Holy Idol [EN]: Chapter 263

263. Find a Way Back (2)

“The Commander still trusts the High Priest. Of course, I do too. But we don’t have time.”

Silence filled the room. No one spoke except Nibling, the Holy Knight of the Redrin Temple.

Nibling felt miserable in the silence. He was proud to be a Holy Knight, proud to follow the gods and protect the priests. High Priest Rembrary was the most important person he had sworn to protect.

But the thought that he himself had to incite people to kill the very person he had sworn to protect, even at the cost of his own life, was agonizing.

“What’s inside the High Priest isn’t him. It’s just someone else wearing his mask. In other words, the current High Priest is both the High Priest and our enemy, the one who eliminated the real High Priest and took his place. He is also an enemy of humanity, a pawn of the demons who sells out his own people.”

However, Nibling believed that even for a Holy Knight whose duty was to protect the High Priest, the top priority was to protect the people. A Holy Knight is also a knight. That was the core mission of those who embarked on the path of knighthood.

If killing the body of one loved by God was a grave sin, then he would bear that sin. Nibling gripped the scabbard with one hand and slowly drew his sword with the other.

“If God punishes me, I would rather die gladly, knowing that He is still watching over us.”

Once the sword was completely out of the scabbard, Nibling held it aloft and shouted to the Holy Knights who were watching him.

“Those who don’t want to, don’t have to come! Only those who share my will, follow me!”

* * *

Once those who shared his will gathered, Nibling unfolded a temple map he had drawn from memory in the middle of a large desk and pointed to a spot with his finger.

“This is the High Priest’s bedroom. The fake High Priest is probably here.”

“Are we going to go inside?”

“No. There are too many guards when he’s inside.”

“Then…”

“Here.”

Nibling drew a line along the corridor in front of the bedroom to the temple gate. Eventually, his finger led to the nearest city.

“Once a day, the fake High Priest goes on a ‘procession’ with a demon. The demon is strong, but if it’s just one, the difficulty of an ambush won’t be too high. We’ll kill him then.”

Silence fell around them. Everyone gathered here had seen their work increase and suffered hardships because of the fake High Priest and fake Holy Knights, and they were even insulted by the people. The people’s antipathy toward ‘Holy Knights’ had become so severe that even real Holy Knights were using the name of mercenaries.

Even in this situation, they couldn’t shake off their miserable feelings at the thought of killing the High Priest who had created this situation. Even if that High Priest was a fake, his body was real.

“Should we all go?”

“No. Our numbers have decreased significantly, and if we all rush out of nowhere, it will be even more noticeable. We’ll go with the minimum number of people.”

“Yes.”

* * *

At the same time, Rembrary was also racking his brains.

‘People think I’m on the side of the Demon King. First, I have to change people’s minds. But how?’

Changing minds is possible with enough time and effort. The problem is time. If I slowly change people’s minds one by one, and those who remember the brilliant culture all die, it will be useless…

After much deliberation, Rembrary decided to use the procession—where the demons take him around the city like an accessory to break the people’s fighting spirit and hope—to his advantage.

‘Let’s get rid of the demons. In front of the people.’

And the next day.

Earlier than yesterday, but in the same way as yesterday, a demon wearing a Holy Knight’s uniform came to find him.

“Get ready. It’s procession day again today.”

“What about breakfast?”

“Huh? Eat later. Isn’t two meals a day enough?”

Instead of arguing, Rembrary obediently went outside. But upon seeing that insignificant action, the demon frowned and looked Rembrary up and down.

“What, did you drink?”

“Tell me after you give me some.”

“…The atmosphere is a bit different from usual?”

The High Priest, who was always locked in his room crying, was acting so resolutely today, which made the Holy Knight demon feel uneasy. He kept tilting his head. He seemed to have a good sense.

But to suspect Rembrary any further, this demon was already too dismissive of the High Priest.

“Let’s go.”

The demon shrugged off the momentary doubt and roughly grabbed Rembrary’s arm.

“Wait a moment.”

However, Rembrary suddenly reached out his palm and stopped the demon.

“What is it? Don’t be annoying.”

“Are we going alone? Again?”

“Then you want more to go?”

The demon ridiculed Rembrary’s question, but this time Rembrary grabbed the demon’s arm instead.

“Since we’re going, let’s go with a lot of people.”

“Is this High Priest crazy…”

“A procession with just you and me walking side by side? That’s not a procession. That’s a walk.”

“!”

“Or maybe… are there few demons in this temple?”

When Rembrary asked with a subtle tone, the demon snorted and sneered at Rembrary, thinking that Rembrary’s intention was to find out the number of demons in the temple.

“Trying to use your brain. Trying to find out the number of demons inside in that way? A human who’s even a High Priest is surprisingly good at using his head.”

“You’re reacting too much, so I guess there aren’t many.”

“Hmph, that can’t be!”

