The Unlucky Priest #1
“The defendant—the city of Royal Road and its three hundred thirty thousand residents—guilty.”
The royal city of Royal Road.
For twenty-five years its gates had never permitted a single enemy to pass. Today those gates were forced open.
In the span of five years a cult had swollen with terrifying speed, and now its fanatics swarmed the capital like a plague of locusts.
Black smoke choked the sky. Screams and lamentations rose until they seemed to scrape the heavens themselves. Amid the red-robed throng of cultists, someone stepped forward.
“Boring. So the impregnable gates of Royal Road fall this easily?”
She wore the same crimson robe as the rest, yet nothing could hide the elegant lines of her body. A young woman, almost certainly.
The swirl-patterned mask she wore marked her as one of the great figures who bore the name of a Great Sin within the cult.
“I don’t have time to waste on small fry! Move, all of you! If any of you dawdle even a second, this Las will crush your balls!”
Crack. Pop.
The masked woman flexed her fists.
“We keep advancing straight to the palace treasure vault!”
The cultists had only one goal: the occupation of the royal palace and its treasure vault.
If nothing changed, a palace with four hundred years of history would fall into their hands.
Yet even in pitch-black despair, hope still existed.
Before the great figure who had been crushing knights’ plate armor with her bare hands, someone appeared.
“Halt!”
Her long hair blazed like flame; her armor flashed silver. She drove a greatsword into the ground and cried out as the blade shone.
“Not one step farther!!!”
The frenzied excitement of the cultists, who had been rampaging without fear, cooled as if ice water had been poured over them.
The Order’s sentinel, the pure virgin Psyche.
She was the woman called the hope of a kingdom boiling with cultists, traitors, and grief.
“Great Sin Seat Las.”
“Idiot Psyche.”
Psyche and Las had clashed in slaughter countless times; neither had ever settled the score.
As the two women’s killing intent collided with savage force, every onlooker shared the same thought.
Today, one of them would truly die—.
Yet contrary to every expectation, their blood duel never began.
The cultists parted like the sea in scripture and dropped to their knees. Along that red path, someone appeared.
He was tall, a man wearing a black mask crossed by a crimson cross.
“Ru…Rust.”
“Two Great Sin Seats have descended upon us…!”
Rust.
An unidentified monster called a living devil.
Blasphemer, violator, earth-eater, fallen one, virgin predator, plague, demon king—the nicknames that clung to him were so many their origins could no longer be traced.
The only certainty was this: the book he was said to have written under the evil god’s instigation, Gwichukdo, had become the cultists’ scripture and plunged the world into chaos.
And that man now stood here.
Even Psyche, who had always faced the cult with courage, tensed at Rust’s appearance.
“…Beastly Rust.”
Having fallen victim to his “sorcery” more times than she could count, Psyche wanted nothing more than to turn and flee. The same held true for Las, fellow cultist and Great Sin Seat.
“…Rust, that pressure is insane. I almost pissed myself a little. Our Blood Crusade is taking the royal capital today—you’re excited too, right?”
Rust gave no answer to the high-ranking cultist Las. He did not even glance at her or Psyche.
The only thing he looked at was the palace treasure vault.
“What I desire lies beyond there.”
Rust opened his heavy mouth, muttered a few words, and began to walk.
That was when Psyche recovered her senses. She shouted at Rust and swung her greatsword.
“Rust! The treasure vault is full of tools that will bring calamity upon the world! You have to stop even now! Stop! I said stop!”
Whoosh—! When Psyche’s greatsword came flying for my neck, I honestly nearly shit myself.
Fortunately the high-ranking cultist Las blocked the attack with her fist, and I kept my life.
Clang—!
“Rust! I’ll handle Psyche—you go to the treasure vault!”
Las rattled on while pulling on her gauntlets. I had no desire to answer her.
My real name wasn’t Rust of the Blood Crusade or whatever. It was Hyde, a discharged soldier and returning university student!
To explain how I ended up in this mess I would have to talk about the novel contest on the shady site Evilpia and its hundred-million-won prize money—
—but unfortunately I had no time right now.
The cultist rebellion would soon be crushed, and every member of the Blood Crusade would be arrested and beheaded. In this world without human rights, cultists were either burned or had their heads cut off. One or the other.
Thud-thud-thud—.
I sprinted through the burning palace toward the treasure vault. The reason I had goaded this reckless rebellion into existence lay inside the Royal Road palace treasure vault.
Normally more than ten guards protected the place, but I had bribed them long beforehand, so the entrance now stood completely empty.
“Perfect!”
I cheered.
Five years of forced cultist acting had piled up stress; it felt like all of it was flying away at once.
Creeeak—.
I opened the vault door and stepped inside. Heaps of glittering gold bars and jewels met my eyes. If I had been a thief I would have gone mad for them, but I wanted only one thing.
The three royal treasures.
Among them, the object called the Holy Grail. Countless rumors and myths surrounded it, yet the one that had seized my attention was this:
The Holy Grail purifies its owner’s soul—.
I wanted salvation.
