Chapter 561 – 561. Corrupted Priest (2)
As a result, Marius’ wish to become a full-time priest after completing priestly training and leading a happy life with a stable income was not fulfilled.
It was like a tough journey, but the reason he worked hard to graduate from priestly training with good grades was to become a priest that the orphanage, Ness, and villagers who supported him, and Bishop Venter, who wrote a letter of recommendation for him, could be proud of. I have endured it with one single thought to repay.
However, Marius’ training as a priest did not lead to that result.
“I came here after receiving a report that someone with xie jiao ideology infiltrated this place as a priest.”
A paladin from the Coloras Temple branch came to the central temple and arrested Marius as a traitor with the ideology of a cult.
“Hey, let this go… !”
Feeling unfair about being suddenly cornered into a cult, Marius desperately resisted, but from the beginning it was impossible for Marius, who had the physical abilities of an average man, to shake off the many trained paladins.
“Follow me quietly! On the rubbish subject of socializing!”
In front of many apprentice priests and temple officials, Marius, who resisted, was beaten mercilessly and unilaterally assaulted to prevent him from resisting.
“Oh my god… It’s called a cult… ?”
“How could something like that be inside the temple…”
“No… No… ! No! Everyone! I like socializing… !”
Marius desperately complained of regret while enduring the one-sided assault of the paladins, but he was already unable to speak when he faced the eyes of those who were looking at him.
Eyes of disgust and contempt, as if looking at bugs.
I realized that it is absolutely impossible to convince them that they are disgusted just by being together, with emotions expressed through their whole body and face.
Only then did Marius stop resisting.
It was not that he was accommodating to this incomprehensible misfortune that suddenly befell him.
The disgust and contempt of those who looked at him were dark and dull, terrible things that he had never felt in his entire life.
‘Why… Ji? Why me… What happened?’
Even if you ask the paladins who arrested you, all you get is the same answer.
“Because you have committed blasphemy by pretending to be a priest of a sacred temple while inheriting the teachings of a filthy cult!”
He couldn’t understand
Since when, where, what, how, and why, many questions have arisen in my head, but none of them are resolved, and dark emotions begin to stain my heart.
Eventually, Marius arrived at the temple’s dungeon after the rough entrainment of the Paladins.
“Go in!”
“Keugh… !”
Far from being respected as a human being, Marius groaned softly as he collapsed to the floor, imprisoned beyond the iron bars, as if a captured animal were being thrown into a cage.
He had bruises all over his body after the beating, and the tingling sensations and pains that overtook him made him feel like he was going crazy.
“You… ?”
“Uh… ?”
Eventually, Marius heard the voice of a familiar man from inside the prison, and while lying on the floor, Marius turned his head and stared in the direction he heard his voice.
The man also came to Marius, relying on his senses in a dark prison without a torch, and soon the two recognized each other’s faces.
“Marius… !”
“Ah… !”
Marius, recognizing that he was a man from the same village, gave a small sigh.
“Uh, how are you here… !”
“… It’s not just me.”
“What… ?”
Marius immediately recognized the people on the side of the man’s approach in his dark vision.
“Every… !”
Realizing that all of these people in this prison were villagers, he turned to the man again and asked.
“Why… How did this happen!”
“… I was tricked.”
“Tricked… Say?”
“We were tricked! To that priest and temple… !”
The man’s face, which did not hide his resentment, was not so fine.
The man, swollen and bruised, told Marius what the priests and paladins of the temple had done.
It is said that a few weeks after Marius left for the central temple for priestly training, Ness hurriedly vacated along with Venter, who had occasionally delivered news of Marius.
And while she was away, the lower priests and paladins from the shrine to take care of the nursery school started the problem.
They found objects and documents that symbolize xie jiao inside the orphanage, and they concluded that all the staff of the orphanage were members of a xie jiao group and began arresting them.
“That… Does not make sense… !”
“Nonsense.”
Of course, no one in the village believed the absurd story.
A nursery school that is daunting just to bring in young children who have no parents and have nowhere to go, feed them, clothe them, and put them to sleep.
It’s like a ridiculous skit that even a passing dog won’t laugh at.
The objects and documents that were said to be symbols of social jiao that she found were only very contradictory circumstantial evidence for Ness and her nursery school staff, who were unable to read and write basic texts due to her real life.
“But… The result is this.”
Of course, the villagers resisted the reckless suppression of the paladins and priests, but the resistance of the villagers was futile for the paladins who had been training combatively against the enemy with swords.
As a result, all the villagers, including children, the elderly, and young men, were imprisoned in this prison.
“The young women and girls in the village… I took them all away.”
“Ness… What happened to Ness!?”
“…”
I hurriedly asked where Ness was, but the man kept his mouth shut and turned his head away from Marius to avoid his gaze.
It didn’t take Marius long to understand what that meant.
“I will… Medical charge…”
The emotions that had accumulated little by little in my heart swelled up in a big way, and my whole body trembled as if expressing them.
