Free Web Novel“O savior, I am Timorang, priest of the Gray Tree clan.”
Mm.
Cale was not particularly the sort of person who respected elders just because they were elders.
“It is an honor to meet you like this.”
But if the old woman before him looked like she was easily past eighty, at the very least, and had dried blood caked around her mouth—
“Mm. Elder. No, Priest.”
Cale spoke politely without meaning to.
“O savior, you may call me Timorang comfortably.”
No. How am I supposed to casually call an elder who looks easily past eighty by her name?
Yes, I call Choi Han by name and speak casually to him, even though he is Choi Jung Soo’s elder cousin-uncle, but that is that and this is this, isn’t it?
Cale had a great deal to say, but he held it in and spoke calmly.
“Um, I am not a savior.”
He needed to correct the facts first.
“Heh.”
But the priest laughed for the first time.
Fine wrinkles gathered around the old woman’s eyes.
Peace entered her rigid face for the first time, and she asked Cale,
“O savior, you wish me to guide you to where the clan members stricken by chaos are, do you not?”
Ah.
I said I’m not a savior!
This grandmother does not listen!
Irreverence slowly crept over Cale’s face, and he opened his mouth.
“Yes. Please guide me.”
Whatever the case, Cale first needed to examine the demons infected with gray sickness. He had to understand their condition.
“Heh heh.”
The old woman laughed meaningfully once more, then pulled out her wooden staff and began to walk.
Rustle.
The lively leaves attached to the wooden staff briefly caught Cale’s eye.
“It smells like wood.”
At Cale’s blunt remark, Priest Timorang, who had been walking ahead, flinched for a moment. Soon, however, she left behind a single sentence and resumed walking.
“It is trees that protect the land.”
Those words sank strangely deep into Cale’s mind.
Wasn’t the Gray Tree clan said to protect the ancient site of the demon god?
Then why was she saying they protected the land?
Cale felt something strange, but he soon closed his mouth.
“Priest.”
Because General Mol, who had been quietly standing by, opened his mouth.
“I heard you were preventing us from examining the clan members infected with gray sickness. You must allow that to—”
But General Mol could not continue.
“Shut your mouth.”
The old priest’s gaze turned fierce.
It naturally brought to mind how she had stood firm without even glancing aside before the third Emperor, Dragon King, and the Demon King.
“!”
General Mol flinched and shut his mouth.
He was the leader of the Third Army, but even so, this clan’s priest was someone respected by demons.
The old priest glared at General Mol with extreme sharpness and shouted,
“How dare a man who carries traces of another god in his arms try to set foot in this place and run his mouth!”
“......!”
Mol’s face turned even paler. Without realizing it, he urgently looked at Cale.
Cale was looking at him, and Cale’s mouth opened.
“Ah. I know you have a divine relic. I don’t know which god it belongs to, though.”
“!!”
Mol’s pupils shook violently.
He knew?
He knew I had a divine relic?
How?
The old priest, who had been staring fixedly at Mol’s face, snorted.
“Hmph. How laughable. How very laughable. They call you the Hand Behind the Back, so I thought you struck others from behind. Yet looking at you now, you are a man who has struck his own head from behind so badly that you cannot even see what is before you!”
Then she spoke respectfully to Cale.
“O savior, we have been waiting for you to come.”
Her staff cut through the air.
Rustle—
In that instant, wind rose.
The entrance to the ancient site and the village nearby.
The leaves of every tree in that area shook.
Swaaaaa—
The sound of leaves fluttering.
Tap, tap, tap—
After a brief silence, light footsteps began to be heard.
“We will cooperate in all things, so please do not worry.”
The demons of the Gray Tree clan opened the village gate so Cale could enter.
“Priest.”
“Yes, O savior.”
Looking at the people who welcomed him as if they had been waiting, Cale asked the priest,
“Can you see the future?”
He had simply tossed it out because, for some reason, it felt like that might be the case.
No, I mean, isn’t that what this feels like?
She was a priest, and she knew of Cale’s existence.
Judging from Cale’s experiences so far and putting things together, he had a feeling.
“As expected, you know. You are remarkable.”
The priest spoke to Cale with a face filled with great admiration and awe.
That is excessive.
Cale thought the reaction was far too excessive. However, the priest maintained that expression.
“I cannot see every future.”
Cale responded to that.
Because he felt as if he knew.
“It seems you only see some futures?”
