The Silver Paladin
"It's been a while, Lady Erena."
The man who entered the Prayer House ward offered Erena his greeting first.
She seemed to know him well enough; she returned it with a slight dip of her head. And that was all.
Knowing her temperament, she would never have left it at a nod if she had actually been glad to see him.
Messi caught the strangeness of it, and Ereb added a quiet word of explanation.
"This is Sir Benedict — the one they used to call the Silver Paladin. I'd heard he was staying at the monastery in our territory these days. So it was true."
It was hard to believe the man had ever been a holy knight. He was not particularly large, and the priest's robes he wore suited him rather well.
"He's the fellow who came to the family a few times to treat Erena."
The words had barely left Ereb's mouth before Benedict turned to her.
"Have you been keeping up with your prayers of late? As I told you then, you must recite the prayer for thirty minutes each morning and evening to temper your faith, and send your worldly goods to the monastery, that temptation may be kept far from you."
"...I haven't."
"Ah. And that is why there has been no improvement. As I said then — without faith, even a priest's treatment is of no use whatsoever."
Ereb snorted and cut in.
"That's rich. Before you treated her, you took our family's money and talked as if Erena would naturally be able to stand!"
"Lord Ereb, forgive me, but that must have been someone else. I distinctly told you before the treatment that the effect would vary according to Lady Erena's faith."
"If that's how it works, who couldn't be a priest? I could do it myself."
"A fair point. Goddess Gaia sets no qualifications upon those who would become Her servants. Should you take holy orders, you would be most welcome. Ah — and if Lady Erena were to take vows as well, and purify body and soul for thirty years, there would surely be improvement."
Was this man insane?
He was talking about being locked in one place for thirty years of cultivation as if it were the most natural thing in the world. There was a screw loose in that head of his.
Ereb could not help but be furious at such an absurd suggestion being made to his precious little sister. And yet he knew, in his head, that Benedict was not saying any of this out of malice toward Erena.
It was not that Benedict was a bad man. He sincerely followed Gaia, and had so thoroughly offered himself up to an absolute being that even the way he looked at the world had been calibrated to a god's measure.
If we had never gotten tangled up with people like him, my sister and father might have been hurt a little less.
House Ahental had offered money to the Church again and again for Erena's treatment. Famous priests had come, wagging their tongues, pouring hope into her, and attempting to heal her. There had been no results whatsoever. And through it all, the Church insisted there was nothing wrong with the power of the gods — the problem was with the patient — and laid the blame on Erena.
That the relationship between House Ahental and the Church had soured was only natural.
Father's dealt with hundreds of people like this. No wonder he has a fit at the mere mention of treatment.
If it doesn't work, just say it doesn't work. Instead they keep stoking the patient's hope, milking them for money, and then, when it fails, they blame the patient. Who would trust that?
If the viscount had not been so traumatized by the word treatment, Ereb would have long since pushed to have Messi try healing Erena.
"Lady Erena. It is the offering of one's flesh and soul — mere creations — unto the Goddess. Of course it requires long devotion. I pray you will not count that time as meaningless."
"That's enough. I'll look into other methods, so please stop concerning yourself with me."
Erena's refusal was cold. Unlike before, it was a definite rejection. Had she found something to lean on? When she looked at Messi, Benedict's eyes met his as well.
"Ah... so that is the Saint of the Foreign Race."
"The Saint of the Foreign Race?"
"Have you not heard, Lord Ereb? Well — it has only been a day. The rumor is spreading all through the city. That a foreigner of extraordinary healing arts has arrived at the Prayer House... Ah, and of course, the praise for Lord Ereb, who brought him here, is unanimous as well."
There was no sarcasm in it. Benedict was looking Messi over from head to toe, taking his measure. Messi was doing the same.
"So. Why has the devout Sir Benedict graced us with his presence? We already have a saint here, you know."
"Lord Ereb, I too have a busy schedule, and I hesitated a great deal before coming all this way. However, your elder brother requested the monastery's assistance."
"...What?"
Why would that man...?
"He seemed filled with concern for his younger sibling. How deeply must it have weighed on him, to ask a favor of the Church with which he had had no dealings?"
"Haha... this crazy..."
Ereb had felt something was off himself. Among priests famous for being slow to move, the odds of a reasonably renowned one suddenly showing up to volunteer at the Prayer House had been low. And it turned out Ayres had been pulling the strings.
Why? What's he after?
"I'm sorry, but I'd rather you just went back. We're taking good care of the patients ourselves."
"I apologize. An agreement has already been reached between the monastery leadership and Lord Ayres. It has been a long time since House Ahental's church tithe came in, and the monastery is in high spirits. How could I return having done nothing?"
"...So what are you planning to do?"
"What a priest does when faced with patients is a given, is it not?"
He meant to treat them.
This was the picture Ayres had wanted. A joint treatment between the Saint of the Foreign Race and a renowned priest of the Church. If it happened in the same space, they would be compared down to the last detail. And the moment the priest overwhelmingly outhealed him, they would spread the word that the so-called Saint of the Foreign Race's skills had been exaggerated — that he was still lacking, after all, compared to a priest of the Church.
And the men who had come trailing at Benedict's heels were needed as witnesses for that testimony.
When asked about the people at his back, Benedict explained as if he had been waiting for the question.
"Ah, they are my patrons. Baron Boavang, and the vice-master of the Pengel Trading Company. They said they wished to observe the saint's healing arts, and followed along. They will not get in the way, so please don't mind them."
The two men smiled brightly and stood well back, as if determined to be as unobtrusive as possible.
The Pengel Trading Company... one of the places my brother deals with often. And Baron Boavang is from my sister-in-law's family.
