Free Web Novel"???"
Looking at this utterly unexpected scene, even Muen, who had already braced himself, still felt somewhat stunned.
Was this also part of the burial process?
Were Church burial rites... all this wild?
"Understand now?"
Muen was dumbfounded, yet the limping priest seemed to have done nothing more than something perfectly normal. He casually wiped the blood and brain matter from the sacred text, then raised his head with perfect seriousness and said:
"A gravekeeper’s duty, of course, also includes giving these dead a proper funeral."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"?"
After their eyes met for a long while, the limping priest frowned.
"Why aren’t you saying anything?"
"No... I just don’t know where to even begin criticizing that."
Muen was silent for a very long time before finally speaking. "Or should I slap you, you corpse-desecrating bastard, to death right now?"
"Corpse desecration? What are you talking about?"
The limping priest seemed insulted. His expression turned solemn, anger in his eyes as he said:
"This is purification! This is soothing the dead! What desecration? This is an incomparably solemn and sacred mission!"
"...I don’t think there’s any method of purification in this world that involves smashing someone’s head rotten with a brick," Muen retorted. "Much less anything solemn or sacred!"
"How rude. Your own ignorance is limiting your understanding, and yet you think I’m the one who’s wrong? Also, this is a sacred text! Not a brick!"
"Is there a difference?"
"Of course there is!"
The limping priest raised the sacred text high and said in a deep voice:
"This sacred text has iron corner guards... It is exactly three pounds heavier than a brick!"
"...And?"
"Three pounds heavier, and you still can’t grasp the difference? That is the weight of the Goddess’s punishment!"
Isn’t that still a brick?!!
Is there a difference?
Does a brick stop being a brick just because it is three pounds heavier?
And is the weight of the Goddess’s punishment only three pounds? Shouldn’t the Goddess first send down punishment and strike you, her shameless slanderer, dead with a bolt of lightning?
"All right, I don’t want to argue with you over useless things, priest."
Muen held his forehead. "I only want to know why you’re doing this."
"Didn’t I already tell you the reason? Purification."
After finishing the so-called "purification ritual," the limping priest tried to climb out of the pit.
Only, whether because the pit had been dug too deep, or because his legs truly were inconvenient, the priest grabbed at the edge several times and actually failed to climb out.
So he silently reached a hand out toward Muen.
"..."
Muen’s cheek twitched. After hesitating for a moment, he still took the priest’s hand.
"Hm?"
But as he pulled him up, Muen’s eyes suddenly sharpened, as if he had noticed something.
"You’re injured. And badly."
Muen keenly sensed that the lame priest before him was not merely lame.
There were extremely severe wounds on his body.
Beneath that tattered outer robe, those wounds sank deep into flesh, deep into bone, and even... deep into the soul.
It was as if countless maggots were crawling back and forth through that skin, and with every wriggle, they carried away a portion of the priest’s vitality.
To be honest, Muen could not imagine how a person could still survive with injuries this severe. Were it not for the faint warmth he felt from the palm in his hand, Muen would almost have thought he was pulling up a dead man.
"What are these injuries?"
Muen secretly activated the black flame vision.
The priest’s body did not only bear fresh wounds.
More serious than that were countless old wounds.
Those wounds had almost torn his soul apart.
Yet strangely, on top of those old wounds, Muen saw traces of the priest’s own power.
It was as if... the one who had wounded him was himself.
"Here, take this."
The limping priest handed Muen a shovel.
Though Muen was puzzled, he said nothing. He took the shovel and accompanied the priest, scooping earth into the pit one shovelful after another.
"Do you remember what I told you before?"
Earth was flung down shovel after shovel. Only when the corpse had gradually been covered by soil did the priest slowly speak:
"About how I once committed a great sin."
"Molesting little boys?"
"...I told you that was something I made up. And when did it become molesting?"
The limping priest rolled his eyes.
"Sorry. I thought love would ultimately make you lose control of yourself. Isn’t that how certain stories tell it? A devout priest ultimately cannot resist the desire in his own heart, finally falls into a demon, and stretches his wicked hand toward pure little boys..."
"Enough. How long are you planning to keep using this joke..."
"All right. Please continue."
Muen immediately stood properly, with an earnest expression, and listened carefully.
"Sigh. That is the thing I regret most in my life."
The priest sighed, then began to speak:
"Strictly speaking, that great sin was the source of all destruction. Even the situation before us is strongly related to it... Oh, right. You met Ision?"
"Hm?"
Muen did not understand why the priest had suddenly changed the subject, but still answered:
"Yes, I met him. Not only met him..."
He had personally given him a heart-piercing package guaranteed to make him feel the temperature drop by thirty-seven degrees even in the height of summer.
But Muen felt that this was probably not something he should say for now, because since the priest could call him by name, his relationship with the Archbishop before him was likely not shallow.
Just as he had guessed, this man was indeed not merely an ordinary crippled old priest.
