An Ancient Longing (8)
Cardinal Gregcio was an ambitious man of the cloth. The holy power he possessed was laughably meager compared to the other cardinals, but in his hands rested superb political skill and powerful backers who served as a rock-solid source of funds. With nothing more than those two advantages, he had effortlessly claimed the lofty position of cardinal. Gregcio therefore believed he was finally taking his first real steps toward his grand objective.
Twenty years earlier, after the Chaos Church’s catastrophic flood, most of his political rivals had either fallen to corruption and been judged or had lost their lives fighting the cult. At this point, the only person left who could check him was the Pope. So he tracked down a survivor of a long-destroyed race whose very existence had been nearly erased from history and elevated her as a Saintess candidate. That is, until Levia appeared in the world eight years ago.
Levia Leviathan. A Saintess candidate who, at the tender age of five, had simultaneously saved dozens of Holy Knights on the brink of death and subdued an opponent of Master rank. According to the testimony of every Holy Knight present, she had wielded a unique holy technique no one else could replicate, and the sheer volume of holy power she contained surpassed anyone else at the scene.
When Gregcio first received the report, the sudden appearance of an unforeseen rival left him badly shaken. To claim she possessed more holy power than any other Saintess candidate or cardinal present… A mere five-year-old girl was, in terms of raw holy power alone, essentially no different from a true Saintess.
Gregcio immediately mobilized every resource at his disposal and dispatched assassins. He could not afford to leave her alone; the tower he had spent years building could be reduced to ashes. His powerful financial backers agreed completely and spared no expense. They disguised the killers as priests so they could pass through the Entat Parish barrier, hired renowned assassins from the underworld, and erased every trace of the operation.
If Gregcio had made one mistake, it was assuming the story of Levia fighting a Master-level opponent in single combat was an exaggeration—a tall tale added to inflate the prestige of the thirteenth Saintess candidate.
The first attempt failed. So did the second, and the third. Ten attempts, a hundred attempts—all of them failed. They even poured out a fortune large enough to shake the finances of his backers and hired the woman known as the Assassination Empress, yet every single effort ended in failure.
Any ordinary person would have given up by then, but Gregcio could not. The karmic debt he had accumulated was far too great to turn back now, and the faction that shared his ambitions had no intention of retreating either. Yet he had run out of options. The skilled assassins had all been crippled, gone missing, or vanished at Levia’s hands. The mediocre ones were detected by the Holy Front Knights before they could even approach the barrier and were killed on the spot.
While he was wrestling with this dilemma, the Saintess candidate Ashurta—the very one Gregcio had promoted—summoned him.
Ashurta, who introduced herself as the last survivor of the great Light Clan, demanded that the other candidates be sacrificed to her.
When Gregcio heard those words, he saw a brilliant ray of hope in Ashurta. This is it! With this, every problem would be solved!
He tested the method on two Saintess candidates. Both girls died in the process, but Gregcio did not care. With this, he could eliminate any rival whatsoever.
The only variables that emerged afterward were that the Hero candidates—who had originally numbered five in the final selection—had been reduced to two by the Chaos Church’s interference, and that the greatest obstacle of all, Levia, had suddenly embarked on a pilgrimage.
Two Hero candidates was actually preferable; it meant more rivals could be removed. Levia’s situation had also been resolved. The news that she had earned great merit by preventing a near-disaster in Minoris made his stomach twist with jealousy, but none of that mattered anymore. Once her holy power was drained and she was dead, she would be nothing more than another name added to a tombstone, exactly as Ashurta had said.
That Levia would launch a direct surprise assault was genuinely unexpected, but it still did not matter. If he could endure just a little longer—just a little longer—victory would be his.
Ashurta had promised him. Once she became the Saintess, seized control of Eliaque, drove out the false gods Lumentis and Umbrio, and ushered in the descent of the true god, she would hand over everything in this world to him.
Ah, what a sweet tale that was. She had vowed to fulfill his long-cherished wish of becoming Pope—a dream he had thought impossible. She had promised not merely to grant it, but something even greater: to make him a human who would stand above every race beneath the true god.
Therefore Gregcio would endure. In the distance he could see a shining path. Surely that path had been prepared for his own brilliant future!
A man who would place the entire world beneath his feet—money, women, power, everything in his grasp!!
Behold! No—listen! It whispers to me from that radiant path! Voices that bring tranquility to body, mind, and even soul.
“Wow… Sleeping and even dreaming at a time like this? You’re impressive in all sorts of ways.”
Last time on! After eight years of bottled-up rage, I stormed Cardinal Gregcio’s quarters! I beat down everyone who tried to stop me, charging forward again and again until I finally stood before him—and the guy was a real piece of shit! Fine! Let’s fuck you up! That was my mood, and since I’d just gotten my hands on an absolutely insane weapon and wanted to test it at least once, I gave it a light swing. Oh dear sweet heavens. The Papal Palace got sliced clean in half!
Having caused a catastrophe of that scale, I immediately kidnapped(?) Cardinal Gregcio and his entire faction and fled with my party!
“…And that is the complete story of this incident, Mother.”
“I see. So with that special method of yours, you uncovered not only Cardinal Gregcio’s objectives but also the identity of his backers?”
“Of course. Obviously.”
Gregcio’s original goal had been to become Pope, but he fell for the coaxing of Ashurta—who claimed to be the last survivor of the Light Clan or the Beach Clan (his pronunciation was so slurred I couldn’t catch it properly)—and changed his ambition to becoming the ruler of the world or some such nonsense. Wow… Even I, with my fairly severe chuunibyou phase, never entertained delusions that ridiculous. …Although now that I think about it, the method was different but I might have done something similar once?
