An Uneasy Feeling
For some reason, I couldn't shake a sense of unease.
"Saintess Beatrice, might I have a word with you?"
The meeting had just ended, and as the attendees filed out in a churn of confusion, Council Speaker Magnus had approached me.
"What is this about?"
"It is difficult to discuss here. Perhaps we could speak in my office?"
"Hmm... well, all right."
I had no particular reason to refuse, so I decided to follow him.
After telling the old man and Leonid to head back to Frost Palace ahead of me, I set off after Speaker Magnus.
"Please, come in."
The Speaker's office was, in a sense, the workroom of the Holy Empire's emperor itself, yet its interior was remarkably sparse. Clergy were expected to shun extravagance—and truthfully, most of them had no taste for it to begin with.
Of course, in novels you often see a corrupt priest hoarding gold in chambers like this, and even real Earth history had its share of religious decay—the monstrous abuses of indulgences come to mind. Maybe religion and corruption were simply two dogs that could never be fully untangled.
But the Holy Empire of this world had never shown that face. When I racked my brain over why, the best answer I could come up with was that the seven denominations were constantly checking each other's power, and the demon realm—a formidable enemy—was looming right at the doorstep.
Anyway, enough of that. Time to ask why he'd summoned me.
"So, what did you call me here for?"
"Would you care for a cup of tea?"
Instead of answering, Speaker Magnus set a cup of tea before me. I took a sip, and a bitter bitterness lingered on my tongue.
"...Ugh. That's bitter."
"Haha, it is brewed to suit the palate of old men, so I imagine it is a bit harsh for a Saintess. Still, nothing settles the nerves quite like it."
"Oh."
In that case, I could choke it down. I'd had more than my share of stress lately, so I might as well drink it with gratitude.
"Setting aside the reason I summoned you, Saintess, there is something I would like to ask first."
As I drained my cup in a few long gulps, the Speaker refilled it and spoke.
"Which is?"
"Do you believe that war is approaching?"
"...Hm."
A tricky question. A war with the demons was inevitable. It had been that way in the original story, and in practice, Lust had already tried to destroy me twice.
"Even optimistically assuming Lust is the only demon currently moving against us, I don't believe war can be avoided. At the very least, not for our church."
The demon of Lust and the Church of Eris were bitter, irreconcilable enemies. Lust would strike at our church first—and if we had to name which demon we needed to eliminate first, it would be Lust.
"I see."
"But didn't you yourself say we must prepare for war? Why ask me this?"
He surely hadn't dragged me all the way here just for this conversation. I threw the question back at him, probing his intentions.
"I believe that a third Fall War will break out before long."
"...A Fall War."
The Fall War. The term for the two great battles in which the demons and the Holy Empire had staked their very existence.
The first Fall War had erupted while the gods still walked the earth. That conflict raged for hundreds of years, and in the end, neither side could claim victory—it closed with an armistice. Centuries of war had left the Lorentia Continent devastated, an outcome welcome to neither the demons who sought to claim the land nor the gods who wished to shepherd mankind. Under that armistice, the demons were driven into the barren Demon Realm, and the gods ascended to the Divine Realm. With that, the Age of Gods ended and the age of humanity began.
The second war had come roughly five hundred years ago. The opening of that Fall War, launched through the demons' meticulous schemes and a surprise attack, had pushed the Holy Empire to the brink of annihilation. Only by the grace of a Saintess's Precognitive Dreams, and heroes who appeared like stars burning all the brighter against the darkness, had humanity barely managed to drive the demons back into the Demon Realm.
In short, a Fall War was a colossal conflict in which humanity and the demons gambled their very survival.
A third Fall War meant another war of that scale. I had expected as much to some degree, but the thought of countless people dying made my chest grow heavy.
"Do you truly believe a third Fall War is coming, Speaker?"
"Yes. Unfortunately, I do. The unsettled aura now drifting across the continent is chillingly reminiscent of the air just before the second Fall War broke out five hundred years ago."
"...That suggests you lived through that war yourself, Speaker."
"Yes, I did."
