Eve, as the territory representative, could not accompany me. Cellu's movement on land was restricted, meaning I'd have to carry her everywhere, and if we were unlucky at the Magic Tower, she could end up as a mermaid taxidermy. In Sieri's case, the Magic Tower itself was a safe place, so it wouldn't have been a problem to take her, but without Sieri, there would be no one to put the brakes on Eve. Elsi couldn't go because she was from the beastfolk tribe.
Therefore, I had to go on this business trip alone. Strictly speaking, I wasn't alone. A few undertakers, a few people to pull the cart, and two priests to help with the funeral procedures were with me. To explain the plan, the goal was to first retrieve the priests' corpses, quickly finish the on-site investigation, and then send the priests back to their hometowns.
The Archdeity Church cherished its priests so much that there was a system where if a priest died on a church-related dispatch mission, the high priest of that region had to go and personally officiate the funeral. I couldn't understand how a church could have more restrictions than privileges. Why wasn't the church in this world corrupt? Fuck, if this was an erotic game, shouldn't there be a pot-bellied, corrupt pastor raping women?
Was I still too immature, living a wholesome life?
I was etching such dissatisfactions into my mind as I packed my luggage. In a world where church corruption wasn't a given, my evil deeds would stand out too much. Eve and Elsi were seeing me off on my departure. A little farther in my field of vision, Cellu was waving her hand appropriately from the swimming pool.
Sieri had gone to work at the church early, and Aira still couldn't leave the house. Eve spoke.
"Buy me a present."
"I'll buy you a puppy tail."
".....What the hell are you trying to make me? Isn't a mermaid hybrid enough?"
"Because a mermaid hybrid with a puppy tail is hornier."
"You crazy bastard."
Eve appropriately brushed off my nonsense. Elsi heard this and said to me,
"If you're buying one, a cat tail is better."
"Pardon?"
"A cat tail is better."
"Ah, yes....."
I couldn't understand what on earth Elsi was saying, so I just played along and turned away. As I boarded the carriage, the priest sitting across from me bowed his head. With six priests having died this time, he was a funeral-officiating priest specially dispatched from the Archdeity Church Headquarters. He was a man of an age I couldn't speak down to, so I also bowed my head.
"A pleasure to meet you, High Priest Lusius."
The priest said so. He wore a smiling face, squinting so much I wondered if his eyes were just slits. I found that smile unpleasant, but I didn't let it show.
"Yes. A pleasure. What should I call you? Funeral Priest?"
"I would be grateful if you just called me Priest Elson."
The carriage departed. The sound of the wheels leaving the territory sounded somehow sorrowful. Priest Elson spoke.
"I heard you took a beastfolk as your escort guard this time."
"Yes, I did."
The news that I had taken a beastfolk as my personal bodyguard after taking a mermaid wife had already spread throughout the entire southern region long ago. Of course, who I took as my bodyguard was my own mind, and with the Eastern High Priest's certification that Elsi was with me voluntarily and not as a slave, even the Archdeity Church didn't say much.
"You seem to have quite a unique preference."
Was he mocking me? I asked with a smile.
"What do you mean?"
"Do you perhaps feel a certain, ah, special sexual desire for non-humans?"
"Are you thinking that I hired Elsi, a beastfolk, as my bodyguard because of lust?"
It was the right answer, but I pretended it wasn't. There was no way this priest who worked at the Archdeity Church Headquarters would know that I was fucking Elsi.
"That's not it, but as someone who is part of the Archdeity Church, I'm asking because your, ah... your personnel selections are just so explicit, I feel it might be a bit excessive."
"It doesn't go against the doctrine of the Archdeity Church, though."
The doctrine of the Archdeity Church had no such rule as 'one must not take a beastfolk as a bodyguard or keep one close.' In the first place, the Archdeity Church didn't even define 'human'. The first line of the Archdeity Church's scripture began like this.
'A human has a duty to live as a human. The Archdeity Church is the path and the truth that leads to that duty.'
"Priest Elson, do you think beastfolk are not human?"
"That's a difficult thing for me to say from my position."
"Then what's the problem? I'm not sure if you want to criticize the fact that my bodyguard is a beastfolk, or if you want to criticize something else."
Actually, I knew. To sum up what Priest Elson was saying in one line: 'Even so, a beastfolk is a bit...' It was a criticism, asking if I wasn't crossing the line, no matter how free the Archdeity Church was on this front. Considering my political standing and social status, there was bound to be some opposition to me keeping a beastfolk as a bodyguard and treating them like a 'human'.
Strictly speaking, beastfolk were invaders who gave humans a hard time in the Eastern Plains Region. It meant that no matter how much I practiced the teachings of the Archdeity Church, I had to be mindful of appearances. After all, in the territories of the Eastern Plains Region, there were many people whose families had been killed by beastfolk.
