86. This Blasphemer!!!
86. This Blasphemer!!!
"You've got business with our church? What's with the crowd?"
"Ah, you came out to greet us yourself."
The Holy Knight Order was about to march straight into the cathedral when every eye locked onto Ja-seong.
A lavishly dressed man stepped forward from among the knights as if he represented the entire group, fixing Ja-seong with a ferocious glare.
"The Hero of the Mether Church. Have you been living it up, sleeping soundly with both legs stretched out in comfort?"
"...Well, look who it is. His Eminence Cardinal Helix."
"That is correct. I am Helix, Inquisitor and Cardinal of the Priga Church—the state religion of the Empire. A station far too lofty for a worm like you, scurrying about worshiping some backwoods god!"
The moment they faced off, Cardinal Helix oozed authoritarian arrogance.
Arrogant people in power never surprised me, but the titles he was tossing around only sharpened the uneasiness already coiling in my gut.
Not just any cardinal—the Inquisitor himself had come all this way.
The reason was painfully obvious.
"And I have come strictly to carry out my duties as Inquisitor. Now—do you see this warrant stamped with the Imperial Seal?"
As if proving that all-too-predictable turn of events was now reality, he produced a warrant bearing the Empire's seal and bellowed at Ja-seong.
"Hero Nam Ja-seong! I hereby detain you, along with the entire Mether Church, on charges of colluding with the Demon Lord Army! You will quietly accompany us and prepare to stand trial for heresy!"
"...Heresy trial?"
Even with those oppressive words hanging over him, Ja-seong let out a hollow laugh.
Moments ago, he'd basically confessed to provoking them, but instead of looking intimidated, he just shrugged his shoulders as if ready to play it cool.
"Strange thing to say. All our church does is cook up meals with donations to share and lend a hand with reconstruction work."
"Do you seriously mean to play dumb when a warrant has already been issued?"
"Even if you brought a warrant, you're supposed to explain things properly when the other guy doesn't get what's going on. You think I'm gonna grovel and crawl into custody just because you showed up barking about arrests?"
"Hah. This is exactly why barbarians who worship false gods are..."
Had Ja-seong struck a nerve?
Helix's voice soon erupted with venom.
"Listen closely, you uncivilized heathen. The sole reason humanity has survived until now is purely Lady Priga's protection—she who has embraced humanity with infinite love since the dawn of time!!!"
"Even the fact that foolish humans lacking faith in Lady Priga are permitted to settle upon this land—and that heretics like you are viewed with tolerance rather than executed on the spot—all of it is by Lady Priga's mercy!!!"
An inflated sense of chosen-ness seeped through the grand speech.
Ja-seong was listening with only one ear, but it let me guess why someone as high-ranking as a cardinal had shown up personally.
"I don't care what god you lot worshiped back in your own land. Now that every nation except the Empire has ceased to function, those gods have essentially lost divine protection. Meaning that you—who crawled into the Empire—ought to be grateful for Lady Priga's protection, and likewise have an obligation to revere her!"
Yeah, religions ranking each other—that happened in my old world too, to some degree.
But in this world, every country besides the Empire had crumbled into dysfunction, so any church other than the state religion, Priga, held very little real power or standing.
Non-Priga faiths were, at best, simply tolerated for "political convenience"—preserving each group's traditions and history, gathering a certain following, and demonstrating voluntary community service.
However, some of those tolerated churches had been seeing their influence grow over time—and that kind of expansion would naturally feel like a crisis to the Priga Church.
After all, a bigger rival church meant fewer believers for your own.
"And yet, far from being grateful to Lady Priga, you not only acted impudently as if to compare yourselves to us—you even went so far as to hail a demon as your saint! Is that not repaying Lady Priga's grace with outright enmity!?"
From Priga's perspective, a rival church growing larger with a rising-name hero at the front was definitely cause for alarm.
And now, if a suspicion surfaced that their newly revered saint was actually a demon, they would naturally seize that chance to latch on and tear into it.
Whether true or false, all they had to do was agitate, brand them as heretics, and the situation could be tidily settled.
"...The Saint is a demon?"
Ja-seong had told me himself that the demon girl he saw two years ago had since become the Saint.
In effect, the fact that they had targeted that point precisely meant they had solid evidence. Even so, when the accusation landed just now, Ja-seong merely shrugged as if feigning ignorance.
"That's strange. The only time our church presented the Saint to another denomination was at the religious assembly held a short while ago. You're telling me a single glimpse of her back then was enough to make you suspect the Saint is a demon?"
"You ask the obvious. You may deceive the eyes of others, but if you think you can deceive mine, you are sorely mistaken!"
