Protecting the Saintly Brand
With the hero now on our side, it seemed unlikely anyone would dare oppose us going forward. Our journey to Romano continued without a single obstacle in our path. The trouble only started once we reached the border between Brien and Tellaia. For all the casual talk, a border was still a border; the soldiers kept up a visible tension.
“You must be the Saintess.”
“That’s correct. We’re heading to Romano to meet His Holiness the Pope. Is there any reason we should be detained here?”
The widest and safest crossing point had a fairly respectable fortress garrisoned by roughly a thousand troops. After confirming our identity as the Saintess’s procession, the Tellaia knight still blocking our way answered in a trembling voice.
“P-please, could you not bestow your miracle upon us as well? We’ve gathered plenty of gold.”
“Huh? But there’s a cathedral here, isn’t there? You must have clergy too. What exactly are they doing?”
“There is a cathedral, but the bishop stationed here can only heal moderate wounds at best.”
Healing moderate wounds was the basic requirement for priestly ordination. Anyone pretending to be a bishop should at least be able to mend fresh fractures. If he couldn’t manage even that, he was little more than a half-baked bishop. Still, these people weren’t short of money, and I couldn’t ignore customers who were stepping forward of their own free will to spend.
“Then let’s see what sort of miracle you need.”
“No, you mustn’t! Absolutely not! Everyone! How dare you request a miracle directly from the Saintess? The Saintess stands above even the cardinals! She is second only to His Holiness the Pope himself! How could you possibly presume—”
What? What is this guy even talking about?
“What do you mean? Bishop, in Endium I shared miracles even with the poor. Is there any reason I shouldn’t do the same for the exemplary knights and devoted soldiers guarding this fortress?”
“N-no, if the Saintess wishes it, of course it’s possible, but… well… is it truly necessary? I and the other priests can handle—”
“You can’t, that’s exactly why. These people have gold, yet they’re supposed to suffer without receiving miracles? People who uphold their beliefs and carry out their worldly duties?”
Something was off. I narrowed my eyes and stared hard at the bishop. When he merely hunched his shoulders and stayed silent, I turned to the knight in command.
“Knight, please bring forward those in the worst condition first—”
“Die! Fake saint!”
What?
“Ugh!”
A searing pain tore through my left side, as if something had stabbed in and twisted. The half-baked bishop was pressed flush against me while soldiers, knights, holy knights, and the hero all froze in shock at the sudden violence. I was just as stunned.
Did this bishop really just stab me—the Saintess? Why? For what possible reason?
The one small mercy was that I’d reflexively used the martial techniques I’d learned from the holy knights. I grabbed his arm, swept his leg, and pinned him down. Then—
“S-Saintess!”
The shout came from one of the clergy, but the first to reach me was Ziegfried. Even though our journey had lasted less than a year, the constant real combat and accumulated experience had clearly sharpened him.
“Don’t touch it! I’ll handle this myself!”
“But—”
“Just stay back and don’t interfere! Haa… huu… huuu… heup!”
I never knew I had this kind of grit. Even while doing it, I surprised myself. My left hand gripped the hilt of the dagger buried fully inside me—still slightly twisted—while my right hand gathered a thick surge of divine power. I yanked the blade out with a wet sound and immediately poured healing into the wound as if cauterizing it on the spot.
If this had been a movie, my right hand would have been holding a red-hot blade. There would have been writhing, the sizzle of burning flesh, teeth gritted against the agony while trying to staunch the bleeding. But as the Saintess, I didn’t need any of that. I could simply heal it with divine power.
In truth, the miracle erased the stab wound and internal tearing in an instant. The aftershock, however, was another matter entirely.
“Breathe in slowly. You’re all right now.”
“Heup… huu… huuu… heup… huu…”
The sharp, tearing pain didn’t vanish completely just because the wound had closed. The memory of hot steel digging into my side and twisting there refused to fade. I sank to the ground, clutching the now-healed spot, and followed Ziegfried’s guidance as I regulated my breathing, absorbing and calming the shock that had slammed through my body.
“Wh-what in the world…?”
The Tellaia knight responsible for the fortress had pinned the bishop beneath him, yet his face had gone deathly pale. Understandable—under his watch, the Saintess who had appeared after fifty years had just been stabbed.
“It’s fine. I’m okay now. Let him go.”
“Even with divine healing, a wound like that doesn’t simply disappear. The pain may linger even after the injury itself is gone.”
“It’s all right. I can’t stay sitting here forever.”
I stood up, brushed the dirt from my legs and backside, took the bloodied dagger in my right hand, and faced the bishop who had stabbed me.
This vermin bastard. Who the hell do you think you’re stabbing?
“Hey. Why did you stab me?”
I held the dagger that had pierced me close to the bishop’s face. With the Tellaia knight pinning both his arms, there was no risk of him snatching it. I could threaten to drive the blade—still slick with my own red blood—into his eye or anywhere else I pleased.
“Y-you’re a f-fake! A fake saint! Not real—aaaagh!”
