Volume 6, Chapter 50 – A Crisis of Faith

Time quickly passed. Three days later.

In a clean and bright room on the second floor, breakfast was proceeding in silence.

Under the gaze of two nuns, Evelyn, in her customary white and gold priestess’s habit, wiped her mouth with a handkerchief, then pushed away her plate and dipped her hands into the basin of water brought by a third nun. According to church tradition, food was a gift from the Goddess, and to enjoy it with utensils was disrespectful to the Goddess. Therefore, all members of the church ate with their hands. In the Ymir Territory, those who used cutlery such as knives and forks were considered the exception.

“□□—[Cleanse].”

With the nun’s incantation, Evelyn’s hands, which were soaking in the basin, immediately became clean. If Yisi had seen it, she would have surely thought that Evelyn was using a chemical product to wash away the grease, but in fact, this was a life magic specifically used for cleansing.

While the other two nuns were clearing the plates and taking away the basin, one of the nuns, who was closer to Evelyn, stepped forward and asked in a low voice.

“Lady Evelyn, is there anything you’re not feeling well about?”

“No. I remember saying many times that I prefer my breakfast to be served hot.”

“This…” The nun in the black headdress looked troubled and lowered her head humbly. “To avoid any accidents, your three meals must be taste-tested for poison before being served…”

The subtext was that a breakfast that had been sitting for one or two hours could not possibly be hot.

Knowing that she was making a futile effort, Evelyn sighed in annoyance. She had protested about these matters long ago, with suggestions such as “placing the taste-tested dishes on the stove” and “using magic to keep them warm,” but they were all rejected. Placing them on the stove might create an opportunity for someone to poison them, and using magic to keep them warm was a fantasy. No one could continuously heat an item for an hour without interruption.

“Forget it. It’s useless to tell you. You may leave.”

“Yes.”

Today, she had to continue hunting the monsters. Besides the two monsters she and Yisi had killed in the alley three days ago, she had come up with nothing in the past three days. The remaining four monsters seemed to have disappeared from the city. No matter how she and the paladins searched, they could not be found.

If that were all, she would be a little more at ease. As long as there was enough time, she could find them one day through a carpet search. But the problem was, these monsters were not silent and did not let her and her group act freely. They continuously attacked the city’s residents. Theft and destruction of houses were minor matters. The key was that they would attack humans in the dark. In the past three days alone, there had been dozens of reports of them injuring people. In one case, if the paladins had not arrived in time after being alerted by a person in black, an entire building of people would have been killed by them.

While summarizing the reports from the past few days in her mind, Evelyn stood up, picked up the Staff of Divine Retribution beside her, and, lowering her head in thought, slowly walked out of the room.

“I still haven’t found who the person in black who provided the information is. If I could find him, maybe… No, it would be a waste of time to look for him.”

The monsters had an appearance different from humans, so anyone could see that something was wrong. But for a human to hide in the city, it was just too easy, too difficult to search for.

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“I need more manpower.”

Evelyn couldn’t help but click her tongue.

If those monsters were weak creatures like goblins, she could have just ignored them and left them all to the cardinals to hand over to the Inquisition Hall for disposal. But every one of the monsters she had let escape had the strength equivalent to a Mithril-grade monster. Moreover, according to the reports of the paladins who had fought with them, their strength had grown by leaps and bounds in the past three days. Originally, two squads—ten Inquisition Knights—could beat one monster to the point where it couldn’t fight back. Now, the same number of paladins had difficulty even defeating them. As a result, the original strategy of dispersed encirclement would be defeated one by one by the monsters. They had no choice but to switch to a group search, which greatly reduced the search efficiency.

“If I could deploy a tenth of the hunters, I could definitely catch them. But now, there are less than a hundred hunters in Mitters Bayer, and half of them are recuperating. Of the remaining half, I can only deploy less than twenty.”

Every hunter had a strength of level thirty or above and possessed rich combat experience. They could carry out all kinds of secret missions, such as assassination, eavesdropping, and also things like cooperating to repel a dragon or destroying the stronghold of heretics. It could be said that every hunter was a treasure that the church had built up with gold coins. Besides Julius, no single individual in the church had the authority to command all the hunters.

With Evelyn’s current authority, she could only command the twenty of them with lower levels to act. If she wanted to deploy all the hunters in the church without going through Julius, she would have to obtain the consent of the majority of the people in the Inquisition Hall, as well as the other cardinals. And those cardinals had not yet realized the terrifying growth potential of the monsters. Most of them had not even seen them with their own eyes. To want to get their consent was simply a fantasy.

