Chapter 90
Chapter 90
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 89
Chapter Title: The Demon of the Convent
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The jolting motion of the carriage had become so familiar that reading my book was no longer an issue.
It was just that the chatter from Iluania and Pindenai beside me was a bit annoying, if anything.
“You can hear its voice if you press your ear against it?”
“Not quite yet.”
“Really? I can’t wait. Have you picked a name yet?”
“No, not yet. Oh! Maybe Master can choose it?”
“……”
Iluania was trying to draw me into the conversation. I slowly closed my book and let my gaze linger on her abdomen for a moment.
It wasn’t visibly swollen yet, but there was life growing inside.
The more I thought about it, the stranger it felt, along with an obsessive sense that I had to do this right.
As I searched for something to say, Pindenai let out a mocking snort.
“From that guy? He’d probably give it some weird name. Like a yokai or evil spirit or something.”
“No way……”
Iluania looked at me with genuine disbelief. Even I wouldn’t name a child after something like that.
“Cut it out.”
I warned Pindenai not to spread nonsense like that, and she clicked her tongue in annoyance before changing the subject.
“But seriously, do convents usually get built in such remote valleys? How many more days do we have to keep going like this?”
Pindenai grumbled, being from out of town, and Iluania began explaining with a smile.
“The Elia Convent is famous. It’s the place where most saintesses are trained, praised by the kingdom as the sanctuary closest to the gods.”
“A place close to the gods?”
“That’s why even ordinary people don’t know its location, and only a select few bishops do. It’s meant to be cut off from the temptations of the world.”
“Hmm.”
Iluania explained with the gentle kindness of a mother reading a fairy tale. I knew about the Elia Convent too.
“Sounds peaceful.”
Pindenai sounded disappointed. Iluania might have agreed, but I didn’t.
“Convents are a classic cliché in horror stories and plays.”
Especially since the saintess Lucia had requested help directly from the convent, it suggested a pretty urgent situation.
“Really? Must be ’cause I’ve lived so rough.”
Pindenai scratched her head as she replied.
Just then, a small convent came into view atop a distant ridge beyond the carriage window.
[Um, this feels ominous.]
[……]
The Black Necromancer had already sensed the foreboding atmosphere, along with the burned woman who served as Iluania’s guardian spirit.
It wasn’t just the two spirits; even I felt a damp heaviness weighing down my body already.
It felt like this would turn into a more dangerous ordeal than expected.
* * *
“What are you!”
I’d thought dealing with the convent would be tricky from the moment I saw it, but I ran into an unexpected obstacle.
Abbess Hamates was a middle-aged woman who looked quite seasoned.
Her wrinkles were just starting to show noticeably, and she was far more irritable than the typical image of a nun.
“This is no place for men to enter casually! And a necromancer? Ridiculous! What can some wicked black mage do!”
“Hah.”
Pindenai snorted at the abbess’s rapid-fire outburst. From the way she fidgeted with her hands, she clearly wanted to grab her axe.
“I came here on Saintess Lucia’s letter.”
When I held out the letter, she snatched it with her tong-like fingers, her face twisted in disgust at even approaching me.
She put on the glasses hanging around her neck and checked the contents, then let out a deep sigh of lament.
It contained a handwritten note from Lucia asking for consideration toward Hamates.
Lucia had done this knowing her personality well.
“It’s clear she’s losing her qualifications as a saintess more and more. The worst.”
“If you don’t need me, then fine.”
I replied coolly, giving the convent a quick once-over.
“The stench of demons is wafting all the way here.”
As I pinched my nose with my fingers, Hamates’s eyes widened. Her hands trembled with shame as she crumpled Lucia’s letter, then exhaled and responded.
“Very well. If you’re the one sent in Lucia’s place, I’ll trust you for now.”
Her quicker-than-expected acceptance showed just how desperate the situation was.
She glanced at the convent once, then approached and whispered cautiously to explain the circumstances.
I wondered why she was being so careful, but it became clear once I heard the details.
Late at night, three nuns had summoned a demon.
But by morning, when the abbess arrived, the three were burned to death atop the summoning circle.
So she gathered the nuns to assess the situation.
But out of seven, with three dead, there should have been four left—yet there were five.
One extra.
The summoned demon had cleverly hidden and disguised itself, so the abbess had planned to call in Saintess Lucia to discern it.
Since saintesses were the natural enemies of demons.
“Hmm.”
After hearing the full story, I couldn’t help but let out an ambiguous sound.
If it was true, Saintess Lucia would actually have been more suitable than me.
But the saintess couldn’t leave Graypond right now.
I had to handle it.
“Wow, damn. The boss was right. This is gonna be fun.”
Pindenai shattered the serious mood immediately. She’d grabbed her axe from the carriage and swung it around.
“Why not just beat on them one by one? I’m pretty good at rough torture.”
The abbess snapped at her grinning question.
“Absurd! How dare you treat my girls like that!”
Hamates spread her hands wide, spitting as she declared it absolutely forbidden.
I had no intention of torturing innocents either, so I raised my hand to stop Pindenai.
“Let’s check the bodies first.”
No need to drag it out. I moved to inspect them right away, but.
The abbess led us to the cemetery near the convent.
“We buried them here.”
Tombstones marked Rachel and Mika, the definitely dead nuns, and beside them an unmarked one.
Probably meant to make it after finding the last missing nun.
I furrowed my brow and asked.
“Buried as is?”
“W-We had no choice. In the end, three innocent nuns were murdered. They need proper funerals to enter the gods’ embrace. We couldn’t leave the bodies out for long.”
“Dig them up.”
I planned to exhume them immediately, but the abbess cried out in alarm.
“N-No! These children have already gone to the embrace of their patron gods! We can’t desecrate their deaths!”
