Chapter 383
Chapter 383
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 383
Chapter Title: Omen (2)
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The pilgrim knights’ encampment felt more like a monastery than a military camp. The supplies, weapons, and warhorses were neatly organized, evoking the discipline of a proper army, but aside from the quiet tolling of bells and the occasional rustle of turning pages, there was no other noise.
Fernandez followed the knight leading the way, strolling through this eerie disconnect. Now and then, knights spotted him and halted in their steps, but none questioned his identity, barred his path, or even greeted him.
The churches of the Holy Pantheon officially forbade the service of private armed groups. Individual churches trained a few templar knights to act as enforcers, but organized force was another matter entirely.
Organized military power could influence secular royal politics. In the five hundred years since the Council’s declaration, the Holy Pantheon had entrusted all its external military forces to the Beitasser Church.
As a result, the Beitasser Church commanded two combat orders: St. Bartholomew Monastery, tasked with confronting heretics, black mages, and demons—
And the Order of St. John Pilgrim Knights, formed to counter mass apostasy on a national scale or assaults against the Church itself.
Fernandez could keenly feel the subtle differences between these two seemingly similar groups right here and now.
The Inquisition suspected everything in plain sight, dissecting it until not a shred of doubt remained. If one had to describe them, they were like hyenas or vultures, greedily devouring and tearing into every incident reeking of heresy.
But these pilgrims, the Order of St. John, harbored no suspicions. They maintained the most fundamental posture of priests, like ancient clerics from antiquity. They did not doubt that all things would unfold according to the Lord’s will.
Thus, they did not question. They did not speak. They did not express. They moved like automatons carrying out the Lord’s word, machines of faith.
‘The official reason for their dispatch was retribution for the monastery’s destruction?’
That was the most plausible explanation, but according to documents released by the Fairn royal family after the Inquisition’s functions were suspended, the Fairn Kingdom had not been behind the monastery’s ruin. He couldn’t fully trust their information, but noble society ran on pretexts and face; one couldn’t dismiss a royal proclamation without evidence.
In other words, the Beitasser Church had first ascertained that the attack on the monastery was not the work of some ‘mysterious cultist group’ before dispatching these knights.
‘Sigismund knew that fact better than anyone... and struck first.’
Even now, Fernandez thought the man’s mind turned too sharply for someone worshiping Tyban. He didn’t overestimate Sigismund’s raw power, but the man’s strategic acuity was certainly worthy of high praise.
He had set up a perfect board where the Beitasser Church, the Holy Pantheon, the Empire, and other kingdoms couldn’t intervene, then formulated his plan faster than anyone. Fernandez, robbed of the initiative, had no choice but to play a desperate gambit to overturn the board.
Fernandez pressed his lips together bitterly and kept walking. The knight ahead halted abruptly. Near the campfire at the center of the camp sat a priest peeling potatoes into a pot.
A familiar face.
“Your Eminence.”
The irritable-looking old man set down his knife and looked up at him. He soon chuckled dryly and patted the ground beside him.
“My throat’s parched. You plan to keep making this old man crane his neck?”
Cardinal Kaliocini. A few years back, during Fernandez’s canonization advisory council, this stiff-necked elder had taken on the role of his adversary.
Fernandez barked a carefree laugh at the man’s jest, devoid of animosity, and sat down. The cardinal turned back to slice potatoes and toss them into the pot.
“Surprised?”
“Now that I know how much heart and soul His Holiness poured into this matter, there’s nothing surprising about it.”
“You still have a silver tongue. Heh.”
Contrary to his prickly demeanor, the cardinal spoke like any kindly old grandfather. Yet Fernandez kept his guard up as he watched him.
Every church needed a ‘devil’s advocate.’ There was no guarantee a group’s consensus served the good, so they appointed someone to represent evil as a precaution.
In this era, the devil’s advocate for the Beitasser Papal Court was this old man before him. A thankless job requiring constant opposition to the pope’s absolute authority. No prestige, no honor. A role too cruel for one person to bear alone, yet he had shouldered it for decades.
Even actions born of good intent warped a man’s nature slowly under such relentless pressure. Fernandez couldn’t deny the elder’s morals were righteous, but he could never possess the warmth of a genial neighborhood grandpa.
“You sought out this old bones to probe the Holy Pantheon’s stance, I presume. Impressive intuition. Who else could think so far ahead? It’s been a while.”
As expected. Fernandez gave a wry smile, confirming his prediction spot-on, and eyed the elder. The cardinal stirred the pot impassively, betraying nothing.
The field stew bubbled thickly, filling the air with a savory aroma as the flour roux thickened. Staring into the pot, the old man continued without changing expression.
“I know you’re exceptionally shrewd and cold-blooded. A level of intellect beyond your years. Beorn and His Holiness both agreed on that. Brother Beorn saw it as divine providence, His Holiness as prophetic gift—but I see differently.”