“Get a hold of yourself. So tell me—why exactly am I fake? Because you haven’t met the Pope yet? Or because you simply didn’t know I existed until now?”
I didn’t stab the eye. That would kill him too quickly. Instead I drove the blade deep into the hollow between his shoulder and neck, twisted it slowly in a circle two or three times, pulled it out at a different angle, and healed the wound with a miracle.
“Now speak. Come on. Quickly.”
Since he had already tried to kill me, I felt no hesitation. I stabbed again, healed with a soft glow, stabbed again in a different spot, repeating the process several times.
“St-stop… stop…”
“You weren’t going to talk anyway. So why stop?”
“I’ll talk… I’ll t-talk… I’ll tell you everything… please… stop…”
Only then did I rise, handing the now-clean dagger to the Tellaia knight. He took it with a small shudder.
“Why am I a fake saint? Why did you try to kill me?”
It was a mercy that this so-called bishop had neither experience nor talent for murder. If he had gone for my throat instead of my side, I might actually have died. Even if he genuinely believed I was fake, the willingness to kill in front of so many witnesses was something else entirely.
“Th-the true Saintess… isn’t supposed to appear yet. N-no, that’s not right. She shouldn’t have come for another fifty years… fifty more years… but you… there’s something wrong with you.”
“Where does it say that?”
“The true Pope… told us so.”
“The true Pope? You mean the one up north?”
The bishop’s only reply was to nod through his tears. Even though this region fell under our Church’s influence, a bishop here had defected to the antipope’s rival faction. With this, I raised the perceived threat level of the rival church considerably. I had thought it was merely a doctrinal dispute, but they had gone so far as to brand me a fake saint and attempt assassination.
“Good grief.”
“Saintess, are you all right?”
“Do you honestly think she’s all right right now? Prepare a place for her to rest immediately. This happened under your command, so provide the best possible environment for the Saintess to recover.”
When I let out a hollow sigh after grasping the situation, Ziegfried immediately began scolding the Tellaia knight. Does this guy talk to everyone else like that?
“No, it’s fine. We’ll proceed as planned. Gather everyone who needs a miracle and form a line.”
“Pardon?”
“Saintess, you may believe you’re fine, but even after miraculous healing the condition can deteriorate at any moment. Therefore, for now you should—”
“Didn’t you hear me? The Saintess will now personally distribute miracles, so gather the people. They’re calling me a fake right now. I’ll show them what a real saint looks like. Gather them. Quickly. Hurry.”
If I allowed myself to be branded a fake saint as the rival church claimed, my shelf life would end that very day. Counterfeit imagery was one of the most critical factors when reevaluating a brand. Therefore, I had to crush this controversy while it was still just a sprout, before anyone could even speak of it carelessly. Controversies and conspiracy theories, once they bloomed, had the annoying habit of sprouting back up like weeds no matter how thoroughly you cut them down.
“If you feel even slightly unwell…”
“I know how to value my own body.”
To be honest, the spot where the dagger had gone in was starting to throb again. The wound had been completely healed, so there should have been no pain, yet the agony I hadn’t felt immediately was now gradually intensifying. So this was why, even when clergy were deployed in war, troop numbers didn’t increase infinitely. I wondered if the child whose arm I had severed and regenerated after the carriage accident felt similar lingering pain.
“How long does pain like this usually last, Ziegfried?”
“It can fade within a few hours at the earliest, but at worst it may persist for three or four days. Given that your injury would have been life-threatening without the miracle, I expect it to last a day or two. Is the pain severe?”
“No. I didn’t realize this before. When I treated that child whose arm had been crushed and bones fused after the carriage accident, I simply cut the whole arm off and regenerated it. I was worried it might still hurt, but if the pain only lasts up to three or four days, it must have healed by now.”
“That was… quite a bold approach.”
Even after treating fresh wounds, the pain could remain. So divine power wasn’t quite the omnipotent force I had imagined. Still, to the people of this world it truly was a miracle. With virtually no other treatment methods available, divine power and miracles could heal every kind of injury and disease.
It made me curious in a new way. If the Black Death in the history of my original world had encountered this kind of divine power and miracles, could it have been overcome far more easily?
“Thank you so much, Saintess. And I am truly sorry.”
“Even I, a fellow clergyman, and the holy knights whose entire duty is to protect me had no idea. How could you have known? So put that away. The statement that one must pay gold to receive this golden miracle simply means that anyone who pays the exact set amount can receive it.”
Authenticity and proper measure were important. Once you set a price, you must accept exactly that amount, and once you have accepted it, you must deliver exactly what was paid for.
“Ah, Saintess. You are no fake. I and every soldier in this fortress will testify to that truth anywhere.”
“Please also report the atrocities of the rival church to the Tellaia royal family.”
And so, by paying the price of two full days of pain that felt exactly like being stabbed, I managed to further solidify the Saintess’s brand image, the reliability of gold currency, and the legitimacy of our Church.