65
Chapter 65
-I've grasped the situation. I'll lead the others and head there soon.
The man on the screen said as much.
Given the emergency, it meant the High Command of the Holy See would gather to discuss future countermeasures.
"Yes, understood."
With his usual hypocritical smile, Karon replied... and ended the Transmission Magic.
However, unlike his words, Karon had no intention of waiting for them to arrive.
In a way, it was only natural.
Even if they were both Cardinals, that man was on a completely different level from him, who had heard the Holy See's greatest secret directly from the Pope, who had hidden his tracks.
The power they held and their abilities were as different as heaven and earth.
From the very fact that he was the Cardinal in charge of the most important Empire, Karon possessed power comparable to no one else in the Holy See.
It wasn't for nothing that people called him the next Pope.
'Even if guys like that come, they'll only get in my way.'
They were all hypocrites.
You could tell just by looking at that one guy.
He knew to some extent that this was happening, saying that corruption was inevitable when a faction grew too large.
And yet, he insisted they had to come up with a solution.
He said that what was wrong had to be fixed, that they had to try to correct it even if they knew it was impossible.
'Absolutely disgusting.'
They were either naive idealists spouting hypocrisy like that man, or they got involved in all sorts of corruption behind the scenes while pretending to be righteous on the outside.
The Holy See was infested with vermin like that.
The latter was at least somewhat reasonable to talk to...
But they were also just half-wits who felt repulsed by the efficient method of grinding up orphans to create the Holy Grail.
Karon knew this because he had brought it up once before, only to be rejected on the grounds that it was going too far and would surely bring down divine punishment.
Fortunately, because they stupidly showed their disgust right away, he was able to kill them on the spot to shut them up.
'They're all so frustrating.'
If you grind people up, you can get as much Divine Power as you want.
The vermin spouted hypocrisy and hesitated to use humans as materials.
He could confidently say there was no more efficient material than humans.
That was how Karon made it to this position. He caught the eye of the Pope, who understood his intentions, and even claimed the seat of his successor.
However, this efficient method could only be carried out in the Empire.
It was because of those hypocrites, who were bound to reject the rational method of exploiting God.
Thanks to them, he had to waste time needlessly tightening security.
The mass production of the Holy Grail could have been done much more efficiently, but he couldn't do it.
'Thanks to that, things are going to get troublesome.'
He was already busy enough just dealing with the Leader of Black Fang. But thanks to those bastards coming after him, he now had to needlessly dispose of the evidence as well.
First, he had to quickly hand over the Hero's corpse here to the Empire.
Since he had built a deep relationship with the Second Prince beforehand, he could just ask him for a temporary favor.
If he left it to that cunning Emperor, he would definitely lose complete ownership of it. The Second Prince was exactly the right person for this.
"......?"
Why was it?
Why did he suddenly feel so unsettled and anxious?
A sinister premonition washed over him. A feeling that he was making the wrong choice.
However, Karon was a rational man.
Because of that, he didn't abandon his most efficient plan over something as unstable as a mere gut feeling.
"......C-Cardinal. The preparations for the ritual are complete!"
While he was busy cleaning up the evidence, a report came in from his subordinate.
Karon quickly made his way over.
As he chanted the Incantation, a hidden passage revealed itself.
A staircase leading down to the Underground Cathedral.
As he walked down the dark corridor, he found a spring filled with a crimson liquid.
Holy Blood.
An artifact passed down for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. A Holy Relic forged from the flesh and bones of a Saintess who had fulfilled her duty.
It could be called the history of the Holy See itself, and it was the most powerful artifact in their possession.
It was Karon's trump card, one he had saved until the very end.
It was a bit of a shame to use it, but a trump card was meant to be used at a time like this.
There was never a moment where it was more desperately needed than right now.
He had to take measures before the Leader of Black Fang exposed his greatest secret.
Karon submerged himself into the spring.
His pure white garments were dyed red.
He could feel an overwhelmingly powerful aura enveloping his entire body.
No matter how formidable the Leader of Black Fang was, he wouldn't be able to stop this.
