The Inquisitor's Wounds
Heretic inquisitors are absolute elites. They carry out covert operations for the Holy Empire with remarkable skill, protecting the world from the shadows. Yet almost no one truly understands just how capable they are.
Still, having trained under my master—a retired inquisitor myself—I possessed at least a surface-level understanding of what these people represented. Master never showed me much, but… The few abilities he did demonstrate offered a glimpse of how extraordinary he truly was. And I knew the person standing before me now was equally exceptional, even if she didn’t quite reach his level.
“What happened?”
I hadn’t seen her since I mentioned entering the Labyrinth in two weeks. I’d been wondering how the woman who had so boldly provoked the prince was holding up, and sure enough, trouble had found her.
“I’m fine. It looks worse than it is.”
“You’re covered in blood. That doesn’t exactly scream ‘fine.’”
Was this really the prince’s doing? It seemed impossible that a few sharp words could reduce someone to this state.
“Don’t tell me the prince did this?”
“No.”
That wasn’t important right now, yet the question had slipped out anyway.
“This isn’t the time to stand around. Please, come over here. Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
Her calm demeanor made me question whether she was actually injured at all.
“Where does it hurt? With this much blood, you shouldn’t even be standing…”
There wasn’t a single spot on her that wasn’t stained red, making it nearly impossible to locate the wounds.
“Not all of it is mine.”
“Obviously. If you’d lost this much, you shouldn’t even be conscious. May I cut away some of your clothing?”
“Yes. Do as you wish.”
Confirming the extent of her injuries came first. A deep gash ran across her thigh, countless smaller cuts covered her arms and shoulders, and a protruding bone in her hand suggested a fracture. At this point, a full-body examination seemed wisest.
I drew up my divine power and carefully scanned Sister Melody’s body from the inside out.
“Good grief… The external wounds are bad enough, but your internal condition is even worse.”
Not a single part of her remained untouched. Whatever fight she’d been in must have been brutal. Would getting pummeled by a large monster leave wounds like these?
While assessing her overall state, I focused on the most critical areas first. My healing abilities had improved dramatically, allowing me to handle injuries of this severity alone. The old me would have needed to call in other healers just to finish the job—and even then, complete recovery would have been out of the question.
“You mustn’t move immediately after treatment.”
Anyone who valued their own body would take time to recuperate after injuries like these. But I couldn’t predict this woman’s behavior. She might decide that once the wounds closed, everything was fine and immediately head back into battle. So I spoke up preemptively, warning her to be cautious.
As expected, Sister Melody replied in her usual curt manner.
“…I’ll manage appropriately.”
“I doubt you will. Please do not discharge yourself right away. You need to be admitted. As you can see, the wounds are too extensive for me to have finished treating them all. You’ll require several more sessions.”
Divine power could mend the body, but it wasn’t omnipotent. Blood loss and depleted stamina didn’t recover so easily. What she needed was proper rest.
“I still have work to finish.”
“Ah… I knew you’d say that. Whatever it is, the answer is no.”
“I must go. You cannot stop me.”
“Patients need rest. You know that better than anyone. At minimum, you require two full days of recovery.”
I wondered if she realized how ungrateful it sounded to talk about pushing herself again right after someone had poured their energy into healing her.
“If it’s truly that urgent, ask someone else to handle it.”
“There is no one else.”
Did that mean there were no other inquisitors available?
“Is it serious enough that delaying it would cause a major problem?”
“Yes. It cannot be left unattended. There may still be remnants.”
“……”
Remnants. She clearly meant surviving heretics. So these wounds hadn’t come from the prince after all—they were from battling them.
“In that case…”
I felt a familiar twinge of worry about stepping into yet another complicated situation, but her stubbornness left me no obvious way to stop her.
“Are you truly without anyone you can ask?”
“It is not a task for just anyone.”
“Then I’ll do it. How about that?”
“…You, Priest?”
Sister Melody shook her head as though she’d heard something ridiculous.
“You have no fear. You don’t even know what the task entails. This is not work for someone like you, Priest.”
She wasn’t trying to belittle me. This was likely because the work belonged exclusively to inquisitors.
“I have a general idea of what you do, Sister Melody. You know who my master is, don’t you?”
“Didn’t you say you never learned this line of work from him?”
