Holy Idol [EN]: Chapter 729

729. Unwanted Attention

‘Rembrary must be very upset,’ Rishue thought with sympathy, looking at the audience who showed no interest in the song. ‘He seemed to practice a lot.’

‘Huh?’

Then, Rishue noticed something strange. The accompaniment for the part where Rembrary should have already started singing was playing, but Rembrary wasn’t singing.

Only the piano music flowed out, and even the pianist looked at Rembrary in embarrassment.

The audience, who knew all the lyrics of the song as they heard it every year at the festival, also became curious and began to pay attention again.

“Why isn’t he singing?”

“Maybe the kid got nervous.”

At that moment, Rembrary, who had been standing blankly, finally started singing. However, he skipped several measures entirely, yet he didn’t seem embarrassed at all and looked natural.

As the child calmly continued singing, people were stunned and thought.

‘Did he perhaps skip the beginning on purpose?’

‘That kid is a genius. He must have deliberately skipped the beginning and sang it later.’

‘Since people weren’t paying attention, he skipped the beginning to get their attention again?’

‘Shouldn’t he be singing instead of being a priest?’

People who saw Rembrary singing without any fuss began to think positively on their own.

Moreover, thanks to the light Redrin [divine energy] mixed into Rembrary’s voice, people immediately forgot the brief commotion and became absorbed in the beautiful song as they focused on the music.

Then, when Rembrary’s solo part finally ended, the children began to sing in chorus again.

Some people who saw that were even moved to tears.

Rishue watched this scene and relaxed his shoulders in relief.

‘Thank goodness. Still, he managed to get through it well.’

* * *

Although he was the one who deeply moved the people, Rembrary himself didn’t think much about it as he lined up to go down after the performance.

Rather, Rembrary’s mind was filled with the thought, ‘Why is the silver-haired person I saw at the Imperial Palace here again?’

The distance between the Imperial Palace and this temple is definitely not close, and he heard that not many people know that Rembrary is here.

But how is he here? Did he follow me? Or is it a coincidence?

Besides, the silver-haired person was gagging someone. What was that about?

However, as soon as he came down the stairs behind the stage, the performers who were waiting rushed to the children and cheered, so Rembrary had no time to think.

“Wow, you guys did so well!”

“I almost cried listening from behind.”

“Who sang the solo part?”

When the children awkwardly pointed to Rembrary, the performers poured out praise again.

“Wow, our baby priest, you sing really well.”

“Where did you learn to sing?”

“Baby priest, don’t you want to sing instead of being a priest?”

“There’s nothing I can’t do. The priest taught me how to sing. I’m not a baby priest, I’m a trainee priest. But it’s true that I sing well.”

Rembrary was so busy answering the people who praised him that he temporarily forgot about the silver-haired person.

However, while Rembrary forgot about the silver-haired person, some other people belatedly began to pay attention to the silver-haired person.

* * *

The guards were patrolling around the festival to prevent disturbances.

They stepped in to stop fights, and if someone tried to commit a crime, they arrested them on the spot and took them to the guardhouse.

It was also their role to take anyone who collapsed to the temporary infirmary. On big festival days like today, all the guards were extremely busy.

The guards also took the spectators who collapsed in front of the stage to the infirmary.

However, there were some other people who fainted besides them, and accidents happened here and there because there were so many people, so the guards didn’t notice anything strange about the spectators in front of the stage at first.

But around the time they had moved about six people, the doctor who was examining those who had collapsed and been carried in from watching the stage approached the guard captain and said.

“You need to take a look at this for a moment.”

The captain wiped his neck with a handkerchief and went inside the makeshift tent.

The doctor walked towards those who had collapsed while watching the stage.

Before the captain could explain why he had called him, he immediately noticed something strange and muttered.

“Those people… have black handprints on their necks?”

“Yes.”

The doctor approached the nearest patient. There were two black handprints around the unconscious patient’s neck and mouth.

The captain rubbed the black handprints with the handkerchief he was holding.

“!”

The captain looked at the doctor in surprise.

“This?”

“Yes. It doesn’t come off, does it.”

The doctor answered relatively calmly, as if he had already tried it several times himself.

“It’s not just this person. All six of them are like that.”

“Six people?”

“The six who were carried in after watching the stage.”

The captain stared at the doctor. The doctor pointed to the six people lying in a row and asked.

“What happened?”

The captain immediately went outside and looked for the guards who had brought them. The guards who came at the call looked puzzled and came to the tent.

“What’s wrong?”

They seemed puzzled that several people had been called out at once when even one hand was lacking.

“You brought the people who collapsed while watching the stage, right?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Do you know why those people collapsed? Did someone attack them, or were there any unique or common situations when they collapsed?”

The captain took the guards into the tent and showed them the black handprints on the necks and mouths of the injured.

The guards looked at each other, murmuring at the unsettling appearance that was usually called a wound. However,

They seemed to have no particular memory because they were moving so busily.

Then one of them carefully raised his hand and said.

“Actually, Captain. I don’t know if it’s all of them. I saw the scene where one person I brought collapsed.”

