༺ 𓆩 Chapter 20 — Old Faith (2) 𓆪 ༻
「Translator — Creator」
᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃
“… It’s more underwhelming than I thought.”
At Isaac’s command, Randolph and Carlson used violence only against those who tried to harm them.
They had not even needed to draw their swords.
Most of the cultists who claimed to worship the Goddess of Fire were nothing more than drifters who had spent their lives rotting in the sewers or the slums.
Once Randolph seized one of them and beat him into a pulp, the rest, stricken with terror, lost their nerve and fled.
“If you turn your faces from the Goddess, a curse shall fall upon you! A curse……!”
The desperate warning of an old woman fell on deaf ears.
“If any of you wish to die, come at me. I’ll send you off before you even have time to feel pain.”
When Randolph finally drew his sword and even released his aura, those cowed by his killing intent fled the catacombs without the slightest care whether the old woman was shoved aside or trampled underfoot.
“So this was the sort of rabble Nias had been enthralled by. Blind beggars, nothing more.”
Randolph let out a hollow laugh as he watched the cultists scatter like the ebbing tide.
“Someone must have built this religion on purpose. Can you stand?”
Carlson handed a cane to the fallen old woman.
The old woman, her face a bloody mess, simply clutched the cane and stared blankly at a spot.
“There’s really nothing here. Nothing except those lumps of meat they treated as sacrifices.”
After searching the room where the cultists had performed their rites from top to bottom, Bill spoke.
“Search the other rooms too.”
Isaac looked around the chamber, stained with dried blood.
It was the largest stone room in the catacombs. Dried blood marked the place in dark patches, and flies and maggots swarmed and clung wherever they pleased. Being underground, it was warmer than the surface, a place well suited to vermin. Because of that, countless flies and beetles, cockroaches and ants had made their homes in every corner.
“At least for the insects, it’s paradise.”
Watching the feeding vermin, Randolph clicked his tongue.
If he had followed his heart, he would have left this horrible place at once. But they had not yet found what they had come for.
“What are we to do with these two?”
Randolph asked Isaac as he looked between the pulped vagrant and the old woman.
“Once the search is finished, we’ll take them out.”
“Yes.”
Isaac and the other three searched every part of the catacombs.
They sought one thing alone.
Evidence that could serve as proof of a connection to the Old Faith.
‘It started around this time.’
The cultist group that would later begin gnawing away at Goethe under the name of the “Dark Order.”
The reason the Old Faith’s influence in Goethe had grown so great was because of the Dark Order.
The grotesque murders they committed. The incomprehensible rites they performed, uncanny and obscene alike.
Little by little, fear had begun to spread through the citizens of the city of Bern.
And the one who profited most from that fear was the Old Faith.
They summoned inquisitors, rooted out the fanatics of the Dark Order, held burnings in the plaza, and proclaimed a holy war.
At the same time, they provided food and education to the people of the territory in the name of service, and so the hearts of the people turned less and less toward their lord and more and more toward the bishop of the Old Faith.
In truth, it was only natural. Compared with a lord who remained in the fortress to defend the land, it was easier for their hearts to lean toward the bishop who stood before their eyes and dispensed charity with his own hands.
From that point onward, the bishop began to demand ever more outrageous things of the count.
He demanded that tithes be paid twice a month. He demanded manpower from a fortress still in the thick of a defensive war, supposedly for the expansion of a sanctuary. He demanded that serfs be put to labor for the sake of the church.
The result soon led to shortages in food supply and the failure of the fortress’s defense.
‘The dark arts Nias was obsessed with and the Dark Order had much in common. They prattled on about souls, and they committed acts of cannibalism as though flaunting them in plain sight.’
Randolph and Pyke had done nothing more than extort money from Nias’s organization through threats.
They had not known exactly where the money came from.
There had been talk of slave trading, but selling off one or two people a month could never have covered the supplies needed for two whole companies of soldiers.
It was from there that Isaac’s deduction had begun.
Nias was engaged in another business, one Randolph and Pyke knew nothing about.
And the silver coins the two knights extorted had been good coin struck directly by the royal house, rich in silver content.