Helix shouted with absolute certainty.
Overflowing with emotion, he soon stepped away from the Holy Knights guarding his back and strode right up to Ja-seong.
"The moment I came face-to-face with that wench you brought along and dared to call a saint, I felt it clearly. That bewitching creature is no ordinary demon—she is a Mongma, possessing even a faint power to seduce people!"
-Grk.
Strength surged into the shovel resting on his shoulder.
Helix, seemingly oblivious, glared wide-eyed and pressed Ja-seong again, shouting.
"Those others on the scene might not have noticed, but you cannot fool my eyes! The dizziness and rapture I felt merely from looking at that damnable wench were faint—but they were exactly the same as the sensation one feels when beguiled by Mongma scum!"
"Heh... So that's it. Everyone else kept quiet, but you noticed the weak charm radiating from a lass who doesn't even know how to drain life force...?"
A low murmur slipped from beneath his helmet.
As he spoke, his empty hand came up, and then he gripped the handle of the shovel resting on his shoulder.
"That's a fine answer, Your Eminence."
The moment he seized the shovel hilt with both hands at full strength.
A chill ran down my spine, but Helix—blind to what was about to happen to him—was too busy pressing his accusation.
"In short, you're saying you felt your prick rise for an existence that a holy believer should absolutely never feel lust toward—'girl plus demon'—and then used that as evidence to stage a heresy trial. Which makes you a pedophile."
"Well, naturally... What?"
"YOU BLASPHEMOUS PEDO BASTARD!!!"
-KWAANG!!!!!
The shovel came swinging with that shout.
It caught the Cardinal square in the face and drove him into the ground. From the point of impact, cracks spiderwebbed across the road until the earth itself was torn open.
"Uh... uhhh?"
The mouths of the Priga Church's inquisitors, who had been watching the situation unfold, all dropped open at once.
In the silence that followed, Ja-seong lifted the shovel he had just smashed into the ground and rested its handle on his shoulder.
"Pedophile scum like you doesn't deserve to live. Don't keep breathing and flailing around—just crawl into the fires of hell."
The target had been none other than a figure of the Empire's state religion.
And in that instant, he had pulverized a cardinal—whose rank alone stood above even nobles—an inquisitor tasked with punishing heretics.
"Uwaaaaaaah!"
The moment the Holy Knights registered that such an outrageous incident had occurred in the middle of the city, they screamed and started drawing their swords.
"Wh-what do you think you're doing, you insane hero—right in the middle of the road!!"
"Your Eminence! Your Eminenceeeeeee!!!"
"That damnable heathen must be executed immediately...!"
-BANG!!
A thunderous boom crushed the commotion.
The moment the shovel in his hand drove down onto the ground where the corpse had been smashed, earth and debris erupted, showering the area like rain.
"Everyone shut up and pay attention."
Patter-patter. Fragments of the road rained down, along with blood and flesh.
The realization that a figure of imperial authority had been obliterated without a trace was enough to seal the lips of those lofty believers.
"I'll bash in the skull of anyone who pokes his head out unnecessarily, so quit your yapping and just answer what I ask."
Of course, having been branded a clear evil, they might charge again before long—but Ja-seong showed no particular hostility toward the knights other than Helix.
Soon, still resting the tip of the shovel on the ground, he posed a question to them.
"Raise your hand if you were among those who accompanied this bastard to the recent assembly."
"...What?"
"Those who went along, raise your hands. Like this, alright?"
Unimaginable composure for a man who had just killed a cardinal.
The Holy Knights exchanged glances, then—seeming to judge that playing along was the better option—some of them raised their hands.
"Did you guys get hard too?"
Ja-seong stared at them and asked.
"What?"
"I asked if you got excited when you saw our Saint back then."
Two years ago—whether they had let themselves get aroused looking at that young Mongma he had taken in.
"Th-that's impossible!"
At that absurd accusation, the Holy Knights all shouted in alarm.
"That's right! We are clergy! We who serve God would never feel lust toward a little girl!"
"Much less if the subject is a demon..."
"But this asshole said he got a boner."
The clamoring knights fell silent all at once.
Ja-seong, the bloodied shovel resting on his shoulder again, looked at the bewildered knights and began to explain why he had done what he did.
"If he was able to so keenly sense a demon's aura that even you lot missed, that's practically impossible unless he felt attraction toward that child in the first place. Attraction toward an existence that a pure-hearted clergyman should never feel anything for—a girl and a demon."
...This crazy old man.
So that was why they'd made a demon their saint—an even more insane reason than I'd imagined.
"So, without any need for a trial, I determined he was trash who shouldn't exist in this world and killed him. Got a problem with that?"
