Chapter 32
Hyungkesuni has not set foot in her own space from yesterday all the way through tonight.
Joanna's gaze burns. I do think I provoked her too far at the end. Still, she knows something happened. She has to. The moment the black veil Hyungkesuni had raised vanished, Joanna startled awake, because she heard both our voices.
Even so, it is also true that Hyungkesuni is wary of me past all reason.
Hieronymus hardly spares me a thought anymore. I can see that he has come to treat the whole business as work: me trailing after him, taking the warmth of the Sacrifices, and laying blessings down. Hyungkesuni must have warned him about me, and there is a good chance he simply isn't listening. Or perhaps he doesn't care what becomes of the Church of Future Hope, so long as it holds together until the Kingdom of Ancelus is brought down.
Nearly half a year. The seasons have turned twice. In the space between, I have learned a great deal.
About Hieronymus, who summoned me, for one. His true name is Yasle. He once stood considerably high in the Theocracy of Yeongnang.
Yeongnang is the name of a nation that fell some fifteen years ago—a theocratic society that occupied the Arim Jungle, north of where I am now. A holy war destroyed it. A great many countries to the east believe in a faith called the Church of the Holy God, and Yeongnang did not worship that god. Among those nations, the particularly devout Kingdom of Ancelus raised soldiers and started the war. Like a crusade, they passed through the Kingdom of Cogni and wiped Yeongnang from the world.
Yasle is a survivor of that. A survivor packed to the brim with a single resolve: revenge upon the Kingdom of Ancelus.
Afterward he took up a primitive religion for the poor and the failed as his pillar, invented a god's name, and wrote its precepts. He built it at a startling speed. Among those who became Sacrifices of their own will, quite a few had already been there before the name Church of Future Hope ever existed. For them, becoming a Sacrifice to me was salvation.
No—of course it wasn't truly salvation. Strictly speaking, a religion murdered them. But at least they believed it until the moment they died. Their lives had always been unhappy, so throwing that life away for a god at the very end actually came out as a plus.
And so I looked, from every angle, at how Yasle had made the Church of Future Hope.
Among them, a man named Andrew joined relatively late. He had already formed an enormous cult of his own. Whatever passed between them, Andrew bowed his head and came over to Yasle. I don't know exactly what he was thinking then. But I said it before, didn't I? That among the people receiving my blessing now, there are Andrew's own subordinates.
Yes.
Andrew means to shove Yasle aside and swallow the Church of Future Hope himself. He explained as much in secret to the supporters who follow him. That is how I know.
Whether Yasle knows it or not, I can't say. What I do know is that he isn't answering it. All I can see is that he is driving the blessed even harder into the Kingdom of Ancelus.
Wait. Isn't he pouring far too many into a single place?
There was one place more. Somewhere else that needed the blessed, wasn't there?
The Rasbe–Cogni front has all but stopped fighting. They have pitched their camps well back from the border and are tearing through the villages around them, rooting the Church of Future Hope out. Blessed people who had been waiting in nearby villages were caught and killed. More than once. By that logic they ought to be pushing still more people up to the front, and yet, since winter came, no one has gone north.
If anything, the Church of Future Hope is turning into a common enemy. So Witga is coming down with a subordinate he treasures. That subordinate, for the record, is someone I blessed. None other than Isla. Her true age is on the young side, but her body has become fully grown, hasn't it? She follows Witga about and is learning well.
Wade, meanwhile, is leading a great number of the blessed inside the Kingdom of Ancelus. For his part, he wants to gather them and build an entirely separate society.
Receive the blessing, and a person's physical abilities are strengthened across the board. Get lucky, and a special ability appears as well. In plain terms, Human 2.0. It is hardly strange for a human upgraded to a new version to climb toward higher places, and the Church of Future Hope is moving to make exactly that happen. So the more the blessed cease to be soldiers who know only how to use force and become commanders fit for all kinds of work, the wider the reach of what I can see becomes.
Which means I can see it. The Church of Future Hope is beginning to creak.
Each person's desires are spilling out with no order to them, and Yasle has no mind to clamp down hard. There is a strong chance he thinks that if he can destroy the Kingdom of Ancelus, the rest may go however it likes. The disposable tool is coming to the end of its life.
Of course, destroying the Kingdom of Ancelus looks considerably difficult. Because the Kingdom of Ancelus has Tisha.
At first the kingdom left him alone, watching him the way one watches a dangerous convert. Then Tisha's good nature began to shine. Not a man who only does the work set before him, but a man who can move for the sake of the unfortunate. In an age when wars this hideous break out, a good person shines all the clearer. And above all, he converted to the Church of the Holy God. From a dangerous convert, to a man of the Kingdom of Ancelus, and little by little he grew into a hero.
