Chapter 188: The Ember of Heresy
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 188: The Ember of Heresy
“I’m back.”
Elize arrived at the inn, which had become another one of her homes.
She looked a little tired.
“What have you been up to? You look exhausted.”
“It was nothing.”
“…”
“…I just got rid of some bastards who were trying to experiment on young believers.”
Elize had tried to hide it out of habit, but when Karami just smiled and stared at her, she had no choice but to confess. She couldn't imagine what kind of retaliation he’d come up with if she pretended otherwise.
A naked stroll was something she would vehemently refuse.
“Experimenting on little children. The world is full of all sorts of heinous villains.”
Karami feigned ignorance.
Elize’s eyes narrowed.
“What’s with the terrible acting?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re the one who told me, Master.”
“I did? When was that?”
His shameless reply was dumbfounding.
“Are you pretending you don’t remember, after coming all the way to the confessional to give me a confession yourself?”
“Aren’t the things that happen in the confessional supposed to be confidential? Have you forgotten your vow to God?”
“God? What damn god? A vow to a god like that is no different from some old lady promising she’ll never tell anyone else if you just tell her.”
Was there ever such an insincere nun?
Not only had she broken her vow to God, but she was belittling it.
It was a wonder she could even use divine power.
Having had no intention of keeping his implicit secret from the start, Elize began to question him openly.
“That theologian, Roman. Is he really your friend?”
“Not a friend, but someone I know very well.”
He knew exactly what kind of person Roman was and what his goals were.
Of course, it’s a one-sided relationship where he doesn’t even know I exist.
He hadn’t lied.
“What did you do with the children?”
“I erased their memories and sent them to a nearby village. They know where they lived, so they’ll either go back or do whatever.”
“Hmm…”
“What is it?”
“It’s nothing.”
“And yet you tell me to tell you everything.”
Elize grumbled, popping a cube of cheese into her mouth.
She gazed at the night view through the window. Karami watched her profile and thought.
This incident was one of the events that could determine which version of a liberated Elize would emerge.
While staying in the Holy Kingdom, she could obtain information related to the experiments. The same experiments Elize had endured in the past were being continued by Roman and his group.
At this point, her path could diverge in three ways.
One was to save the children.
Another was to not save them.
And the final option.
There was a route where she didn’t just stop at saving the children, but went further to find and rescue all the children who had been used as test subjects. And then, get revenge together.
That was the Pied Piper version, but Elize had stopped at just saving the current test subjects. In other words, she wasn’t the Pied Piper.
This isn’t easy.
It seemed he would have to watch her a little longer.
“Master.”
“Yes?”
“Do you happen to know about the Saint?”
“Of course.”
Not a holy Saint, but a sexual one.
A lewd cleric who preached purity while wearing suggestive clothes and unconsciously seduced people at the drop of a hat.
People would call a beautiful woman’s bodily fluids ‘precious’ and refer to them as holy water, but unlike that, she was a living, breathing holy water-making machine.
“Am I wrong?”
He said all of this directly to Elize.
Elize frowned.
She looked at Karami as if he were a piece of filth, or something even more disgusting.
“I’m kidding. I was just messing with you.”
Karami belatedly tried to cover his tracks, but the affection points he’d lost weren’t coming back.
“Anyway, you were asking about the Saint? I don’t really know anything either. But why do you ask?”
“Because they called me a Saint.”
“Hmm…”
A Saint-turned-slave captured by a demon was a plausible concept, but unfortunately, no such slave existed. Furthermore, the very existence of a Saint wasn't in TOS.
He’d never thought about why. If something didn’t exist, you just assumed ‘the developers didn’t make it,’ you didn’t analyze the reasons for its absence.
And in that context, the clergy had called Elize a Saint.
Is this a variable?
There was no Saint route for Elize.
If a route that didn’t exist in the game had appeared, it would be a variable. But if not, being hailed as a Saint wouldn’t hinder the story’s progression at all.
He just had to keep observing Elize’s attitude as he had been.
“Do you perhaps want to become a Saint? Shall I enthrone you as the Saint of our Church of the Grim Reaper?”
Elize scoffed.
“No, thanks. I’m not interested in such a childish title.”
*
Secret conversations are bound to happen in secret places.
The night was like a sealed room, shrouded in darkness.
In a corner of Kassilon stood a shabby, unused old cathedral, its entrance guarded by four holy knights.
On one side were the White Guardians, clad in white armor. On the other, the Black Guardians, in black armor.
They were believers divided into two factions to maintain the order and balance of the Holy Kingdom.
