Holy Idol [EN]: Chapter 835

◈ 835. Punishment

“Rembrary?!”

A surprised voice shouted from behind. Rembrary turned his head.

High Priest Morso of Camuel was rushing over like someone who had seen a calf walking on two legs.

“Why are you here!”

Morso grabbed Rembrary’s arm, pulled him inside, and scolded him.

“I felt like I needed to be here.”

Rembrary replied calmly.

Morso was about to rebuke him for talking nonsense, but then he noticed the broken sword in Rembrary’s hand.

The Redrin emblem was engraved in the center of the hilt. Morso closed his mouth.

“It looks like Sir Cheru’s sword.”

Rembrary whispered, offering the sword.

Morso cleared his throat, glared at High Priest Iira, who was standing next to him, and then approached the dirt waterfall.

“Did it fall from here?”

High Priest Iira was too busy glancing at Rembrary to answer immediately. *How is that child here?* He was still in shock.

He had a hunch, but did he really follow? High Priest Iira swallowed hard.

If so, did that child see what he had done earlier—erasing the traces on the tree bark and grass? Those traces where he applied the liquid that attracts monsters.

“Hey.”

Morso snapped.

“Yes, it’s there.”

High Priest Iira turned his head away from Rembrary and quickly ran towards that spot.

Rembrary held Cheru’s sword in his arms and stared at High Priest Iira’s back.

“Are you okay?”

A Camuel paladin, feeling awkward, asked in a hushed voice.

“Yes.”

Rembrary replied in a slightly dazed voice and sat down on a small rock behind him.

High Priest Iira and Morso were talking to each other, but their voices were not clear.

‘Redrin, is Sir Cheru alive?’

Rembrary asked Redrin, but there was no answer.

Even though Redrin didn’t always answer immediately, the silence felt so unsettling today that Rembrary kept pushing the dirt under his feet with the tip of his shoe.

“Rembrary.”

As he was doing that, Morso called him. He looked up and saw Morso walking towards him, having seen everything.

“How is Sir Cheru?”

When Rembrary asked, Morso frowned deeply and said,

“It doesn’t look like we need to go down to the Demon World. He fell with the sword in one piece. It seems he managed to climb back up here on his own.”

“Why is the sword broken?”

“We don’t know. We can only guess. Maybe it broke while fighting a monster.”

“Maybe he came up and fell again.”

“That’s unlikely. Sir Cheru jumped down himself to retrieve the sealed artifact back then. Unless it’s a special situation like that, there’s no need to jump down.”

Morso ruffled Rembrary’s hair like he was smoothing out tangled wool and then bluntly shouted at the paladins.

“Find any traces of the missing Redrin paladin!”

Morso turned away and the paladins scattered, but Rembrary placed the sword on his lap and continued to stare at it.

“The sealed artifact is said to be in the shape of a bead!”

Morso’s loud voice, coming from somewhere, awakened Rembrary. Rembrary looked up.

‘A bead shape?’

Cheru had shown Rembrary the sealed artifact before. It was a hyacinth model made of purple glass. A bead? It didn’t look anything like it.

“If you find anything similar to a bead, or even a broken bead, let me know immediately!”

Did that High Priest Iira lie? But instead of telling Morso that story, Rembrary took out a feather and tried to go to ‘Sir Cheru.’

The feather didn’t move. He tried to go to ‘the sealed artifact that Sir Cheru broke,’ but it still didn’t move.

‘Why isn’t it working?’

There was no choice. He had to find it himself. Rembrary put the feather away and eventually started wandering around himself.

As Morso guessed, if there was a broken sword here… there would be other things too.

Fortunately, it wasn’t long before Rembrary found a broken piece of glass hyacinth. It wasn’t far from where the sword was found.

Rembrary took out a handkerchief and carefully picked up the glass fragment.

‘It’s broken.’

If the glass fragment containing the power of the seal is broken, doesn’t that mean Sir Cheru safely used the sealed artifact?

Rembrary was lost in thought, looking down at the bottom of the waterfall, and didn’t notice someone approaching him from behind.

* * *

You brought this on yourself. High Priest Iira thought to himself, slowly reaching out his hand towards the small back.

The ground below was mixed with dirt and sand. If he pushed hard, the child would slip and fall down the waterfall.

There was no fear of anyone seeing. His ability was to temporarily make himself invisible.

He was hiding his appearance just in case.

Even if Morso directly saw Rembrary falling, he would only think that the child had lost his footing. He had been hiding his ability all along for that purpose.

His hand almost reached the small back. The high priest closed his eyes tightly. And then, just as he was about to push.

A sharp pain passed over his head with a thud.

“Ugh!”

The high priest screamed and fell backward on his buttocks. His ability was dispelled, and the child turned around quickly.

“What are you doing?”

The child asked in a peaceful voice, seemingly not surprised. The high priest forgot the headache for a moment and felt a chill at the child’s even tone.

