Holy Idol [EN]: Chapter 823

◈ 823. Suspicious Village

Rembrary quickly approached a familiar face and tugged at his sleeve.

“Inquisitor? What are you doing here?”

*Inquisitor?* The paladins, who had inadvertently followed Rembrary, stared at Seditor with wide eyes.

Seditor turned around at the familiar voice. Seeing their surprised faces, he laughed helplessly.

“You’re still calling me whatever you want. An Inquisitor and a heretic are as different as heaven and earth, so please don’t call me that… You just call me ‘Inquisitor,’ and I have to launch into an explanation. Am I just talking to myself here?”

The paladins, embarrassed, looked away. Some returned to the wagon to organize their luggage.

Rembrary stayed put and repeated his question to Seditor.

“What are you doing here?”

Seditor had a large, square luggage bag leaning against his leg, a sketchbook under his arm, and a small glass bottle in his other hand.

He pocketed the glass bottle and countered, “What brings you here?”

“I came because there are sick people here.”

“You came because you were worried? How kind.”

“Of course. But I didn’t come *because* I was worried. I came to heal them.”

Seditor started to say ‘How kind’ again, but stopped himself, remembering Rembrary’s correction.

“You’re amazing. Well, your presence will be a great help to these people.”

“Of course.”

Rembrary smiled proudly and looked up at Seditor again.

“Why did *Inquisitor* come here? You’re not helpful at all.”

Seditor’s shoulders slumped.

“Why do you have to be so blunt?”

Even as he grumbled, he glanced back and forth between the village and the paladins, then leaned down and said in a low voice, “The disease spreading in this village doesn’t seem ordinary.”

“Is it a dangerous disease?”

“It is, but the progression and symptoms are a bit different from ordinary diseases. As you know—no, you may not know—but black mages have many ways to make people sick.”

“Just like Inquisitor.”

Seditor looked dejected at Rembrary’s cheerful remark and asked, “…You’re not doing this on purpose, are you?”

* * *

“See you later!”

As the paladins finished organizing their luggage and approached, Rembrary greeted Seditor and headed off with the paladins to find the village administrator.

Seditor waved, and as Rembrary and his party moved away, he lowered his hand, his expression turning serious.

“I smell something…”

Seditor muttered, looking around the desolate village.

“I smell something…”

Rembrary continued walking with the paladins, unaware of Seditor’s musings.

“Welcome! I’ve heard the story!”

As they approached a large brown building in the center of the village, the village administrator, who was standing out front, came forward, arms spread wide.

The administrator approached with a touched expression, then looked around at the paladins.

“The… the priest who’s supposed to heal is…?”

He seemed puzzled that only paladins were present when he’d been told a healing priest was coming.

The paladins stepped aside, and Rembrary, who had been behind them, walked forward with dignity.

The administrator looked down, his mouth falling open.

“Younger than I thought?”

The administrator’s voice was laced with embarrassment. The paladins, trying not to laugh, became overly serious.

Seeing their expressions, the administrator worried he’d been rude and that the paladins were angry, so he quickly plastered on a kind smile.

“Thank you for coming all this way. I’m truly touched. You must be Rembrary?”

“That’s right. I’m Rembrary.”

The administrator had heard the healing priest was still an apprentice, but he hadn’t expected him to be *this* young.

The administrator felt a chill as he listened to the child’s clear voice. *Can he really heal?*

“Where are the patients?”

“This way.”

The administrator led the paladins and Rembrary to the building where the patients were gathered.

Seeing that he had brought so many paladins, he must have some talent. He wouldn’t have come all this way for nothing. The administrator tried to suppress his unease.

When the administrator appeared, the guard standing in front of the building immediately opened the door.

“Are they all gathered here?”

When one of the paladins asked, the administrator shook his head, his expression gloomy.

“No. At first, I tried to gather them all here, but some people were too sick to even make it here.”

“You could have transported them on stretchers, couldn’t you?”

“That’s what we did at first. But when even the people carrying the stretchers collapsed, no one wanted to help anymore. So, the people who got sick early on or who are still in relatively good condition are in this building, but the people who are very sick are still in their own homes.”

“Is it an epidemic?”

Rembrary, who had been listening quietly, asked.

The administrator lifted one of the lamps hanging on the corridor wall and walked forward, answering, “It’s a bit ambiguous. It’s hard to say it’s an epidemic because some families with patients don’t get it, but it’s hard to say it’s *not* contagious because, as I said before, the people who carried the stretchers got sick.”

The administrator walked to the innermost part of the corridor and opened the door there.

A spacious room appeared, lined with numerous beds along the walls.

The patients were lying on the beds, not even covered with blankets, twisting in pain.

When one of the paladins covered his nose and stepped back, the leader paladin frowned and gestured for him to leave.

The paladin left discreetly. There was definitely a foul smell in the room.

“It’s the smell of medicine. We only thought about slowing down the disease, so it seems to be effective, but the smell is a bit strong.”

The smell of medicine was piercing, almost painful.

The paladins and the administrator unconsciously looked at Rembrary.

They thought that he was a child and wouldn’t be able to handle such a smell, but they also expected that he was a miracle-working healing priest and wouldn’t even frown.

