Chapter 71
Chapter 71
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 71
Chapter Title: Welcomed by the Sun
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“Arrival confirmed.”
Along with Selene’s inorganic, emotionless voice, my feet touched the ground once more. The dizziness faded quickly. My head spun just a little, but there were no other symptoms.
“…….”
The knight captains were a different story.
Iris, Claudia, Lize, Erika—all of them sprawled haphazardly on the ground, desperately fighting the urge to vomit up their guts.
The first teleport had left them stumbling around, barely able to speak through the nausea. By the second, just standing up seemed like a Herculean effort. From the third onward, they’d clamped their mouths shut entirely.
They’d ditched their armor long ago. Apparently, keeping it on made their heads ring like crazy, dragging out the dizziness several times longer. The discarded plate mail was neatly stacked off to the side.
With the knight captains in that state, the rest periods between teleports had no choice but to stretch out longer and longer. Now I finally understood why Selene had come to fetch us under the pretext of an escort.
There was no way they could fight enemies in that condition. They couldn’t even stand, pouring every ounce of effort into holding down their breakfast.
If we’d stuck to the original plan and taken a carriage to the Holy Kingdom, we wouldn’t have needed an escort at all—but it probably would’ve taken us months to reach the Grand Cathedral.
Thanks to Selene’s teleports, we’d made it in a single day, rest breaks included.
“You okay, Lize?”
“…….”
Lize looked up at me, her body trembling. Her blue eyes all but screamed, *Does this look okay to you?* Fair point—it didn’t look okay at a glance, so it was a dumb question anyway.
Her position had her chest squished between her torso and the ground, spilling softly to the sides. The sideboob bulged well past her underarms. Even like that, it held its shape with perfect firmness.
She probably had no idea what she looked like, her vision spinning too much to notice. If she did, she’d have teased me—or maybe seduced me—with it for sure.
“My task is complete.”
Selene ignored the knight captains clutching their heads in agony, channeling power into the holy catalyst in her hand. The gray and silver glows scattered around us began to fade.
“I look forward to the day we meet again.”
The catalyst in her hand flared with light. Selene vanished, along with all traces of the moon. Warm sunlight filled the void. Pale light tinged with yellow blanketed the ground.
The knight captains still hadn’t recovered. It’d take a while, so I decided to wait patiently and took in our surroundings.
*Impressive.*
Everything was white. Every building lining the streets, every rooftop, everything in sight—even the tiles paving the main thoroughfare gleamed pure white.
Those tiles were spotless, pristine despite being white. Crowds of people walked by in reverent silence, not a footprint or speck of dirt in sight.
According to the NPC lore, the entire Holy See was protected by holy power. The game glossed over it, but seeing it in person felt like a miracle.
A world that so blatantly proved the gods existed? No wonder people threw themselves into faith.
That wasn’t what really caught my eye, though.
*……Why are the women’s outfits so damn modest? Did the modder get lazy and skip them?*
It was the complete opposite of the Empire’s fashion.
Unlike the Empire girls who couldn’t even dream of crop tops or miniskirts, the women here dressed modern enough—but wrapped up tight from head to toe.
You’d see plenty with nothing but their faces exposed above the neck. The most revealing outfits might show a hint of one thigh or bare a shoulder with a sleeveless black top.
No Empire-style “one strap over the tits and hot pants basically underwear” anywhere, even if you scoured the streets.
It was such a refreshing, wholesome sight after so long. My mind eased right up.
*Maybe the Heresy Inquisitors are the weird ones.*
Stella’s nun habit was objectively and subjectively sexier than hell, and her battle nuns flashed everything in a stiff breeze.
But the women on the Holy See streets were bundled up head to toe. Made you wonder if *they* were the oddballs.
“Ughhh…….”
As I took in the prim, modest Holy See women and let my mind settle, the knight captains started staggering to their feet, finally regaining their senses.
“How’s your head? Feeling better?”
“……Enough to stand. Walking properly’s still out.”
I helped Iris up first and leaned her against a nearby tree. She pressed her forehead, back against the trunk, breathing raggedly.
I assisted Erika and Claudia next, then reached out to Lize last. She meekly let me take her weight.
I draped her left arm over my shoulder, slipped my right hand under her armpit, and lifted. My hand flailed awkwardly in the air. Any higher, and it’d brush the underside of her breast, position-wise.
Hell, even this had her sideboob rubbing against my right forearm. *Human anatomy makes this unavoidable when helping someone up,* I repeated to myself as I started walking.
“……I never want to do that again. Let’s take the carriage next time, even if it takes forever.”
Lize twisted slightly, burying her face in my chest as she mumbled. The other knight captains nodded in agreement.
It must’ve been pure hell for them.
“Feeling with it now?”
A cheerful voice came from behind us. I recognized it. Turning, I saw Stella approaching with her battle nuns.
