Chapter 3
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 3
Chapter Title: Priest Roberta
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By the time she entered Dithmarschen, it was summer. Being adjacent to the polar region known as the Ice Peninsula, the feeling of summer was faint. Even when the sky was clear and the sun beat down, the north wind was so fierce that it chased away the heat.
The heart of the domain was the small city of Freiche, said to have its origins in a hill fortress built long ago to block the descent of an evil god's creatures, back when the region's old name was forgotten and it was considered part of the Ice Peninsula.
As the temperature rose and the snow melted, humans naturally migrated to the area, and it became a central hub when Hilde, the lord before Ulrich, developed the surroundings with the fortress as her base.
From a distance, Priest Roberta took in the panoramic view of the city atop the hill.
‘They said the people here live like nomads. It seems that was true.’
Below the hill, an encampment of tent houses was spread out.
They were the round tents common in nomadic cultures. Called gers or yurts, they were homes designed for easy assembly and disassembly by nomads who moved with the seasons.
The territory of Dithmarschen was vast, but the environment was difficult for farming, save for its southernmost tip. For that reason, the people had no choice but to make their living through animal husbandry and hunting. The lord ruled from Freiche Castle, while the people lived as nomads.
‘There are no walls, either.’
And so, there was only a small castle perched on the hill. There were no outer walls whatsoever to protect the surrounding settlement. After all, when the weather changed, the entire settlement would up and leave.
‘The temple must be inside the castle, right?’
Suddenly, a question bordering on anxiety arose in her mind.
If one of those scattered tents was the temple, wouldn't that mean she would have to live a nomadic life for her entire term? A mobile temple. It was something a military chaplain would surely experience, but she had hoped her first post, however small, would at least be made of stone.
She gave a hollow laugh at her own selfish thoughts and spurred her horse on.
“Where have you come from?”
A guard stopped her as she arrived at the castle gate.
“As a servant of Ganymea, I have come seeking an audience with the lord.”
Roberta removed her glove and held out her palm.
A blue crest materialized on her bare palm. It was the symbol of Ganymea, one of the gods of the Pantheon, and proof that Roberta had been ordained into the priesthood.
“Please wait a moment.”
The guard went inside the castle and soon returned with a middle-aged man. This man had brown skin and red eyes—the distinct features of a southerner.
‘He’s incredibly tall.’
He was also bald and remarkably tall.
‘He must have some giant’s blood in him.’
Roberta herself was quite tall—so much so that men at the temple avoided standing next to her during ceremonies—but this man was a good two heads taller than she was.
“You said you are a priest of Ganymea?”
To top it off, his voice was a gravelly baritone. How could she not be frightened, with this giant looking down at her with red eyes and speaking in such a low tone? She calmed her racing heart and forced an awkward smile.
“Yes. I am Roberta. Bishop Alonso of the Nua Grand Temple sent me.”
“Bishop Alonso?”
The middle-aged man’s voice rose.
“If I may be so bold, what is your relationship to Bishop Alonso…?”
“Bishop Alonso is the one who took me in.”
“Ah, I see! He is as kind-hearted as ever.”
Joy tinged his voice.
“Is Bishop Alonso in good health?”
“He is. He asked me to convey that he wished he could have come himself.”
“That would have been wonderful. It is a shame.”
He kissed the back of her hand.
“Forgive my late introduction. I am Bernhard Meyer. Please, call me Bern. I have the honor of serving Lord Ulrich by his grace.”
Bern introduced himself as the steward of House Dithmarschen.
“Bishop Alonso visited here long ago. I remember he was just over thirty at the time… Now, it seems, the time has come for one who follows in his footsteps.”
He said, as if lost in memory.
“Time truly does fly. My memories of Bishop Alonso are still so vivid. He never shied away from difficult tasks and would sometimes give treats to the children struggling with their chores. He was a truly kind-hearted man.”
For someone with such an intimidating appearance, his manner of speaking was surprisingly gentle. Roberta thought he might be kinder than he looked, but the posture he took reminded her of Alonso when he was lost in thought, so she quickly spoke up.
“I would like to see the lord.”
