Chapter 3: One Who Understands the Three Worlds (3)
Chapter 3: One Who Understands the Three Worlds (3)
Homi packed Eugene a jar of honey, dried fruit, and jerky. She waved until he disappeared from sight.
At that devoted display, Goffrey clicked his tongue.
"You really are one lucky bastard."
"I think so as well."
"Most knights only care about the horses they ride, but my thinking is different. A good squire is as precious an asset to a knight as any steed."
When they entered the village, they found it unusually noisy and crowded.
"What is going on?"
Eugene stopped a passing farmer and asked.
"Oh, m'lords! They say a vampire has been caught at the monastery!"
They were a race that looked human but had pale skin and drank blood.
Their physical abilities surpassed a human's, but not overwhelmingly. They could not turn into bats or instantly recover from fatal wounds, and sunlight did them no harm.
The differences amounted to a low body temperature, keen smell and night vision, and a strong aptitude for certain forms of sorcery.
They had established a nation called Barsia in the northwest of the continent and wielded influence from there.
"In the first place, they don't drink blood to a lethal dose," Goffrey said.
"Is that so?"
"Of course. They get too full to drink that much."
It was a somewhat anticlimactic reason.
"Moreover, blood affects vampires much as wine affects humans. If they drink enough, they become intoxicated and pass out before reaching a lethal amount. Overindulgence is mocked among them as uncultured."
It was the sort of minute detail Eugene hadn't known, and he listened with interest.
"They say they're parading them around the village in a cart. There it comes now."
Where the farmer pointed, a prisoner transport wagon resembling a cage-cart was approaching.
It was a wooden prison of open bars, so the interior was clearly visible. It was a structure that allowed onlookers to hurl stones or filth and heap insults.
A priest at the front of the wagon harangued the crowd.
"By the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we have seized this unclean abomination! Soon the punishment of purification shall be meted out! Then shall God's grace descend upon this village!"
The ignorant mountain villagers nodded their heads without understanding a thing.
The Orthodox Church had thoroughly indoctrinated these rural farmers. To them, the prisoners would look like nothing more than terrifying monsters that drank human blood.
The wagon reached Eugene. Inside were three women who bore unmistakable signs of hardship.
"The priests never cease to amaze," Goffrey said with a frown.
"They are already helpless captives. To humiliate women and girls like this..."
"How knightly of you."
"Don't mock me. I haven't quit being a priest yet."
Eugene observed the cart.
One was a girl in her late teens. Even in enemy hands, she maintained a dignified bearing and grace.
The other two were a woman in her late twenties and a young lady who appeared to be about ten years old. They had their eyes tightly shut and were clinging to each other.
"Judging by their ears, they're not pureblood vampires either."
"Ha! To make such a fuss over catching a dhampir."
The purebloods have ears whose upper parts are slightly more elongated, like a bat's, but theirs were the same as a human's.
"Still, they look like a highborn lady and her maids."
Dust and grime could not hide their refined features or the status evident in their fabric and embroidery.
The girl in her late teens was presumed to be the mistress, and the other two her maids.
"This is worrying."
"What do you mean?"
"Their kind has a fierce pride in their bloodline. Trouble may arise in the village."
"Every noble is proud of their lineage, I would think."
"The Barsians stand at the very height of that elitism. They do not call themselves the nobility of the night for nothing."
Goffrey had traveled endlessly in pursuit of every sound in the world. He knew the cultures and customs of many peoples.
"They trade in a viciously lethal kind of intrigue that makes the petty squabbles of human nobles look adorable. With a family member captured, there's no way they will sit idle."
"It seems they've already been paraded around and humiliated at length."
The cart was entering the monastery. They evidently meant to confine the prisoners in its underground dungeon.
"There's no reason for Barsian nobles to be in this area, so how did they manage to capture them?" Goffrey said, puzzled.
Between their domain in the northwest of the continent and this village stood the Kingdom of Gord, a nation of mighty warriors.
"If a Barsian noble who shouldn't be here has been captured, then a pursuit party that shouldn't exist might appear, too. Does the Orthodox Church not consider such things?"
"Are they not ones who live with their eyes and ears both shut? Even if they know, they are probably arrogant enough to think, 'who would dare attack a holy monastery?'"
A fanatical belief that God would protect them. That was something even most secular orders could not contend with.
"Well, it is no concern of mine whether the monastery gets a good thrashing."
