The Priest with the Blurred Face
“What kind of person is he?”
When I asked about the new priest out of concern for Ivetta, she paused for a moment as if thinking before beginning her explanation.
“He had this blurry impression! Like a pencil portrait that someone had lightly rubbed with an eraser.”
I remembered most of the High Priest’s close aides from the original novel, but a description like that made it impossible to pin down his identity.
Yet Ivetta smiled proudly, as if she couldn’t possibly explain it any better.
“I see.”
I simply smiled back at her.
Well, that’s exactly how Ivetta was in the original story too.
The novel was mostly told from Ivetta’s first-person perspective, and her descriptions—especially of appearances—were always this abstract.
When she described her own looks, simply listing objective facts like pink hair and blue eyes counted as a remarkably good explanation.
In Kylus’s case, she had described him as “the supporting male lead in a romance novel who suffers from unrequited love.”
And when she described the Emperor…
She wrote something like “the feeling of encountering a handsome beast in the middle of the night.”
I hadn’t met the Emperor in person yet, but the real Kylus truly looked like the second male lead from a romance novel’s cliché cast, so Ivetta’s description had been surprisingly accurate.
The only problem was that you only realized “Ah, so this is the person she meant” after seeing them in the flesh.
I cleanly gave up on getting any physical description from Ivetta.
“Did he act rudely toward you or show any suspicious behavior?”
What mattered was how dangerous this priest might be to Ivetta.
“Not so far.”
Ivetta answered without hesitation.
Still, I couldn’t relax completely.
They had only met once, after all.
“Would it be all right if I sat in on your next lesson?”
She had accepted the priest’s lessons, but with the condition that a knight escort and maids would be present for her safety. I planned to attend while pretending to be one of those maids.
“Yes! Of course!”
Since I rarely asked her for anything, Ivetta gave her enthusiastic permission.
“Thank you.”
As it happened, today was the day of that lesson.
The moment Ivetta agreed, I changed into the uniform of a low-ranking maid.
I went to the drawing room where the lesson would be held, stood against the wall, and soon the priest entered.
I barely made it in time.
The priest had light gray hair and eyes an even paler shade of gray. It wasn’t ordinary gray—it was the kind of gray left behind after you’d lightly rubbed a pencil drawing with an eraser. His features were equally indistinct.
Once again, Ivetta’s description had been spot on.
While I tried to recall if any of the High Priest’s aides had gray hair, the priest gave Ivetta a polite bow.
“This humble servant of Minos God, Yudaf, greets the Saintess.”
Yudaf. That was a name I knew.
I should have asked for his name sooner.
I’d had a bad feeling, and sure enough, here it was.
There was no way the High Priest would miss such a golden opportunity.
This man was the High Priest’s confidant and adopted son.
In other words, he was the same person who had appeared in Ivetta’s first and second rounds—rounds that would never happen now, years in the future.
At this point in time, he had no direct connection to the High Priest yet, but he was someone who handled divine power skillfully.
And true to his future role as the High Priest’s right-hand man, he already showed the excellent makings of a villain.
He was exactly the kind of person the High Priest would send as Ivetta’s teacher.
But this guy is a real piece of shit.
He was one of the few villains who tormented Ivetta in both her first and second rounds.
In fact, he had been even worse to her in the second round than in the first.
Because he harbored such intense inferiority toward Ivetta after she became the Saintess.
Yudaf had awakened his divine power from birth.
The amount an infant’s body could endure was minimal, but it had been a birth full of future promise.
His parents had entrusted him to the Grand Temple.
Yudaf had been raised with every luxury, treated as a future candidate for High Priest.
However, even after he became an adult, his divine power was hardly any stronger than it had been as a baby.
The reason the temple had kept him around was because he knew how to use his meager divine power with incredible efficiency and was exceptionally skilled at internal politics.
When his power refused to grow, he lowered himself to the ground and clung to the temple’s influential figures, acting like a tongue inside their mouths.