The manifestation of a living miracle.
It was an artifact that had accumulated the power of dozens of generations of Saintesses.
It was on a completely different level than the Holy Grail.
Unless he was a monster on par with the Emperor of the Empire, it would be absolutely impossible to counter. That man would soon lose his consciousness and be reduced to a puppet of the Holy See.
That man would soon pay the price.
The price for touching someone he should never have messed with.
The price for daring to challenge the Holy See without knowing his place.
Karon smiled as he prayed in that sacred spring.
The Leader of Black Fang.
Teolbakteolbak.
Asking to let himself into that man's mind.
******
"......Excuse me, are you alright, Cardinal?"
Such a voice reached him.
Karon grabbed his forehead at the question and opened his mouth irritably.
"Nothing happened. Don't disrupt my focus and just shut up."
His words were excessively forceful, unlike his usual self.
His subordinate was flustered by those words that had thrown away all pretense.
But Karon had no time to care about such things.
In a way, it was only natural.
Nothing happened...
That was a lie.
Too much had happened. It was so overwhelming that his head was spinning.
'What on earth was that?'
Why on earth was the Mental World full of human feces...... and obscene photos of an old woman?
If one were to say he had grotesque tastes, he had clearly felt hatred toward those things.
But if he hated them, why did they take up so much space in his Mental World?
As if he faced them all day long.
'No, that's not the only strange thing.'
Fursuit.
A costume worn to disguise oneself as a beastman, born from loving beastmen too much.
The attachment he had to that item, purchased by spending an entire month's salary.
A muscular hand pressing a stone engraved with an electric pattern against the yellow mouse's cloaca.
No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't erase from his memory that yellow mouse's suspicious breaths and cold sweat. And that flushed expression.
And something even worse than that... something that made him feel like all the common sense he had built up would collapse just by thinking about it.
Images and videos he couldn't fathom why they existed in this world.
The more he looked around the Mental World, the more he only discovered such bizarre things.
He couldn't even begin to guess what kind of mental state this guy had or what kind of life he had lived.
But there was one thing he could say for certain.
This guy was definitely not the Leader of Black Fang.
A bastard like this couldn't be the Leader of Black Fang.
That shouldn't be possible. It absolutely couldn't be true.
Such a being below human...
No, he could never accept that an organization led by something less than human had driven the Holy See into a corner.
'...What on earth is going on?'
That was why Karon was in such a state of confusion.
The mental world was just too bizarre.
He had rushed back the moment he sensed something wrong, before his own mind could be destroyed.
No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn't make sense of what had just happened.
Teolbakteolbak.
That man was known to be the Leader of Black Fang.
He was a person the Empire was hunting nationwide. It would have been stranger not to know him.
But there was no way that person—that Teolbakteolbak—could be the Leader of Black Fang.
Then... was it all a mistake by the Empire?
All of it?
They were putting all their resources into the investigation, yet all those imperial forces were just wasting their time?
'Does that even make sense?'
A power as great as the Empire, confusing such a degenerate with the Leader of Black Fang.
How could such a ridiculous thing happen?
But... looking at the current situation, that was the only thing that made sense. There was no other way to explain it.
"U-Um, Cardinal...?"
Just as Karon was spiraling into confusion, his tactless subordinate kept trying to speak to him.
"I told you to shut up."
He was already past the point of controlling his temper.
Once again, sharp words devoid of any pretense escaped Karon's lips.
Strangely, however, the subordinate did not obey his order.
"T-That... is that really okay?"
He was already on edge.
Irritated by the man's persistence, Karon was about to punish the subordinate standing before him...
But he suddenly stopped.
He had no choice but to stop.
He had seen the anomaly at the place his trembling subordinate was pointing to.
"What on earth is this...?"
The most powerful Holy Relic in the possession of the Holy See.
An object passed down through the history of the Holy See for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years.
A treasure among treasures.
The Spring of Miracles had grown shallow.
In this short span of time, nearly half of the Holy Blood had evaporated.
...It was the moment the history of the Holy See was cut in half, as payment for viewing furry porn.