I tensed for a second, wondering if she’d start ranting about heretics again, but relaxed when I saw no one held weapons.
“You look coherent enough to drink, so bottoms up.”
At Stella’s gesture, the battle nuns came forward, uncorking potion-like vials. They went to each knight captain, pressing the bottles to their lips.
The captains obediently swallowed the potions fed to them. They didn’t have the energy to resist.
*Those are pretty pricey.*
Every status effect except Enthrallment had a dedicated consumable to cure it. Enthrallment was an exception—you had to crank up your holy power and faith sky-high to break it.
There were three ways to cure all status effects: magic, holy spells, or consumables.
Consumables like these were only available at full price in the Holy See. The Empire had them too, but crooked merchants jacked the price up nearly tenfold.
The last battle nun approached us. She started to offer the potion to Lize—who was practically in my arms—then paused at our position and held it out to me instead.
“Me?”
She nodded. She shoved the vial into my hand and headed back. I held the potion in my left, nudging Lize.
She pulled her face out from my chest, where she’d been huffing my scent.
“……What?”
“They said for me to feed it to you.”
I shook the vial, making the liquid slosh. Lize glanced at it, then shifted position.
She unwrapped her arm from my shoulder, clasped her hands demurely over her lower belly, leaned her full weight against my right arm, and tilted her head back to the sky, mouth open.
Between her parted lips gleamed pearly whites, her uvula twitching as she swallowed, a vivid pink tongue, and a pool of clear saliva nestled in between. It all hit me full force.
Weird thoughts bubbled up, so I jammed the vial’s neck into her mouth and tilted it fast.
Lize gulped it down with noisy swallows. Correction: it wasn’t *going to* spark weird thoughts—it *did*. Especially seeing her expression.
I shook out every last drop before those thoughts could take over, then yanked the vial away.
“Pwah.” Lize met my eyes, tongue half-out. A thin silver thread stretched from the vial’s rim to her tongue before snapping in midair.
“Delta, you just made me suck on a long stick and swallow the liquid inside, right?”
“……Talking nonsense means you’re fine. Quit yapping and stand up.”
She grabbed my hand and rose obediently—then pressed against my side, rubbing her chest teasingly. No need to worry about her.
The other knight captains stood tall too, like they’d never been sprawled puking.
“Pretty expensive potions. Worth every coin?”
“Indeed. Our thanks.”
“Skip the thanks. We’re the ones who misunderstood you first, right? Branded healthy folks as heretics— we’ve got a long way to go to make up for it.”
Stella glanced at the spot where Selene had lingered last.
“Getting here so fast, with lunar holy power still hanging around. Looks like the Heresy Inquisitor paid a visit. Right?”
“Yep. She helped us get here in a day. It was…… pretty rough.”
“Always such a softie…… Follow me. I’ll take you to His Holiness the Pope.”
*What was that?*
Stella’s face had darkened just a touch. Not irritation—more like gloom or sadness. Too quick to be sure.
Just my imagination?
“This is the Grand Cathedral. His Holiness resides here.”
The cathedral was massive. I had to crane my neck for ages to spot the top. Huge in-game, but way bigger in reality.
The whole structure gleamed with yellow-and-white bricks and golden ornaments. A central spire stabbed skyward.
The exterior was insanely intricate. I couldn’t even begin to parse the layout.
Stella gave the building a light bow, then led us around the side. Pilgrims knelt in prayer everywhere.
We circled the cathedral to the back, where she pointed to another ornate door, different from the front. Warm light like sunlight leaked from the half-open entrance.
“Straight through here leads right to His Holiness. He’s granted you an audience directly, so we skipped all the formalities.”
Her slender finger jabbed at me.
“But you first. The rest come in when I say.”
“I’m nominally a new knight, right? Shouldn’t the captains go by rank?”
“Why do you think you’re here?”
That shut me up. I was the reason we’d come, after all.
Stella stepped aside by the door. The battle nuns surrounded us like escorts. I’d been through something similar, but this time the vibe wasn’t hostile—no weapons drawn.
Feeling their stares prickling my back, I stepped into the light. It stabbed my eyelids; I squeezed them shut instinctively. When it softened a bit, I cracked them open cautiously.
“You’ve finally come to me.”
The first thing I saw was the sun.
No—a stained-glass window blazing with solar motifs so vivid it tricked the eye. And behind the golden-haired woman, a halo glowed.
I froze solid, words failing me. My mind blanked, thoughts melting away.
Not overwhelmed by the warm aura, dazzled by the glass or her beauty, or swayed by her compassionate voice.
“일러스트보기 Click”
“In the name of the Sun, I welcome you. You who were once called a heretic.”
*What…… the hell is that?*
Her outfit.
*Clothes?*
The woman’s clothes—or lack thereof—were absurdly revealing.