Paladin of the Dead God - Chapter 231



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Episode 231. Gearing up chaos (3)

Isaac was a bit bewildered, but he was swept along because he wanted to get information from the priests anyway. He was also curious about how the words he had been talking about in the Isacre territory had spread. It was common for stories to be strangely distorted as they passed from mouth to mouth.

“I never thought that the nonsense I was babbling about in a foreign land would spread all the way to the capital. Have many people heard my story?”

The young priests laughed and smiled awkwardly at Isaac’s words. Among them, the most enthusiastic priest with glasses – a young man named Claire – spoke first.

“It’s hard to say that it’s a mainstream opinion. But it comes up quite often among people my age. Usually, bishops and deacons dislike it, saying it’s radical.”

“These are the thoughts of old people who can’t read the flow of the new era! They’re not like the Knights of the Holy Grail who go out and check the situation, but rather the authors who hide in their comfortable parishes and mutter.”

It seems that the young generation is resentful of the privileged class everywhere. Of course, no matter what the logic, the young people can enter through the gap by destroying the old people. And the Code of Light was an extremely rigid conservative society. It was natural that the young people were enthusiastic about Isaac’s new argument, which was active both domestically and internationally.

“I wonder how my story spread.”

At Isaac’s words, the young priests spoke excitedly, one after another.

“Our current topic of conversation is miracles. Miracles are clearly the benevolence of a real God. However, as the Holy Grail Knight said, the common people of today worship miracles, not God.”

“A stronger miracle, a more wonderful miracle! What is the difference between paying money and buying a miracle? I don’t know if this is the top of the golden idol or the code of light.”

“That’s right! Miracles are just tools to follow God’s will, but the tendency to worship those tools has become stronger. As if having a miracle proves how strong one’s faith is!”

The Order of the Light’s Law is a rigidly hierarchical society with a rigid order.

As you rise in rank, you are granted stronger miracles, and if you happen to be granted a stronger miracle, you automatically rise to the appropriate rank. It seems as though faith is not involved in this process at all.

Strictly speaking, the religious order is nothing more than a tax collector. After collecting the faith and collecting the set amount, no further obligations are imposed.

The young priests were dissatisfied with that. They also talked for a long time.

Isaac began to feel strange as he listened to their story.

“Then what do you think we should do?”

“As the Grail Knight said, we must return to our original state! The Code of Light has already completed the rules of the world, and our purpose is to understand and explore them. We should not use miracles as tools without understanding them!”

“That’s right. The lighthouse keeper taught us the doctrine of miracles using light and fire, but it was meant to light lamps and light bonfires. Not to burn our enemies!”

‘No, I think it’s meant to be used for burning.’

Honestly, no other angel has burned as many people as the Lighthouse Keeper. Leaving aside all the other places, the actions he took in Mirmia, the holy place of the Salt Council, were enough to set an example of destruction.

But that was the fault of the lighthouse keeper, not the priests misinterpreting the doctrine.

The Code of Light never once spoke of burning enemies. From the beginning, the Code of Light was simply order itself.

The power that makes the world the world.

The lighthouse keeper took only the most destructive part of that power and put it forward as a basic doctrine.

Isaac was surprised that the young priests were speaking with such remarkable accuracy about his intentions. Of course, there were many things he could not say for fear of being branded a heretic or an apostate, but they were secretly revealing even such thoughts.

“Um, actually, I’m surprised that you all understand my story much better than I thought. Excuse me, but I’ve never met you in person and talked to you before… … .”

Honestly, it was so accurate that it was surprising. They even supplemented the fact that Isaac was just complaining and didn’t make any concrete logic out of it.

In fact, it wasn’t something that was hard to understand. After all, it was common on Earth for revolutionaries to create ideologies and then for those who followed them to edit and organize them in detail.

But that wasn’t what happened to Isaac.

Claire smiled happily at Isaac’s words.

“Nice to hear! I am glad that we understood exactly what the Grail Knight said. Of course, since the Grail Knight spoke based on the teachings of the owl, it was easy for us to understand as well.”

“yes?”

***

The teachings of the owl? Isaac wondered what that meant.