If I had to explain my current action, it could be described like this. After being told by a friend's parents to make myself comfortable at their friend's house, I immediately lie down on the wooden floor and start scratching my stomach. If the friend's parents see that and ask, 'What are you doing?'
- You told me to make myself comfortable, didn't you?
It was the same as answering like that.
Priest Elson was beating around the bush right now. Telling me to take it down a notch. The fact that headquarters had sent someone directly for an incident like this was surely to convey this message to me indirectly. The church couldn't be political, but that didn't mean it could completely escape political and social problems. The Archdeity Church had grown because of the kingdom's support, after all.
Priest Elson said no more. He looked rather displeased, but there was nothing more he could say anyway. Because aside from beating around the bush like that, he couldn't impose any sanction on me. Who would say anything about me hiring a freeman beastfolk as a bodyguard in my own territory?
With Priest Elson having shut his mouth, I was able to enjoy a rather comfortable carriage trip. Since the human right next to me wasn't talking, I could fully enjoy the scenery.
The Dwarf Kingdom was situated within a great mountain range. While it didn't match the magnificent majesty of the Dragon Mountains, the Dwarf Kingdom was also buried in enormous mountains. From a distance, I could see the sharp cross-sections of the mountains and the holes dug by miners. At a glance, it looked like Swiss cheese, and also like a disturbing image set up to trigger my trypophobia.
I looked at the mountain, frowned, and turned my head away. It was unpleasant to look at. A mountain riddled with holes wasn't an object to be stared at for long. In the original work, the Dwarf Kingdom had already found all the ore veins in the mountain range and was planning to migrate to the northern region. It was hard to tell from the original work's graphics just how fucked up the mountain was, but seeing it riddled with holes like that, I could tell that those dwarf bastards were fuckers who fucked up the environment just as much as fucking humans.
I couldn't stand the fact that bastards who looked like Brock Lesnar squashed by a press had ruined the mountain scenery.
Just as I was suffering from that shitty feeling, one of the priests riding alongside the carriage pointed to the horizon and shouted.
"It's the Magic Tower."
At those words, I stuck my head out. The magic towers of the Magic Tower City were truly towers. Dozens, hundreds of towers that looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa were lined up in a single city. Inside the towers, there were shopping districts, restaurants, and accommodations. For us, it was a space similar to a mixed-use apartment complex.
The higher the floor, the more skilled the mages who lived there, and mages without skill were not assigned rooms inside the magic tower. Therefore, even a registered mage often didn't live in a magic tower but built a separate house nearby or made a tent to live in.
We got off the carriage at the city entrance and looked for the person in charge. I could see someone running towards us from a distance. It was clearly the person in charge who had confirmed our arrival. As it was his turn to work in earnest, Priest Elson's frowning expression relaxed into a solemn face.
The person in charge gasped for breath and opened a thick roster. He was a man with thick glasses and an aquiline nose that left an impression.
"You are High Priest Peta Lusius, correct?"
"Yes, that's right. I heard that our priests, and the dispatched mercenaries, have all died."
"Yes, that's right. We recovered the corpses and moved them over here..."
The person in charge pointed to a small tent. The priests in a tent? As I stared at him with a peculiar expression, he hurriedly made an excuse.
"We had no choice because there was no room inside the Magic Tower to use as a morgue! A-And besides, it would be a bit much to give a room where a corpse was kept to a mage who entered the Magic Tower, wouldn't it? It's not right to put them in a warehouse either."
"No, well, I didn't say anything. Let's go quickly."
I had no intention of making an issue of it, but the person in charge was making excuses on his own.
"Still, we cast all sorts of magic, starting with preservation magic, out of our respect for the Archdeity Church, so there shouldn't be any problem with the condition of the corpses. They'll look just like they're sleeping..."
I entered the tent. Inside, corpses were laid out in neat rows and columns. I chose one of the corpses covered by a cloth and pulled it back.
"Whoa..."
The corpse was, literally, shattered. It was the kind of power as if a dwarf wearing a dwarf-made knuckle had landed a super blow to the face. I couldn't even tell who it was, so I just made the sign of the cross and covered the corpse with the cloth again. The funeral was the funeral priest's job anyway.
"What a tragic event. I want to see the scene."
My mission was, above all, to check the scene and uncover the truth of the incident. Though the conclusion would ultimately be 'Evangeline did it.'
The person in charge guided me to the scene. The priests were doing the corpse recovery behind us. But what if a problem arose later after they cleaned up like this? I spoke urgently.
"Just in case, could you please wait a moment? A situation might arise where we need to examine the corpses."
Priest Elson looked at me with a somewhat dissatisfied expression before stopping his subordinate priests. He must want to send the priests back to their families as soon as possible, so his dissatisfaction must be immense. But there was always a 'what if'. The situation could be complicated enough to require an examination of the corpses.
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