“Would Master have raised his disciple so carelessly? He didn’t teach me everything, but he never refused to answer when I grew curious, either.”
After all, what heretics involved themselves in was always related to curses or the Evil God. I had studied the Evil God during my school days, and the Sun God had directly granted me knowledge regarding curses. I possessed more than enough information to be useful.
“What exactly needs to be done? Whatever it is, I believe I can handle it.”
Of course, if combat was required, I would be useless. I had never trained for that. But judging by her current condition, the fighting was clearly already over. If she hadn’t won, she never would have made it back here alive. Therefore, if the task involved cleaning up whatever the heretics had left behind rather than fighting, I was more than capable.
“Try standing up. You’ll understand why I said no.”
When she continued to hesitate, I spoke again to drive the point home. Sister Melody rose at once.
Thud!
“……”
Just as I expected, she lacked the strength to stay upright and collapsed. I caught her arm to steady her.
“See? It won’t work, will it? Even my divine power wasn’t enough to fully heal the wounds. Restoring your stamina was beyond me.”
Several fractures. Multiple bleeding points. If I’d possessed enough divine power to heal all that and restore her strength, I wouldn’t be the chief healer—I’d be a living saint.
“I don’t understand. I received treatment, so why is my body still so weak?”
“A little study in healing arts would explain it, but I suppose that isn’t your area. A humble priest’s divine power like mine isn’t all-powerful.”
“……”
What could I say? My abilities were limited. This was apparently her first assignment since being appointed as an inquisitor, so her ignorance was understandable.
“Of course, since you’ve never sustained injuries this severe before, you might not have known.”
My words seemed to sting. She opened her mouth to respond, then pressed her lips shut again. She could have said plenty, but apparently this wasn’t enough to pry open that tightly sealed mouth of hers.
I waited with genuine sympathy until, at last, Sister Melody spoke.
“…I located a heretic den and dealt with it. But the resistance was fiercer than anticipated, so I couldn’t finish cleaning up.”
A heretic den. I could easily imagine what might be inside. Leaving it untouched would be asking for trouble.
“It must have been quite large. I suspected there might be heretics near the Labyrinth, but I never imagined they’d actually be there.”
It seemed the incident with the man I’d brought to the temple clinic had already escalated this far. And I hadn’t realized the group was large enough to warrant being called a proper den.
So Sister Melody handled all of them by herself?
As expected of an inquisitor. She hadn’t backed down even before the prince. It seemed she charged forward even more aggressively against heretics.
“I’ll take care of the cleanup. I can do it properly. So please rest easy here.”
“You cannot go alone.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“I eliminated them all, but the path is complicated. There may be hidden remnants as well.”
So that was why she couldn’t rest—worry over those remnants. And of course a heretic den couldn’t be built in an obvious location, so the complicated route made sense.
“Then…”
“I will guide you. In exchange, may I ask you to handle the cleanup?”
For someone like Sister Melody, that seemed to be the greatest concession she could offer. She couldn’t walk at the moment, but once she recovered some stamina, she would manage.
“Understood. We’ll do it that way.”
“…Thank you for your assistance. It could not have been an easy decision.”
She was blunt, but not incapable of expressing gratitude.
“Goodness, how could I possibly sit still when a patient who just received treatment announces she’s heading back into danger alone? If I didn’t know, maybe. But now that I do, I can’t ignore it.”
“…You lead a tiring life. I knew you were strange from the beginning, but I didn’t realize it was to this degree.”
“That hurts when you strike right at the heart of it.”
It would have been simpler to just treat the patient and stop there. After all, it wasn’t my business. My responsibility ended with healing. Yet I couldn’t help empathizing with her situation. That same tendency had already dragged me into Princess Canaby’s affairs and even into the Labyrinth with Princess Reciel.
I just wanted to take the easy path and come back safely. How did things end up like this?
It was all because of my stubborn obsession with patients. No matter how many times I told myself I had to heal them, my nature refused to change.
“Even if you help, you will receive no reward.”
“I never expected one. You acknowledge that you cannot move properly right now, yes? You must recover here at least until you can walk. So please lie down quietly.”
At my words, she obediently settled onto the bed.
“Oh, right! Have you eaten?”
Her answer was, of course, no. Since she couldn’t move, I had no choice but to request special nourishing meals for patients from the temple kitchen.