“You saw the scene?”

“That curly-haired person. He was about to shout something when the trainee priests from the Florandia Temple were singing in chorus.

But as soon as he shouted, a person with silver hair appeared in the blink of an eye, gagged his mouth, and disappeared.”

The captain immediately ordered, thinking that there was something unique about this incident after all.

“Ask the people who watched the stage if they saw or heard anything.”

About two hours later, the captain heard about the incident that happened briefly when the trainee priests were singing.

“So, circumstantially, those who collapsed were attacked and fainted when they tried to shout something at that time.”

The doctor approached the captain, who had become serious, with a clean towel and said.

“Take a look at this. No matter how hard I scrub, those handprints don’t disappear. It’s definitely not something that’s묻은 [묻은 means ‘covered in’ or ‘stained with’].

Besides, the people who fainted have no major injuries, but they can’t wake up.”

The doctor spread out the towel as if to show it and recommended.

“I don’t think the culprit is an ordinary person. Shouldn’t we ask the priests?”

* * *

The trainee priests under Rishue, who sang well, were specially rewarded with the opportunity to enjoy the festival.

Today’s performance was also a success, but these trainee priests had been busier than the other children to prepare for this stage. They had earned a day’s enjoyment.

Accordingly, Rishue and a few lay priests who played the instruments took the children to see the festival in earnest.

Rembrary also followed Rishue, turning his head busily here and there.

‘Huh?’

Then, Rembrary noticed that several priests were moving urgently, following the guards.

‘What’s going on?’

Curious, Rembrary tried to look at that side more closely by standing on tiptoe.

“Rembrary, you have to follow the person in front of you.”

However, the priest who played the piano immediately came over and turned Rembrary’s body to face forward, so he couldn’t see anymore.

Inevitably, Rembrary suppressed his curiosity and moved, following the smell of food.

The priests Rembrary saw arrived at the temporary infirmary, following the guards.

“These are the people.”

The doctor showed the priests the patients with black handprints.

One of the priests blew divine power into the handprint and clicked his tongue. When the divine power touched it, the mark on the neck wriggled slightly. The doctor was startled and stepped back.

The priest clicked his tongue and said.

“A demon has been here.”

The conscious patients were watching the doctor, guards, and priests, wondering what was going on.

Then, when they heard the word demon, they hurriedly got up and ran out of the tent.

The doctor and guards also reflexively stepped back three or four steps from the patients with handprints on their necks.

“Then what happens? Priest?”

At the doctor’s question, the priest answered relatively calmly.

“It’s okay. It’s not a serious or dangerous curse.”

“They can’t wake up at all?”

“They’ll wake up if you erase that mark.”

While one priest and guard were talking, a few priests in the back were exchanging glances with each other.

One of them was Priest Niran, who had hired them to instigate people.

* * *

Priest Niran took advantage of the fact that the other priests were distracted by the appearance of the demon and left the tent with a few other priests who had received money, and moved to a place where there were no guards.

When there was no one around, the brown-haired priest shouted in an excited voice.

“Did you see? Only the people we planted to instigate were attacked. Only they had black handprints. This is clearly the Demon King helping that prince!”

Other priests also seemed to think the same, and they said similar things.

“I thought he was a bit of a suspicious prince. If he’s really in league with the demons, wouldn’t it be dangerous?”

“But it was Redrin who saved that child in the end.”

“Is the demon who was with that prince still lingering around the prince?”

“Or maybe that prince has already been tainted by the demons.”

“If the demons are still attached to that prince, we don’t have to do anything…”

At that time, Niran hurriedly gestured to be quiet. The priests closed their mouths in a daze.

“Why?”

Instead of answering, Niran looked towards the sound of footsteps.

Between the bushes behind the tent. There was a person crouching in a place where there was clearly no one when he first came here.

He was a stranger, but the person’s clothes were vaguely similar to those of the priests.

However, the cloth wrapped around his waist came down a little longer, and he tucked his pants inside long boots, so there was a slight difference in clothing from the other priests.

For some reason, he was holding a notebook in his hand.

“Inquisitor…?”

Niran recognized that the outfit was that of an inquisitor [an investigator of heresy] and muttered.

“An inquisitor?”

Other priests asked in surprise.

“Yes. Hello.”

The inquisitor directly acknowledged it, put the notebook he was holding back in his front pocket, and stood up, smiling.

“Could you tell me more about that story in detail?”

* * *

Rembrary was eating sausages that had been greased and freshly grilled, cutting them into pieces.

‘Delicious’

The glossy grilled sausage looked like it was grilled roughly, but it was surprisingly savory and delicious.

But as he put the last remaining piece in his mouth and chewed it, he felt several people approaching from behind.

Rembrary only turned his head back. A priest he had seen a few times at the Florandia Temple was walking this way with a priest he was seeing for the first time.

‘Are they going to Rishue?’ Rembrary thought so, but unexpectedly, they came right up to Rembrary.

The priest he was seeing for the first time spoke to Rembrary.

“Are you Rembrary?”