Chapter Thirty-Nine: A Place Filled with Love and Peace
After leaving the grand cathedral, Ruby began to explore the headquarters of the Holy See alone. As the central seat of the faith, the headquarters was naturally magnificent and splendid. The vast courtyard was bustling with people, but passersby gave Ruby only a fleeting glance before returning to their own affairs. He wandered aimlessly until he reached the area open to the public: the Hall of Murals.
These simple and abstract murals, for the most part, depicted the greatness of the God of Light as a means of proselytization. Most of the scenes, however, were fabricated by people; few bore any semblance to the truth.
“Young man, are you interested in these murals?”
As Ruby pondered the stories set out in those abstract images, a stranger’s voice sounded behind him. A cleric, dressed in a red-and-white robe, had approached without notice and asked the question with genuine curiosity.
“Yes, I can more or less understand them,” Ruby replied, glancing back at the man. At first, he was nearly blinded by a dazzling light—only to realize that it was the man’s bald head reflecting the light from the magic crystals on the ceiling. Looking closer, he noticed that this middle-aged priest didn’t even have eyebrows.
“Is that so? It’s rare to find a young man as insightful as you. Would you consider joining the faith? If you believe in the God of Light, you’ll have the chance to learn divine arts. One day, you might even become a cardinal like me.”
The cardinal’s polite overture was transparent to anyone with sense. He didn’t bother with flowery rhetoric and quickly revealed his true intention—trying to lure Ruby into the faith.
“No, thank you. I don’t believe in superstition—I believe in science,” Ruby refused without hesitation. As a native of Earth, he was a thoroughgoing atheist. Even having been saved by a so-called god, he still saw that youth as an extraordinary person, not a deity. The irony wasn’t lost on him: during Earth’s apocalypse, countless believers cried out to their gods for deliverance, yet only godless Ruby survived in the end.
“Why won’t you believe? The God of Light is real! We owe our lives today to the protection of the divine.”
“I disagree. The life I have is one I made for myself. Sure, someone who claimed to be a god helped me once, but I got food because I hunted for it, and I earned my money through my own labor. None of that has anything to do with any god. If I could just lie in bed and still be fed, then I might believe.”
“You—you—you… That actually makes sense… But I still think people need faith. What if, in your time of trouble, God hears your prayers?” The bald cardinal was left speechless by Ruby’s logic. He’d been rebuffed before, but never by someone who so thoroughly countered the argument for divinity. All he could do now was stubbornly persist.
“Then I’d rather believe in Aqua,” Ruby replied, though in truth he trusted no one. He could tell that if he didn’t give the bald man some sort of answer, he’d never be left alone, so he just blurted out the name of the only other deity he knew.
In the Holy Empire, there was no ban on religious plurality. In another story, Ruby might have been hauled off by the Inquisition for heresy, tortured, and burned at the stake. Here, though, it only served to sour the cardinal’s mood.
“The water goddess again? You heretics—just because she’s a goddess! If the God of Light were a woman, he’d be way more popular. Seriously!”
At the mention of Aqua, the cardinal’s expression soured. He grumbled at length about “men thinking with their lower halves,” no doubt because most of the converts he tried to win over ended up embracing Aqua instead.
“Look at that—Bald Hans has failed to convert another one,”
“Yeah, that’s the thirtieth time this month. What a disgrace. He should just quit already.”
Two holy knights, charged with maintaining order, burst out laughing as the cardinal was rebuffed. Dressed in spotless white armor, these young men showed not a shred of deference to their superior; they chatted about his experiences as casually as if exchanging family gossip.
“You little brats! Have you finished your patrol, or are you just going to stand around and gossip?” Hans roared in anger, kicking both of them away.
“Everyone here gives off such a warm aura,” thought Ruby. Though he didn’t believe in gods, he found himself warming to the Holy See. When Moyuna spoke of the Pope, he’d instinctively imagined a sinister place where people wielded divine authority to do harm. But after seeing the genuine way these people interacted, the honest expressions on their faces, he realized he’d been too quick to judge.
“Did you think the people of the Holy See were like the ones in your novels—harmonious on the surface but rotten underneath?” someone asked.
“Yes, maybe a little,” Ruby admitted.
“I’ll say this: people from your world are truly paranoid. Whenever you see a church, it’s always a den of villains. Don’t you ever wonder—if the god the church serves is truly good, would he allow his followers to commit such atrocities in his name? And if the god himself is evil, why bother pretending to be kind to deceive a bunch of lesser beings? Trust me, no god would stoop to such pettiness.”
“You’re right. My thinking has grown rigid,” Ruby conceded, shaking his head before returning his gaze to the abstract murals. Eventually, he reached the far end of the hall and stopped before a mural quite unlike the others. It was short and painted in a somber, shadowy style.
In the mural, magicians seemed to be struggling against some unknown foe, but their magic was powerless. Countless human corpses lay strewn across the ground, and the beings marching over their bodies were all white-haired, red-eyed humanoids.
“What do you make of it?” Bald Hans had quietly reappeared behind Ruby, speaking with a ghostly calm.
“Demons, right?” Ruby guessed.
“The demons of the underworld are far friendlier than these. That was the darkest era in human history. The God of Light’s adversaries weren’t just the Demon King Satan, but also the Goddess of Vengeance. No one knows why she hated the God of Light. She didn’t attack him directly, but turned her wrath upon his beloved humans.”
“The creatures she created with her divine power are the ones in the mural. Their bodies were made of light, impervious to all magic, and their sole purpose was to slaughter humans. Humanity’s numbers were halved by their onslaught.”
“Was it the God of Light who finally saved them?” Ruby asked.
“No. One day, the creatures and the Vengeance Goddess simply vanished from the records. Perhaps the God of Light reached some agreement with her—but that’s not for us to know,” Hans replied, his presence seeming to have materialized merely to offer this explanation. With that, he absently rubbed his smooth scalp and wandered off.
“So this is why people fear Moyuna?” Ruby finally found the truth Moyuna was reluctant to discuss. He scoffed at the legend; he could easily find several rational explanations for Moyuna’s appearance. There was no shortage of ignorance born of backward technology.
“Are you afraid?” Dragan asked suddenly, eager to see how his partner would react to the truth.
“Legends are never trustworthy. I only believe what I see with my own eyes.”
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P.S. Magic Overlord: Who knew I had such a big background!?
P.S. About the Holy See: As a long-time reader myself, I have to say that in all the books I’ve read, the church is never a good thing, haha. Its reputation is about the same as Beedrill in Pokémon—whenever it appears, the audience just thinks, “Ah, here come the villains.” That probably stems from what the church in our world has done (if you disagree with me, I’ll just burn you), using divine authority for all sorts of mischief. I’m too lazy to write elaborate conspiracies, so it’s nice to have a church with a different flavor now and then.
P.S. Thanks to the reader Ke Rou Lata for the 1000-tip, Xing Ye★Guang for the 500-tip, and hamletzhou, Qiufeng Yeying for the 100-tip each.