...Well, dragonkin were a long-lived race—it wasn't strange. They lived even longer than elves, who were famous for their longevity.
"The good news, however, is that the Holy Empire now enjoys an unprecedented golden age."
"Hm... does it?"
"Indeed. There are already three Heroes, when even one appearing in a generation is considered rare."
"Three?"
One would presumably be the original story's protagonist, and one—ridiculous as it sounded—was Cassian. But who was the third?
"Ah, I see you were unaware, Saintess. They have been hiding them quite carefully, so it is not yet public knowledge..."
"Hold on. If you're planning to dangle information like this and then put me to work, I'm not listening."
This was clearly important information. And when someone high up offered you a favor like this, it was because they wanted something from me. And whatever that something was, the odds were nine in ten it would be a royal headache.
"Please, do not worry. It is truly a small favor."
"...If you say so."
He was the Speaker, after all—he surely wouldn't say one thing and mean another.
"The Hero belongs to the Church of Hestia."
"...Hestia?"
Hestia, goddess of the hearth and home. A goddess who enjoyed the devotion of all women, and was said to possess the gentlest temperament of any deity. Despite the foundational doctrine of chastity, she permitted relationships between women, and if a priestess ever suffered some terrible misfortune and lost her chastity against her will, the church did not cast her out but embraced her warmly.
She couldn't remain in the mother church afterward—she'd be transferred to a branch—but a place to belong was a place to belong.
At any rate, it was rather surprising that such a gentle-natured denomination had produced a Hero whose sole goal was killing demons. From what I knew, they had never produced a single Hero in all of history.
Just as only a woman could be a Saintess, every Hero had been a man. A male Hero existing in a denomination that accepted only women was an outright contradiction...
No, wait. Could it be?
"Is the Hero a woman, by any chance?"
"Oh, how sharp of you. Indeed she is."
"......"
The thought occurred to me unbidden. I was wearing a woman's shell, but the filling inside was still a man, wasn't it? Was the universe spawning a female Hero just to patch up the broken gender balance(?)
Pfft, no way. If anything, it'd be more believable if it were a man with a woman inside.
Besides, there's always a first for everything, isn't there? It had simply never happened before—nothing said a female Hero couldn't appear. Though then again, a Saintess was a Saint-ess, so a man would never do.
"So what is your purpose in telling me this?"
"As I said—a small favor."
"...Right."
Ugh, this was making me seriously uneasy.
I stared at Magnus as he sipped his tea. ...What was he thinking? I had no talent for reading minds to begin with, and even if I had, there was no way I could pry open the belly of a slick old dragonkin serpent that had been marinating for five hundred years.
A brief silence settled over the room, and I used the opening to take another sip of tea.
...Ugh, this is disgustingly bitter.
They said it was good for stress relief, so why did it feel like it was piling more on? Was that just my imagination? Or maybe it was the Speaker's slippery, evasive demeanor racking up my stress in real time.
"In your view, Saintess, what do you make of Cassian—the Hero candidate of the Church of Eris?"
Speaker Magnus broke the silence with the question. What was he getting at? Was he genuinely curious about Cassian? Or had he noticed something about him that prompted the question?
Ugh, my head hurts. Let's not overthink this.
"He's a disappointment. Honestly, he's so hopeless I can hardly believe they called him a Hero candidate."
I gave my unvarnished opinion of Cassian.
"Hm, it seems you do not care for him much, Saintess?"
"Why would I?"
I'd said it until I was blue in the face, but Cassian was the man who wrecked our church in the original story. Setting that aside, there was also the glib garbage that had come out of his mouth the first time we met—and the sight of him, pathetically weak yet coasting on talent alone without so much as lifting a finger to train.
Sure, he'd changed somewhat lately... but it was still a little early to trust him.
"Then what would you say if he were to die?"
"I'd like to ask what your intention is in asking that."
I fixed Magnus with a hard stare. I couldn't read the emotion in those slitted amber eyes. But something felt off.
"Or is it that you've found that 'unsettled air' you mentioned—in Cassian himself?"
And if not, did you simply feel like picking a fight with our church?