Randolph had testified that it had not happened once or twice. Every time, it had been those same coins.
Where could Nias possibly have obtained such a supply of sound currency?
One question had led to another.
Isaac fitted the scattered scraps of information together as though piecing together a puzzle.
A means by which Nias could regularly obtain high-quality royal coinage.
Given the clues at hand, only one possibility remained.
A connection between Nias, the Dark Order, and the Old Faith.
“There’s nothing.”
“You could scrub your eyes and look again and still find nothing. Did you not perhaps guess wrong?”
Randolph and Bill reported back.
Carlson too shook his head, as though he had found little of worth.
“Is that so.”
Isaac began to suspect that his reasoning might have been wrong.
Where had he gone astray?
He was retracing each step of his thoughts when:
“That’s enough. Let’s go. Where is your home?”
“Dear, where is this place? Please don’t hit me.”
“……?”
Just as Kyle was about to help the old woman, who had been sitting collapsed on the ground, she began to speak in incomprehensible words.
“W, what is happening? Please, please, don’t kill me.”
The old woman looked upon the severed corpses, the half-rotted bodies, and the bare skeletons, then curled in upon herself and trembled violently.
It was nothing like the sight of her earlier, when she had cried out to the Goddess in a voice sharpened by frenzy.
There was even yellow piss leaking out between her legs where she sat collapsed.
“Was the old hag senile?”
Bill clicked his tongue in disbelief.
“Please spare me, please spare me. Reverend Deacon, spare me. My husband beats me as though he means to kill me. Spare me. Ah, Apostle of the Goddess. Save me. Save me.”
The old woman went on pleading for her life in a thin, wavering voice.
Even as she spoke, her memory seemed to flicker in and out.
“Grandmother, where is your home?”
Isaac asked.
***⚜***
“……Ha.”
“This is insane.”
“Good Lord.”
South of the city of Bern, in a house in the red-light district not far from the slums, Isaac’s party found a chest in the attic.
It was the sort of place where the old floorboards screamed every time one walked across them.
Inside the chest were coins minted by the royal house and stacked silver ingots.
Even by rough estimate, there were thousands of coins and dozens of ingots.
It was enough wealth to buy even a minor noble title and have plenty left over.
“Where in the world did all this money come from……?”
Randolph, who held the title of baronet, felt the weight of the sum far more keenly than Bill or Carlson.
It was enough money to buy two or three estates the size of his own.
Unlike the three, who could not hide their astonishment, Isaac’s lips twitched upward.
There was no way to test the silver content of the coins here and now.
But the royal crest stamped into the silver was sharp and unmistakable.
The quality of the minting was so fine that one could almost feel each strand in the lion’s mane.
Such workmanship was beyond the skill of common counterfeiters.
It was the moment Isaac’s thoughts were proven correct.
With this, Goethe had finally gained a pretext to break its ties with the Old Faith.
“Sister, Sister. Are you there?”
At that moment, a young man’s voice rose from below.
Randolph and Carlson exchanged urgent glances.
Through a gap in the attic floor, Isaac checked the man’s appearance.
Snake eyes. A patchy goatee.
It was a face he had seen many times before.
“Ah, Apostle.”
Lying on the bed, the old woman looked at the goateed man who had entered the house with vacant eyes.
The clothes he wore were the vestments of a priest of the Old Faith.
“What happened? Did you meet the Goddess?”
“I did.”
A gentle smile spread across the old woman’s face.
The goateed man took her hand in his.
“Then… did the ritual succeed?”
“Ah. That……”
The old woman’s smile slowly vanished.
Then, all at once, her eyes widened.
“The demons, the demons! They trampled the altar and slaughtered all the faithful. Apostle, please, grant us another miracle……!”
“Demons? What do you mean? Tell me clearly, Sister.”
The goateed man’s face hardened.
He shook the old woman by the hand, urging an answer from her, but suddenly the light in her eyes changed.
“Reverend Deacon, Reverend Deacon, my husband beats me as though he means to kill me. Spare me.”
“……Damn it.”
The goateed man released her hand.
He had realized there was nothing to be learned from an old woman whose memory was no longer whole.