A group of three approached the old cathedral. The holy knights flinched and grew wary for a moment before immediately relaxing. They bowed their heads in respect.
“Your Eminence.”
The one who received the holy knights’ greeting was a middle-aged man in black clerical robes.
His gray hair exposed half his forehead, and his eyes were sharp and downcast.
Cardinal Marcenus of the Congregation of Doctrinal Faith.
The man known as the head of the Inquisition.
“Are the two of them inside?”
“Yes. They are waiting. We will escort you.”
Escorted by a knight, Marcenus entered the cathedral. When a device inside the cathedral was activated, a secret entrance leading to the basement opened.
Descending into the basement revealed a small space.
Two shadows swayed in time with the flickering candlelight from the sconces on the wall.
“You’ve arrived, Cardinal Marcenus.”
“Mm.”
One was a woman in a black nun’s habit, the wrinkles around her eyes giving her a benevolent impression. It was Matilda, the Mother Superior of the convent where Elize worked.
“I had so much to say, what took you so long? I’ve been dying to talk, the wait was killing me!”
The other was the mad theologian, Roman, who questioned the Cardinal without a shred of deference.
Marcenus, who valued etiquette, frowned. If he had his way, he would punish the man for blasphemy, but he couldn’t. At this moment, his existence was necessary.
Marcenus sat down.
“I don’t see the captain of the Black Knights.”
“A vampire appeared in the city center. All the knights are on high alert.”
“So. Why have you called me?”
“Someone is on our tail.”
Marcenus’s eyes narrowed.
Their plan to establish a new order with perfect balance, in place of the half-baked doctrine, had been carried out in top secret for over a decade, and now an obstacle had appeared.
“Who is it?”
“A new girl at our convent.”
“She broke into my study, you know! She seemed to be quite careful, but she can’t fool my memory. The chair was tilted by thirteen degrees, and the pen was moved two centimeters to the side. Also…”
“Enough.”
Marcenus cut off the rambling nonsense with a single word.
“If a mere nun is digging around, it’s something you can handle yourselves. Why call for me?”
Marcenus was a cardinal.
They might be in the same boat, but a sailor and a captain were not equals.
He had no intention of handling every trivial matter.
“Well, you see, the laboratory was attacked at the most opportune time.”
“What?”
“The researchers and the children vanished without a trace. The lab was also damaged beyond repair. Thankfully, we still have the important data.”
Elize had asked the Mother Superior about Roman, and then someone had broken into Roman’s study and looked through his materials. And then the attack on the lab.
The timing was truly coincidental.
There were no other suspects.
“No one can enter my study but me, you know~”
“There were no witnesses, either.”
Since she was at the convent during the day, she likely operated at night.
But even if the night was good for moving stealthily, a nun wandering around alone at night was bound to be seen, yet there were no such reports.
Furthermore, the laboratory was a good two-day carriage ride from the Holy Kingdom. But Elize had never been absent for even a single day.
“She’s no ordinary nun.”
“It seems so. She wasn’t raised in our Holy Kingdom; she’s a child that Priest Lucas brought from the outside.”
“What do you plan to do?”
“We could call her out separately and deal with her…”
“She uses an unknown power. It would be troublesome if she escaped and exposed our plans.”
Just as Matilda and Marcenus were struggling to find a suitable solution, Roman spoke up.
“Why don’t we just frame her and get rid of her?”
Matilda nodded at Roman’s suggestion.
“That’s right. That way, we can dispose of her without revealing our identities. She won’t know who to hold a grudge against, so she won’t be able to retaliate blindly, and no one will believe the word of a criminal.”
Branding a single nun as a sinner was a trivial matter.
“What of the matter of the Saint?”
“Still no progress~ At this rate, we can’t even begin the plan.”
Order is found in chaos.
It was a state that suited the current Holy Kingdom perfectly.
Thanks to the previous Pope who had retired as if he were quitting a job at a bar, the believers had lost their father overnight.
The faithful needed a parent to embrace them.
The existence of a Saint with perfect balance would be the cornerstone and pillar of their reformation. She would be the linchpin to unite the hearts of the confused citizens.
But the experiments showed no signs of success…
“For now, it seems we have no choice but to wait for the experiment to succeed.”
“If it doesn’t succeed, the plan will end up as nothing more than a childish fantasy.”
Finding something amusing, Roman giggled.
Marcenus disliked his frivolity, but sadly, he wasn’t wrong. The grander the dream, the more likely the plan is to have flaws somewhere.
That was exactly their situation now.
If only a Saint would just drop out of the sky.
Marcenus had such a foolish thought.