Yet here he was, standing before the knights, proudly asserting such an absurd conviction.
Obviously, there was no way an execution carried out with neither proper logic nor procedure would ever be accepted as normal.
"D-do you even hear yourself...?"
"Oh! Hero! Perfect timing!"
Before the expected backlash could even pour out, the faithful of the Mether Church—having heard the commotion—came rushing out of the cathedral as if they'd been waiting. They thrust what they were holding in front of him.
"Sir Hero, we were hiding because that Helix fellow came, but we just show them this here, right?"
"Yeah! No point dragging it out—release it all right here!"
-Flutter, thump.
The faithful who emerged from the cathedral kept dropping what they held onto the already chaotic ground.
Ja-seong spread open several pieces from the massive pile of documents and, as if showing off, began holding their contents up before the knights.
"Here, here, my good fellows. Before you charge, read through this stuff first."
"...What is this?"
"Embezzlement of donations, gambling, illegal prostitution... Whoa, there's even a record of receiving bribes from a human trafficking ring that abused orphans under the pretext of confession?"
The pile of evidence covered every conceivable manner of corruption and misconduct committed by a man who was both a papal candidate and an inquisitor meant to punish heretics...
It was far too detailed to be entirely fabricated, and plenty of it matched real, existing incidents.
"H-Hero Nam Ja-seong. How in the world did you even gather all this...?"
"When a man's committed as many crimes as he had, acquiring evidence is easy. Every attempt at public disclosure got shut down by cries of heresy, so it just never came to light until now."
The eyes beneath his helmet glinted coldly as his gaze gradually lowered, settling on the scattered pieces of the cardinal's corpse strewn across the ruined street.
"So just when I'd been itching for the right moment to reveal it—well, look at that. The bastard crawled right up to my face on his own. Wasn't it better to just handle it on the spot? The dead can't talk, so there's no danger of the public disclosure getting blocked now, either."
"N-No, but still. If punishment is to be carried out, it must go through a rigorous trial first..."
"That trial song and dance again... If we stall around waiting for that and the evidence gets destroyed, are you going to take responsibility? You were his errand boys—you must've had a rough idea what kind of man he was and what filth he got up to."
"......."
"...Well, I suppose grunts who just do as they're told wouldn't have much authority anyway."
He used the shovel to push aside the documents strewn across the ground, then gave a chin gesture toward the faithful who had come out of the cathedral.
Even after killing a man who was a cardinal, he showed no guilt whatsoever and was already moving to wrap the situation up.
"I'll send one of our people with you. If you're not part of his pack, take all these documents straight to the judiciary. After that, whether you revoke my hero status, brand me a heretic, or bring another warrant, I'll obediently walk into jail on my own."
"...Y-yes. Understood."
"Alright, work's done. Hyosung, let's head in."
He beckoned me with his hand, urging me to follow him into the cathedral.
The sight of him drenched in blood was a bit shocking, but in the end, I decided to follow without dwelling on it.
It was bewildering in many ways, yet I also thought that for someone like him, this kind of behavior seemed perfectly natural.
All I could do was worry about whether he could handle the consequences of what he'd done.
"Sorry, Hyosung. I meant to deal with this when you weren't around—suddenly showing you something ugly like this shocked you, didn't it?"
"Nah, not really. I'm used to it, so it's fine."
Seeing people die wasn't exactly a once-in-a-while thing anymore, so none of it really surprised me at this point.
But this was the first time I'd seen someone you could call an authority figure die inside the Empire—where the rule of law was firmly in place, unlike the lawless zones that heroes roamed.
"Still, Ja-seong hyung—even if the cardinal was human garbage, is this really going to be okay?"
"That's exactly why I brought that kid in as the Saint. A maggot who feels lust toward a little girl who can't even drain life force, much less control charm—there's no way he was a decent human being. And sure enough, whenever we dug into guys like that, all sorts of filth came pouring out."
"Still, the responsibility..."
"Hey, that reminds me, Hyosung. I'm late asking this."
Just as I was about to voice my concern, Ja-seong turned to look at me and asked.
"You... when you saw that kid, don't tell me..."
"Don't say crazy stuff. My type has come up over and over while we've eaten together—did you seriously forget?"
My type is older women who listen well, you know.
Even if she's a Mongma, there's no way I'd lose my head over a child.
"Forget? Even if I act wild, my memory's not that terrible, you punk."
He clapped me on the back and stepped ahead.
Feeling the sturdiness of his back, I sensed my worry about him gradually fading away.
Sure, he had his reckless streak, but the act of beating a corrupt authority figure to death without giving a damn about law or rank—that's something only a "true hero" could pull off.