“He has stepped out for a while. It will be some time before he returns. If it’s all right with you, I can guide you to the temple first.”
Roberta was about to agree when a question arose.
Considering the lord’s age, shouldn’t he be frail and confined to his bed?
“May I ask on what business?”
“He went to perform a sacrament.”
“A sacrament?”
Sacrament referred to the whole range of religious rites. Rain-making ceremonies, funerals, and priestly ordinations were prime examples, and their number varied from as few as six to as many as twenty-three, depending on the denomination within the Pantheon.
These were rites that only a priest could preside over.
“There must have been another priest, then?”
For a moment, she wondered if the missing priest had returned. But that was impossible. He hadn’t been seen for nearly a year; what other reason could there be besides death?
Had they invited a priest from a neighboring domain? That was a common solution when a sacrament could not be postponed and no presiding priest was available.
But Bern shook his head.
“No. The lord is performing it himself.”
“What do you mean…?”
Her eyes went wide.
“Has the lord been ordained or something?”
An expression that said, *oops*, flashed across Bern’s face. He then shut his mouth and subtly averted his gaze. Roberta’s eyes grew even wider. *What in the world is he talking about?* she screamed inwardly.
“He’s really performing a sacrament? The lord, himself?”
“Yes.”
Roberta felt her mouth go dry. As if she had to check on someone who had fallen from a cliff, she forced her unwilling lips to part and ask.
“Wh-what sacrament?”
“The Infant Sacrament.”
She stifled a scream and clutched her head with both hands.
‘Of all the things it could be!’
The Infant Sacrament was considered the most important of all the rites.
In the beginning, it is said the world was covered in fire. When the land had not yet taken shape, the gods came, drew water to extinguish the flames, raised the earth, and made life bloom.
But life was fragile and did not grow easily, so the gods scattered a power across the world to help living things adapt to the harsh environment. That power was mana.
The Infant Sacrament was the act of connecting a life to the heavens, allowing mana to dwell within a person. Some described it as entering a name into the celestial registry.
Unless a newborn was too frail or was abandoned in the mountains, it was a rite that everyone had to receive. Only by undergoing this rite was one truly acknowledged as a person. Conversely, this meant that anyone who had not received the Infant Sacrament was not treated as human.
This was the Infant Sacrament, and for that reason, it was the most important rite of all.
‘What in the world was he thinking, performing the Infant Sacrament when he isn’t even a priest!’
What would happen if one who was not ordained were to perform the Infant Sacrament? Usually, no problems would arise from performing the rite, but on rare—truly rare—occasions, the child would end up communing with an evil god.
Evil gods were beings who had been cast into hell after clashing with the primary gods of the Pantheon over the direction of creation. There was no need to explain what it meant to become their servant.
“If an unordained human presides over a sacrament, they can be branded a heretic! You can’t be ignorant of that, can you? Ah, no, let’s stop this talk.”
She mounted her horse again.
“Where is the lord? I must see him at once.”
Roberta glared at Bern. He scratched his head awkwardly. He seemed to understand what the problem was, but unlike the heretics she had seen before, he neither panicked nor made excuses. Not only him, but even the guard standing beside him showed little reaction.
‘What in the world…’
His reaction, in turn, left her dumbfounded.
“It is not far. Here, we gather the babies born over the past year and perform the sacrament for them all at once in the summer. You should be able to reach them in about half a day’s ride from here.”
Bern gestured to the guard with his chin. As the guard mounted his horse, Roberta quickly spurred her own to follow.
#
She rode back the way she had come.
As if her luck had soured, the rite was taking place a short distance east of the path Roberta had taken. She saw a group of people, and nearby, a flock of grazing sheep.
‘Those aren’t sheep. Are they of mixed monster blood?’
From a distance, with their fluffy white fur, they could easily be mistaken for sheep, but up close, they looked more like cattle covered in wool. Having never seen nor heard of such an animal, she concluded that they must have monster blood.
Dithmarschen and the uninhabited lands beyond it, the Ice Peninsula, were lands where the descendants of monsters from a prehistoric age still breathed. It was likely common for grazing livestock to mate with monsters.
