The Unlucky Priest
“Fuck this!”
Nomad could not sleep no matter how hard he tried.
If he drifted off, he would forget to breathe, and if he stopped breathing he would surely sink into the eternal sleep.
In the midst of that torment he suddenly recalled the words of the strange man.
“…A curse. That’s right! He said he was casting the Curse of Awareness!”
The man in the dark had called it a curse.
Fortunately this place was still a monastery of sorts, so there were plenty of ways to break a curse.
“I don’t know who the bastard is, but casting sorcery on me? What a fool! The moment I’m cured I’ll string him up by the neck!”
Nomad rushed out of his room in search of the most effective remedy against sorcery and curses—holy water.
He hurried toward the chapel, and the instant he found the basin of holy water on the dark dais he froze in shock.
“What the hell? It’s all muddy water!”
The holy water was already fouled with earth and, for some reason, bubbling furiously.
Every other water vessel was the same.
Even after twenty years as a veteran priest, Nomad poured every scrap of holy power he possessed into the liquid, yet it refused to clear.
What sort of being in this world could contaminate holy water so thoroughly?
If such a thing existed, it could only be something that bore the name of a Great Sin.
“A… aaagh!”
Faced with that ominous sight and the sheer difficulty of drawing breath, Nomad finally lost his reason.
“A demon!!! A demon has appeared in the monastery!!! The demon has polluted the holy water!!! Just as the Crescent Moon witches prophesied, a demon has come into the world!!!”
Nerves stretched to the breaking point, Nomad staggered and dropped the holy water onto the floor.
Thud—.
The candelabrum that had stood on the pulpit toppled under the impact of Nomad’s body and crashed to the ground.
The moment the candle flame touched the holy water that soaked the floor, heat flared up as violently as if oil had been poured on the fire.
Whoosh—! Crack, crackle, crack, whoosh—!
In an instant the chapel was engulfed in flames.
“No! My monastery! Everything I have! No! After all I did to climb this high! After everything! Haaah, haaah!”
Nomad flailed his robes trying to beat out the fire, yet the scarlet flames leapt beyond the chapel and swallowed every corner of Emeris Monastery.
When the monks finally woke and raced to the chapel, they found Nomad screaming like a half-mad lunatic.
“A demon…! A demon…! Puccino… there’s a demon…! Just as the prophecy said…! Send a carrier pigeon to the Crescent Moon Sisterhood! A carrier pigeon! The demon… inhale and exhale…! Haaah!”
Watching the deranged Nomad fling the doves from their cages in every direction, Supervisor Puccino felt his own mind begin to crack.
“Bishop—no, Abbot! Pull yourself together! What about your breathing? What do you mean, inhale and exhale… haah, haah, haaah…!?”
Supervisor Puccino clutched at his own throat and chest.
Something was terribly wrong.
While he was still gasping for air, people who had just woken began to shout.
“Fire! F-fire! Fire!”
“Everyone up! Put it out! Put out the fire! Contact the city!”
People scrambled about, scooping water with wooden buckets and racing back and forth.
“Fire?”
I had been testing my holy power with holy water in my room when I noticed the monks frantically hauling well water, and the sight left me thoroughly puzzled.
The heat that had spread through the entire monastery in the blink of an eye was so fierce I felt as though my face might blister; my brow furrowed hard.
This is why people can’t live with sin. Commit a sin and this is the price you pay.
In my view Emeris Monastery had simply received divine punishment. They had deceived people, exploited their labor, and colluded with heretics—so they deserved to burn.
Near this city of Sodomy there seemed to be an endless supply of heretics in league with cultists.
Training in a den of sin like this was clearly why I couldn’t concentrate and why my holy power refused to accumulate.
At this rate I would have to continue my cultivation somewhere else.
“….”
I looked up at the sky. The North Star glittered with unusual brilliance, and something flashed through my mind.
Come to think of it, a little farther north there’s a place perfect for cultivation. If I go there I might even learn the prayer of the golden plaque.
The great cathedral of the city of Durgien.
Its master was Archbishop Archibold, a cleric of the golden nameplate.
The thought of meeting him already lifted my spirits.
I remembered how, when I had been forced to invade the royal capital, the Archbishop of Durgien had fought the cultists with ferocious resolve.
In particular I recalled how the vicious Great Sin Seat Las had raged, “That Durgien Archbishop—I want to kill that bastard with my own hands.”
I had never met the man myself, yet the mere fact that the madwoman Las hated him so fiercely proved he was an outstanding man of faith.
“I want to meet him. I need an excellent teacher.”
The faithful, myself included, are like sheep that each try to go their own way; we need a fine shepherd.
That is why one cannot live a life of faith alone.
In this life granted by the Holy Grail I wanted to meet a devout archbishop in person, speak with him about faith, seek counsel on this and that, share meals, and take him as both spiritual master and comrade.
If things went well I might even catch his eye and be taken as his disciple.
Becoming the disciple of an archbishop would open a smooth highway for any cleric.
In twenty-first-century terms it would be like landing a job as the pastor of a mega-church that paid as well as a corporate executive!
With that pleasant thought in mind, dawn arrived and an investigation team was dispatched from the Durgien region to uncover the truth behind the fire at the monastery.
The leader of the team was a Holy Crusade knight wearing a surcoat over chain mail—a woman in her mid-to-late twenties.
Five years ago I would have been astonished that a young woman would don armor and take on the harsh work of a knight.
But this world was one in which the three miracles of Aura, Holy Power, and Mana truly existed.
If a woman possessed aptitude for any of them she could become strong enough to put a UFC champion to shame.
