Ch.130Ill Fate (13)

“What do you know so much about the Life Tree Order that you’re babbling about Black Phoenix and whatnot?”

The priest bristled at Elisabet’s sarcasm.

“Ha! We are the legitimate successors of the Life Tree Order. The teachings that were severed long ago, the doctrine that the Empire cut off—we have inherited it!”

“You got one thing right,” Elisabet whispered. The excited priest continued his rant.

“The Empire is incompetent and the Order is corrupt. While serfs and freemen groan in suffering, it’s the nobles and priests who fatten themselves.

Behold, the sunken shall rise, and the soaring shall fall; the wealthy shall hunger, and the oppressed shall become oppressors. The day of reckoning will come when everyone is repaid according to what they’ve given. The day will come when all reap what they have sown. It will surely come! The Black Phoenix will purify the world!”

These words were familiar to Kain. They were the usual rhetoric of heretics. But Elisabet merely frowned.

“That’s not what it means.”

“What?”

“The passage you recited isn’t about overthrowing the established order—it’s about cycles. How are you interpreting the text?

Spring, summer, autumn, and winter—a young tree sprouts, draws nutrients from the soil, and grows leaves. It blooms, bears fruit, scatters seeds, and then returns its old leaves to the earth before becoming bare again. It cycles through dressing and undressing. Other trees, in their own ways, take from and give back to the world.

The sunken rain rises through the canopy, the soaring spores fall seeking earth, and the fruits that grow rich and abundant in summer eventually drop. Trees alternate between abundance and hunger, and the exploited earth receives more than it gives.

But trees and earth continuously create something better. They repay what they receive and reap what they sow. That passage is about love and life.”

“No. You’re the one who’s wrong,” the Black Phoenix priest growled.

“The blood of countless people killed by the Empire and the Order has soaked the ground, and their resentment will surge from the earth to the heavens! They will spill as much blood as they have spilled, and more! They have sown hatred, so they will reap hatred; they have planted death, so they will harvest death!”

Elisabet didn’t respond. She simply stared at the priest silently. The priest barked again, clearly uncomfortable.

“What are you looking at?”

“Why are you so consumed by evil?”

“What?”

“Why are you snarling like a starving dog? What did the Empire and the Order do to you? What in this world made you want to become the Black Phoenix?”

The priest’s face contorted. Elisabet continued speaking calmly.

“Fire is pure and clean. It burns and purifies everything. But when it embraces impurity, it creates tremendous soot. Dirty things, disgusting things, trees that died and rotted before they could grow. That’s what the Black Phoenix means.”

“Isn’t that exactly what I was saying earlier?”

“No. It’s different. Even the Black Phoenix eventually burns out. Things in this world flow and flow. Nothing is eternal. Taking just one piece of the cycle and worshipping it is narrow-minded. That’s not a cycle. It’s a disconnection.”

“…Ha.” The man dropped his arms.

“Don’t be naive. That cycle? If I can’t receive anything during my lifetime, if I’ve only given during my lifetime, what meaning does any of it have? I, me! This me! I’ve only been robbed! The world has never, not once, been kind to me!”

“What was taken from you?”

“Why. Why. Why did other children have parents, homes, and kind neighbors, while I had nothing? If my parents had been nobles, I could have lived like that too. If my parents had been wealthy tenant farmers, I could have lived like that too! But I…! Even the glory of the crusade was taken from me!”

Kain, who had been quietly taking notes, murmured.

“You mentioned the Children’s Crusade, right?”

“Yes. It was… my only chance to live like a human being. If I had become a hero! If I could have defeated the Demon King! Then, no one would have looked down on me. No one!”

“What happened?”

“…We went to the seashore.” Something like a sob escaped from the priest’s throat.

“It was our first time seeing the sea, so none of us knew what to do. The sound was similar to the forest, but all we could see was water, and our noses stung from the smell like sweat.

I remember taking off my shoes and walking on the sand. The waves washing over my feet. I took a drink and it was so salty I coughed and spat it out, but soon we were all busy splashing water on each other. But then…”

The priest hunched over. Even remembering seemed painful for him.

“…People on horseback approached. Ships came to the beach. The priest who led us separated the children. After waiting a while, wagons with iron bars arrived, and anyone could see they were trying to load us like livestock.

Everyone tried to run away, but we couldn’t escape from the mounted men. We were beaten severely and dragged along. That’s when I saw it. The mendicant monk who had led us this far was receiving money pouches from people in various attire.”

His hands trembled, but Kain continued to record the testimony. No one knew about the fate of the Children’s Crusade. All that remained was that the Pope, in his fury, had the monks in question tied upside down and burned, but no one knew where the children had gone.

If this priest’s words were true, then the Children’s Crusade was a massive human trafficking operation.

“…Where were you sold to?”

“…I don’t know about everyone. Pagans in the north and west. The Empire. The Eastern Union… Anyway, we were torn apart and sold everywhere. We had nothing to eat or wear, and two people died every day… I was relatively lucky. I was taken by boat to the riverbank.”

“Riverbank?”

“We just had to unload cargo at the riverbank. Being whipped was a daily occurrence, so there was hardly any skin left on my back, but I was still happy. Everyone knew what happened to the children who went to the wasteland. Rumors spread that they were tied to poles, loaded onto carts with their eyes covered, and led the army while screaming.”

His hands wouldn’t steady. Kain gripped his pen painfully tight. He had to write. Somehow, he had to keep writing.

“…Do you know the reason?”