Of course, these were not the most important problems. What was more fatal was that the people in the city of Mitters Bayer were already in a state of panic. The disappearance of the divine grace and the monsters that could threaten their lives at any time… Recently, the calls for the church to give an explanation had been growing louder, and the number of believers gathering on the streets, hoping to receive the purification of her divine power, was also increasing. If those believers were to gather together and rush to the church gate, she would be pushed to the edge of a cliff.

At this thought, Evelyn lowered her head and looked at her free left hand—fair, slender fingers that had not experienced heavy physical labor. She tried to clench it. There was nothing wrong with it. Her body was still her body.

It was just that the miracle bestowed by the god had disappeared.

Although she had never thanked the Goddess for the divine power, it did not mean that Evelyn was not proud of her specialness. It was precisely because of the divine power that she was a cut above ordinary people. At the same time, it was also the divine power that made her respected by all and directly obtained the position of the next Pope. Although Evelyn had never said that she was nobler than others, the sense of distance when facing ordinary people was a real thing.

Now, the divine power had disappeared.

This noble-like, innate quality instantly vanished, and even the pride she had hidden was shattered. If one were to say that Evelyn was not panicked by this, that would definitely be a lie. She was just hiding her worry, anxiety, and eagerness, not letting others discover her abnormality, in order to buy time.

If the divine power were still here, she wouldn’t have to be so anxious now.

Evelyn unconsciously clenched her fists.

Then she shook her head and let out a soft breath.

“I should go find Yisi first.”

If she could quell the monster turmoil with her own strength, she could more or less use the remaining prestige to temporarily pacify those believers for a period of time, and then use that time to leave the Ymir Territory.

As for why she was going to find Yisi, it was always safer to act in a group than alone. And in the entire Mitters Bayer Territory, besides Yisi, she could not find a second person with whom she could open her heart and get along with easily.

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Unknowingly, Evelyn had already walked into the main hall of the church. The pure white statue of the goddess stood at the end of the hall. Sunlight shone on the statue through the stained-glass windows on all sides, creating a sacred atmosphere in the empty temple.

There was only one exception to the usual.

The main gate of the temple was tightly closed, and it seemed as if many people were gathered outside, the sounds exceptionally noisy.

Anxiety began to surface in the normally quiet temple. The feeling of something stirring made a bad premonition rise in Evelyn’s heart.

Something must have happened.

Her brain was warning Evelyn that turning back now was the best choice. But Evelyn forcibly suppressed this intuition and insisted on checking. She put on an air of authority befitting a Pope and walked to the temple gate.

She placed her hands on the handles of the temple gate and then pulled it open from the inside.

The dazzling sunlight that shone into her eyes made Evelyn squint slightly. After her eyes had adjusted to the light, her heart instantly sank.

Outside the church stood a dense crowd of neatly dressed believers. In front of them was a line of paladins. These believers were agitated, their faces flushed as they pushed and shoved each other, trying to break through the human wall formed by the paladins, but they were stopped several times. Some of the more agitated people even cried out loudly, calling Evelyn’s name.

“Lady Evelyn, please save us!”

“Has the Goddess really abandoned us?”

“I can’t feel the Goddess’s grace anymore. If this goes on, I’ll go mad!”

“Lady Evelyn has the power bestowed by the Goddess. Why won’t you let us see her!”

The one who answered the believers was a paladin responsible for maintaining order. As if he were shouting with all his might, his cheeks puffed out, and he shouted loudly.

“Lady Evelyn is currently preparing for the oracle ceremony with His Holiness the Pope and is not available to see you for the next few days. The church can understand your anxiety, but please wait a few more days. Lady Evelyn will definitely see you!”

“I’ve heard that enough! I can’t wait that long! I want to see Lady Evelyn today, no matter how much it costs. I want to confess my sins to the Goddess! We can’t let the Goddess abandon us! I want to see Lady Evelyn!”

“Open the gate!”

“Let us see Lady Evelyn!”

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“Let us see Lady Evelyn!”

Gradually, the voices coalesced into a single slogan. And the moment Evelyn opened the gate was precisely when the slogan was at its loudest.

The shouts came to an abrupt end.

All the believers’ gazes fell on the crack of the opened gate. When they saw that it was Evelyn, they all stopped shouting in unison. With a look of hope, like a dying person looking at a god, their faces were filled with joy, and their breathing became rapid.

The paladins also looked back at Evelyn. Most of them had a look of relief on their faces. Only the paladin who had been shouting at the believers had a gloomy expression, a look that was both of foreboding and of extreme annoyance.

Damn it.