As soon as the demon said confidently and snapped his fingers, as many as seven demons in Holy Knight uniforms approached.

“This is the number just nearby.”

At the demon’s confident words, Rembrary nodded and pointed to the road they had to take.

“Lead the way.”

* * *

Sometimes, when you raise a weapon high to attack the person in front of you, you end up hitting the person behind you. [This is a metaphor for unintended consequences.]

“The fake is using his head like this!”

The person behind was Nibling. Nibling, who had infiltrated the city with those who shared his will, was dumbfounded and gnashed his teeth when the fake High Priest, who used to bring only one demon on the procession, appeared with eight today. How could he be so cunning?

“Isn’t it a coincidence?”

“Does this look like a coincidence to you? Does it make sense?”

“Even if the soul is fake, the body is the real High Priest. Redrin [Presumably a deity in this world] is giving him luck to protect the High Priest…”

One of the Holy Knights who came with him trailed off, unable to finish his sentence when Nibling glared at him sharply. But some of those who had already heard those words had their morale greatly lowered.

No matter how much they racked their brains, if Redrin tried to protect even the ‘body’ of the High Priest in this way, they wondered if it was even possible.

“It’s not Redrin who did it. He did it.”

Nibling sharply reminded the Holy Knights of their purpose.

“If Redrin was watching us, he wouldn’t have abandoned the world in this state.”

At that moment, one of the Holy Knights who was watching the High Priest suddenly exclaimed, “Ah!” and widened his eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

Nibling also turned around and dropped his jaw in surprise. The High Priest, who was walking down the street with eight demons, had stopped abruptly, and the eight demons surrounding the High Priest had fallen to the ground.

“What is that?”

The Holy Knight who had asked if the coincidence was Redrin protecting the High Priest’s body clasped his hands together with tears in his eyes.

“High Priest. It’s clear that the High Priest has returned.”

* * *

Rembrary’s plan not only disrupted Nibling’s ambush plan.

‘……I miscalculated.’

Rembrary thought that if he knocked down the demons disguised as Holy Knights, people would clear up their misunderstandings about him. At least, he expected that the people who saw this scene nearby would definitely clear up their misunderstandings.

But there were two errors in Rembrary’s calculations.

“Oh my. Does he even kill his own subordinates?”

“They defected together, but he just kills them without saying a word.”

“To think that such a cruel person was the High Priest…”

“Why did he kill his subordinates in front of us?”

“Isn’t that a signal to be careful with our actions and mouths?”

People whispered with their voices lowered as much as possible, but since there were so many voices, he could roughly understand what some of them were saying. Rembrary clicked his tongue inwardly.

One thing he didn’t expect: people didn’t know that the Holy Knights around him were demons wearing Holy Knight uniforms.

Thanks to that, when the demons who had completely exhausted their power disappeared to the ground, people thought that Rembrary had killed his subordinates, and they trembled with fear.

And the second thing Rembrary didn’t expect was the people’s distrust of the High Priest.

“What is he trying to do again…”

“Isn’t he trying to call his own gang?”

“He’s doing something like that because he has an ulterior motive.”

Even the young man who had shown so much hatred yesterday couldn’t dare to approach Rembrary, who was standing alone, and only looked at him with fear. Rembrary sighed softly.

‘Maybe regaining my reputation won’t be as fast as I thought.’

* * *

However, Rembrary’s actions were not entirely in vain. Although they were not the originally intended target, there were quite a few people who were impressed by Rembrary’s elimination of the demons at once.

“You’re not going to participate in the ambush?”

“That power in the street was definitely the High Priest’s power.”

“That’s right. He made the demons disappear. He didn’t kill them, he made them ‘disappear’. Who else but the High Priest could do that?”

“Instead of ambushing, we need to see the High Priest and confirm that the fake has disappeared.”

Some of the Holy Knights who had gone to secretly attack Rembrary with Nibling were surprised. Unlike the townspeople, they knew that the Holy Knights traveling with Rembrary were fake. That’s why they weren’t surprised like the townspeople, saying, ‘The High Priest is killing his subordinates now!’

However, Nibling was even more angry when he saw this change in people and shouted.

“This is the fake’s scheme! The demons are not dead! They’ve only exhausted their power! It’s a trap!”

Nibling was convinced that this was the result of the fake High Priest using his head. Thanks to that, the number of people who had gathered to ambush the fake High Priest had been completely halved in just one day.

Moreover, even the colleagues who had made up their minds to ambush the High Priest were divided into those who wanted to check if the High Priest had returned and those who said to stop talking nonsense and carry out the ambush. Nibling was in the latter group.

“Those who want to drop out, drop out.”

In the end, Nibling removed all the people who had changed their minds from the original attack force. Such people would be of no help and would only hold him back. That left almost half of the original number.

Nibling planned again, and this time, he thoroughly took advantage of the night to enter the Great Temple.