I didn't bother saying the rest aloud.
"Haha, I had no such intention. With two such outstanding Heroes about, I merely wished to learn more about Sir Cassian. Please think of it that way."
"Fine... I will. Though if it's possible, I'd like you to look into his condition as well."
The biggest reason I'd dragged Cassian all the way to Septimoa was precisely that suspicion—was he hiding something? Well... seeing as nothing had surfaced yet, he did seem truly, genuinely fine. Still, you never knew. If a Great Archdevil had pulled some trick, it wouldn't be easy to detect.
"And why is that?"
"When he first came to our church, he sparred with me. At the time... hm, I hit him rather hard, and demonic energy seeped out of him."
"Hm...? Is that so?"
Speaker Magnus, whose expression had been flat throughout, showed a flicker of interest. No—not quite interest. It was closer to a look of faint dissatisfaction.
"When he came to, did he behave differently than before? As though he had become an entirely different person, for instance?"
"...Well, he did change quite a bit."
He'd gone from a sleazy layabout to a dopey, stubbornly earnest mutt, so yes—plenty had changed.
"Then there is no need to delay any longer. Let me tell you the reason I summoned you here, Saintess."
"Yes."
What the hell? He'd spent all this time beating around the bush, and now he was ready to state his business? And there was no need to delay any longer?
Didn't that sound exactly like he'd been stalling—holding me here on purpose this whole time?
"I intend to bestow the rank of Saint upon you, Saintess Beatrice."
"...I'm sorry?"
But the words that left Speaker Magnus's mouth were so staggering they blew away, in an instant, all the suspicion and distrust that had been stacking up inside me.
Saint—the title bestowed upon the strongest warriors of the Empire.
"You look surprised."
"...It feels like rather more than I deserve."
Being a Saint didn't come with any special privileges. It was basically just, You're absurdly strong. The Holy Empire will guarantee that under its name. That was about the whole of it.
Even so, it was not a title handed out lightly.
"You repelled a demon Legion Commander single-handedly, Saintess. Once word spreads, people will find it stranger if we don't grant you the rank of Saint."
"I was merely fortunate."
Frankly, if Selenia hadn't let her guard down, I'd have ended up her puppet, plain and simple.
"Carelessness or not, repelling a Legion Commander is an achievement unlike any other."
"...Won't there be fierce opposition?"
The rank of Saint could only be granted with the unanimous consent of all seven denominations. If I became a Saint, our church alone would have three of them—a sign that the Church of Eris had pulled a step ahead. The other denominations would hardly celebrate that.
Currently, the Churches of Nike, Eris, and Justitia each had two Saints, and the remaining four had one apiece. Add the two Saints belonging to organizations outside the seven great denominations, and that made a mere twelve in all the vast breadth of the Holy Empire.
"You repelled a Legion Commander—no one will object. That would bring our Empire's Saints to thirteen."
Thirteen. What an ominous number. Didn't it feel like exactly the count at which one traitor would pop up among the Saints?
Not that I had much room to talk, considering I'd dragged Hans, Judas, and Griffith into the Holy Empire with me.
"Give it some thought. With all seven denominations conveniently gathered here, you could return to your church already a Saint."
"...I'll think about it."
There were too many snags to just snatch up the title of Saint. I had no particular interest in it to begin with, and even if I had, consulting the old man would come first.
After all, I needed to figure out what the Speaker was really playing at, suddenly hoisting me up to sainthood. When it came to dealing with this stinking brand of politics, the old man was far better at it than I was.
"If your business is finished, may I take my leave?"
"Yes, of course. Go well."
Speaker Magnus nodded along surprisingly readily.
Hm, what was that? Had I imagined the sense that he'd wanted to keep me here a while longer?
I gave a light bow and left the Speaker's office.
"Let's get back to Frost Palace, for now."
I hurried toward Frost Palace without delay. I had to report my conversation with the Speaker to the old man, and above all, that inexplicable unease had settled over me like a fog.
And whenever this feeling came over me, something was bound to go wrong.
So I quickened my pace toward Frost Palace.