Then, when the priest who had been backing him died of old age, Yudaf was caught up in the schemes of those who disliked him and was thrown in among the disposable low-ranking priests the High Priest used and discarded.
Even there, he displayed his characteristically cunning nature, earned the High Priest’s trust, and was put in charge of managing the brainwashed low-ranking priests.
That meant Ivetta had been among the low-ranking priests he managed.
However, the death of the priest who had supported him was still some time away.
Now that I think about it, when Ivetta was captured, there were already other low-ranking priests who had been brainwashed before her.
Even though the original story had changed, this seemed to be something that had happened before the point of divergence.
He must have already started gathering the low-ranking priests.
They were both the evidence and the victims of the High Priest’s most cruel crimes.
Obviously, I had to find them and help them.
But it wouldn’t be easy.
There were only two ways to break the brainwashing the High Priest had cast.
Either the caster died, or the person under the spell died.
In other words, freeing the priests who were already captured meant I would have to kill the High Priest.
That was essentially the same as defeating the final boss of the original story—something I couldn’t pull off right this moment.
But someday I’ll be able to.
Even without the returned Ivetta, the Emperor already hated the temple.
This time too, the Emperor would try to bring down the High Priest.
And he’ll succeed.
In the original story, things had gone more smoothly thanks to Ivetta who knew the future, but even objectively looking at their forces, the Emperor had more than enough power to do it.
And this time, I also have the information from the original story.
I planned to subtly leak future information to the Emperor on Ivetta’s behalf.
The sooner we took down the High Priest, the sooner those priests could be freed.
Even while thinking all this, I watched Yudaf with sharp eyes to see if he would try any tricks on Ivetta.
True to his setting as someone skilled at political maneuvering, Yudaf played the role of a devout priest perfectly.
If you didn’t know from the original story that he was a villain, his performance was convincing enough to inspire a fair amount of trust.
Throughout the entire lesson, he taught Ivetta with utmost sincerity.
Both the content and his attitude were textbook perfect, enough to loosen one’s wariness.
“Then I shall see you at the next lesson.”
It seemed he was still in the stage of lowering Ivetta’s guard.
After filling the allotted time, Yudaf bowed to her.
“Yes. Please go safely.”
Ivetta hesitated for a moment before returning the greeting.
I should tell her.
To stay on guard.
But Ivetta’s next lesson began immediately afterward, so I decided to bring it up later.
* * *
After returning to the room assigned to me, I stepped out onto the terrace connected to the garden, feeling stifled.
There, I saw Everett standing in the small garden attached to this room.
Not long ago, the errand boy who had been going back and forth between Everett and me had come looking for me.
Asking if I had any message to deliver.
Realizing it must have been sent by Everett, I had written an extremely long letter and sent it back with the child.
At the time, I told him I would be staying in the separate palace for a while and asked him to send his reply there.
But here he was in person!
When I suddenly opened the door, Everett looked slightly startled.
I was surprised too, you know.
Still, joy won out over surprise.
I waved both hands enthusiastically at Everett in greeting.
“Ed!”
“Yes, Lina.”
Everett, who looked a little pale, lifted his head toward me and smiled.
The composition felt incredibly familiar.
It was a very common scene in classic romance novels.
I called out to him playfully.
“Did you come to sing me a serenade?”
“Huh?”
He must have heard me clearly, and he definitely knew what a serenade was, yet Everett asked again as if he hadn’t.
Guess he can’t sing.
But if I pressed him a little more, it seemed like he might actually do it?
A mischievous impulse flared up for a second, but I maturely suppressed it.
“Pfft, I’m just kidding.”
Everett looked subtly relieved.
However, in the composition of a woman on the terrace and a man outside, there was one other familiar scene.
He hadn’t seemed keen on singing a serenade, but I wondered if he might like this instead.
“Would you like to come inside?”
Inviting my lover directly through the terrace.