In less than half a year. But as Yasle's offensive grew fiercer, Tisha fought battle after battle. He lost many people. He also protected many. Textbook, isn't it. The result of what Yasle set in motion is standing right over there. Is this what they mean when they say you reap what you sow?
And he has gone past merely holding that offensive off. Here—he is drawing up a plan to take the underground temple in the Skade Rock Desert. The primary target, surprisingly enough, is not the leader, Yasle.
It is me.
Because the blessed are simply too cost-effective. Offer a single Sacrifice, and a superhuman is drawn at random, someone who can face anywhere from ten people to a thousand alone. Anyone would try to smash a production line like that. All the more if the being behind it is unknown.
Whether I can even die, I don't know. Considering the device Yasle prepared in order to deal with me, it is hard to believe that technique belongs to Yasle alone. There ought to be a device capable of killing me as well.
Of course I have considered going over to that side. But from the moment I accepted Sacrifices, there is a high chance I am already out. Once religion gets involved, people grow even more conservative. If they don't, they change too much, and that is dangerous—the way a glut of mutations carries a species quickly away from what it was. Too conservative, and you cannot answer change; meet the wrong age, and you simply go extinct. Keeping a religion this vast probably means it is conservative to some degree. On top of that, this is a world where a god actually exists, so the god's words can be heard.
Yes.
Among the priests of the Church of the Holy God I have taken as Sacrifices, several remember hearing the words of their god. It was not something they heard drunk on drugs, or after falling into a trance through some special practice. They used an unknown power called divine power.
At first I thought they were using mana. But once I had licked my way through enough mages and priests, the difference showed. Say, for instance, that they do something with their hands. With a mage, something flows out of the heart and travels to the hand. With a priest, something suddenly born in the head slips out through the hand. At the very least, the mechanism is different.
A god exists. And that god is likely to look on me with displeasure. A monster that dyes light black and steals warmth. That is what I am. They call me an Outer God as well, but set beside the figures that appear in stories of Outer Gods, I am nothing more than a simple monster. So clinging to the Church of the Holy God and surviving looks difficult, no matter how I turn it over.
Even so, I am very much looking forward to Tisha bringing the Kingdom of Ancelus down on this place. A great many will die. Which is to say, I can obtain a very great deal of warmth.
Hehe.
Judging by the timing, a great many people will gather at nearly the same moment in the Skade Rock Desert—in this underground temple. Of course it isn't impossible that luck lets them destroy Ancelus and invade the other kingdoms. Looking at how things stand, that will be difficult. Above all, there are far too few people.
The Church of Future Hope certainly has many believers. Fanatics among them, though, are very rare. They believe only because the environment they live in leaves them little else, and most of those who have swelled the ranks of late hate the church on the inside even while they claim to believe on the outside. Because it strips so much out of their villages. It promised to free them from a lord's harsh rule, then gouged them harder than the lord ever did. Some villages had actually been blessed with decent lords. The warriors of the Church of Future Hope killed every one of them and called it liberation.
Yes. Resentment is piling up. Ignorant violence cannot solve everything. In most cases it makes things worse. By default, the people who receive the blessing are loyal to the Church of Future Hope, so I cannot see it myself—but if the Kingdom of Ancelus comes, I imagine a great many will surrender. And there will be quite a few who level spear and sword the other way instead.
Well. It is time to sleep, so I will tidy this up briefly.
First, the Church of Future Hope. The villages around the underground temple are at their peak. People live there watching the blessed work their powers with their own eyes. Step past that ring, and things grow steadily worse.
The Kingdom of Rasbe and the Kingdom of Cogni. They have turned, first, toward a truce with each other and toward catching and killing the church's agents. No official letters have changed hands through Witga's scheming—or else they traveled by a route he never grasped. In any case, the north is being shut, step by step. So Witga is coming to the Skade Rock Desert to ask for reinforcements.
The Kingdom of Ancelus. On the present main battlefield the Church of Future Hope is winning battle after battle. The blessed under Wade are extraordinarily strong—superhumans running wild across a medieval field. Everywhere else, though, the church is having its hands and feet cut off. A tactical victory, and a strategic defeat. Above all, they are preparing a single hammer blow with Tisha at its heart. Taking this very point in the Skade Rock Desert.
The noose is drawing tight from every side.
What choice will Yasle make? What will Hyungkesuni do? In a situation like this, what move will Andrew play?
I wonder.
Time will settle all of it. So all I have to do is wait.
"Joanna. Sleep well."
"Yes, Lady Rebecca. Sweet dreams."
I lay quietly down in the bed.
Of course, instead of dreaming, I will be watching all sorts of people in real time!