Beorn had viewed Fernandez’s brilliance as a blessing from the Lord. Most youths his age couldn’t even grasp the fragments of complex reasoning Fernandez displayed, so it wasn’t wrong.
The pope, meanwhile, believed Fernandez possessed precognition. Acting as if he already knew information mismatched to time and place was hard to explain otherwise.
But Cardinal Kaliocini disagreed. This old man, whose life’s work was to refute every opinion first and seek evidence later, thought otherwise.
Everything began with assumptions. Knew unknown information in advance? Possessed knowledge beyond normal realization, predicted future events, wielded wisdom beyond his age?
The pope was wise. Without prophecy, it was inexplicable. But Kaliocini opposed the pope’s view first. If not prophecy, what other conclusion?
“Compiling records left by those with prophetic gifts yields one conclusion: this world will someday surely end. It’s not widely known, but the Holy Pantheon believes that day isn’t far off.”
The material world was skating on thin ice. Conditions for doom were legion, countermeasures few, and those scheming for apocalypse countless.
Suppose some cultists finally succeeded in opening a hellgate one day. If that horrific heresy was reported a step too late, and response efforts hit snags—what then?
Hell could end the world effortlessly. A single demon could slaughter hundreds, thousands. A handful of hell’s mana could corrupt land the size of a village or more, its tainted air spreading plague-like.
To eradicate it, the Church had spent a millennium employing every means: torching villages whole, razing cities, impaling multitudes to root out one hidden heretic.
Necessary sacrifices. Humanity prospered now by near-miraculous chance. After the pre-Heavenly War settled folk vanished, humans claimed the empty lands.
Power and miracles not earned by effort could vanish anytime, in any measure. More than any group, the Church knew this intimately. Thus, they believed the end could strike at any moment.
They merely hoped it wouldn’t be today—or at least not tomorrow—while hurling themselves into the flames even now.
“Demon worshipers multiply with time. Despite our efforts, heretics lurk in sewers and shadows. Demon incidents flare every instant we look away, consuming lives to suppress. How much time do we have left?”
Just a century ago, it wasn’t like this. Incidents in a month now exceeded a year’s reports back then.
Further in the past, ancient records showed even fewer: a year’s less than a week’s now. The Inquisition traced back to the Great Wilderness’s Mumto rampage, but its current scale was less than fifty years old.
Naturally, the Holy Pantheon had to take the apocalypse seriously. When, they didn’t know—but soon.
And watching Fernandez’s actions, Kaliocini suddenly thought: What if the pope was wrong? If... just if. What if this youth wasn’t a prophet?
“Have you seen the moment of the end?”
“……!”
A logical leap bordering on delusion, an assumption impossible to explain. But Kaliocini silently did his duty. Oppose the pope, then find evidence.
The result was this. Fernandez wasn’t a prophet; the reason he knew the future, seemed precocious and wise beyond years... He’d come from the future.
He knew no way to turn back time. Maybe impossible. But if so—
“At least within a century, this world ends. Isn’t that right?”
Fernandez knew this era’s state intimately. Far beyond history books. That meant he’d already lived through this world.
Kaliocini shivered at his deduction. It fit perfectly. Knowing unrevealed info, preemptively eradicating hidden heretic sects, even slaying archdemons.
All archdemons were sealed in unknown places. The Great Wilderness’s Mumto and northern Sadarkelia, confirmed slain; the other two, seemingly resealed.
A future-dweller knowing their locations and states—where even the Church didn’t—meant they’d been freed not long hence.
Ancient demons infused with divinity roaming free? Simply put: ‘apocalypse.’ If Fernandez knew all that, he’d returned from facing it.
Kaliocini gazed at him with weary, haggard features. Deep terror and despair flickered in his complex eyes.
“Answer me.”
“You’re right.”
“Lord...”
Kaliocini crossed himself and bowed his head.
“I miss Brother Beorn. Who’d have thought his view most correct?”
Fernandez’s existence was the Lord’s blessing. Beorn Shieldbane’s final conclusion on him in life. Unlike the pope, who’d sought to leverage prophetic gifts for political ground among secular royals, Beorn believed in Fernandez to the end.
The pope’s judgment was wise and cool-headed, but if Fernandez had regressed by Beitasser’s power, wasn’t his very being truly divine blessing?
Perhaps he was the last chance. Paradoxically, his existence meant even divine might couldn’t avert the end. No alternative but fleeing to the past.
“Who among us wouldn’t miss that brother?”
At Fernandez’s words, Kaliocini gave a wry smile and ladled stew into a plain wooden bowl for him. Fernandez accepted it, raising his like a toast.
“The brightest light among us heads to the fore—”
“As the beacon of the vanguard.”
“Macto.”
“Macto supelau do.”
They clinked bowls once and ate in silence. Mourning the dead, as always, was brief.
Now, time to face reality. The two priests’ voices echoed softly amid the pilgrim knights’ hush.
Discussions of the Holy Pantheon’s future, the world’s end, secular royal politics. Between two priests who believed apocalyptic visions should remain mere metaphor.