The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#Chapter 344 Delinquent Priest Rufus (2) - A Snake-like Whisper The feeling of serving tea to the very person who was about to send her to the executioner's block. How many people in the world could possibly know that feeling? Probably not very many. And for what it's worth, Raphaela hadn't particularly wanted to know it either. "...H-here. Please, have some." With a clunk, a wooden cup was set down on the wooden table. The narrow-eyed priest, staring at the green liquid placed before him with an odd expression, soon spoke. "Isn't this a bit too honest, for an attempted poisoning?" "...What?" Raphaela blinked for a moment, puzzled over what on earth he meant, then after a slight delay in processing, jolted in shock—no, she practically thrashed about as if having a fit. "A-aaaaaah, no!! Poisoning, what are you talking about!! It's just mugwort tea!!" "Hm, so you're saying a witch caught for heretical acts served tea to the very priest who could put her on trial, and yet it isn't poison?" Hearing him put it that way, she supposed that from the recipient's position, it would indeed look suspicious beyond belief. But Raphaela was innocent. "Really! Truly! There's not a shred of a lie in it!! It's just that, since I'm going anyway, I wanted to leisurely enjoy one last cup of tea, but saying that outright wouldn't have gotten me anywhere, so my only crime is making tea for you and enjoying some myself while I was at it!!" "...That's quite the scheme in its own right. Cup size included." Rufus let out a wry chuckle at the sight of Raphaela's cup, which looked like it could easily hold about five times the liquid his own did. Still, it couldn't be helped. Tea was practically a daily necessity to her, and sipping it little by little from a fist-sized cup only left her frustratingly unsatisfied, never quite giving her a sense of fulfillment. It was Raphaela's firm belief that tea, properly speaking, was something you steeped in large quantities in a big cup and drank ceaselessly, again and again. Whether it was because Raphaela's sincerity had gotten through to him, or because he'd simply let his guard down at the sight of her scatterbrained antics, or perhaps because he was confident he could endure or neutralize any poison regardless— Rufus lifted the cup to his lips and drank the tea down with impeccable manners, without so much as a single slurping sound. "Hm. The taste is a bit different from ordinary mugwort tea. It has more of a nutty, mellow feel to it." "That would be because I mixed in a few herbs. It's something I've refined several times over, so it clears both hunger and drowsiness at once." It was, all things considered, quite a pleasant exchange. And at last, once the tea was entirely gone, Raphaela let out a deep sigh. "Thank you for waiting. You may drag me off now." At her words, half resignation and half composure, Rufus tilted his head slightly and asked. "Quite a docile attitude. Surely you're not unaware of what a heresy inquisition entails. Didn't you consider simply killing me to silence me and fleeing instead?" "In this Divine Kingdom?" Raphaela gave a bitter smile. "Using mana without authorization in Hasht makes you a criminal, but harming a member of the clergy is a shortcut to being treated as something less than human, let alone a criminal. I don't want to suffer Divine Punishment and keep suffering even after death." "That's quite peculiar. Why would someone who knows that do such a thing?" Rufus set the wooden cup down on the table and spoke. "Because you wanted an enormous reward? No. What you received calling it a treatment fee doesn't even cover the cost of the treatment you gave—it's practically volunteer work." "Because you demanded fame and respect? That doesn't make sense either. Neither the treated boy nor his father would know what risk you took on. Even if they feel gratitude, it would only amount to an ordinary degree of goodwill." "Because you had some deep personal connection to them? Judging by it, the boy you just treated doesn't seem to be a particularly close neighbor or family member of yours." If things went wrong, there was far too much to lose. Whereas even if it succeeded without a hitch, there was far too little to gain. And yet, why had she gone and done such a thing? At the narrow-eyed priest's sharp remark, Raphaela answered. "That's the thing, why did I do it…. What an idiot I am…." Clutching her own head, letting out heavy sighs one after another. "...Huh?" At a reaction quite different from what he'd expected, Rufus blinked. Though since his eyes were narrowed to begin with, it barely showed, and even if his eyes had been wide open, Raphaela wouldn't have noticed anyway. After all, she was already digging herself into the ground without so much as looking at Rufus. "I could've just pretended not to know! I could've just said I couldn't fix it! Why did I have to go and show off…!" Thud! Thud! Thud! Each time Raphaela banged her forehead against the table, her disheveled hair bounced along with it. It wasn't the sort of state fit to display in front of a man she was meeting for the first time today, but writhing in self-loathing as she was, she had no room left to consider that. After all, with death looming right before her eyes, was there really any room to worry about appearance or dignity? "Hmm." Watching Raphaela in silence for a while, Rufus suddenly curled up the corner of his mouth and spoke. "Then how about we make it as though it never happened?" "What?" Raphaela raised her head. As though it never happened? Could he possibly mean he'd let her off? He looked suspicious, but was he actually a kind and considerate priest? Raphaela pricked up her ears at the off-chance possibility, and— "You'll return that boy's arm to how it was originally—that is, to before you fixed it." —doubted her own hearing at the words that followed immediately after. "I— what do you mean by that…?" To Raphaela, muttering in bewilderment, Rufus spoke with a beaming, good-natured smile. "Your crimes are broadly two in number. Possessing mana without reporting it to the Church and submitting to its control. And possessing and using techniques that make use of mana." "Of these, the former is fortunately not that grave a crime. There are often people who go their whole lives without knowing whether they have mana or