There were no flowers.

And no blood.

Darkness like dense fog shrouded the empty underground space. Other than the black stone platform before him, which told Muen he was still in this so-called “Holy Burial Ground,” the atmosphere from before had vanished completely in that brief daze. Not the slightest trace of it remained.

The bloodshed and killing intent were gone. The eeriness and death had dissolved. The pursuit and murderous hostility had vanished into the void as well. Any pressure from the outside world had disappeared in that instant.

But Muen had no sense of relief whatsoever.

On the contrary, after seeing that scene with his own eyes, something like a massive stone had already settled heavily on his heart.

“That was Archbishop Ision just now, wasn’t it?”

Muen pressed a hand to his forehead. His mind was already close to its limit, yet he still had to keep thinking, and it felt like his head was splitting apart.

He had not seen the old man’s face clearly.

But that ruby authority ring engraved with a cross of Holy Light had already made the old man’s identity unmistakably clear.

Ision Larosville.

The Archbishop in charge of Saint Blancfazesiya Cathedral, one of the nine Temple Archbishops, the Church’s highest-ranking authority in the entire Kingdom, and the Church’s immovable cornerstone in Saint Blancfazesiya.

Most of the Kingdom believed in the Goddess. Naturally, that made this place immensely important to the Church.

Which meant that Archbishop Ision, who had been stationed here, ranked near the top even among the nine Archbishops, whether in strength or qualifications.

He was definitely at least a notch above Archbishop Canterbury of Belrand Cathedral in the Empire—that shameless loafer who loved slacking off, drinking tea, and extorting people.

“And yet... he died?”

That image flashed through Muen’s mind again: beneath the embrace of countless little white flowers, a weeping nun driving a black dagger into his chest. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

The scene had been both holy and grotesque.

But what came after it was despair.

Utter despair for the real royal capital hidden behind the false surface.

Actually, when Bishop Kore had first said there was a problem among the cathedral’s upper ranks, Muen’s immediate suspicion had fallen on the Archbishop. After all, there were not many people in the entire cathedral qualified to appoint or remove a regional church bishop.

But after only a little thought, he had ruled that possibility out at once.

The reason was simple: if Archbishop Ision had already been one of the Salvation Society’s people, then the Salvation Society would not have needed to go through all these twists and turns.

They already controlled the Kingdom’s upper ranks. If even the head of the cathedral had been theirs, would they still have needed to create a false royal capital just to buy time?

Of course not. In that case, no one inside the capital would have been able to stop them. Everything would have naturally become theirs for the taking.

So Archbishop Ision had unquestionably been the hardest obstacle for the Salvation Society to overcome on its way to fully controlling the capital.

But now the situation was...

The Archbishop had not betrayed anyone, but he was already dead.

Yes, dead. Dead beyond any doubt.

At that final moment, Muen had sensed it with perfect clarity. The instant that black dagger—the one even Holy Light gave way before—entered Archbishop Ision’s body, the last scrap of life inside him vanished completely.

“Before that scene, Archbishop Ision was already badly wounded. With his strength, plus the cathedral’s own support, even the Salvation Society shouldn’t have had an easy time defeating him... so in the end, was he stabbed in the back by one of his own?”

Even the strongest fortress could be broken from the inside with ease. Since the Salvation Society had planned this whole chain of events, of course they would have made the necessary preparations.

And now, the balance of power in the real royal capital had probably already been shattered completely. With the Archbishop gone, there was no one left there who could stop the Salvation Society’s plot...

or even delay it.

The Church’s cornerstone in this city had been smashed to pieces. The greatest obstacle standing before the Salvation Society had ceased to exist.

The road ahead of them was about to become completely clear.

“We have to move faster... faster still... The people inside the capital can’t hold out anymore. That means outside rescue has to come immediately. Otherwise this city... is finished...”

Muen muttered to himself as he forced his nearly exhausted body upright and quickly left this “holy burial place,” where hope itself had been buried.

...

...

The way out was even easier than Muen had expected. He ran into no meaningful obstacles, and there was no barrier blocking his way. All he had to do was use a light spell {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} to obscure himself, and he slipped out of the cathedral with ease.

“Why does the cathedral here feel empty too?”

After merging into the crowd, Muen looked back at the cathedral entrance and frowned.

Under normal circumstances, in a “peaceful” city like this one, the cathedral should have been operating as usual. But even in broad daylight, other than a few novice nuns going about ordinary chores, Muen did not see a single higher-ranking member of the clergy.

And it was not just the clergy. There were barely any common worshippers here to pray either. The great doors, large enough for hundreds to enter at once, now saw only one or two people at a time, and even they hurried in and out as if they had received some important news inside and could not spare a second to linger.

“For people this devout, what could possibly matter more than their daily morning prayers?”

Muen watched the area around him in puzzlement.

“Want to know what happened?”

Suddenly, a childish voice trying very hard to sound mature spoke up beside him.

Muen glanced over casually and discovered that the little brat Pero had popped out of who-knew-where.

Apparently, he had been waiting outside the cathedral the whole time.