Although Isaac had studied the contents of the Bible, the teachings of the owl were a story he had never heard before.

“Yes? Weren’t you referring to the teachings of the owl?”

Claire asked, rather puzzled. Isaac was taken aback, but he wasn’t a priest who studied the doctrines of the Knights anyway. It wasn’t strange at all if he didn’t know.

“I think this is an area I am not very familiar with, so please explain.”

Claire seemed rather pleased to see Isaac asking for teachings.

“Oh, of course, it is an eccentric opinion that belongs to the Apocrypha, not the mainstream academic world, so you may not be aware of it, Holy Grail Knight. However, since there are many points of agreement, I thought it would be natural for you to be influenced by it.”

As expected from a cathedral in the capital city, it seems to contain books that are not strangely designated as forbidden books. In the remote monastery where Isaac was, such apocrypha could not be found even if one tried to look for them.

Soon Claire and the young priests began to explain the teachings of the owl.

To put it simply, it was a kind of fundamentalism of the law of light. The logic was that the current religious order was distorted, so the original order should be restored. It even went further and claimed that miracles were acts that distorted order, and that the descent of angels to earth was harmful to the ecosystem.

‘Oh my god, there was someone crazier than me before?’

As the priests said, Isaac and I had surprisingly much in common.

If you think about it, there must have been many people who felt skeptical when looking at the corrupted religious order, and since they couldn’t curse God, there must have been some who connected it to the corruption of the religious order. It was natural that Isaac’s logic was not new. Despite the efforts of these pioneers, the religious order simply did not change.

It was likely that the angels would have been displeased.

“Who is that Owl guy? He doesn’t sound like a person’s name.”

“Well, well, we only found the records, but we don’t know the name. Considering how he is so bold in telling even the angels what to do, he might be one of the great angels.”

Isaac’s original purpose was to investigate the cemetery murders, but if there was a senior who shared his views to this extent, he couldn’t help but find out. Especially if that person was actually someone who had not been revealed in history.

“Hmm, can I see some related materials?”

The priests’ faces turned pale at Isaac’s words.

“That, in fact, we naturally assumed that the Holy Grail Knight would have studied the teachings of the owl, so we told you, but it is not something that can be carelessly leaked outside.”

“Ah… … Well, I guess this is something that might make the higher-ups uncomfortable.”

But Isaac is not the type to just say, ‘Oh, I see.’ and move on.

Isaac activated the Eye of Chaos at that moment. The moment the pupils turned purple, Isaac delved into Claire’s mind. Claire’s mind was half-open, so he could look into it without difficulty.

‘huh?’

Claire was thinking about the owl’s teachings and their source as expected. However, Isaac couldn’t help but be taken aback by the unexpected content that came out of it.

“I thought about it, but I don’t think it’ll be possible, Holy Grail Knight. Ha, but if I get the chance later, I’ll try to make room for you! Could you come visit me again later?”

“… … Of course. I will definitely visit again.”

Isaac was a beat late in answering because of what he had read from Claire’s mind. He quickly turned around and hurried out of the cathedral, half-said or not.

I heard unexpected stories and found unexpected clues.

‘You found such an abomination in an underground cemetery?’

Their passion for learning was burning in strange places.

If Isaac’s guess is correct, the identity of the ‘cultists’ secretly operating in the cemetery is none other than the young priests of this cathedral.

***

Isolde slowly climbed the hill of the cemetery.

As expected of a cemetery built near the largest city in the empire, its scale was enormous.

It is fortunate that the funeral culture of cremation was developed after the creation of the Immortal Church. During the time when burial customs existed, the cemeteries that had accumulated alone were enough to create a small mountain.

‘They built catacombs underground, then built tombs on top of them, then built extensions on top of them to create another cemetery, then they collapsed once during the war, were buried under the earth, and then a columbarium was built on top of them… … .’

The shape of the cemetery is also like Ultenheim, built up like layers. I heard that when the doctrine of the Code of Light began to spread across the continent in the past, believers used to hide in this labyrinthine cemetery to worship to avoid the ancient gods. Now, it is said that heretics are hiding there, which is also a historical irony.