"It seems you have lost all affection for this place too."
"Are you not the same, Master?"
Goffrey had nothing to say and let out a bitter smile.
After returning to the monastery, Goffrey went to his duties while Eugene submitted the monster boar's tusk.
"This is the proof?"
"Yes, Senior Priest."
He was the one with the highest station next to the abbot of the Orthodox Church monastery, and the one who had entrusted the commission to Eugene.
He turned the tusk this way and that with a dissatisfied frown.
'What's his complaint now?'
They said some people inspired dislike for no reason, but the priests hated Eugene despite everything he had done for them.
He was Goffrey's direct disciple, looked every inch a trustworthy knight, and had earned the villagers' respect by driving off wild beasts and bandits.
By any rational measure, he was a man they should have valued rather than mistreated.
But people are creatures of emotion, and this was the Middle Ages—moreover, a monastery ruled by fanatical faith.
When it came to the Orthodox Church, the most thick-headed bigots of them all, rational judgment was meaningless.
"I have slain the boar that threatened the village. As promised, I wish to have my mother's keepsake returned. Grant me entry to the Sealed Shrine."
The monastery had several storehouses, but two were the most important.
One was the Treasure Hall, where they kept relics and scriptures they considered sacred.
The other was the Sealed Shrine, where they isolated things deemed wicked from the world.
The senior priest fiddled with the boar tusks, then shook his head.
"I cannot permit it."
"Do you mean to break your promise?"
"How am I to trust a paltry tusk like this? You could have bought it somewhere, or happened to pick it up off the ground."
"Do not be ridiculous. As Priest Goffrey's disciple, I would never stoop to such a base act."
His low voice carried quiet anger.
The senior priest stepped back without realizing it, imagining a wild beast's hot breath against his face.
"You wretch."
His pride wounded, the priest's lips twisted.
When Eugene first entered the monastery, many of the brothers had persecuted him, openly and in secret. Not to the point of outright cruelty, but by saddling him with menial chores that didn't truly need doing.
Yet as Eugene grew older, those incidents rapidly dwindled until the priests simply pretended he did not exist.
The senior priest, who had rarely had to deal with Eugene directly, assumed they were simply cutting him slack because he would soon be leaving.
But now he saw that was not it. They had all simply been too afraid to touch him.
"I swear to God, I have brought the trophy of the hunt as promised. You as well, Priest, keep your word."
His tone remained courteous, but the force of his glare made the senior priest grit his teeth.
"You are not a priest! Do not invoke God's name lightly! This is not proof enough, so bring something more certain."
He flung the tusk back to Eugene, then hurried away without looking back.
"That is what happened."
Eugene spoke calmly before Goffrey.
"Hah. I felt guilty about leaving people I'd lived alongside for so long, but they've swept even that feeling away. Perhaps I should thank them."
"I more or less expected it, but still."
Even within the monastery, the senior priest had been especially hostile toward Eugene.
"He can't possibly still be holding a grudge over the Wine Ceremony?"
When Goffrey had first taken Eugene in, it hadn't been this bad.
The trouble had begun a few months later, with the Wine Ceremony they performed.
After washing oneself clean, one holds a cup of wine, prays to God, and drinks. It was a sacred ritual meant to wash away the dust of the secular world.
Performing it didn't make one a priest, but it was an absolute requirement for anyone residing at the monastery.
But when Eugene prayed, the sacred fire before the holy icon went out.
It was a holy flame that, in its religious significance, had to burn all year round. A novice priest who had accidentally extinguished it had even been subjected to flogging.
-It is the witch's bloodline after all.
-Oh, how could such a thing happen.
The priests had whispered amongst themselves, and Goffrey had ardently defended him, saying it was a chance occurrence. Only a few priests had sided with Goffrey's opinion.
From that moment on, the senior priest had looked at Eugene with eyes of deep distrust.
"Do you not feel anger?"
"I do," Eugene said with a gentle smile.
"You're not mocking me, are you?"
"Of course not. I am merely trying to remain composed."
"This goes beyond composure."
Eugene had been raised under Goffrey's guidance not as a priest, but as a knight.
Knights had a complicated relationship with endurance. They lived with pain like a lover, but treated insult like filth to be cast away.
When a sacred promise was desecrated, any knight would rampage like a wild beast. To smile in such a situation—that was something else entirely.
However, Eugene truly hadn't been angry.
The display he had put on before the senior priest had been nothing more than an attempt to apply pressure and make him keep his word.