Tensing her facial expression, Evelyn cursed inwardly.

The thing she had hoped for the least had happened after all.

The problem was, even so, she had no way to solve it.

Take a step back and then close the door? That was of course impossible. Not to mention the issue of face, she wouldn’t be able to get past the believers in the first place.

But she could no longer use her divine power. If she were to follow the believers’ requests and touch them, they would surely find out immediately that she had lost her divine power.

And for the next Pope, who had been bestowed with divine power, to have that power taken back, what did that mean? The believers would attribute the fault to the church, and the church would in turn brand her with the crime of having her power taken back by the Goddess because she had been negligent in her faith. Then, just as Yisi had said, she would be pushed out by the church and become its scapegoat.

Suppressing the panic and anxiety in her heart, Evelyn, holding the Staff of Divine Retribution, asked calmly.

“What happened?”

“Lady Evelyn, you must save us!” a believer in the crowd cried out before the paladin could speak. “You are the child of God who has been given a miracle by the Goddess. Now that the Goddess has taken back her grace, only you can help us out of our misery!”

From a certain perspective, divine power was not much different from a drug. A drug could make people temporarily forget their troubles and fall into a dreamlike, false sense of well-being. And divine power was the same. It used external force to quickly interfere with the spirit, freeing people from their pain, leaving only joy and positive emotions. If one had to say the difference between the two, it was just that a drug had great side effects, while divine power only reaped people’s faith.

Evelyn moved her lips, trying to explain something, but she couldn’t say anything. She couldn’t possibly agree to them and say, “Alright, come over,” exposing the fact that she no longer had her divine power.

And influenced by this believer, the other believers—among them were young men and women, as well as old people, and even a few children were mixed in—began to stir again, trying to cross the human wall formed by the paladins and come before Evelyn.

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She had to quickly think of an answer that would not expose herself and would also satisfy these believers.

Following the paladin’s words, say that she was very tired from just finishing the oracle ceremony, so she would come back tomorrow?

Such an answer would obviously not satisfy the believers. The grace given to her by the god only needed her to touch others to take effect. It would not consume her stamina, magic power, or energy. At such a critical moment, such an excuse was completely inappropriate.

Then use a stopgap measure, tell the believers that the god told her in a dream that she had taken back her divine power because something evil had mixed into Mitters Bayer, and that only after people had eradicated those evil things would the divine power descend on the human world again?

It looked good and could buy a lot of time, but in reality, it would cause an even more fatal problem. The words above were undoubtedly explaining the Goddess’s actions, and the authority to interpret the divine will should only be in the hands of Julius, who had been unwilling to let go of power for two hundred years. Once she explained, it would be equivalent to contending for power in front of Julius. Evelyn was completely confident that as long as there were voices among the believers that equated her with Julius, Julius would see her as a thorn in his side. Not to mention, since it was a divine will she had made up herself, the divine power would not return to her at all. With Julius’s status, he could easily expose her lie. At that time, she would die an even more miserable death.

Evelyn’s brain was working at high speed. If it were a machine, it would already be making a loud humming sound.

The paladin who had been shouting before walked up to Evelyn and shouted at the believers.

“Now, in order to see you, Lady Evelyn has gone so far as to terminate the oracle ceremony. Please do not add to her burden. The church has already done its utmost to listen to the divine will!” The paladin turned to face Evelyn and knelt on one knee. “Lady Evelyn, please say something to everyone.”

Was he creating an opportunity for her? But the paladin shouldn’t know that she had already lost her divine power.

There was no time for Evelyn to think much. She followed the opportunity created by the paladin, walked out of the temple gate, placed her left hand on her chest, and prepared to speak with a serious expression.

At this moment, a man in ragged clothes suddenly broke through the human wall created by the paladins. Amidst the loud shouts of the paladins, he rushed straight to Evelyn’s feet. With an agitated expression, he reached out a trembling hand towards her.

“Lady Evelyn, please save me. My faith in the Goddess is devout…”

Subconsciously, Evelyn shrank back to avoid the man touching her. But the man, as if he had gone mad, suddenly shot out his dirty hands and grabbed Evelyn’s wrist.

—He failed to grab it.

The paladin who had been kneeling beside Evelyn blocked the man and, with a very rough motion as if he were dealing with a criminal, first knocked the man away with his shoulder, then stood up and stepped heavily on the man’s chest, declaring in a stern voice that everyone could hear.

“Anyone who attempts to attack Lady Evelyn shall be punished by fire! Take him down and hand him over to the Inquisition Hall for disposal!”

In an instant, the crowd fell silent.

They seemed to see their own shadows.