“My dream was to be a pioneering church pastor! Why the hell am I a cultist?!”
I had been about to return for my second year of seminary when I was suddenly dropped into this barbaric, blasphemous world. I flailed just to survive and somehow ended up a cult executive.
It was so unfair.
I had cried every day from the injustice until even the tears stopped coming!
At this rate my soul was booked for hell the moment I died.
Somehow, any way I could, I wanted my soul saved.
“There it is!”
While searching the vault my eyes locked onto a vessel gleaming gold.
It was the size of my own head—more than worthy of the name Holy Grail.
How hard had I worked this past year just to obtain it?
“…Salvation is mine!”
I laughed with joy and stretched my hand toward my redemption.
The instant I seized the Holy Grail—.
Whoooooosh—.
I felt everything I was being sucked into the Grail.
“What the—?!”
This must be exactly how rats feel when they fall into a washing machine.
But the pain lasted only a moment. Then I began to feel better and better.
It was as if the filthy water of sin was being wrung out of my soul, leaving it clean.
I was becoming a new man!
“Is this heaven?!”
I shouted in overwhelming gratitude.
That was when the woman watching me let out a startled scream.
“Kyaa!”
Thud—.
She landed hard on her backside. Long blonde hair, a brown robe. A mole sat on the bridge of her nose like a targeting reticle; she was a reasonably cute beauty.
Who is she? What’s some woman doing here?
“Ow ow… shouting all of a sudden… ugh, my butt hurts.”
Sway.
Hidden beneath the shabby robe, her chest was quite large.
Probably 75D.
A thoroughly blessed size.
Could she be an angel?
Had I really been saved and come to heaven?
“…A-are you conscious?”
The angel rubbed her rear, stood up, and asked me.
Conscious?
I looked around.
This place was far too damp and gloomy to be the paradise of the redeemed I had always dreamed of.
Stuffed rats decorated the interior of what looked like a rundown hut; snakes and frogs floated in jars of solution.
The whole place reeked of mildew.
“Where is this?”
“This is Doctor Faltman’s house in Sodomy. Doctor Faltman is a physician known as ‘Blue Beard’… I found you collapsed and brought you in for emergency treatment…”
At her words something flashed through my mind.
Sodomy’s “Blue Beard.”
A familiar name.
Once, long ago, I had suffered a serious injury and been treated by a man called Blue Beard.
And his assistant’s name had been Nicola.
I asked,
“Sister, is your name by any chance Nicola?”
“H-how do you know my name?”
“How do I know, you bitch?!”
I seized both of Nicola’s breasts in my hands and squeezed hard.
Women always hurt when their chests are grabbed that fiercely.
“Kyaaaa!!!”
Struck by Rust’s twenty-second hellish punishment—“Milk-Jug Squeezing”—Nicola collapsed back onto the floor and revealed her true vulgar nature.
“Y-you crazy bastard!!! I go and save your life and this is what I get!!! You insane pervert bastard!!!”
“Calling a person a crazy pervert bastard? You really can’t hide your true colors, wicked woman Nicola! When I think of everything I suffered because of you—”
The truth was, that bastard “Blue Beard” who had once treated me performed unethical experiments on his patients and, once they were no longer useful, sold them to the cult as sacrifices. A thoroughly evil son of a bitch!
And his assistant, the “wicked woman Nicola,” used her pretty face and 75D cups to lure men in and then turn them into complete fools. The D in 75D stood for Devil!
Only later did I realize I had been tricked and sold as a sacrifice to the cult. I was so furious that for a while I even developed circular bald spots!
I had no idea why these people were standing in front of me again, but scum like them needed judgment.
“Defendant Nicola—guilty! Defendant Blue Beard Faltman—guilty!”
Crash! Crash!
I swept every medicine bottle I could see onto the floor and smashed them.
Then I took a nearby candle and set the floor alight.
Whoosh!
“This is the flame of the Holy Spirit!”
True to its nature as a den of sin, Blue Beard’s hut caught fire in an instant. I made my triumphant escape from the blaze.
The dawn breeze rising with the sun felt wonderfully refreshing.
That was when my eyes fell on a leather-bound newspaper lying in front of Faltman’s house.
Today’s delivery? Or yesterday’s?
The date read Arud Year 12, June 6.
12, 6, 6. An absolutely shitty date.
Yet it was also a day I could never forget.
It was exactly when I had first opened my eyes in this strange world.
“Wait a second. Blue Beard and Nicola, who should already have been executed and dead, are alive… and an old newspaper is lying on the ground as if it was just delivered…”
Zap—.
A hypothesis struck my mind like lightning.
Had I returned to the past?
I wondered whether a miracle like a person going back in time was even possible.
But something pointed the way.
“The Holy Grail!”
I had touched the Holy Grail.
For the sake of salvation!
That was it.
Through the Holy Grail I had clearly returned to the pure days before I committed any sins—before I ever became a cultist!
“Right now I am still a pure theology student who has committed no sins!”
It was the same as having received salvation.
“In this life I will become a faithful and devout priest!”
“Save me! That crazy pervert set fire—cough. Cough!”