As we reached the top, we saw a huge furnace and priests burning the corpses that had been buried.

The priests waved incense to see the soul off to the afterlife, and prepared to put the charred ashes into a box and send it to the charcoal house.

‘Hmm, what should I do… … .’

Without much thought, Isolde followed the funeral procession into the charnel house. No one suspected Isolde of being in a monk’s attire.

After the priest placed the ashes in the ossuary, he gave a brief blessing and left with the mourners. Isolde, who was hiding between the pillars, looked around.

Of course, Isolde had told Isaac that she would not enter the cemetery. But the charnel halls, kept clean by priests, with holy fires burning in each hallway and incense burning to a pungent level to drive away the spirits of the dead, were at least safer than the Old City.

‘It’s almost like a monastery chapel.’

It was natural that the Code of Light, wary of the terrorism of the Undead Cult, would be pathologically obsessed with the management of the cemetery.

The charnel house was indoors, but it was well-ventilated and kept dry. It was certainly difficult for ghosts to roam around in such an environment. The same would be true of the strange cultists she had met in the old town.

‘Then the hiding place would be an underground area that is less managed than this… … .’

In Isolde’s head was already the blueprint she had obtained before entering the cemetery.

She wandered down the hallway and found a staircase leading down. It was locked, of course, but she opened it with a bunch of keys she had stolen from the priest as they followed the funeral procession.

Pickpocketing and theft are part of the Inquisitor’s training.

“Light is the key that dispels darkness, reveals secrets, and opens locked doors.”

Isolde muttered an excuse-like doctrine and pulled out the sacred torch hanging in the hallway and went down. The unquenchable sacred flame burned brighter than the other torches, illuminating the surroundings.

It wasn’t dangerous yet. The dangers were the facilities that weren’t in the blueprints, the ruins of an old era that had been built haphazardly. Isolde was only planning on figuring out how to get there.

However, the underground tombs are built to a level of complexity that is almost like a labyrinth, while being thoroughly managed, in preparation for ‘the one and only unforeseen situation’. This is to prevent the undead from easily escaping while wandering around underground, even if an unfortunate incident occurs.

But even in the labyrinth, where it would not have been strange for anyone else to have gotten lost in the darkness and panicked, Isolde skillfully found her way down to the next floor, and then the next. As she went down, the style of the hallway changed, and the decorations also changed. She could see the layers of the past piled up one after another.

The lower I went, the more the air smelled different.

With each floor she descended, Isolde felt as if she was going back in time by decades. Among the drifting dust, there must have been the ashes of those who had died before the Immortal Cult was even born.

After coming down for a while, Isolde stopped near the last passage she found.

‘It looks dangerous.’

The hallway she was standing in was a graveyard in the blueprint, but the large hole she saw before her eyes was not in the blueprint. It seemed like the space that had been perfectly fine had collapsed due to an earthquake or flood. Isolde took a quick look inside.

There was a wall engraved with strange patterns and decorations. It seemed like a place that only someone who studied archeology rather than theology could understand. Isolde observed the patterns and soon made up her mind.

‘Okay, then.’

She soon went back the way she had come and waited for Isaac in front of the charnel house. As the sun was setting, Isaac was seen running towards her in a hurry. Isolde looked at him and asked.

“Do you think you found some clues?”

“Uh… … I found some clues or something, but I’m not sure yet. But I didn’t know you’d be waiting outside. I thought you were definitely still exploring.”

Isolde glared at Isaac as if she was dumbfounded.

“Do I look like an idiot? I wouldn’t jump into a place where I don’t even know what’s inside.”

The incident in the valley of the monastery was so intense that Isolde always rushed into the scene with a foundation and safety measures. The danger always came closer than she expected. But this time, there was a clear sign of danger that made Isolde hesitate.

“I investigated the catacombs and found some worrisome traces. I don’t know if this will provide any clues, but… … .”

As she spoke, Isolde took out a piece of stone the size of her palm. The decorative tile that had been attached to the wall and had fallen off had a strange, rough, and sinuous pattern of tentacles carved into it.