Welcome to Son Billy Village!
If the Exorcism Bureau protected the One Thousand Religion from the shadows, the Pope's Office stood at the forefront, confronting the secular world head-on. It was a position where corruption came far too easily, which meant every person who rose to become Pope of the One Thousand Religion was twisted in their own special way.
“Hmm. Bishop Gundel. So what exactly are you suggesting we do about Brother Dante?”
“His violent tendencies have put the regular priests and novice exorcists in serious danger! We cannot simply let him continue unchecked!”
“Hoo…”
Among all those twisted souls, the current Pope, Clemens Lubrong, stood alone. He idly toyed with his glasses. The aide standing beside him turned deathly pale the moment he saw it, but didn’t dare speak out of turn.
“Looking at the report, there are some personal opinions mixed in from the administration, but Brother Dante’s words don’t seem entirely wrong, do they?”
Just as Dante had said, the death rate and corruption rate among regular priests and novice exorcists were rising—slowly, but unmistakably.
“That’s simply a natural increase that comes with the times. How can we possibly interfere with the natural order?”
It was nonsense, of course. The people born into this softened, comfortable era had grown weak, so more of them were dying. But Clemens never lost his smile.
I really shouldn’t rip those chubby, quivering cheeks off his face.
The moment that smile vanished, he wasn’t sure he could stop himself from acting on the thought.
“Haa… Ah. Thank you for the coffee.”
The aide, who had served him for many years, handed over a pre-poured cup with trembling hands. He had loaded it with the sugar Clemens always craved when angry, hoping to end this situation as quickly as possible.
“Anyway! As expected of Head Exorcist Homerus’s direct disciple! The man is nothing but a brute! A complete savage!”
“Hahaha. Understood. The opinions of the bishops are important, so I will give the matter careful consideration.”
The moment the words “I will consider it” left his mouth, Bishop Gundel stormed out with heavy footsteps. The instant the door closed behind him, the aide rushed to spray perfume on the chair and the area the bishop had occupied, desperately trying to erase the stench.
“Isn’t it interesting?”
“Y-yes?”
He was a handsome middle-aged man bathed in the glow of the setting sun, yet his eyes gleamed with a cold, serpentine light.
“An exorcist simply performed an exorcism. Why do they react like this?”
“Y-you are absolutely right!”
“Send Judge Iryns.”
“I-if it’s her, then…”
The Judges had been created to replace the rampaging inquisitors of old. Only a carefully selected few belonged to their ranks, and among them, Evangeline Iryns was special.
“If she’s the one handling it, even those who aren’t guilty might not survive, wouldn’t you say?”
A healer who wielded the Moon’s holy power. Precisely because of that ability, those who fell into her hands never died. They never died…
Blowing up the train with a grenade in spectacular fashion meant the rest of the journey to the academy would be completed by carriage.
“Oof! Ow! Ouch!”
“Shut it!”
The administrator must have been furious. He had gone out of his way to procure what could only be described as a piece-of-shit cargo wagon, so we were being bounced around like luggage. I was used to it, but the woman—no, Leona—was another story.
Who the hell tells someone their name just because they got a little friendly? What an idiot.
It was still ridiculous no matter how many times I thought about it, but I didn’t want to waste a memory-erasure potion on this moron.
“B-but it hurts!”
“Then you should have ridden in a proper carriage with the other nobles like you were supposed to.”
“That’s because… you, Exorcist-nim…”
“Exorcist.”
“…didn’t ride in one, Exorcist-nim.”
One of the rules exorcists needed to know: in any place that wasn’t a safe location like the main headquarters of the One Thousand Religion, you didn’t casually use someone’s real name. It didn’t matter for me, but if she pulled that in front of another exorcist, she’d have no right to complain if a bullet ended up in her mouth.
“Can’t be helped. Exorcists are basically plague bearers. Plague bearers.”
Wherever we appeared, someone was guaranteed to die. Of course, the truth was that we only showed up after someone had already died, but people preferred the simpler, more convenient target for their resentment.
“Haha. Traveling with an exorcist through woods like these is actually the safest option. Most nobles are magic users, so they wouldn’t know that.”
“True. Looks like you’ve been helped by one before, old man?”
“Sigh. Who else would people like me turn to for help if not exorcists like yourself?”
Shiiing!
I couldn’t let a decent person die, so I snatched the arrow flying toward the coachman’s temple out of the air.
“Huk?!”
“…Is this the kind of place that has bandits?”
“N-no, it isn’t!”
It wasn’t some broken mountain path. We were moving along a proper official road when the arrow came. The funny part was that it had only flown at the coachman of our wagon. None had flown toward the coachmen of the noble carriages. Thanks to that, aside from our startled driver, the entire procession heading toward the nearby city continued moving naturally.
“What a nasty trick.”
The tip had a point, but it was blunt, and there was no poison on it. Still, the impact could knock someone off the wagon and under the wheels, which would be far more painful.
“Old man, can you turn back from here?”
“I-I can return quickly if I ride a horse.”
“Got money?”
“Plenty.”
He really did. If I’d known, I would have squeezed more cash out of the administrator… What kind of 4D industry worker had less money than an exorcist candidate heading off to knight training?
“We’ll take one horse. Use this to buy yourself another horse and a carriage.”
“But…”
“I know you’ve grown attached, but you know what happens if you get too involved with an exorcist, right?”
“S-sorry!”
After the coachman left, we were lucky there was an extra saddle. I threw it over the horse.
“Um… riding a horse is…”
“If you want to become an arrow cushion, go ahead and ride by yourself.”
“I’ll ride with you, Exorcist-nim.”