“The demon stole my breath… s-save me… I’m sorry… f-forgive me… the demon…”
“What’s wrong with this one? A demon?”
The female knight frowned as she looked at Abbot Nomad, who had half lost his mind.
It was not only Nomad. Every person in the monastery was clutching their throats and moaning that they could not breathe.
The only one still perfectly fine was me.
The female knight—brown hair neatly tied back, face healthily tanned—turned to the sole unharmed person present and called out.
“You there!”
“Who, me?”
“Yes, you.”
This female knight.
Speaking casually right from the start.
Then again, female knights were all like that.
Whether bronze plaque or silver plaque, their pride was as hard as the armor they wore.
“I am Galatea, Bronze Knight of the Holy Crusade. According to the abbot a demon appeared, set the fire, and polluted the holy water. Is that true? He also claims the demon spread a curse throughout this monastery.”
Bronze Knight Galatea, is it?
I knew quite a few knights’ names, yet I had never heard of Galatea.
Still, a bronze-plaque knight meant a veteran with at least ten years of experience.
She had freckles that made her look plain yet pretty, but she was not someone to take lightly.
The bronze-plaque female knight I had once seen had skewered ten mercenaries single-handedly with one sword. In this world “knights” were less human beings than tactical weapons on the level of tanks.
I decided to tell this prickly human weapon only as much as I knew.
“I only recently entered this monastery, so I do not know exactly what happened. However, I did overhear by chance that the abbot had been exchanging messages with the heretical Crescent Moon Sisterhood.”
At my answer the female knight Galatea’s brown eyes widened in clear astonishment.
“The Crescent Moon Sisterhood? Those wicked, cruel witches?”
“Yes. Search the burned remains. The Crescent Moon Sisterhood and their followers leave palm prints stamped in blood as their mark. If the fire did not destroy them, they will still be stored somewhere.”
“Is that so? Understood! I’ve heard the stories about the blood palm seals!”
Swish—.
When the knight jerked her chin, men who appeared to be her retainers began rummaging through the charred wreckage of the buildings.
Before long they discovered a strongbox so sturdy it had survived the flames. It looked far too solid for such a shabby, out-of-the-way monastery.
Clang—!
Knight Galatea brought her sword down on the lock; the door sprang open.
Rustle rustle rustle—.
Rolled letters poured out in such numbers that they spilled onto the floor.
They contained orders from the Crescent Moon Sisterhood treating the monks like servants. And just as I had said, there were stacks of papers stamped with bloody palm seals.
“These damned bastards! To think the cult’s reach extended even to a backwater like this! We’ll take them to the Order for further investigation. Before that, though, I want to examine the curse that drove them mad…”
Galatea pressed her hand to the throats of the men who claimed they could not breathe.
Sssss—.
Her hands, rough for a woman’s, glowed white with holy power for a moment.
Then the brown-haired Bronze Knight Galatea clicked her tongue.
“There’s not a single trace of the mana that should have been used in a curse or sorcery formula. No sign of a curse at all. Since it isn’t a curse, neither holy water nor blessings will break it.”
Well, of course it isn’t a curse.
My “Curse of Awareness” is nothing more than a verbal trick.
Still, I decided to play completely ignorant.
“Perhaps the fire damaged their respiratory tracts? The breathing passages are delicate and vulnerable to heat, so that may be why they cannot breathe.”
The female knight Galatea nodded. “That does make sense.”
Then she drew a water skin from her belt and uncorked it.
“Then why is this holy water so contaminated? Bubbling holy water? I’ve never heard of such a thing in ten years as a nun and five years as a knight.”
“…I truly have no idea how that happened either.”
I really didn’t.
No matter how much holy power I poured in, the muddy holy water refused to purify and only kept bubbling.
“I see. The smell is strange too… it smells almost… ahem… the scent is… very peculiar yet…”
The female knight Galatea kept pressing her nose to the leather water skin filled with the polluted holy water. What on earth did she mean by the smell?
When I watched her with growing unease, Galatea cleared her throat, her healthily tanned face coloring faintly, and looked away.
“Ahem. I’ll take it back to the Order and examine the exact composition myself. In any case, bind the heretics and drag them to the interrogation chamber!”
At once Abbot Nomad, Puccino, and their underlings were tightly bound with rope.
Every one of them was a monk who had been caught stamping loyalty blood seals for the Crescent Moon Sisterhood.
Furious that I had nearly been deceived by them, I could not hold back my rage and began shouting and thrashing them.
“You dreamed of becoming priests yet colluded with a cult! You bastards deserve divine punishment!”
How dare they try to sell me as a sacrifice to those cultists.
“You brood of vipers! How can a priest fall onto the path of a cult! You deserve every bit of heaven’s wrath! Hell is waiting for you! Nomad, you only get two hits!”
“Aaagh! Ugh! S-stop it! Hiiiek!”
I had been seething, yet after yelling for a while I felt a little better. My hands, however, hurt like hell. Punching people was not something just anyone could do.
Watching me rage so fiercely, Knight Galatea seemed rather moved.
“Monk Hyde! Thanks to your accusation we were able to round up the apostates in one sweep! My retainers just told me you were also the one who exposed the heresy of Sodomy’s wicked woman Nicola and Bluebeard Faltman?”
“Has word already spread that far?”
While I scratched the back of my head in embarrassment, Galatea looked back and forth between the burned ashes and me with a deeply regretful expression.
“So, Monk Hyde. Now that the place you were staying has burned down, what do you plan to do next? If there’s anything I can help with, tell me. If there’s divine punishment, there ought to be good fortune as well, don’t you think?”
She’s offering to help me?