After pretending to be aloof for about 10 minutes, Heinrich became the most polite person in the world, and after another 10 minutes, he became a sage who knew everything.

    I should say it was much faster than expected.

    It was a time when I could clearly understand how tough those Ka’har bastards are—the ones who only start talking after you open up the butcher shop and pull out their nerves.

    —-

    A while later, Lacy came up to the first floor, wiping the blood splattered on her face and flowing sweat with a handkerchief, smiling with joy.

    It was a smile full of refreshment, like an athlete who had just stretched their body after a long time.

    “Priest Heinrich confessed everything. As you expected, my lord, he said they fabricated the assassination plot under Cardinal Erich’s orders. It’s truly an abominable act.”

    “We got lucky. I was worried we might have caught an innocent person.”

    Not everything that glitters is gold, and no matter how suspicious someone might be, you can’t blindly assume they’re guilty.

    There was always the possibility that it was all our misunderstanding and Heinrich was simply a priest faithfully treating the critically ill Archbishop.

    In that case, what Lacy and I had done would have been a terrible evil—kidnapping and assaulting an innocent priest to extract a false confession.

    “I was concerned about that at first too… but it seemed to be his first time being interrogated, as he couldn’t control his expressions. That’s where I gained confidence. When I changed the order of questions and asked repeatedly, his answers remained consistent, so it’s unlikely he made a false confession because he couldn’t withstand the interrogation.”

    Fortunately, Heinrich was a man who didn’t disappoint our expectations.

    He knew everything—the detailed plan, accomplices, and motives—and revealed it all without any omissions.

    Though it was a hard story to believe.

    —-

    The motive behind Erich’s crime that Heinrich revealed was beyond our imagination.

    The motive Lacy and I had expected was simply trying to gain advantage by causing conflict between the Holy Sun Alliance and the Free Sacred Legion.

    After losing Archbishop Paulus, who was the central figure of the Sacred Night Struggle Council, the only way not to be pushed out of the faction fight was to weaken the other two factions more than themselves.

    Of course, there was also the possibility that he was actually a witch’s puppet or an apostle of an ancient god.

    In that case, this staged act would have been aimed at weakening the entire Holy State by causing internal strife.

    But that seemed odd considering that knights and priests had participated in this.

    No matter how close they were, would they follow someone trying to destroy their homeland? That seemed unlikely.

    So I thought it was a staged act committed under thorough political judgment, but…

    “He said he wanted to restore the Holy State to its pure form through civil war? What nonsense.”

    In reality, it wasn’t a political scheme but something that only a crazy fanatic would think of.

    Contrary to what Lacy and I had expected—a corrupt power holder—Cardinal Erich was surprisingly a devout cardinal.

    The problem was that the direction of his devotion was greatly distorted.

    He had a very violent interpretation of the domains of fire and civilization governed by their god, Kranus.

    He believed that war was the catalyst for advancing civilization, and that the fire of Kranus symbolized the flames of war.

    …In short, he was a war glorifier.

    Heinrich claimed it was more about glorifying holy wars, but from my perspective, I couldn’t see the difference.

    Anyway, Erich believed that the reason the Holy State had become increasingly chaotic in recent years was due to the corruption of the churches.

    He claimed that impure clergy who pursued power over faith had brought about this confusion.

    Up to that point, he shared the same thoughts as Lacy… but the problem was the solution he came up with.

    “If everyone in the Holy State wages war against each other, in the end, only pure clergy will remain. The gods would never look after the corrupted ones.”

    It was a typical idea from both a war glorifier and a religious leader.

    Blind and insane.

    The problem was that within the same church, there were many who understood and sympathized with his devotion.

    I would have opposed such madness, but since religion is an organization where people with similar ideologies gather, it was perhaps inevitable.

    Anyway, this staged act was also carried out to provoke conflict between the churches and cause a civil war within the Holy State.

    He had hoped that the false accusation against the Church of Volberg would cause conflict, but he was deeply disappointed when there was no clash, only verbal disputes.

    Crazy bastards.

    Being disappointed because there was no war—how is this any different from those Ka’har bastards?

    —-

    “So… what do we do now? If we make this public, an entire church will be wiped out.”

    If it had been due to a cardinal’s personal greed, we could have just expelled him and been done with it…

    But when we dug deeper, we found that the motive was pure religious belief, and most of the church members were direct or indirect sympathizers.

    At this rate, if we revealed everything to everyone, wouldn’t the Eleven Gods Religion become the Ten Gods Religion?

    “What can we do? If we leave it as is, a civil war will break out as Cardinal Erich intended. We must prevent that at all costs.”

    Lacy showed an attitude that there was no other way.

    She said it would be better for the Church of Kranus alone to be destroyed than for all churches to be involved in a civil war.

    “Well…”

    For me, neither outcome was appealing.

    So, instead of nodding, I rested my chin on my hand and fell into deep thought.

    Hoping that my smoke-soaked brain would come up with a viable alternative.

    First of all, if Erich’s staged act were to be made public, the Church of Kranus would certainly be doomed.

    Since it was committed based on doctrine rather than personal greed, the entire church, not just Erich, would be put on the chopping block.

