episode_0081

89.

Anise’s first move to the public, after imprisoning her queen mother in the royal palace and assuming full power, caused a huge stir throughout the kingdom.

This was because Anis, who had gathered the residents of the royal capital on behalf of the recuperating queen, declared that the war against the demons had ended and that an era of peace had come.

The residents of the royal capital were greatly shaken when they heard that the demons, who until now had known that they had to fight against each other and that they were incompatible, had made an agreement with their representative, the demon king, not to invade each other’s territory anymore.

Peace is certainly something to be welcomed, but it was natural that people would not just react with joy at the fact that they would no longer fight and coexist with beings who have taken it for granted that they have been hated, disliked, criticized and blamed at any time.

In addition, demons were religiously defined as enemies that must be annihilated in the name of the goddess.

There were people who said that they could not accept the decision of the royal family due to their religious beliefs, and there could have been a big uproar, but it ended in failure because the saint, who has the second highest authority after the Pope and resides at the headquarters of the religious order, in the church that worships the goddess. This was because they suddenly came forward and announced a new interpretation of the doctrine.

The evil and demons that must be opposed in the scriptures are not demons that actually exist on this earth, but are abstract concepts, and there has been a problem with the interpretation so far, so demons are not the source of evil or demons themselves, but are merely a different race from another world. It was an unconventional interpretation.

Normally, she would have been taken away by the Inquisitor without even knowing it just for making such a claim, but the saint is second only to the Pope in the entire church and is no different from the head of the church power in the royal capital, so the Inquisitor cannot touch her. Rather, it was a being in a position to listen to orders.

It is not simply a matter of status, but in a world where divine power actually exists, the authority of a saint with stronger divine power than anyone else could be said to be higher than that of the Pope, who is only an elected position in the church organization and is only above the nominal hierarchy.

And thanks to the groundwork that had been laid in advance, quite a few priests agreed with the saint’s claim as if they had been waiting for it.

Priests who believed in the existing doctrine and opposed the saint’s interpretation no longer officially existed within the royal capital.

If there is no clear cause, people will eventually follow practical reasons, unless they are some extremists.

It is said that Queen Nephytia’s excellent rule has not caused any major disruption to livelihoods, but war is war, and prices are still at a stable level. However, young people who have gone to the front lines to protect the kingdom, willingly or unwillingly, are gradually disappearing from the streets and news is cut off from the citizens. There was no way I wasn’t anxious.

There was a lot of talk about the sudden change in the situation, but the citizens of the royal capital eventually accepted the change, accepting peace that would completely relieve their anxiety, and the chaos within the capital was quickly resolved.

However, public opinion was not able to unite, but those who could not keep up with the rapid change in the situation did not disappear, so a spark still remained beneath the surface.

90.

“Anyway, this doesn’t make sense!”

A little late in the evening, shouts rose up from a bar crowded with people who stopped by to soothe their tired bodies after work and quench their thirst.

“Peace? What peace, what peace is it with those fucking devil bastards?! Does that make any sense?”

The woman’s voice was slightly rough and high-pitched due to being drunk, and the surroundings were already full of noise, so the woman’s voice was not enough to attract attention.

However, another woman who was sitting in the same seat as her looked shocked with a cold expression on her face and tried to dissuade her from raising her voice even further.

“Hey, lower your voice. Someone listen.”

“I heard that someone else is listening, ah, no, um, that’s right…”

The woman, who was about to raise her voice in displeasure with a red-faced drunken face, soon calmly lowered her voice and relented, as if her initial momentum had been a lie, because the woman who had tried to dissuade her saw people in black clothes in the direction she pointed with her eyes. It was.

Inquisitor Idin.

Of course, no matter how ruthless the Inquisitor was to those who opposed the church that revered the goddess, and who was famous for not tolerating even the slightest insult to the goddess, there was no way he would immediately arrest him for voicing his displeasure while drinking.

However, it was natural for people to naturally lower their voices and become cautious about speaking out.

As the atmosphere in the bar, which would have been even more noisy, had calmed down a bit, one of the Heretic Questioners, who was in the corner and receiving a series of glances from people, opened his mouth to his colleague who was sitting in the same seat.

“Isn’t this really funny how we look?”

“Hey, senior, is it okay for us to stay here like this before that? I know that drinking is not completely prohibited by doctrine. Still, this is a bit…”

“Well said. There is no problem in doctrine, right? When did the goddess tell us not to drink? Everyone refrains from drinking too much for fear of making a mistake. Drinking itself is not a problem. I’m not at work and I didn’t drink that much, so what’s the problem?”

“What you said is correct, but…”

The junior, who could not dare to say openly to his senior, “I think it is right that he drank a lot.”, trailed off and instead looked at the empty liquor bottles on the table.

“Keu-hum, keuh-hum.”

Even though she turned her head and cleared her throat with a humble face at that blatant gaze, the female Heretic Questioner never let go of the drink in her hand.

And the voice of the senior who emptied his glass was heard again in the ears of the junior who was sighing in his heart as he looked at the scene.

“Martier, do you remember?”

The voice was a little quieter than before.

“Ma, what? Umm…. I’m not sure…”

“Is that so….”

When the junior, who was shocked and rolling his eyes at the senior’s suddenly hardened mood, was unable to find an answer, the female Heretic Questioner, who was watching him, sighed and filled the glass again without knowing when. I brought it to my mouth and gulped it down.

