80
Chapter 80
After spouting whatever nonsense I could to shake off the clergy, I was running toward Rubia's mansion with the unconscious Lucy in my arms.
A completely unexpected figure appeared before me.
Surprisingly, I had run into the Leader of the Black Fang.
To be more precise....
[I know your secrets.]
I came face-to-face with a video featuring the Leader of the Black Fang.
I was walking through the most deserted paths I could find to avoid drawing attention,
when a dark shimmer suddenly appeared before my eyes... and the moment I touched it, the video started playing.
Naturally, my face couldn't help but be colored with doubt. That was definitely the method I used.
Because there were rarely things as effective as that for spreading information.
[Yet, I did not speak of it. That was a sort of opportunity. A final chance to confess all your sins and beg for forgiveness.]
But of course, the person shown there wasn't me. The method was the exact same, but I had never made a video like that.
[But you threw that chance away with your own hands.]
Accompanied by words stating he had no intention of giving them a second chance, various scenes flashed within the video.
My jaw naturally dropped.
It would have been stranger if it hadn't.
[This is what you have been hiding. Atrocities committed in the name of God, so foul they make me sick to even mention.]
Grinding children down to manufacture Divine Power.
Secretly colluding and cooperating with Demons to conduct all sorts of experiments.
It was a tale shocking enough to surprise even me, who had somewhat anticipated the Holy See's corruption.
There is a line even for atrocities.
That line had been crossed by a massive margin.
Before that shock could even fade, the self-proclaimed Leader of the Black Fang in the video opened his mouth and declared.
[This is what has been happening in the Great Temple. And it is the reason I have given them 'punishment'.]
He declared that he had passed judgment on the Holy See.
He stated that he had delivered rightful punishment to those who committed such blasphemous acts in God's name.
And if anyone were to defile God's name again.......
[I will gladly pass judgment upon them as well.]
He warned that they would meet the exact same fate.
With those final words, the video ended.
However, even after the playback finished, I stood there for a long time, unable to move.
I understood the content of the video.
I understood what had been happening there.
The developers of Bone and Blood.
I even convinced myself that it made sense, considering it was a developer that suspiciously loved tormenting orphans.
But there was one fact I simply could not comprehend.
'Just who the hell are these bastards?'
The first hypothesis that came to mind was that they were the 'real' Black Fang.
Actually, until the video ended, I thought the person in front of me was the real Leader of the Black Fang.
The Boss of a Mastermind organization that was shaking up the Empire to a suspicious degree, despite not even getting a single mention in the spoiler post.
I was even happy for a moment, thinking I had finally gotten a lead on those guys.
'But this doesn't make sense.'
It was an obvious conclusion if you thought about when the video was filmed.
That video was of a type that absolutely could not have been filmed before the people of the Great Temple were massacred by Lucy.
Internal Documents.
Research Journal.
And countless other materials on top of that.
Because the amount of evidence was far too vast to claim they just sneaked in and investigated.
Unless they used some hypnotism app to get the Great Temple's cooperation for filming, how on earth did they find and record all of that?
'And if this video was filmed after Lucy massacred the people of the Great Temple.......'
It would mean this video was filmed and distributed within the time I left the Great Temple until now, taking no more than two hours at most.
Even though there was a high probability that the Clergy were still there.
Because the situation had flowed in a rather bizarre direction. Even though the Clergy I met earlier had shown me some strange behaviors.
For now, their power was at a level that absolutely couldn't be ignored.
Just from the power I sensed, they were at least Archbishop-class.
There were even some who looked to be around the level of a Cardinal here and there.
If they combined their strength, it was a fighting force that could surpass the Empire's Knight Commander, and if things went well, even challenge the Imperial Family's direct Imperial Guards.
With people like that gathered there.
Does it make sense that the Leader of the Black Fang would awkwardly drop by and say he's just going to film this and asks for their understanding?
A fight would have broken out.
I don't know who would have won, but they certainly wouldn't have had the leisure to film this video.
Therefore, it was practically proven that the real Leader of the Black Fang wasn't the culprit.
'......Wait a second.'
As I racked my brain like that, a certain thought suddenly occurred to me.
If that were the case.
There was only one possible explanation I could think of.
The Clergy I ran into earlier.
There was no one else besides those guys who could have filmed such a video.
But... why?
What benefit would they get from spreading a video like this?
This video would only benefit the Black Fang.
If this was spreading everywhere across the Empire, the number of Black Fang supporters would be growing in real-time.
The justice achieved by the Black Fang.