    That part was really troublesome…

    If only Erich had been a greedy character, things would have been easier.

    Then we could have sent only the main culprit Erich and the ringleaders to the execution block, and shifted the core of the problem from the Church of Kranus’s doctrine to the personal ambition of the cardinal.

    …Wait a minute.

    Couldn’t we just do that?

    Suddenly, a lightning-like realization flashed through my mind.

    It wasn’t a method that could be called righteous by any means, but it was the one that would spill the least blood.

    “Lacy, how about we do this? I mean…”

    I explained the method I had come up with to Lacy.

    Lacy evaluated my plan as an excessively irreverent method, but she agreed that it was the method that would cause the fewest casualties.

    Hersella, who was listening, also gave it a positive evaluation.

    [It’s just like you. Somehow your brain works exceptionally well in these kinds of situations.]

    I wasn’t sure if it was admiration or sarcasm.

    Probably both.

    —-

    The next day, I left Durandal in my room and headed to the cathedral of the Church of Kranus.

    Under the pretext of visiting the injured Cardinal Erich on behalf of Lacy, who was busy with official duties.

    The priests of the Church of Kranus couldn’t hide their discomfort, but they couldn’t turn away a paladin of archbishop rank who had brought the highest-grade holy water and recovery potions, so they eventually granted me an audience.

    Cardinal Erich Rudolf was an old man who looked like a bulldog with eyes full of discontent and sagging cheeks.

    I mentioned the name of Priest Heinrich to him and requested a private meeting, and once we were alone, we had a very long conversation.

    Although voices were raised at times, after a lengthy discussion, Cardinal Erich accepted my proposal.

    He too couldn’t deny that this method was the best option.

    “…I will do as you say. I am… grateful for your leniency.”

    “It’s hard to call it leniency, but if that’s how you see it, it does ease my mind.”

    I looked down at Cardinal Erich, who was bowing his head in submission, and stood up.

    Now that I had his agreement, there was no need to stay any longer.

    All that remained was to wait for him to act according to my proposal.

    I told him to finish it today… so the results should come by evening.

    “Then, I will take my leave now. We won’t meet again. Rest in peace.”

    I gave him my final greeting and returned to the Elpinel Cathedral.

    —-

    Four hours later, Cardinal Erich convened a cardinal meeting and confessed his crimes before them.

    He said he had planned to cause a conflict between the Holy Sun Alliance and the Free Sacred Legion, and then eliminate them all when they had exhausted their strength, becoming the number one figure in the Holy State.

    Of course, it was hard for the cardinals to believe.

    Aside from it being an unexpected scheme, he was confessing suddenly after having succeeded perfectly, rather than having failed.

    However, Erich then presented evidence of his staged act one by one, and eventually the cardinals had no choice but to believe him.

    They just couldn’t understand why he was confessing a completed plan now.

    After finishing his story, while the cardinals were still in shock, Erich used his holy power to blow his own head off.

    Even a cardinal-level priest couldn’t resurrect a corpse with its head completely blown off.

    The cardinals tried to investigate key individuals to understand the full picture, but they had already ended their lives by suicide around the same time as Erich.

    The ordinary priests who didn’t know much about the situation were in shock that their cardinal had confessed to evil deeds and then committed suicide.

    Some found out that I had had a private meeting with Erich a few hours before his suicide, but no one could question me about the truth.

    After all, it wasn’t just anyone but the Empire’s First Sword who insisted, “I simply paid a courtesy visit to the sick”—no one could arrest and interrogate such a person like a criminal.

    It’s rare to find a mouse brave enough to bell a cat, or in this case, something more like a man-eating tiger.

    —-

    And so, the second assassination attempt that had stirred up the Holy City was vaguely concluded with the mastermind’s confession and suicide.

    Just as I had hoped.

    All those involved ended their lives by suicide, and Erich Rudolf’s honor was dragged through the mud.

    Not only was he stripped of his clerical status, but his body was also treated as a criminal’s corpse rather than with the respect due to a cardinal—it was truly a miserable end for someone who had acted according to religious beliefs.

    However, the Church of Kranus was able to survive.

    Since the motive for the crime was revealed to be the personal corruption of the cardinal, ordinary believers were merely blind lambs who failed to notice the intentions of a vicious hypocrite.

    The church’s influence would weaken significantly, but it was a much better outcome than having the entire church branded as an enemy of the Holy State and destroyed.

    Erich knew this too, which is why he readily followed my proposal.

    I threatened that if he took all the blame and dishonor and committed suicide, I would let it go, but if not, I would use Heinrich as a witness to publicize the church’s crimes.

    And as expected, he chose the survival of his church over his own honor.

    To me, Cardinal Erich was just an incomprehensible madman… but at that moment, he did seem like a devout religious person.

    Not that I had any intention of sparing him.

    If we hadn’t noticed his staged act, a religious war would have broken out. Blood would have flowed like rivers.

    So he had to die.

    Well… he acted according to his religious beliefs and committed suicide to protect his church, so perhaps Kranus, whom he served so devotedly, will take good care of him. Perhaps.


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