not, and it's not unheard of for it to awaken suddenly later in life either. If you turn yourself in to the Church even now, you'd likely be able to enter the Special Unit after just a few reviews." "But the latter is different. The Church strictly forbids unsupervised use of mana, and if it were to learn that you used it on a fellow believer without authorization, it would throw a fit. Straight to execution. Conversely, that means if only this could be made to have never happened, you might get through this safely." Only then did Raphaela, too, finally understand what Rufus was saying. Healing the boy's arm with unauthorized, heretical power was a sin. So then, if the arm were broken again afterward, it could be made as though it had never been healed at all from the start. "D-does that even make sense? It's not as if this were pencil writing you could just rub out with an eraser." "There's no reason it can't be done. I'll simply rule it so and report it up the chain. I've grown rather fond of this tea, after all." Rufus brought the contents of the teacup to his lips once more, then spoke. "Pharmacist Raphaela. You said so yourself, didn't you? That you don't know why you did such a thing. In a word, that means it was a momentary impulse, a foolish choice you now regret. I'll give you the chance to correct it." Rufus's voice was an exceedingly pleasant, beautiful one to listen to. Since anyone could make a mistake, the offer to overlook it as though it never happened, so long as she corrected it, even sounded considerate. And so Raphaela answered. "Um, well, I don't want to." A brief silence passed. Rufus went "hmm" and turned his head this way and that. "It's true, isn't it, that healing the boy wasn't part of some grand scheme, but was simply impulsive?" "Yes." "And it's also true that you feel regret and self-loathing, wondering why you did such a foolish thing and landed yourself in this crisis?" "Yes." "You don't particularly want to die either, do you?" "Yes." "Then why does it end up at that conclusion?" At his utterly bewildered reaction, Raphaela answered clearly, if only this once. "Well, because if I did as you say, priest, I feel like my dreams would be haunted right up until the moment I died." Rufus looked into Raphaela's eyes. And whatever he was thinking, he soon gave a large nod and rose to his feet. "I'll come to fetch you tomorrow morning. Since you'll have a long road ahead of you, be sure to prepare thoroughly." After Rufus's retreating back had disappeared entirely past the shop door. Raphaela gulped down, in great swallows, the now-lukewarm tea in her own large cup. And then she muttered. "What should I write in my will for it to be talked about as a masterpiece, I wonder…." *** In the end, Raphaela never wrote a will. More precisely, she had no spare time to write one. She was this village's one and only herb gatherer and pharmacist. In other words, the only option the villagers had to turn to when they fell ill. If she were to leave so suddenly, filling the medical void she left behind would surely be no easy task. She would set down in writing the knowledge that didn't rely on mana—that is, knowledge an ordinary person could learn without the Church finding fault or branding them a heretic—organize it, and make it usable for people. As for the writing itself, she'd kept at it steadily all along, so there was no need to rush and start from scratch, but organizing it and putting together a sort of guidebook that people could easily understand was, on its own, an enormously laborious task. Even working as quickly and decisively as she could, she still had to stay up almost the entire night. Fortunately, since she'd made a habit of never writing down anything related to mana or alchemy and committing it to memory instead, it was a small comfort that she had nothing separate to burn or dispose of. Still, thinking she wanted to look at least somewhat presentable on her way out, she took one last bath and was sitting in a chair when a knock sounded from outside. When she opened the door to greet her visitor, Rufus stood there gazing at her, the sun just now breaking dawn behind him. If she followed him now, a future leading to the executioner's block would surely open up before her. As Raphaela struggled to suppress her legs, which kept trying to tremble, Rufus looked her up and down. "Didn't I tell you to prepare, since we'll have a long road ahead of us?" "Yes. I've finished putting everything in order." "But why don't you have any travel luggage? Do you intend to travel empty-handed?" "What?" Tra… vel? "Raphaela, your crimes are grave. However, having determined that your will still has something worth seeing in it, I shall have you atone for your sins by joining me on my pilgrimage through the Sacred State and serving as my aide." Raphaela was momentarily at a loss for words. And then she thought. "No, wait, if that's the case, you should've told me beforehand!?" Let me correct that. She didn't think, she shouted. Common sense dictated that, in that place, under those circumstances, if someone said 'prepare for a long road,' anyone would take it to mean preparing to leave this world—how on earth was she supposed to understand it as meaning to prepare for physically traveling far away? To Raphaela's thoroughly just and reasonable point, Rufus replied. "Well, it's fine since you know now. Then go prepare at once. I'll give you ten minutes." —If you have a complaint, what exactly are you going to do about it? At an answer so utterly clear, Raphaela felt a surge of indignation well up, but unfortunately, there was no time to argue about it right now. Because that wicked priest had actually pulled out an hourglass and started timing her. After all but turning the house upside down in a mad clatter of packing for a while. Panting for breath, Raphaela returned before Rufus carrying a large bundle, then suddenly realizing something odd, asked. "But didn't you say, when you introduced yourself earlier, that you were newly assigned to this village as its priest?" Was someone like that even allowed to go on something like a pilgrimage? "Ah, that was a lie." At the sight of Rufus saying so with an utterly unbothered grin, Raphaela thought. That he was just like a snake flicking out its tongue. (E/N: He is a spawn of the Great Demon King, the original sinner, the one and only apostate)