“I fell.”

The high priest made an excuse, then felt something dripping down his forehead.

“You’re bleeding from your head.”

The child told him with a smile, and the high priest felt a chill run down his spine and hurriedly backed away.

Only after putting some distance between himself and the child did he wipe his forehead with his hand. Bright red blood was wetly smeared on it.

He felt the pain in his head again. He felt a tearing pain slightly to the side of the crown of his head.

He carefully reached out and groped, and that area felt like it was being stabbed with a knife.

“Ah!”

The high priest lowered his hand and groaned.

“It looks like it hurts a lot.”

In the meantime, the child approached him and whispered.

Fear grew larger than the pain again, and the high priest hurriedly said,

“I’m, I’m okay. It’s nothing.”

He swallowed and quickly turned around, looking at the place where he had been standing.

It seemed like a stone… something like a stone had fallen on his head. A very sharp and fairly large stone.

However, there were no trees around where he was standing. Only dirt and sand were constantly flowing down, and there wasn’t even any undergrowth.

Then what on earth flew over his head? It wasn’t something that nature had done.

Then did someone attack him? It wasn’t the child. But who would see him? He was hiding his appearance with divine power!

“You’re bleeding a lot.”

The child came closer and whispered again.

“I said I’m okay!”

The high priest shouted and moved away from the child.

“Did you find it?”

As if he had heard the sound, Morso appeared, stepping over a large bush. Morso’s gaze went straight to the high priest’s forehead.

“Why is your forehead like that?”

“I fell.”

“Ah.”

Morso didn’t find it strange.

The high priest’s head was aching again as if he was being poked with a fork, so he couldn’t do or say anything for a while.

At that moment, the child trotted up to Morso and held out what he was holding in his hand.

“What is it?”

Morso took the glass fragment, handkerchief and all.

“It’s the sealed artifact that Sir Cheru took.”

At the child’s explanation, Morso glanced at the high priest.

“I heard it was in the shape of a bead? A glass bead.”

“This is it. Sir Cheru showed it to me.”

As the pain subsided a little, the high priest regained his senses. He wanted to insist that it was a bead.

The other party was a child. If he spoke well, Morso would believe him rather than the child.

However, the throbbing headache and the blue sky blocked his mouth. A stone had fallen from the sky.

He was afraid of that. What if another stone fell again the moment he lied?

“Is this correct?”

Morso held up the glass fragment and asked the high priest.

“…Come to think of it, it seems like that.”

The high priest reluctantly changed his words.

“You said it was a bead earlier?”

“It’s usually in the shape of a bead. But now that I think about it, it seems that the one Sir Cheru received was in that shape. High Priest Meli must have added the shape to hold a lot of power.”

Morso tilted his head and frowned.

The high priest staggered and leaned against a rock, pretending that his headache was severe.

“It looks like it hurts a lot. Why don’t you heal him?”

“He doesn’t want to.”

As he listened to Morso’s questioning voice and the child’s soft answer, the high priest kept calling out to the god Iira.

* * *

Even after searching every inch of the nearby forest, they couldn’t find Cheru. All they found were the broken sword and glass fragments that Rembrary had discovered.

The group stayed there for six more hours before leaving the forest.

Whether they were camping or moving through the forest, monsters continued to approach, but thanks to Morso, there was no need to fight.

When they returned to the nearby village, the village was in chaos.

The Redrin paladin had left a note and disappeared, so they were shocked and summoned all the paladins and priests in the area, as well as all the mercenaries and guards nearby.

“Rembrary!”

The paladin was among the people discussing whether to enter the forest or not, and when Rembrary approached blankly, he jumped up and ran over.

The paladin perfectly understood why the highest-ranking priest would never send Rembrary.

This child was good and capable, but too headstrong.

“What do you think you’re doing, suddenly disappearing on your own!”

“Redrin went with me.”

“Don’t make excuses like a priest! You’re being scolded right now!”

It’s true, though. Rembrary looked at Morso, feeling wronged, but Morso turned away.

“Don’t be too angry, Paladin. We met again. I missed you.”

“It doesn’t matter how nicely you say it.”

“Then what should I do?”

Don’t think about how to be forgiven, just don’t cause trouble in the first place! The paladin suppressed his rising anger and pondered how to effectively punish the child.

The punishments that apprentice paladins often received were running around the training ground, swinging a wooden sword five hundred times, and being grounded.

However, he couldn’t make a weak priest child run around the training ground or swing a wooden sword.

He couldn’t ground him either. Grounding him here would mean holding the group that came with him, which would cause even more trouble.

Besides, Rembrary wouldn’t even bat an eye at being grounded. After much deliberation, the paladin decided to cut off what the child liked the most.

“Rembrary, for the next three days, you will only eat bland soup, unsalted bread, and salad without dressing.”

“!”