“Yes. That is correct. I glimpse the future now and then through dreams. And I saw you, O savior, bring gray rain down upon this ancient site and the two cities. Please forgive me for being unable to tell you more in detail and only being able to say this much.”
“Mm.”
Gray rain.
Cale knew that when he used Purification of Chaos, at around the final stage, gray droplets emerged from those infected by chaos.
But that is rain?
It was not something one could call rain.
Mm.
Cale pondered it.
But it was not as if an answer would come.
Since it’s a prophetic dream, I suppose it appeared symbolically.
In any case, Cale would be the one doing the purification, and gray droplets would indeed come out. This priest’s prophecy could be considered fairly accurate.
“I see. For now, let’s go to the infected quickly.”
Cale did not want to drag things out, so he headed to the patients first.
“Yes, O savior.”
Old Timorang gestured to one of the clan members.
He began guiding Cale and General Mol.
“Ah. My companions will be coming here soon as well.”
“Yes. Understood.”
At Cale’s words, the priest gestured instructions to another clan member and followed behind Cale.
This will likely be my final prophecy.
The priest recalled her last dream while thinking of Cale’s back, which was blocked from view by General Mol.
I had never had such a vivid dream before.
The priests of the Gray Tree clan had possessed a special power for generations.
The power to see the future.
And most of those futures came when something great happened to the clan and the ancient site.
Naturally, “something great” meant ill things such as disasters and calamities.
Gray—
This dream had not shown her the third Emperor. Had she known he would come, she would have prepared in advance and prevented anything from happening to the clan.
No, before that, even the matter of a seed being planted in the child who was a candidate for the next priest, and even the Order of the God of Chaos’s schemes, had not appeared in her dreams. Had she known, she could have stopped them well enough.
But what the dream showed me was the savior and gray rain.
Dreams were not clear.
They were full of countless symbols and metaphors.
However, the dream she had this time was the clearest in her entire life.
A cloudy, dark sky. Gray rain falling over the ancient site, Midi, and Mika.
And a red-haired man standing atop the bell tower, the tallest building, creating all of it.
The demons crying out to him as savior.
The savior saved the ancient site and the two cities.
Only now could Priest Timorang finally feel a little relieved and move her exhausted body.
Maintaining the sealing formation for two full days before the third Emperor, Dragon King, had never been an easy task.
The village of the Gray Tree clan.
The treatment center located deep inside that village.
The two-story building was currently packed with infected patients.
“Here is the patient list.”
It was still daytime, so they were sleeping soundly while their bodies slowly turned gray.
In the only examination room left empty, set a little apart from them, without a patient inside, a clan healer and an official dispatched from the Demon King’s castle handed Cale the documents while failing to hide their nervousness.
Rustle, rustle.
Cale turned the pages and examined the patient list.
A quiet space.
Mol stood behind Cale and glanced at the documents.
Nod, nod.
The old priest was asleep in a chair set in the corner, guarded by one of her clan members.
No one reproached her for it.
She was already old enough that it would have been more than enough for her to step down as priest, but because no successor had appeared, she had continued serving. And now, the candidate who had finally appeared had died after the seed germinated.
Because of that, the old priest had stepped to the front once more, sent her clan members away, and faced the third Emperor and his subordinates alone.
Who could blame such an old woman for sleeping?
Rustle, rustle.
The official, watching for Cale’s reaction as the pages turned quickly, opened his mouth.
“We moved all those who were infected and showed seizures in the cities of Midi and Mika to this treatment center.”
More than two hundred infected patients were packed throughout the two-story treatment center.
“Mm.”
Cale let out a low hum.
“Those classified as suspected potential infected have been placed in quarantine centers in both cities, Midi and Mika, and are currently being isolated there.”
Should he call it fortunate?
After the third Emperor caused the incident, the Demon King’s officials who arrived late had still carried out follow-up measures swiftly.
“We can purify this place tomorrow morning as well.”
It was afternoon now. There were no urgent patients, so after the infected who would rampage tonight calmed down tomorrow morning when the sun rose—
That would be when purification should be done.
Cale closed the documents and reached that conclusion.
Of course, he added one comment.
“That is assuming the third Emperor, Dragon King, withdraws today.”
“...Yes.”
The official answered with a grave face, and Mol nodded.
Since the Demon King had stepped forward, the third Emperor would withdraw soon.
—Now the remaining arm will be purified too.
At the Ancient Tree’s words, filled with anticipation, Cale did not show much of a reaction.