However, the wild nature of monsters was usually passed down, making domestication impossible. She had never heard of them being tamed to the point they could be put out to pasture like this.
‘The lord must have done this, too.’
She frowned. The disappearance of the head priest, the heretical sacrament, and now these monsters… it was becoming difficult for her to think well of the lord. If it weren’t for the recommendation from Alonso, a man she looked up to as a father, she might have already ridden straight to the Pantheon to file a formal accusation.
She spurred her horse onward.
A short distance from the herd of livestock, a group of people had gathered. Even from afar, she could tell that some sort of rite was underway.
‘If it’s still in progress, I have to stop it.’
In the center of the crowd, a woman was handing a swaddled baby to a young man. The baby struggled, not wanting to be separated from the woman who seemed to be its mother, and burst into tears the moment he took it in his arms.
“—! ——!”
The wails were so loud they reached Roberta’s ears. The young man held the infant, patting and soothing it. The baby’s heaven-splitting cries began to subside as she drew closer to the group.
“Where is the lord?”
Roberta tore her gaze from the baby and scanned the crowd. She had to find the lord. The three-hundred-year-old man, the rogue who performed sacraments as he pleased.
But there was no old man in the crowd who looked as if he could be the lord.
She slowly rode her horse around the perimeter of the crowd, her eyes searching, but an unidentifiable anxiety only continued to build within her. There was no old man of whom she could say with certainty, ‘That’s him.’
“He is right there.”
There?
When she turned her head again, the same young man was lifting the baby, pressing his forehead against the infant’s. On the surface, it simply looked like he was playing with an adorable baby.
Roberta was about to ask the soldier who had guided her just where ‘there’ was, but at that moment, her eyes flew wide open.
“What in the…”
Like a tattoo, red veins spread across the baby’s face.
A soft light emanated from where the young man’s forehead touched the infant’s, seeping into the child and flowing through its veins. The crowd gasped at the sight. And she, too, let out an involuntary sound.
Only the baby, oblivious to what was happening to its own body, gurgled with laughter as if tickled and patted the man’s cheeks with its tiny hands.
‘Impossible.’
Roberta could not believe it.
Mana does not settle within a person who has not received a sacrament. If someone were to try to transfer their own mana into another, it might settle there temporarily. But it would only be temporary. Once the force compelling the mana disappeared, it would naturally dissipate.
But this baby was accepting the external mana as its own. Its young body could only contain a minuscule amount, but it was not expelling it.
And why was that?
Why would mana settle within the infant?
Because its name was on the registry, because its name was etched in the heavens, because it had been granted the right. ‘This life is worthy to wield the power the gods scattered across the world’—which meant the Infant Sacrament had been successfully performed. And not through a connection to an evil god, but to the heavens themselves.
“H-how?”
How could he add a name to the celestial registry when he wasn't even a priest?
“This is impossible,” she muttered, unable to even think of closing her agape mouth. The suspicion that had been creeping up in a corner of her mind began to transform into certainty.
‘The lord, he said, went to perform a sacrament.’
Then who was the young man in the center of the crowd, performing the rite?
The old priest had told her. The oldest half-blood he had ever seen was three hundred years old, and that duke had looked like a mummy.
Roberta had seen half-bloods before, and they had looked much the same. Half-bloods could not escape aging. Even if elven blood carried no trace of it, human blood did.
When the blood of the two races mixed, their descendants became beings subject to the passage of time.
‘Then, what about the lord of Dithmarschen?’
The young man returned the baby to its mother and turned. The crowd behind him parted, making way. Roberta remained frozen in her saddle until he stood before her horse.
“Did you come because you were worried? It seems Bern misspoke again.”
Roberta suddenly recalled her conversation with the old priest.
She now understood why the old priest had tilted his head when she had called the lord an ‘old geezer.’ And she also understood why he had called the lord bizarre.
No matter how she looked at him, he was far too young.
He looked as if time had not touched him in the slightest.
“……”
Roberta opened her mouth to say, “Are you…” To ask if he was the lord of Dithmarschen. But when she tried to speak, the words caught in her throat.
Looking up at her, he said.
“That’s right. I am the lord of Dithmarschen. Ulrich.”