“Even after they summoned a demon?”
It was extremely awkward.
I thought at least checking the bodies’ condition was necessary, but she urgently pulled photos from her habit.
“I-I took these with a magic camera I keep on hand. Just in case they might be needed.”
She handed me the stack of photos with a humiliated expression.
It was clear she’d photographed the bodies quite meticulously.
Magic cameras were expensive, too.
Quite a pricey item for an abbess.
It would’ve been easier to see them in person, but I decided against it.
Her determination to protect the nuns’ bodies was palpable.
Besides, a clear demonic aura emanated from beneath the soil where they lay.
The ground felt repulsive, sticky, like thousands of insects crawling over it. The demon’s doing seemed half-certain.
The bodies were all in similar states. No special nuns among them; all charred black from head to toe.
“Tch, nothing useful here.”
“Yeah, exactly.”
I agreed with Pindenai and handed her the photos to keep.
“Next, to the demon summoning circle. You didn’t erase that too, did you?”
“……Of course we preserved it.”
The abbess led us to the back of the convent. Under a tablecloth pinned down with stones to keep it from blowing away in the wind, amid the clotheslines.
When we removed the stones and cloth, a faded pentagram was revealed.
“……”
The aura was anything but ordinary.
I glanced at the Black Necromancer, and she nodded gravely.
[Demonic pentagram. Yes, it’s a summoning circle to call a demon. And from the traces, it looks like one was successfully summoned.]
If the Black Necromancer confirmed it, then it was certain.
A demon had been summoned through this circle.
“Now, gather all the nuns.”
“……Please don’t do anything strange to my girls without reason. They’re already quite shaken.”
“It’s to root out the demon.”
When I replied flatly that it wouldn’t hurt them, the abbess bit her lip but pulled a small bell from her habit and rang it.
Ding-a-ling! Ding-a-ling!
Urgent footsteps echoed from inside. It reminded me of my old army recruit days.
With some time to wait, I idly gazed at the convent.
It looked about four stories tall, with tightly packed windows, but a single round one isolated at the very top.
‘An attic?’
Unless it was an attic, there’d be no need for a window that high. Just then, the Black Necromancer voiced a careful doubt beside me.
[But it’s strange.]
“……”
[Demons are prouder than you’d think. You dealt with Griffin’s evil ghosts, so you know.]
The ones who’d failed to become demons and remained evil ghosts.
[Some are far stronger than Griffin’s evil ghosts, others pathetically weak. But demons as a race are incredibly arrogant.]
The Black Necromancer crossed her arms calmly and continued, gazing down at the circle.
[They have strict hierarchies among themselves, but they look down on humans even if they’re kings.]
“……What are you getting at?”
[What I mean is.]
She cleared her throat and slowly circled the summoning array, pausing at each spot where bodies had been.
[Would a demon really come for just three humans as sacrifice?]
“The demon was definitely summoned.”
The Black Necromancer and I both acknowledged that truth.
A demon had undoubtedly come through this circle.
[Exactly! That’s the problem. Laughably insufficient sacrifice. No, they weren’t even sacrifices. Just the performers of the ritual.]
“……”
[Essentially, no sacrifice at all? And yet the demon came.]
And then burned the summoning nuns to death like a witch pyre.
[There are too many oddities.]
“……”
And that wasn’t all.
The motive was key here too.
The basic question of why made it even more of a maze.
Why?
Would nuns from the Elia Convent—called saintess candidates, no less.
Three of them, even.
Summon a demon?
The more I thought, the heavier the doubts grew.
The riddles piling up showed no sign of resolution yet.
First, I needed to check the nuns. If I found the demon among them, the case would end more easily than expected.
The gathered nuns soon lined up in front of the abbess.
They glanced at me—a man—some blushing, some frowning in disgust.
Various reactions.
But anyway.
“I am Necromancer Deus Verdi.”
They bowed reluctantly at my calm declaration.
The abbess said I could ask questions as long as I didn’t touch them, so I fired off several.
Straight out of a detective novel: What were you doing at the time? What did you do the night before? Anything odd about the victims? Any nuns acting strangely after the incident?
The incident happened at dawn, so everyone was asleep. No suspicious nuns. Stock answers.
But it felt less like they were hiding something and more like they genuinely didn’t know.
No demonic aura from them.
The demonic energy enveloping the bodies and the entire convent didn’t cling to any of the nuns.
[High-ranking demons can emit, suppress, or conceal their aura at will.]
The Black Necromancer advised from the side, but I was skeptical.
‘Then it’d mean a high-ranking demon responded to a meager summoning.’
It was peculiar.
Everything didn’t quite fit together.
‘I can’t afford to get the wrong idea.’
I wasn’t a detective.
Not some cool sleuth piecing together clues in a mystery.
Clues and deduction mattered, sure, but I strongly felt that alone wouldn’t solve this.
The sky was darkening.
As I exhaled to clear my complicated head a bit.
“Not everyone’s here?”
“I-I saw it too.”
Pindenai’s mocking tone and Iluania’s startled exclamation.
Both pointed at the same window.
The convent’s top floor.
The highest round window.
“There was one girl up there.”
“Yeah, I definitely saw her.”
At their testimony, I glared at the abbess.
Maybe brazenly hiding something.
But surprisingly, her face wasn’t the only one crumpling.
Every nun in the convent glared at us with fierce expressions, as if their most shameful secret had been exposed.
“Who is it?”
I pressed on, undaunted by the hostility, and the abbess clutched her rosary of her patron god tightly before answering.
“No one.”
“You expect me to believe that with reactions like yours?”
I smirked incredulously, and she shot back as if ready to lunge.
“There really is no one. And even if there was, they have nothing to do with this incident.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
I turned and headed toward the convent’s attic.