She fell for it. Of course, she was half sincere, but I didn’t think the guy who had fired one arrow and run would try again. By the time the coachman left and we fell behind, the nobles’ procession had already moved far ahead. We didn’t bother hurrying to catch up.
“Have you traveled all across the empire? You’ve never been to this area before?”
“Not really. I mostly worked in the southern part of the empire, so I don’t know much about the north.”
Cleaning up my own territory kept me busy enough. I didn’t have the energy to worry about someone else’s. Especially since my incredible talent for creating incidents out of thin air meant I was constantly being dragged back to headquarters. I never had any free time.
“Bored?”
“Yes…”
What a high-maintenance woman.
“Sigh. Then why do you think they shot that arrow?”
“To kill the coachman?”
“Besides that. Killing him was secondary.”
I wasn’t particularly eloquent, so I changed the subject to something she should learn.
“Ah… um…”
“Second rule an exorcist must know. Every death has a reason.”
“Pardon?”
“It means there is desire and emotion involved. When one thing kills another, there is always a reason.”
For power. For hunger. For pleasure. Murder always carried a tangible or intangible sense of fulfillment and satisfaction.
“Th-then they wanted to stop the noble procession!”
“No. If that was the goal, they would have targeted the lead carriage, not us slowly bringing up the rear.”
“Then what does it mean?”
“It means they were trying to tie my feet.”
There was only one difference between the carriages at the front and ours at the back: the presence of an exorcist. I wasn’t a complete cold-blooded bastard, so I would have taken the badly injured coachman to the nearest place where he could be treated. And that place would inevitably be where they were currently repairing the tracks.
“Ah… then that means…”
“There’s something there.”
The sun was beginning to set as we arrived at a three-way junction. It was an awkward time to head into the city, and there were no suitable camping spots nearby.
“It looks like everyone else is resting in the village.”
“It does seem that way…”
Just as Leona said, there were almost no carriage tracks on the road leading to the city. Some might have gone ahead, but the majority had clearly headed toward the village.
“Will you go?”
“We have to.”
Unless it was a tactical retreat, my principle was to dig in the moment I smelled something suspicious. It was like walking into the enemy’s den, but I’d done this sort of thing more than once or twice, so whatever.
“Don’t cry.”
“I-I’m not going to!”
She was on the verge of tears and yet still tried to deny it. It was amazing that someone this scared wanted to become an exorcist.
“Being scared isn’t necessarily a flaw.”
“Pardon?”
“I said being a scaredy-cat isn’t a flaw for an exorcist.”
I had seen plenty of people who overcame their fear and moved forward, but I had almost never seen anyone who acknowledged their own cowardice and chose to step back.
“In that sense, this will be good experience for you.”
“Wh-why?”
“Because it looks like we’ll be fighting things that might not even be human at first glance.”
We passed by a shabby sign and stepped into the village where thin trails of smoke rose from the chimneys.
Welcome to Son Billy Village!
Thanks to the benefits of modernization, there were houses built with cement and bricks. Carriages were lined up along the village outskirts.
“Where is the inn?”
While Leona asked the village guard for directions, my eyes went to the jerky he was chewing.
“Keep going straight that way and you’ll find the village inn. You with the nobles?”
“Not exactly. We were on the same train when an accident happened, so we’re traveling together now.”
“Hmm. There’s a curfew at night, so don’t come out of the inn.”
The village guard left as if he had said all he needed to say. It was the typical wariness toward outsiders you’d find in any small village.
“Did you see the jerky he was eating?”
“Yes! It looked incredibly tough!”
“…Never mind. Let’s just get to the inn first.”
Yeah. If you lacked awareness, at least having a bright personality helped you survive.
As the guard had said, there was an inn. Inside, there were no nobles—only coachmen eating.
“Oh? Where are the nobles?”
“Ah, them? They’re probably eating at the village chief’s house. They wouldn’t eat in a place like this.”
The coachmen grumbled as they ate their stew and bread, and the others nodded in agreement. It seemed the village chief was treating the nobles quite generously.
We sat at an empty table. A middle-aged woman who appeared to be the innkeeper came out from the kitchen.
“Oh my. New guests? Are you a couple?”
“Ehe. Hehehe. N—”
“No. Absolutely not.”
I hated the idea of being paired with this idiot even more than I hated being a priest.
“Ah, I-I see. Two guests, then?”
“Yes. Our stomachs aren’t feeling well, so could we just have potatoes and water?”
“We do have potatoes, but…”
“Fried, boiled, however you want to prepare them is fine.”
When I handed over the money with the order, the innkeeper headed back to the kitchen with a look that said she had no choice. The coachmen eating their delicious-looking stew and bread gave me strange glances, but it couldn’t be helped. It wasn’t like I wanted to eat only water and potatoes out of some ascetic discipline.
“You didn’t have to say it like that.”
“Never mind that we only met yesterday. Since when does an exorcist candidate think about romance?”
“It-it’s a cover! I was trying to create a cover story!”
Her mind really did twist in strange directions.
“Forget it. Don’t even think about eating anything besides water and potatoes.”
“Eh? We’re really only eating that? What they’re having looks so good…”
She looked like she might secretly try some during the night if she didn’t know the reason.
“Sigh. That jerky the guard was eating. What kind of meat did it look like to you?”
“Ch-chicken? Or maybe some kind of wild game?”
“It was human flesh.”
“N—mmph?!”
I quickly covered the mouth of the girl who looked ready to scream. Her reactions were top-notch. If this were modern Earth, she could have made a living as a streamer.
“It’s human meat. So don’t even let anything but water and potatoes touch your lips.”