“You know?”

“Of course I know.”

Pero was no longer wearing that oversized shirt. He had changed into neat, fitted clothes, and now he waved a newspaper proudly in front of Muen.

“That’ll be ten Aimier a copy!”

“It went up again?”

“Can’t be helped.”

Pero put his hands on his hips and huffed. “My sister said we had to find a way to thank you, but I don’t have any money, so I had to come back out and sell newspapers again. And if I want to save enough money faster, then naturally I have to raise the price a little. Someone as rich as you should be able to accept that, right?”

“You call multiplying the price several times over raising it a little?”

Speechless, Muen flicked him on the forehead again. “And this is your idea of gratitude? Taking some lousy newspaper and scamming me like I’m an easy mark? You could at least bring a few more copies and make it look convincing.”

“Pbbbt. How is that a scam? Ten Aimier doesn’t even count as money to you!”

Pero stuck out his tongue. “So, want the paper or not? There’s big news again today.”

“What big news? Don’t tell me it’s another smear piece about me... about Muen Campbell.”

Muen rolled his eyes.

Just thinking about how even the cathedral clergy now knew his “glorious reputation” made him want to round up every newspaper printer in the entire capital and hang them all.

He had thought the tabloid vultures in Belrand were shameless enough, but compared to these Kingdom bastards casually smearing a righteous gentleman like him, Pink Bear practically counted as honest, upright, and committed to journalistic integrity.

“It’s not a smear story today. It’s a major event! A huge major event!”

Excitement sparkled in Pero’s eyes. His whole body had gone light with energy. If he were not waiting here for Mr. Bruce, he probably would have already taken off running somewhere.

Just like those hurried believers.

“...What kind of major event has a little brat like you blooming like a flower in spring? Out with it. Stop trying to build suspense.”

Muen rapped him with the side of his hand again, just to make sure the brat did not actually float away.

“It’s the Saintess!”

Pero clutched his head and whined in pain.

“Her Highness the Saintess is about to enter the city! Archbishop Ision already took a whole group from the cathedral to welcome her. This is the biggest event of the day. Even the kids on the street know it. You just came out of the cathedral and you don’t know? Sometimes I really think you’re some caveman who crawled out of nowhere!”

“Heh. So it’s that. I thought it was something important.”

Muen gave a dismissive sneer.

“Sorry, but I really don’t consider that a big deal. For people like you, seeing the Saintess once might be a miracle, but for a caveman like me, the Saintess—”

And then he stopped.

His expression froze with his words.

As if someone had suddenly hit him with a pause button.

“W-what’s wrong?”

Pero was startled by the abrupt shift and asked cautiously, “Are you okay...?”

“...What did you just say?”

Only after what felt like an extremely long silence did Muen slowly come back to himself and stare straight at Pero.

“This major event. What was it again?”

“T-the Saintess is entering the city. Archbishop Ision has already gone to greet her. It’s a huge deal. The whole city’s Goddess believers are losing their minds over it...”

Pero shrank back a little and raised the newspaper in his hand.

“It’s the headline in every paper...”

“...”

Muen snatched the newspaper from him and opened it.

Sure enough, in the most eye-catching section of the paper, today’s top headline was printed in larger, bolder type than anything else on the page.

—In order to discuss ways of peaceful coexistence, and to comfort the faithful wounded by war, the pure Saintess, symbol of the Goddess’s will upon the world, will today tour the royal capital at the active invitation of Archbishop Ision of Saint Blancfazesiya Cathedral.

It was another official-sounding report, followed by a long stretch of empty praise. Muen had seen so many versions already of stories about how Liya had once chosen to injure herself as a child rather than let some pitiful little animal suffer—a story Liya herself claimed she no longer even remembered.

But none of that mattered.

What mattered was...

As Muen’s grip unconsciously tightened, deep creases spread across the newspaper. But a few words on the page only became clearer and clearer in his eyes.

At the active invitation.

Whose?

Archbishop Ision’s?

He had actively invited Liya... or rather, the Church, into this city?

But the real Archbishop Ision, the true master of Saint Blancfazesiya...

had died not long ago, right in front of Muen’s eyes.

The one currently active in this false royal capital was nothing more than a fake, a stand-in meant to preserve its “authenticity.”

So how dared he...

An illusion this vast and this real requires a powerful support to sustain it.

That support must also be within the illusion itself, hidden inside it.

He would probably become someone who, within the boundaries of normal human thought, would seem the least likely person to be a problem.

Muen’s earlier guesses and deductions surfaced in his mind once more.

They should have been like rootless dandelion fluff, drifting through his thoughts without any proof to anchor them.

But now, with the real Archbishop dead before his eyes, with these words appearing in the paper in open defiance of common sense, with one abnormal phenomenon after another converging here—

even if the line between truth and falsehood was still hard to distinguish, the outline of the whole story was gradually becoming clear.

“I see.”

Muen lifted his head and looked at the grand cathedral, looming there like the gaping jaws of some beast.

A savage smile slowly curled at the corner of his mouth.

“I found you.”