After some time passed in silence, the female Heretic Questioner opened her mouth in front of her junior, who was becoming restless in the frozen atmosphere.

“Yes, Hagisa, it’s not a good idea to remember who the other person is while doing something like this. In principle, that’s not the case, but it’s good for your mental health not to think of your work partners as human beings…”

“Seo, senior? It looks like you’re very drunk?! Let’s go!”

The junior who was listening to the woman opened his eyes wide and stood up.

Even if, as others knew and feared, the work of an Inquisitor was in fact closer to cutting meat in a slaughterhouse, on the surface it was a sacred and glorious job that followed the will of the goddess, and it would never be acceptable to deny or belittle that. .

Especially if it is the Heretic Questioner himself and no one else.

“Martier…. That’s the name of the woman I caught a month ago. What is the meaning of the endless war against demons? Not only this time, but every time throughout history, demons act and heroes appear to solve the problem. What does it mean to those who die in this repetition and are sacrificed on the front lines? A way to break the cycle of repetition. This was the woman who insisted that there was this. Do you remember now?”

“Ah, yes, I vaguely remember.”

While paying for drinks on behalf of a drunk senior and helping him out, the junior nodded appropriately at the senior’s drunken voice.

Even if they were doing the same job, each person’s attitude toward work was different, and in that respect, juniors tended to forget things quickly and did not want to think deeply, unlike their seniors.

So I didn’t remember it very well, but there was something that vaguely came to mind, so I responded accordingly.

It was a half-hearted response that did not seem very sincere to anyone, but the heretic questioner woman, who was already drunk, did not care and continued to speak.

“It was only a month ago that I buried a woman who made such claims with my own hands… Isn’t that funny? What’s the difference between what the woman said then and what the saint says now? Isn’t what the idiots who were complaining at the bar earlier were actually correct? If this is going to happen, what have I been doing? Peace ah? Does that make any sense?…”

“Ugh, senior, I’m too drunk. He said he was drunk. Don’t say anything and go in quickly. Let’s go in and rest. Yes?”

Fortunately, the female Heretic Questioner’s voice wasn’t that loud and she didn’t have any special eyes on them, so no one would have heard her, but the junior who was the only person right next to her who was listening to the woman’s remarks had wide eyes and looked around in confusion. I hurried my steps even further.

As if she was unaware of her junior’s feelings and efforts, words continued to pour out of the mouth of the Heretic Questioner once she had been pierced.

“Ugh, you have no choice but to get drunk. Still, I put up with it all, thinking it was His will, but now it’s like they’re flipping the palm of their hand and saying that the old teachings were wrong and misinterpreted… They say it’s all a ‘misunderstanding’, ugh, hehehe… Okay, well, that’s it. That said, isn’t it funny that now, on the contrary, we have to catch and ‘deal with’ humans who continue to fight with demons? What kind of faith and belief is there here, we were just tools, what did I do for, whoop, whoop!”

The female Heretic Questioner narrowed her eyebrows and glared at her junior, who eventually covered her mouth with her hand as she couldn’t listen to the dangerous remarks pouring out, but she had no choice but to soon relax her expression and correct her posture.

This was because I witnessed who the junior was facing who had an expression of complete ruin.

“Bishop Inari, this, this, that, that…”

There was a feeling of being buried because of the saint’s presence, but in the church organization that worshiped the goddess, there was a separate bishop in charge of the royal capital, and that was Bishop Inari, who had suddenly appeared in front of them.

The Heretic Questioner was also a priest in terms of status, and even though he was not on duty, he was drunk and complained to his superiors. The female Heretic Questioner looked as if she had sobered up and tried to make an excuse. I couldn’t speak properly.

“That’s it, no need to say more. Yeah, you had that thought too. Now that you understand, go ahead.”

“Yes, yes! Okay!”

The female Heresy Questioner was so distraught at the obvious order to congratulate the guests and Bishop Inari’s attitude that she had no intention of listening any further that she hurriedly left the room with her junior without even knowing what she was talking about.

Then, perhaps because she was walking quickly and getting some fresh air, the Heretic Questioner’s drunkenness had subsided a little, and a belated question arose in her mind.

“You too? You definitely said that, right? You say ‘too’?”

“What are you trying to say again, senior?! That’s it, now let’s go back and sleep, please!!”

“Oh, no, that’s not it… I didn’t hear it wrong, right? Really?”

Bishop Inari was the person in charge of the royal capital, the center of the kingdom, so of course she could not be called an ordinary person, but the most famous thing about her was that she was the teacher who taught the current saint before she became a saint.

From the mouth of the saint’s teacher, someone who she could not help but think of as being on the same line, she heard words that seemed to subtly agree with her thoughts against the saint now. Even if it was just a word, the Heretic Questioner’s mind was bound to become complicated. .

Is this really a sign of agreement, or is it just a guess?

“Senior, I don’t know anything. What do I know? I don’t know what the bishop said. Do you know what I mean, senior?”

The alcohol that had receded due to nervousness came flooding back, and perhaps because of the reaction, the female Heretic Questioner, feeling even more dazed than before, remembered the last words left behind by her junior who had dragged her into the room and thrown her into the room.

It was clear that she did not want to think deeply about what she was doing, as evidenced by her reaction at the bar, which clearly indicated that she had no intention of having a relationship.

It might be one way to live like a junior, but the female Heretic Questioner thought that she couldn’t live like that and eventually lost her mind.

Next time, I thought I should see Bishop Inari again while I was sober and alert.