“What bastards…….”
He ground his teeth and muttered.
And then…
Creeeak—!!!
A presence made itself known above him.
It was the sound of old wooden boards parting at the seams.
It was not the sort of noise a rat or a cat would make.
Someone was in the attic.
Silently, the goateed man began to gather mana at his fingertips.
In accordance with the doctrines of the Old Faith.
Magic was a power permitted only to the clergy.
All others were branded heretics.
Of course, because of the practical balance of power, the kingdom still contained countless impure elements.
But they would be removed, one after another.
It was a holy undertaking.
The goateed man’s eyes flicked toward the old woman.
That senile crone was no longer of any use.
If the secret leaked here, everything would be ruined.
It was a pity to lose the wealth stored in the attic, but the Old Faith was rich.
If necessary, they would not hesitate to provide support.
Fwoosh—!!!
Flames rose from the mana the goateed man had gathered.
The method he had chosen was simple: to cleanse this place in holy fire.
But the flames he had kindled failed to spread anywhere at all.
Something cold and sharp touched his throat.
“They say demons hide within the light.”
From behind him, Carlson spoke as he pressed a blade to the goateed man’s neck.
“W, who are you?”
“Try anything foolish and your head comes off.”
The goateed man withdrew his mana and raised both hands.
“S, spare me. If you kill me, the Holy See will not let this pass.”
His eyes darted wildly as he spoke.
And then, before him…
Creak—!!!
Creak—!!!
A boy came climbing down the ladder from the attic.
“Now I remember. Hello, Deacon Silvio. Have you been well all this while?”
“…….”
The eyes of the deacon with the goatee widened.
“I believe this is the first time we’ve met since Elder Johann’s last rites.”
Isaac spoke with a smile.
***⚜***
Deacon Silvio had done what he could.
He had prayed time and again that he might not kneel before the violence of heretics.
But soon enough, he could do nothing but lament.
How weak the human body was.
How false the human heart.
The deacon had sought God, begging not to be shaken by the outrages of heretics.
God gave no answer before the deacon’s patience ran dry, and that patience proved far shorter than he himself had imagined.
Soon he began to resent the God who did not save him.
Soon after, he cursed the bishop who had set all of this in motion.
Every one of those changes within Deacon Silvio’s heart had been brought about by three punches from Carlson.
Carlson did not often use violence.
Neither did he shout.
“You think anyone will praise you for this?”
“If you keep your mouth shut, your superiors will be delighted. It’ll mean they can cut off the tail neatly and be done with it.”
“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen until you open your mouth. I learned a great deal from your inquisitors. You know it better than anyone, don’t you? We’ll start by pulling out your fingernails and toenails one by one. Then your teeth, one by one. After that, we’ll break the bones in your toes one after another. And then we’ll tear open your asshole and let rats eat their way in.”
Carlson’s voice had remained low and even, and all the more chilling for it.
The process was described with such awful precision that it felt as though he had stood and watched such tortures unfold with his own eyes.
More than anything else, what truly terrified Silvio was the sense that Carlson really would do it.
Murderous intent gleamed in his eyes.
“Do you know why I know all this so well? Hm? Even if I chewed up every last one of you Old Faith bastards, it still wouldn’t be enough. The people waiting outside for your testimony might have one part mercy in ten. I don’t have one in a hundred. I want to see just how far your vaunted faith will carry you.”
A demon.
That was what Carlson looked like in Deacon Silvio’s eyes.
To a deacon driven to the limits of fear, each punch that landed at just the right moment felt dozens of times more painful than it would have otherwise.
By the time he had taken the third blow, he was already under the illusion that his body had been turned into a slack mound of minced meat.
At last, he saw the bottom of himself.
“S, spare me. I, I’ll tell you everything. So please, no more than this……”
Deacon Silvio was on the verge of tears.
By the time Isaac entered the underground prison, the goateed deacon had become exceedingly cooperative.
“What in the world did you do to make him end up like that?”
At Isaac’s question, Carlson gave a small shrug.
“I only hit him a few times, and he said he’d cooperate.”
“Seems his faith wasn’t all that strong.”
END σϝ CHAPTER