Still, now that the indigestion had improved—
I just hope the dizziness goes away.
It was annoying to stagger because of it and have someone support him.
“Let’s get through tonight first.”
Cale spoke as he handed the documents he had already examined to the clan healer, and light appeared on the faces of everyone in the examination room.
It was probably hope.
“.......”
Mol quietly watched this.
“!”
Then he flinched and looked back.
He was not the only one.
What is that?
Cale also flinched in surprise and shifted his gaze to one side.
He felt some strange aura.
“Hah!”
There, surrounded by gray smoke, the priest was waking with her eyes wide open.
At that, the warrior beside her and the clan healer hurriedly dropped to both knees.
“A prophecy......!”
At the clan healer’s words, Cale immediately understood what was happening.
A prophecy?
His face hardened.
A prophecy is appearing in this situation?
Things had proceeded smoothly, and now all that remained was to handle them. Yet a prophecy had suddenly activated.
Cale’s face twisted.
The back of his neck felt cold.
He did not have a good feeling about this.
“Night—!”
Priest Timorang was drenched in sweat before anyone realized it.
She opened her mouth while trembling violently.
The gray smoke was fading.
Before that smoke disappeared, she had to spit out what she had seen.
Gray rain.
Today, she had seen a dream even clearer than that.
She realized it.
The gray rain had been nothing more than a warning for the disaster she had seen today.
“At night, the city will be covered in gray, and gray monsters will try to devour the demons!”
Ah.
Cale let out a sound of dismay.
The priest continued speaking.
“The city will burn, and the demons’ screams will cover heaven and earth—!”
Her gaze turned to Cale.
“A red-haired man will climb the bell tower, but that bell tower will be destroyed by the blue dragon!”
She spoke while trembling.
“The g-gray rain will not fall, and morning will come. The city will be covered in gray ash—”
Her whole body shook like an aspen, and then—
“Priest!”
She fainted on the spot.
A line of blood trickled down from the corner of her mouth.
“...I have n-never heard of a prophecy that tells so, so much.”
The healer, trembling, spoke to Cale while approaching the priest supported by the clan warrior.
At that moment, the experienced healer felt that she had to tell Cale this.
Do not ignore this prophecy.
The priest had disregarded her own body and told them so much.
“.......”
Cale, who had been looking at the unconscious priest, turned his gaze to the official.
“!”
The official’s body shrank under that cold stare, and Cale opened his mouth.
“Is this accurate?”
He lifted the documents as he spoke.
“Midi and Mika. The infected and suspected infected in both places. Are you certain you secured them accurately?”
Damn it.
Cale swallowed the harsh words that almost burst out of his mouth.
After hearing the priest’s words, he had fully grasped the situation.
That was how precise the prophecy was.
Tonight.
And Midi and Mika.
In one of the two cities, an infected person would appear and rampage.
And when they tried to stop it, the third Emperor, Dragon King, would appear.
“Son of a bitch.”
In the end, Cale let his true feelings spill out.
“...Th-this is—!”
General Mol’s face turned pale, and Cale spoke coldly to him.
“What are you doing?”
“Huh?”
“Is this the time to stand around blankly?”
Cale chose to move rather than worry.
If it was tonight—
It was still afternoon, so they had time left.
They had heard the prophecy, so they could prepare.
Yes.
This was doable.
Compared to the ordeals he had overcome so far.
“Priest!”
Just then, the priest, who they had thought had fainted, forced her eyes open.
When Cale’s gaze met hers, the priest left one final sentence before losing consciousness.
“You must, must... endure and survive......!”
What the hell.
Cale’s expression hardened.
—...Mm. How ominous.
Just as the Ancient Tree said, the priest fainted after leaving behind ominous words.
While Cale felt deeply uneasy, the gluttonous priestess murmured softly.
—My body itches.
The glutton whined at an itchy sensation, as if something were about to sprout. Her stomach felt blocked as though she had indigestion, yet strangely, she was hungry.
Something was lacking. She needed something more for digestion to happen.
No, she simply wanted to eat something cool and refreshing that would let her endure this tightness.
But she did not know what it was.
The moment she thought that—
—I’m hungry.
The glutton whined again, but Cale did not hear it.
Because right now, Cale—
“Damn it. For now, let’s return to the city of Midi immediately!”
Time was of the essence.
Cale felt certain this was doable, yet for some reason, an unpleasant unease clung to him.