"At least they stored it away without burning it, didn't they?"
"That's because they're as devoted to studying heresy as they are to their faith."
The study of heresy examined the origins and weaknesses of unholy beings so they could be fought more effectively.
Because prying into evil carried the risk of being tainted by it, it was a mission permitted only to veteran priests.
"So, what do you plan to do now?"
"I'll have to activate Plan B."
"Plan B?"
This peculiar disciple often used strange expressions.
"I have another plan."
"Tell me of it. I'll help as far as my strength allows."
"I appreciate the thought, but I need to carry out this operation alone."
Eugene explained the plan to Goffrey.
"Ha! So in the end, you mean to steal it, don't you?"
"It is different. First, it is an object that was originally mine. And second, I won't be picking a lock in secret."
In the monastery's underground dungeon, there was a secret passage leading to the Sealed Shrine. The plan was to sneak in through there and quietly take it.
"Why is there such a passage in there?"
"Who knows. I suppose some priest in the past took an interest in forbidden knowledge. It takes decades to even be granted permission to study heresiology, after all."
Goffrey nodded at the plausible theory.
"If you knew something like that, why did you wait until now? If you meant to steal it, you should have stolen it long ago."
"Whether sooner or later, it would have been found out. I would have been troubled, and it would have brought disgrace upon you, Master. I wished to have it returned justly, if possible. If I had to steal it, I intended to carry out the deed right before my departure."
"Hurry, in any case. You have only three days left."
Eugene knew well, even without being told. He was the one who had been calculating the dates more carefully than anyone.
When Eugene first entered the monastery as a child, the priests most often harassed him by assigning him to clean the underground dungeon.
It wasn't simply a prison but also served as a storeroom, where they piled up objects too troublesome to discard yet no longer in use.
A revolting place where foul odors wafted from all directions, and unidentified mushrooms, molds, fist-sized sewer rats, and insects thrived.
If one cleans a single location for a long time, one inevitably comes to know even its trivial secrets.
Usually, it was trifling information—where the rat holes were, where the draft was worst, and the like.
Yet sometimes, amidst it all, one could make a precious discovery, like a silver coin. The secret passage was exactly such a case.
"It has been a long while since I cleaned that place," Eugene said as he returned, carrying the cleaning tools.
"Did the priests grant you permission?"
"Of course. Is it not a task that someone must do, but everyone loathes? I expect they are grateful I volunteered."
"They must think you're making a desperate effort to get your mother's keepsake back."
"Yes. Even as they gave permission, their expressions said, 'As if that would make us return it? How dull-witted.'"
"Tsk! And who are the real fools here?"
Goffrey let out a sigh.
"So in the end, you will have to leave the cabin—and this village."
"Since they'll eventually realize something's been stolen from the Sealed Shrine."
"Though I wished for you to go out into the world and succeed, I did not want you to leave in this manner."
Eugene shrugged his shoulders.
"More than that, I am worried about something else. Unexpected guests have been thrown into the underground dungeon."
"You mean those dhampir women."
They would be lamenting their fate in the stench, while their presence made Eugene's plan far more troublesome.
"Dhampirs are more cunning things than vampires. Their pride is just as vast, yet their blood is thin, so they are driven by spite. If they happen to learn of the secret passage's existence, they might try to threaten you. That would become tiresome."
"I do have something in mind."
The disciple slung the cleaning tools over his shoulder and grinned easily.
"You are a fellow I can never quite figure out. Even though I have taught you by my side all this while, it seems you still have many secrets."
"Good heavens! I do not think that you taught me, Master. I think that you raised me."
"...Quiet, and be on your way."
Embarrassed, Goffrey shoved Eugene on his way.
After parting from his master, Eugene entered the underground dungeon. The stench he had not smelled in years stabbed into his nose.
"Who goes there?"
A beautiful voice, sharp with hostility, rang out.
From the darkness beyond the iron bars, red eyes gleamed. It was the girl in her late teens he had seen in the cart.
She glared at Eugene with unmistakable hostility. Exhaustion had left her haggard, but her eyes still burned fiercely.
'She is a dhampir, all right.'
Two sharp fangs were visible between her parted lips. Whether pureblood or mixed, there was no difference in those characteristic fangs.
"I am no priest. I dislike the Orthodox Church as well."
Eugene began with the introduction he had prepared. He had learned that an interview should lead with the main point.