Whether it was his calmness during their first cooperation before, or his ability to survive in this dead city now, both represented his extraordinary nature... as well as the fact that the secret he was about to speak of was not simple, Muen’s intuition told him.
"Then you should have met Fubeka as well," the limping priest continued.
"...You know Fubeka too?"
Muen raised his brows slightly and began to guess something.
"Of course. Fubeka... I watched her be born."
"What?"
Muen abruptly turned his head and fixed his gaze on the priest. "You watched Fubeka be born... Then the great sin you mentioned is connected to the Archbishop joining with an Evil God cultist and giving birth to Fubeka?"
"Yes. Not only connected. You can basically say that I was one of the people who experienced it firsthand."
The limping priest grew tired and leaned against the shovel to rest, his thoughts gradually returning to the distant past.
Some figures and scenes began to surface before his eyes. Even though a very, very long time had passed, they were still clear.
So clear they seemed engraved into his soul.
"The beginning of the story was very ordinary."
"A long, long time ago, there was a girl. For a certain wish, she began pursuing power with no regard for anything else."
"However, that blind pursuit eventually brought disaster upon her. She drew the gaze of an Evil God and became an Evil God cultist."
"Then, very soon, as a matter of course, she was captured by the Church."
"...Don’t tell me the Archbishop accidentally fell in love with a girl in prison, and after experiencing all sorts of melodramatic twists and turns, resisted every kind of pressure, and finally two people of utterly different identities joined together and gave birth to Fubeka—that kind of cliché plot." Muen’s mouth twitched, and he could not help retorting again.
"No. I told you, that was a very, very long time ago. At that time, Fubeka’s birth was still far away. It had not even come to the point where that girl would meet Ision. So at that time, the protagonist of the story was me."
The limping priest said.
"You fell in love with that girl?"
Muen raised a brow.
That was even more melodramatic, all right?
A lame priest... a girl who had become an Evil God cultist for some reason... and then later, Archbishop Ision.
Muen had already filled in an intense, thrilling triangular emotional morality drama in his head.
"Although I know you are having some very remarkable and impolite thoughts, I can be certain that all those thoughts are wrong. I am the Goddess’s most loyal believer. I swore long ago to serve the Goddess all my life."
"The few people I know who made that kind of vow are all hopeless romantics," Muen said solemnly.
"...In any case, I did not fall in love with that girl. It was only that, in our time together... I felt pity for her."
The priest stroked his chest. His expression was... somehow both sorrowful and furious, making it impossible for Muen to understand. "That girl was watched by an Evil God, bewitched by an Evil God, and killed many people. According to common sense, she was unquestionably a sinner. And as the Church’s executioner at the time, I should have killed her to eliminate future trouble.
"But during the time I guarded her, I was affected and moved by her kindness. In the end, I actually went softhearted... I merely temporarily sealed her Evil God mark, then secretly let her go."
"Yes. I released a sinner."
The hand before the priest’s chest suddenly clenched tight. It was unclear whether because of the pain deep in his flesh, or because that past, along with his memories, had begun tormenting him again.
"...That’s what you call a sin?"
But Muen tilted his head, seeming somewhat puzzled. "All I see is a foolish old good man."
"..."
The priest froze, then smiled. "Is that so?"
"Don’t tell me that because of this little thing, you blamed yourself and ended up guarding graves here for who knows how long."
Muen suddenly leaned closer and said with gossiping curiosity:
"Or, according to my guess, were you defeated by your later romantic rival, Archbishop Ision, and banished here?"
Mm. Then the lame leg could be explained too.
Look at those male deer, male lions, and male rhinoceroses in nature. After a duel, which one of them did not lose an arm or a leg?
Not to mention the final loser in a love triangle.
Looks like this old priest was still one step worse than the Archbishop!
"Go, go, go. Ision and I were never romantic rivals. I told you, I never fell in love with anyone. The girl and I were not that kind of relationship either."
The priest pushed Muen away with one hand, then took out the half-smoked cigar from before, lit it, and took a deep draw before raising his head with melancholy.
"My sin lies in certain things I learned later."
"First was Ision’s meeting, knowing, and falling in love with that girl. The Archbishop of the Cathedral falling in love with an Evil God cultist—that was something the Church could never allow. Once the Holy City discovered it, the Archbishop would certainly be cleansed by the Tribunal Hall. Because of this, Archbishop Ision had always carefully concealed everything, and because of the choice I had made before, even though I knew it was improper, I still turned a blind eye."
"No wonder..." fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
Muen was somewhat enlightened.
So when the Archbishop noticed that he was investigating the cathedral and Fubeka, he immediately concluded that Muen had been sent by the Tribunal Hall.
It turned out he really had a guilty conscience.
"And after that?"
"As for the second thing... At the moment the child was born, looking into the child’s eyes, I finally understood..."
The pale smoke gradually rose, as if it meant to pierce through the clouds and mist all the way, following the priest’s gaze to a higher, more distant place.
"That girl was not an Evil God cultist at all. She lied to me. In truth... she was an Evil God’s scion."
