“Via, where have you been all this time?”
“Well…”
Via stirred the spoon in her bowl, thinking about how to answer Nana’s question.
After all, she couldn’t tell the truth.
“After you disappeared in Kado City, the Holy Land has been searching for you the whole time, but there’s been no news about you at all,” Nana said. “I asked a lot of people, and no one knew where you went.”
“I don’t want to be a cleric anymore.”
“You don’t?”
“Yeah,” Via nodded. “Being a cleric in the Holy Land only brought me unhappy things. So I decided to leave the Holy Land. I avoided everyone’s eyes and disappeared for a while.”
“Mmm… Now that you mention it, quite a few people in the Holy Land did bully you before.”
“Anyway, I could never become a saintess. There was no point in continuing as a saintess candidate. My sister is much more suited for it than me. You think so too, right?”
“Becoming the Saintess was indeed the least surprising outcome.”
Nana nodded, agreeing with Via’s statement. She never thought she herself had a chance of competing against Sophie either.
“Rather, all those saintess candidates were set up back then just to put pressure on my sister, so she would improve under that pressure,” Via analyzed.
“Ah, so that’s how it was? Actually, I’ve heard similar things from other people too.”
“The truth often hurts. That’s why I gave up on the idea of becoming a saintess and wanted to retire from the Holy Land. But the higher-ups definitely wouldn’t have agreed to let me leave so easily. That’s why I chose to disappear on my own.”
“Via, your appearance changed too. Was that also part of your method?”
“That’s right. If I kept my original appearance, it would be too eye-catching and I’d be discovered easily. To stay low-key, I had no choice but to use some disguise magic and change into this appearance.”
“It was actually magic?”
“Nana, you know that I don’t have much talent in sacred arts. So while I was studying at the academy, I secretly researched a lot of magic on my own.”
Nana stared at Via’s face for a long time without speaking.
“What’s wrong?” Via asked, confused.
“Via, you’re lying to me, aren’t you!” Nana laughed.
“Lying?”
“Yeah. You probably didn’t tell me the whole truth.”
“How did you know?”
Via almost blurted the question out loud but managed to swallow it back in time.
“Intuition. It’s all intuition,” Nana raised her finger. “Because the feeling I get from you isn’t just that your appearance changed. It feels like your personality has changed a little too. You’re no longer as soft and reserved as before. Instead, you’ve become much more talkative. I was thinking… the old Via definitely wouldn’t have said things like this.”
“Your intuition is really scary.”
Via felt helpless. Nana looked like she wasn’t very smart, yet in certain areas, she was surprisingly sharp.
“Even though I feel like you’ve changed, I don’t sense any malice from you. Just knowing that makes me really happy!”
“Nana, you’re one of the very few people in the Holy Land that I don’t dislike.”
Via had never been very good at getting along with Nana, but compared to the clerics who constantly looked down on her, Nana was far better.
“So that’s why you were willing to admit your identity to me?” Nana asked.
“Mm.”
“Being trusted really does feel pretty good.”
“Nana, during the time I wasn’t in the Holy Land, can you tell me about my sister? I want to know… how she became the Saintess in such a short time.”
Nana cleared her throat and coughed twice.
“Oh, so that’s what you wanted to know!”
“Soren promised to make the Holy Land the state religion, so Sophie’s status rose along with it… That’s basically it. Right now, because the current Emperor of the Saint Luo Empire has ascended the throne, His Holiness the Pope deliberately arranged some things to help Sophie establish her image as the Saintess in front of the public as soon as possible.”
Via now roughly understood. Pope Altes had been working to build Sophie’s image as the Saintess in the eyes of the public.
However, she still couldn’t understand why Sophie had cooperated so highly with all of this.
Also, during Soren’s ascension, the Holy Land had sent Sophie to interpret the divine oracle on behalf of God in order to legitimize him. That also seemed very suspicious.
Given Sophie’s personality, there was no way she would have done those things.
“Sophie also seems to have changed a bit. She’s become really cold and doesn’t want to talk to me at all,” Nana sighed. “The change in her is much more dramatic than yours.”
“Cold?”
“The bishops said that Sophie received a blessing from God and awakened some kind of revelation.”
Via felt that something was off the more she listened. Could this so-called awakening be connected to something happening to Sophie?
“I still miss the old Sophie~” Nana stretched lazily.
“Nana.”
“Mm?”
“There’s something I want to ask of you,” Via said seriously. “I want to meet Sophie. Can you take me to her?”
“Saintess, your work for today has been completed. Everything went smoothly, and the believers’ evaluation of you has improved even further!”
Inside the temple, a cleric approached Sophie and reported the current situation.
“You’ve worked very hard today. We’ll handle all the follow-up work. You don’t need to trouble yourself with these matters. Please go back and rest first.”
“Mm.”
Sophie nodded to show she understood. Having already completed the tasks assigned by the higher-ups, she had no intention of lingering.
She stood up and left the main hall through the back door.
She needed to return to the Holy Land through the teleportation magic array, making several transfers along the way.
The young Saintess walked alone through the corridor. Her beautiful face showed no expression.
A spring breeze blew, sending pear blossoms from the branches down onto the corridor.
There were no other clerics around. Everything was quiet.
Suddenly, she sensed something and stopped. She lifted her pale golden eyes and looked ahead. At the end of the corridor stood a black-haired girl, as if she had been waiting there for her arrival.
“Sophie. It’s been a long time.” The black-haired girl showed a complicated expression.
Sophie focused her gaze on the other person. After staring for a while, she spoke in a completely emotionless voice:
“Who are you?”