But Rembrary was openly holding his nose.

The administrator felt embarrassed.

Instead of trying to endure the smell, Rembrary simply held his nose and approached the nearest patient.

The patient looked puzzled as the young child approached, pinching his nose.

“Who is this kid?”

The patient asked the administrator in bewilderment. Before the administrator could answer, Rembrary put his hand on the patient’s forehead.

“Are you taking my temperature?”

The patient asked, even more bewildered, then suddenly his eyes widened, and he sat up.

“It doesn’t hurt!”

The patient stood up next to the bed and spun around twice, then shouted tearfully, “It doesn’t hurt at all!”

The administrator gaped. *He heals this quickly?*

Seeing that he had brought several paladins with him, he thought he might have some talent, but when he couldn’t even stand the smell of medicine and held his nose, his doubts had begun to resurface.

But just by putting his hand on his forehead, he’d made him perfectly fine.

The patients, clutching their aching stomachs, raised themselves up and looked at Rembrary.

“This child—no, this person—is the famous healing apprentice priest!”

The administrator was a step late, but he quickly introduced Rembrary.

Then, the patients who could walk all got out of their beds and tried to approach Rembrary.

“Stay still, stay still! Rembrary will go around and heal you!”

The administrator raised both arms and shouted loudly.

“If it gets chaotic, it will only slow things down!”

The administrator shouted, then slyly asked Rembrary, “That’s right, isn’t it?”

The people awkwardly sat back on their beds. Rembrary also put his hand on the forehead of the patient next to him.

In that way, Rembrary quickly went around and healed people one by one.

Even though Rembrary had only touched them once, the people who had been in pain stood up in a flash.

The administrator couldn’t close his mouth, no matter how many times he witnessed it.

“Really… really amazing.”

When Rembrary healed everyone in the large room, the administrator unknowingly muttered to the paladin standing next to him.

The paladin proudly replied with a pleased expression, “Amazing, isn’t it.”

He couldn’t be prouder that such an amazing apprentice priest came from the Redrin Temple, not somewhere else.

* * *

Meanwhile, Seditor was walking around, asking people if there were any commonalities in how the patients had developed the disease.

“What commonality is there in a disease? You get it when your body gets weak.”

However, people responded harshly to Seditor’s questions. Some avoided answering altogether and walked away.

As the disease began to spread only in this village, people from outside villages who had been in contact with it began to treat this village as if it had been cursed.

On top of that, Seditor was walking around in an Inquisitor’s uniform, so people were responding even more sharply.

*Should I change my clothes?* Seditor thought gloomily, then stared intently at the vicinity of the bell tower on the outskirts of the village.

*The clock is stopped?*

The village clock almost never stopped and was repaired immediately if it broke down.

But the clock near the bell tower was completely stopped and hadn’t been repaired.

“Why is it like that?”

When he asked an old man who was passing by, the old man glared at Seditor but answered curtly, “It can’t be fixed no matter how hard I try. So, people from the neighboring village are saying that our village is cursed. Why, does it look like that to you too?”

“Of course not.”

The old man passed by without another word.

Seditor sighed. When he walked around in an Inquisitor’s uniform, people’s reactions were always one of two things: fear or wariness. The people in this village were already on edge, so the wary reaction was even stronger.

Seditor walked towards the bell tower. The bell tower manager opened the door for Seditor to enter when Seditor asked.

Seditor carefully entered. But as soon as he took a few steps up the circular stairs, there was a bang from behind, and the surroundings darkened.

He turned around quickly and saw that the door that should have been open was now closed.

*I knew it. There’s something here.*

* * *

After treating the people inside the building, Rembrary and the others gathered around a large table and ate a meal together.

“If the lord were here, he would have definitely invited Rembrary,” the administrator said proudly, pushing the sweet food that children would like towards Rembrary.

“Priest!”

But as soon as they finished eating and came outside, a person standing at the entrance suddenly knelt down and shouted, “My parents are too sick to come here for treatment! I’m sorry, but please go and treat them directly!”

“Get up, get up.”

The administrator waved his hand and gestured to the guard to take him away.

“If they’re sick, you should carry them on a stretcher. How can the priest go around to every house in this village!”

The guards approached the kneeling person.

“It’s okay. There must be patients who don’t have anyone to help them.”

Rembrary waved his hand and gestured for the kneeling person to lead the way.

“Thank you so much!”

The person quickly got up, thanked him several times, and went ahead.

Rembrary followed with two paladins.

But the person lived farther away than they thought.

As the person continued to walk to the outskirts of the village, the paladins thought that if they had known this would happen, they should have come by wagon.

Moreover, the person’s house was so small that it would be difficult to move properly even with just the paladins inside.

The person who guided them seemed to know this well and said with a flustered expression, “I’m sorry. The room is even smaller… Since both of my parents are lying down, only one more person can barely enter.”

When the person opened the door, it was true. A room with two adults lying on either end of the wall seemed to barely fit one more person.

“We’ll wait here,” the paladins said to Rembrary, standing in front of the door.

“Okay.”

Rembrary nodded and entered the room. And the moment he closed the door…