Who Audits the Auditor? (4)
The barb struck true, and for the first time, Erzena's divine power flinched.
As the turbulent aura that had been seething around her drew back just a little, the air between the two of them finally lightened, and a breeze slipped through the checkpoint.
The Saintess and Mohaim's eyes met.
He looked every bit as startled as she was.
How in the world...
Mohaim's plan to cross the Crossline Kingdom had been flawless.
1. If only the paladins and the Saintess headed north, it would surely be read as a political maneuver — so they would form a pilgrimage and dilute the optics.
2. They would assemble the largest party ever recorded, disguising the materiel for war as relief supplies and sacred relics.
By the time the examiners, buried under a crushing flood of cargo and travelers, finally noticed something was off, it would already be too late.
The key figures of the pilgrimage would already have been fast-tracked through and be well on their way north.
The plan was built so that as long as the 1st Paladin Order and the Saintess themselves made it across the Crossline Kingdom, nothing else mattered — everything else could be held up at the border and it would change nothing.
And yet it had been blocked at the very first step.
It should have taken at least half a day before there was even a chance of being found out.
Erzena clenched her fist tight, doing her utmost to hide how shaken she was.
Stay sharp. My opponent is a member of the Evil God Cult. This level of suspicion is only natural.
Fortunately, perhaps, the Central Officer seemed to harbor suspicion but not yet certainty.
If he had truly known their real objective was the northern expedition, he would have pulled out every stop from the very beginning to block the Saintess from entering.
But right up until the final moment, when he had been about to stamp her entry permit, he had been remarkably cooperative.
If not for one single thing, she would already be across the border.
The documents the attendant handed him. The moment he read those, the whole atmosphere changed.
The man seated across from her was no longer the cheerful, courteous young officer from before.
Not a moment ago, he had been flustered by a Saintess in a way he couldn't hide — a man who wore every feeling on his face for all the world to see.
"Answer me, Saintess."
In his place now sat an examiner looking at her with eyes that seemed to see straight through to her soul.
Sssssss.
The only sound in the silence was sand trickling through glass.
"What is the true purpose of your pilgrimage?"
A voice stripped of all emotion, pressing her with the psychological weight of her shrinking window to explain herself.
Every trace of good humor had been swept from his face, and he now looked like a hound ready to tear into her at the discovery of a single flaw.
Erzena opened her mouth slowly.
"...I'm afraid I don't know what you mean. A true purpose?"
At her answer, the Central Officer's fingers tapped lightly against the table. Tap. Tap.
And each time he did, the sand in the hourglass beside him poured down at a far quicker pace.
"As I see it... your reason for heading north is not pilgrimage at all."
"I beg your pardon?"
"To be precise, the pilgrimage feels like a secondary objective. Something else lies beneath it."
The Central Officer delivered what bordered on a diplomatic insult in a perfectly flat tone.
Questioning the true intent of an entire organization — not an individual — is a grave discourtesy.
Doubly so when the head of that organization is present in the flesh.
Erzena struck back sharply.
"Do not presume to suspect us, Central Officer. That is an extraordinarily offensive thing to say."
"I apologize. But by the nature of my office, I cannot help but doubt intent at all times."
"Are you claiming the Holy Church has told some kind of lie?"
"I've seen it many times in this line of work. Priests have been known to smuggle contraband in the hems of their robes."
"You—!!!"
Nothing like the gentle young man from earlier, the Central Officer did not retreat an inch.
On the contrary, he piled on ever more insolent words, deliberately provoking her.
At the sight, indignation boiled over in the Saintess, and she blurted out before she could stop herself.
"Then what do you think it is? What do you believe our true purpose to be?!"
Her raised voice rang out across the border.
"Saintess!"
Mohaim, alarmed, signaled her not to take the bait — but her words had already reached the Central Officer.
"..."
The Central Officer held his silence.
For an uncomfortably long stretch of time.
His expression held nothing — no discomposure, no amusement, nothing at all.
His black eyes regarded the Saintess without the faintest tremor.
Where moments before he had parried and riposted with relish, now he simply sat quiet — and that stillness set her stomach twisting with nerves all the harder.
Impossible. There's no way he knows. There's no way a dog of the Evil God Cult could have uncovered our great work.
Sweat gathered on her palms.
Excitement, worry, and fury made her heart pound.
Did he truly know? Or was he simply probing her?
The Saintess prayed inwardly.
Let this heretic not fathom our grand design.
And at last, the Central Officer's mouth opened.
He spoke in a low voice.
"You are going north on a crusade."
The heretic already knew.
"Ha."
The first reaction she showed was a hollow laugh.
"A crusade, you say?"
The second was a flat denial, punctuated with an overdramatic gesture.
I nodded.
Crusade.
It was the word every religion cried out when it meant to wield absolute force.
A term used when a faith wanted to utterly crush some place — or some thing — in its own name.
There's nothing else it could be.
Considering every clue that had surfaced so far, a crusade was the only thing that fit as a true purpose.
Not war. The Church doesn't wage war against nations.
A nation is, in the end, merely a place where potential believers live — so the Church doesn't pick fights with them.
A full-scale war against another faith, however, is another matter entirely.
History held a few instances of one church declaring the other heretical, crushing it, and swallowing its flock.
And so I had probed — and hit the mark.
Erzena said nothing, simply gazing up at the sky. Then she closed her eyes and murmured softly.
"So the world has fallen this far... If he can already divine our purpose..."
Bullseye.