The backer faction turned out to be, astonishingly, the Moneylord Merchant. And the one who had been stealing the holy power from the Saintess candidates was Ashurta herself. She wasn’t being used by Gregcio; she was an enthusiastic collaborator.
“The evidence is stored in the basement of Gregcio’s residence, and Ashurta has fled?”
“Yep.”
“Doesn’t the cost-benefit analysis feel a little off? Even if the building was expanded and renovated dozens of times, did you really need to slice the eight-thousand-year-old Papal Palace in half?”
“I believe people should live for the future rather than cling to the past, Your Holiness the Pope. Let’s just build a new one while we’re at it?”
“Hand down. Listen properly.”
“It’s already been an hour. Can’t I put it down now?”
“Three more hours. Reflect on your actions.”
“Hing.”
Since things had already reached this point, I declared my intention to pursue reform and voiced my grievances at the same time, but it didn’t work at all. The process of kidnapping(?) Gregcio and his inner circle, extracting every last piece of information—which would have taken roughly 5,700 characters to describe in detail—and delivering a proper re-education had gone smoothly. During the process Gregcio had been drooling and cackling like a madman, so I thought he was a tough bastard, but it turned out he was on the verge of a mental breakdown. I quickly stabilized him with holy power.
What El-Asat whispered to me at that moment was genuinely spine-chilling.
It wasn’t her usual manic tone but a dead-serious one, so I wondered if she had lost her mind twice over. In the end, the unconsciously leaked Magi had corrupted Gregcio’s mind and made extracting information easy, but the aftertaste was distinctly unpleasant.
Immediately afterward, Benedict—who had grasped the entire situation—secretly arrested(?) us and dragged us before Mother. We were humiliatingly forced to stand there at our age with our hands raised in the air. Since everyone present was a superhuman, we were wearing the training artifact I normally used for corporal punishment.
I secretly snickered, thinking, Is this all the punishment I get? But the opponent was Mother. The current Pope and the previous Saintess.
She pulled a necklace from her subspace pouch and slipped it around my neck. The instant I put it on, I lost the ability to circulate holy power. At the same time the suppressed Magi tried to surge outward, so I desperately fought to contain it and broke into a cold sweat.
“Hing my ass. Because of you I’m standing here at my age with my hands up—does that even make sense?!”
Mint’s complaints began pouring out.
“Mi…”
“Sorry? Huh? You’d better be sorry! What are you going to do about our family?!”
“You crazy bitch! You followed me because you wanted to!”
Did she think I didn’t know she had completely fallen for my killer persuasion pose(?)? Since she agreed, she’s an accomplice too! …I almost said that out loud, but the truth was I felt incredibly guilty.
Still, the reason I was acting so shameless was because I saw this as my chance. After causing an accident of this magnitude, surely I would be stripped of my Saintess candidate position? I had already taken measures to ensure the Chocola family—Mint’s family—would suffer absolutely no repercussions, so there was no need to worry.
“Your Holiness the Pope.”
“Speak, Assassination Empress.”
“Ah. I don’t really like that title. Please just call me Skadi.”
“Very well. Skadi, what would you like to say?”
“I believe I must reflect even more deeply.”
“I see. However, the artifact designed under divine authority has already reached its limit with the current punishment.”
“There is a way.”
“Oh?”
“If you would simply place Master on my thigh—”
“…This is corporal punishment. Do not use my daughter to satisfy your personal desires.”
“Huing.”
What the hell is this insane perverted dark elf even saying?
“Tsk.”
Don’t click your tongue like it’s a shame, Cheska. Sometimes I can’t tell whether she actually likes Benedict or if she’s trying to become my mom out of personal motives. Probably not the latter. During the meeting she was practically swooning over Benedict’s hidden charm(?).
“Daughter… Your friends certainly have strong personalities. I won’t interfere at this stage, but still… try to be a little more selective about who you spend time with.”
Mother, I sometimes regret it too. But I also feel wronged, you know? When I first met them they all acted relatively normal. There was a time I genuinely wondered if they ended up like this because of me. Fortunately(?) that wasn’t the case. Sadly, those personalities were simply their honest, unfiltered true selves. Sob sob.
“And don’t worry about your daughter-in-law or son-in-law.”
“Nyek?? Hueh? M-me?”
At the sudden title, Mint’s face flushed scarlet and she glitched out, unable to form proper sentences.
“I will not hold the Chocola family accountable, so rest easy.”
“Uh… Thank you.”
“And daughter. An incident of this scale is not enough to strip you of your position as Saintess candidate. Unfortunately, you’ll have to give up on that hope.”
“Why!!!!”
I was more shocked that it wasn’t enough than by the fact that she had read my mind perfectly.
“There are truly two fastest ways to resign from the role of Saintess candidate. Would you like to hear them?”
“What are they?”
Ooh, there really was a method! As expected of Mother! She always told me to become the Saintess, but deep down she didn’t want to force me if I hated the idea!
“You must massacre thousands, tens of thousands, even millions of people for no reason whatsoever.”
“…”
“My predecessor, that Pope bitch, did exactly that. She committed the deed herself and then pinned the blame on the other candidates to eliminate her rivals.”
There was even a real historical precedent. How utterly insane.
“The other method is to fall into corruption and become a traitor to the world. The most recent examples are the former Saintess candidates who defected to the Chaos Church.”
“…”
What the hell, Mother. That’s basically just saying there is no method, so give up already. That’s too cruel.