Everyone would be going wild over it.
The Black Fang faith, which was already popular to begin with, would spread even more explosively.
The Leader of the Black Fang, whose luck was ridiculously good, would be cheering in sheer delight.
Since he just stayed still and suddenly had someone else help him expand his faction and build a support base.
To the point where I felt the saying about successful people succeeding at everything fit him perfectly. This was a stroke of good luck for the Black Fang.
However, to the Holy See, this was nothing short of a disaster.
An absolutely disgusting atrocity.
Anyone perceptive enough already knew that the Holy See was corrupt.
But this had crossed the line by a massive margin.
They were going to fall.
They would absolutely never regain their former prestige.
Honestly, it was questionable if the organization could even survive this.
They would probably abolish malicious systems like the Indulgences, compensate the victims, and put on a show of repentance.
Because they would have to restore trust somehow.
But there was no way they could fully earn it back. That five-minute video had practically half-destroyed the Holy See.
A perfect act of suicide.
I was bewildered as to why the hell they would do such a thing, but... soon, a single hypothesis came to mind.
'Repentance.'
That would explain this situation.
The scale of the Holy See was massive.
Naturally, corruption was widespread because of it.
When people gather and an organization grows larger, those things are bound to happen.
Furthermore, those things could never be easily uprooted.
It was a situation where interests were complexly intertwined.
Even the organization's High Command couldn't just decide everything on a whim.
But with this current situation, it was different.
Under the justification that they had to restore trust no matter what, they could completely overhaul the Holy See.
They could set everything right.
'Of course, the probability of failure is much higher.'
I figured perhaps they had even accepted that fact.
If they were truly repenting for their sins, they must have thought that they shouldn't cover up their crimes in the first place.
That was why they had revealed the truth like this.
An incredibly radical move.
But thinking about it, it might be a natural outcome.
Because those guys probably thought they had come face-to-face with God.
'For a member of the Clergy to meet God. It would be stranger if they didn't feel anything.'
Only then could I fully understand the situation.
How should I put it.
It was just incredibly coincidental.
Coincidences overlapping with more coincidences.
And those piling on endlessly to create this exact scenario.
It was so uncanny that it made me wonder if the God of Light had orchestrated all of this.
'Well, that's probably impossible.'
The God of Light was a systemic entity who granted power in proportion to the devotion offered to him.
Or rather, an entity who could Bless humans for whatever reason, but could never punish them.
Back in the days when the sequel to Bone and Blood hadn't been released for years, and everyone in the community was crying out for it.
Those were the two hypotheses the users had come up with after scraping the absolute bottom of the game's lore.
Whichever it was, there was no chance that he had intentionally orchestrated this.
'...Come to think of it, which one was the right answer?'
Curiosity naturally welled up inside me, but...
I soon brushed the thought away.
This wasn't some philosophy class.
Where would I find the time to contemplate the proof of God's existence?
Instead of doing that, I needed to figure out what was wrong with my body as quickly as possible.
I also had to make a decision regarding Lucy.
[I will repay this debt, someday.]
A faint voice echoed from somewhere.
It was so quiet that it was hard to make out the words.
I looked around to see where the sound had come from, but...
The only person in sight was Rubia.
Far in the distance, Rubia was waving her hand at me from the front gate of the mansion.
I had arrived at my destination before I even realized it.
Seeing her there, it was obvious she had stayed up all night worrying about me after I ran off.
Feeling both apologetic and happy to see her, I quickly ran toward Rubia.
No, I *tried* to run toward her.
Responding to my will, my wings moved on their own.
I *flew* right up to Rubia's nose at the speed of light.
...I hear babbling.
Since there wouldn't randomly be a newborn baby here.
Naturally, this sound had to be coming from the Noonim right in front of me.
It was a sight that looked as though she was experiencing mental regression.
Rubia was pointing her finger at me, stuttering incoherently.
While I couldn't understand the baby talk, I could tell what Rubia was trying to ask.
It would have been weirder if I didn't know.
I hesitated for a long while.
The wings that had suddenly sprouted.
The bloodied girl I had somehow picked up.
The incident where I turned the entire High Command of the Holy See into Black Fang supporters and made them film a confession video.
It was because I had no idea how to explain all of that. But if I stalled any longer, the Noonim before me would definitely faint.
So I just opened my mouth and said whatever came to mind.
"......It just ended up happening that way."
Of course, an explanation like that was never going to work.
I had to carry two fainted women back to the mansion that day.
...It truly was an incredibly eventful day.