Ereb's deliberation stretched on. On the surface, it would be the same volunteer work of seeing patients. Underneath, it would become a healing contest between Messi and Benedict.
Can we win? No — I shouldn't hope for that much. The opponent is Benedict, the Silver Paladin. Even if he laid down his holy sword long ago, his holy power will be intact. If we can just match him, that's a win for us.
The Silver Paladin, Benedict. Fifteen years ago he had been a promising young holy knight, a man many had watched with interest. The distinctive thing was his holy power — unlike the white and blue sacred energy of others, he poured forth a silver holy power. Many still recalled the overwhelming figure he cut when he took up his holy sword against the undead. For reasons no one knew, he had sealed that sword at a young age and entered a small monastery as a priest.
Ereb looked at Messi with worry. But contrary to that worry, Messi was watching Benedict with curiosity rather than wariness.
That guy... isn't he even worried?
And yet, strangely, Ereb found himself reassured by that very fact.
For Messi, this was a meeting he had been waiting for a long time.
Coming from a world without gods, he had long wanted to meet those who performed miracles as proxies of divine power. And there was one more thing.
Can I use holy power?
That was the core of his interest in priests. He had heard that the Church's holy knights used holy power in place of mana, and fought on equal terms with knights. Messi had learned the Ahental Mana Cultivation Method and kept training ever since, but it troubled him that, having started later than others, the amount he had accumulated was still so little. He had been wondering if there was something that could take its place. Holy power seemed as if it would be useful.
Kkyu, you said I was born with divinity — the power of a god. Does that mean I can use holy power too?
Kkyu, who had been sitting quietly in his pocket, stirred for the first time in a while.
Then what's holy power?
...You don't really know either, do you?
Until now she had carried herself like a walking encyclopedia, but having been caught with holes in her knowledge here and there, the princess hopped about in a frantic effort to hide her embarrassment.
Ignoring her, Messi strode toward Benedict.
"Well met, former messenger of Gaia. Blessings upon you."
He offered the greeting with care. Benedict looked surprised that fluent Central speech was coming from someone he had taken for a foreigner.
"Well met. Blessings upon you. I too had been curious about the Saint of the Foreign Race, so I thank you for approaching first."
He did not seem to wear any particular prejudice; Benedict even shook Messi's hand lightly in a warm greeting. What he had said to Erena sat poorly, but outside of religious matters, there seemed little to fault in the man.
"I seem to have become an unintended obstacle to your treatment. Allow me to apologize in advance."
"It's all right. What matters is that the patients recover — not that I be the one to treat them."
Benedict smiled with satisfaction at Messi's perfect answer.
"Even so, I am sorry. I was not going to mention this, but... it seems those above did not send me here with purely good intentions."
Ereb had already picked up on it, so there was no way Messi would not know. He had been guessing on his own even before Ayres's name came up.
"Then with what intention do you think they sent you?"
"To answer honestly... the monastery leadership seems to want me to demonstrate the gap between us in front of people."
That would be it. It had only been a day since he treated dozens of the territory's people. And yet he was already being called the Saint of the Foreign Race — which meant the people of the territory and the freemen had longed for such a being that much.
This was exactly as Messi had guessed. He had not had those patients sing the young lord's praises for nothing. The Church only treated illness and wounds if you paid a steep price, so if you fell sick you followed folk remedies and then quietly died. That had been the reality. In that situation, the story of a single healer treating dozens of dying people for nothing would have been a considerable shock.
That reaction from the people would have displeased the Church — and Ayres had happened to come along and pull the trigger.
"I hope the Saint of the Foreign Race will not take offense. To the Church, a priest's healing arts are a matter of pride and foundation. That you have come to challenge that — you may take pride in it."
Benedict took it as naturally as breathing that he would overwhelm Messi's Heal. You could hear it in his tone. It did not come across as arrogant. There could be no arrogance in someone who genuinely believed it.
Messi was not offended either. He had never seen treatment that used holy power, so he could not be confident he would beat Benedict. But he thought that even if he lost, if he gained something from it, that would be his victory. Messi decided to pick Benedict's pockets thoroughly.
Silver holy power erupted from Benedict's body in a sudden, blinding flash, spilling out into the room around him. He began to murmur a prayer. A brilliant light spread in all directions, and as the words continued, the light stacked upon itself in layers — until three halos linked together in rings of radiance.
Three layered halos of sacred light unfurled from the priest's brow, ringing him in silver.
The mining slave who had nearly died, crushed for hours beneath a pile of excavated ore, could not string together a single word at the miracle unfolding before him.
Ah... so this is a priest's miracle.
Everyone in the Prayer House ward marveled at that silver warmth and bowed their heads. Even Erena, who did not believe in priests, was moved by that light in this moment.
Messi stood at a distance, watching the scene with care. Thanks to his newly awakened eyes, he could see a little even without bathing someone in Heal.
Handling holy power is a different method from using a mana hole, or forming a ring in the heart...
Messi's eyes could faintly make out the structure through which the other man's energy flowed, and the part of Benedict that shone brightest just then was none other than his head. Holy power was manifesting from inside the skull, and from there the three circular halos formed, giving rise to the phenomenon.
Like forming a ring in the heart — there seems to be something special there too.
He was very curious.
No one will notice right now.
The room was already flooded with the light of holy power. Even if Messi's Heal scattered light into it, it would be like tossing two handfuls of dirt onto a mountain.
Heal
The light touched Benedict. In that instant, things flowed into Messi's mind and were naturally understood. He scanned every corner of Benedict's body, accumulating information as he went.
Time passed.
One minute.
Two minutes.
Three minutes...
"...?"
Benedict's murmured prayer was still going. The dying patient was still dying in exactly the same way. Messi's Heal scan had finished long ago.
He thought:
...Just how long is this going to take?