Elisabet, whose knuckles had turned white from clenching her fists, asked. The priest nodded.

“…’Only a pure heart like that of a child can pierce through darkness and find light.’ There was a rumor that with the pure eyes and heart of a child, one could penetrate the darkness of the Shadow.

The children at the riverbank also received an offer. They said they would give us candy and bread if we went with them. They said we could really defeat the Demon King. They said we just had to sit in the cart…

No one listened. No one ever came back, and all we heard was that they went mad and died, or became monsters… Eventually, they started forcibly capturing children and taking them away. The knights and riverbank workers even got into fistfights.

Those monkey-like bastards still had some final conscience. I remember them throwing filth at the knights, saying, ‘This isn’t right, you sons of bitches!’ Fortunately, it soon died down.”

“Because the Demon King was captured?”

“No. Because they no longer needed children.”

“How did that happen?”

“In the Children’s Crusade, there was a brother and sister everyone liked. They were older than the other children, and they were really handsome and beautiful. We called them Prince and Princess. They really looked like nobles. Even adults didn’t treat them carelessly.

I heard… that brother and sister were from the same hometown. So we teased them about when they would get married. The brother didn’t seem to mind, but the sister’s face would turn red…

They said the brother and sister would lead the crusade, so they no longer needed guides.”

“Do you remember where they came from?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know that much. They only said, ‘We have a hometown to return to,’ and even that was reluctant. It was probably a kind of consideration. The vast majority there were children without parents or hometowns.

Everyone liked the brother and sister, but they were always with the youngest and sickest children, so it was difficult to get close to them. There were also too many of us…”

Kain focused on the sound of his own breathing. It was to calm his mind and gather his thoughts. When his breathing stabilized and his mind settled, he added, as if it were an insignificant, casual question:

“To care for the weak children in such a situation, they must not have been ordinary people. Their names must have been widely known.”

“Of course. I still remember them. Their names were…”

The priest revealed the names of the brother and sister. Kain repeated those names to himself. They were names he had never heard before. They were somewhat outdated names, the kind you might give in the countryside.

But Kain did not write those names in his report. In fact, he even altered the priest’s testimony slightly. He wrote, ‘The names are hazy in my memory.’

“…What happened after that?”

“The adults abandoned us and left. We were thrown away like garbage in the wasteland. While we were wandering, our master came to us. He’s the one who taught us the meaning of life.”

“Meaning…”

“We will burn the Empire and nail the eagle. That is the only meaning in my life. I can’t think of anything else.”

“…Were you planning to instill that in those children too?”

To Kain’s accusatory question tinged with anger, the priest tilted his head.

“They’ll be grateful later, just like I am. It’s better to survive, even if driven by evil. Rather than living stupidly and miserably without purpose. And, I never hit their backs.”

A sneer appeared on the priest’s face. Elisabet rose from her seat. Staggering slightly, she approached the bars.

“What? Are you going to hit me?”

“Time to carry the cargo, child.”

Elisabet’s voice was low. She growled, resonating her throat fully. Kain saw shadows gathering behind her.

“What nonsense are you talking about?”

“The time for dreaming is over. Now it’s time to work. You need to go to the dock and do what needs to be done.”

“There’s no dock here…” The priest who was talking back suddenly gasped. The undulating shadows clung to his body in various places. Like slugs crawling up, they overturned the man’s head.

“Wh-what?”

“Work!”

“Aaaaargh!”

The priest rolled on the floor. It was a movement as if trying to avoid an invisible whip. Elisabet cracked a horse whip and scolded him harshly. The priest ran toward the wall and fell over after hitting the stone wall.

“You worthless trash, you can’t even walk properly!”

With a thud, the priest’s body floated up and was slammed against the wall. It was as if a giant had kicked him.

“I-I’m sorry… I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

Cries of pain burst from the priest’s mouth. His tone was a bit whiny, like he had reverted to a child. A look of pain flashed across Elisabet’s face.

“That’s a good boy…”

Her tone was coaxing. The priest, prostrate on the floor, raised his head.

“You’ve been through a lot. That was a dream too. It was a bad dream.”

“Dream. Dream… yes. Dream… it was a dream…” The priest, who had reverted to a child, sniffled. “The dream hurt.”

“How did it hurt?”

“I was in some kind of… cave. Trapped by stone walls and beaten. I was beaten at the dock too…”

“It’s okay. Everything will be okay.” Elisabet whispered, pressing her forehead against the bars. “If you just trust me, everything will be fine. Who did I say I was?”

“…Master.”

Kain understood what Elisabet was doing.

She was rewinding the priest’s memories. Just as people recall painful memories from the past in dreams, she showed him the image of the dock to evoke confusion and pain, and now she was evoking the image of the priest’s master. Elisabet asked in a subtle voice:

“What did you say my name was?”

The priest hesitated. Elisabet smiled gently.

“Yes. You’re doing well as instructed. The thing I told you not to tell anyone. But recently, I heard something different. Someone told me you don’t remember my name correctly…”

“That’s a lie!” the priest shouted. “I remember clearly. Your name is Hans. The great alchemist Hans! One of the Seven Heroes, Hans the Diligence!”

Until then, Kain had been writing his report. Since he couldn’t record Elisabet’s hypnosis as it was, he was processing it into a normal question-and-answer format.

But the moment he heard the unexpected name, his pen slipped.

Hans the Diligence. A man who claimed to be a great alchemist but was actually nothing more than a wandering snake oil salesman and con artist. A cheerful character who often appears in the Seven Heroes epic as a jester and clown.