“Why… ?”
A question popped up in Marius’ mind again.
Everyone, including the villagers, must have the same question as Marius.
Why did he and the villagers have to suffer such unreasonable things?
Marius and the villagers’ life in prison was hell itself.
Wounds sustained in the process of suppression and arrest did not receive proper treatment, and even meals were not properly provided to those who were no different from prisoners.
In the end, he couldn’t stand it and even came out as a casualty in prison.
There were elderly people who could not properly take care of accumulated fatigue and damage, and people who went crazy with the corpses of children still in front of them.
Ironically, Marius was the one who survived until the very end in a prison that was piled up at the end of being left as a corpse without a proper execution or even a proper funeral.
“…”
Marius thought as he waited for the day he would die.
‘It’s God.’
He continued his thoughts by calling the goddess Vesta, who bestowed the grace of divine power on him, into his heart.
‘Why did this happen to me?’
The origin of this incident was, in fact, what happened when she was able to use her divine power.
If that’s the case, isn’t it none other than himself who caused this tragedy?
He said that if he hadn’t been able to use divine power, if Bishop Venter hadn’t come to his village, this disastrous event would never have happened.
‘Answer me. She’s a goddess.’
Although Marius is said to be able to use divine power, he is not a faithful being who believes in the existence of a goddess.
This power was just a kind of means to use to help himself, the nursery school, and the villagers even a little bit, not a believer with a strong sense of mission to carry out his faith and save many people.
‘Is it because I didn’t believe in your existence?’
Is that why you get punished?
If so, I begged you to say so.
I will believe in your existence from now on, so please stop this painful punishment, save those who survived, and punish the false believers who are persecuting many innocent people with your existence first.
But in the end, the goddess did not answer her own call.
Her own prayers did not reach her goddess.
Marius finally came to a conclusion.
‘God doesn’t exist in this world.’
It is the real innermost heart of Marius, who has vaguely possessed it since he was very young, even though he lives in the territory belonging to the sacred kingdom of Erenia.
If there really was such a thing as God in this world in the first place, why didn’t she take care of her orphan herself and the people in her nursery school?
Marius and they couldn’t expect help from God, and they lived their lives trusting and relying only on each other.
That’s why I was doubting the existence of God in my heart.
If God really exists, there is no way he would have left the false believers who unreasonably exploited themselves who were unreasonably dead.
So we come to the conclusion that denies the existence of God.
[What are you?]
And at just the right moment, Marius felt a voice approaching his soul.
What his heart reached was not the goddess, but ‘something intangible’.
“Oops… Oops… !”
As dozens of corpses in the prison rot, the small black aura that has accumulated is disgusting and causes vomiting just by recognizing it.
“Oh come… Mind…”
Instinct realized that the disgusting aura that made gastric juices pour out on almost dying bodies was the crystallization of ‘xie jiao’.
Marius’ whole body was tinged with fear as he tossed and turned backwards, unable to even move.
‘No. Is it a cult?’
[Huh?]
That black, intangible aura stopped and swayed in the air in front of Marius with a voice that seemed to arouse interest.
His face, of course, didn’t even have a clear feature to speak of, but from that aura, he felt the gaze watching him without fail.
“Goddess… Are you?”
[… Huh?]
At Marius’ sudden question, the black aura showed a bewildered response.
It was an incomprehensible flow of thought to think of herself as a ‘goddess’ who was created by the fraudulent energy of countless corpses.
It was a conclusion that Marius reached with earnestness, thinking that he might have met the existence of the goddess he so desperately sought, but in the eyes of others, Marius was a man who had a strong taste.
[Aha. Whoops.]
Soon, the black intangible aura noticed Marius’ emotions in his gaze as he was waiting for an answer.
Those eyes that are expecting something earnestly want salvation, and at the same time, negative emotions of hatred and anger are swirling.
[My name is Medea. In the past, she was called the ‘Queen of the Dead’.]
Those emotions were Mediah’s favorite emotions.
[I needed limbs to move as my limbs to meet ‘my love’ who is here. Can you help with that?]
“Do you know what I wish for?”
[I know very well.]
Before long, the corpses piled up in the prison began to move slowly.
[A necromantic skill that can command the dead. You can use it freely to achieve what you want.]
Marius, who had not eaten anything for several days and was waiting for the day to die, was skinny as if only bones were left, but unlike before, he was able to stand up and walk.
The aura of Mediah, which began to fill her body, pushed back the divine power that Marius had given up on himself and took control of his whole body, beginning to construct her new body.
Marius threw away his divine power.
Because he didn’t need the power of a goddess who didn’t listen to his prayers and pleas, or the power of a goddess who neglected believers who were selfish and false.
And he decided to serve Medea, who had saved him anew, as his goddess.
[Hey, hurry up and finish your work. Please move hard so that I can go to meet ‘my love’?]
“All right. You are my goddess.”