Just as I'd expected, the pilgrimage was not the real objective. It had to be a secondary reason — or an outright fabrication.
Which left only one answer. Crusade. Nothing but crusade.
All right, then. What do I do with this?
The problem, however, remained unsolved.
This situation was on an entirely different level from some individual trying to slip across the border unlawfully.
The Crossline Kingdom never opens its roads for war or acts of armed force.
Not for anyone.
Which meant that here and now, I had to stamp [ENTRY DENIED] on every single member of the pilgrimage.
But before I could, the Minister's words came back to me.
"Let nothing happen to the Saintess. Nothing good, and nothing bad."
However the situation unfolded, if it involved the Saintess, I was not to create any trouble.
A Minister's orders take precedence over ordinary regulations.
It is a mechanism built for flexibility in moments of crisis or urgent need.
And the performance bonus and zero-accident record riding on it were nothing to sneeze at, either.
But that directive applies to minor regulations — not to a catastrophe of this scale, like opening a road for armed force.
Still, an order is an order...
Yet if I rashly stamped the denial under regulation alone, then every last consequence would land squarely on me.
Order and regulation, pulling in opposite directions. A contradiction.
What am I supposed to do with this?
First thing is to contact the Minister, I suppose.
Just as I was sinking into that dilemma, hunting for a way out, the Saintess abruptly rose from her seat, eyes still closed.
"Hm? Is something the matter?"
Her golden eyes, reopening as her prayer concluded, brimmed with resolve and fury — and glared straight at me.
"If it is the Lord God's will, then I shall do it here and now."
She slowly drew a cosmetic brush from the breast of her robes and began writing something across her own forehead.
[THE LORD GOD'S HEAVEN — HELL FOR THE UNBELIEVING]
What in the world is that.
Why would anyone write something that vicious across such a pretty face?
Having scrawled the words in garish crimson and painted a cross on her cheek for good measure, she declared:
"The games end here, Central Officer Nathan Kell. We have known exactly what you are from the very beginning."
"..."
A rigid, outstretched finger pointed precisely at the space between my brows.
I had absolutely nothing to say in response.
I mean, I'm the chief officer of this border. Of course you know who I am.
I literally introduced myself earlier.
What kind of goddamn nonsense is this?
"Whatever you're doing right now, it won't affect the results of your inspection—"
"Silence! Stop trying to deceive me any further!"
Erzena's shout shut my mouth in an instant.
"First Order of Paladins, hear me! Our enemies have already taken root in every corner of the world!"
A voice that thundered far beyond what her slight frame should have allowed burst out of her.
The moment I saw it, I understood exactly what she was trying to do.
Ah. I've seen this type plenty of times.
There are always people like this.
The kind who, realizing they'll be tripped up by the entry regulations, fly into a rage over some absurd pretext instead.
By far the most common type among problem visitors.
Seeing a Saintess do it is pretty novel, though.
Truly, no matter how exalted the person, in the end they're only human.
Act all noble and elegant for as long as you like — the moment your true nature slips out, the temper comes roaring right out with it.
People really are all the same.
A bitter laugh escaped me.
"You dare laugh at me!?"
Only further enraged by the sight, she pointed at me and cried out.
"You abominable impostor, stealing the Lord God's love to stand in the way of our great wor—"
"Saintess!!!"
But her tirade was cut off by Mohaim, who had risen with a grave expression.
"That is quite enough. You have caused more than enough commotion for one day."
"Mohaim! But that man — that person—!"
Unable to bear the injustice of it, whatever it was, she stamped her foot furiously in place.
Mohaim cut her protest off with a single stroke of his stern voice.
"Conflict at a border carries weight rivaling wartime. You have already broken your promise to me and every diplomatic courtesy besides. Stop this now. I will handle things from here."
"But still, this—!"
"...Enough."
"Uuuugh! Just this once!"
The Saintess grumbled and fumed for a good long while, but at last she sat back down and scrubbed the grotesque characters off her face with her hand.
The knight commander turned and planted himself before me.
"Examiner."
"Sir Espirenche."
"I will admit it plainly. We are heading north right now on a crusade."
"Then you are telling me my suspicion was entirely justified."
"I concur."
Oh-ho. A frontal assault, is it? You don't see that often.
My eyes lit up at the unfamiliar approach.
Let's see what excuse you come up with to talk your way through this.
"And that is precisely why I intend to show you this."
Mohaim held out a crystal orb.
"That would be..."
"You uphold the border according to regulation, Examiner. But we, too, must cross it — there is no alternative."
"Everyone has their circumstances. The Church is no exception."
"But I am confident that what you are about to see will change your mind."
"And what connection does this crystal orb have to border passage?"
"A considerable one."
With that curt reply, he poured mana into the orb.
Within it appeared an elderly man, well advanced in years, watering a flower bed.
"Forgive the interruption while you are on leave."
The old man turned toward Mohaim and gave a light wave of his hand.
"Ah, Commander of the First Order. I see you've opened the orb — trouble has found you, I take it?"
"Yes. Just as you foresaw, we've found ourselves stuck at the Crossline Kingdom. It fit to the letter."
"Hohoho. I thought it would."
They exchanged words in fairly relaxed tones, clearly old acquaintances.
No, hold on — what does this old man have to do with me?
"Pardon my rudeness, but might I ask who you are?"
When I asked carefully, Mohaim extended the crystal orb toward me.
"Central Officer, pay your respects. Before you stands His Holiness the Pope."
Oh, for fuck's sake.