Chapter 84
*
The night two saints were chosen at the Apostolic Palace of the Holy Kingdom.
The Inspectorate, located in the Imperial Palace at the heart of the imperial capital, Sanctum Hill.
An agency that, among the many factions of imperial politics, always maintained neutrality, overseeing and mediating all manner of disputes and scandals while protecting the empire from the shadows.
Put more simply, it was the empire's internal security bureau.
The lights in the office of the chief of Section 3 of the Inspectorate's Intelligence Division still had not gone out, even late into the night.
Clack.
In the office touched by nothing but silence, a fountain pen toppled over and rolled across the desk.
“….”
The fountain pen's owner quietly stared at the pen that had rolled away.
Michael Hausen.
In his thirties. Single.
A man who, at a young age, had his abilities recognized and was granted the title of marquis and the post of Inspectorate chief.
A lazy elite who handled his work cleanly and efficiently, yet had no motivation for anything and was practically nonexistent when it came to socializing.
That was the extent of the reputation he had among the nobles.
And right now, he was half-sunk into an armchair, rolling a peppermint candy around in his mouth.
‘What a hassle....’
Michael lay back on the sofa and ran a hand through his hair.
When he lowered his gaze, he saw three sets of documents laid side by side on the desk.
His languid eyes skimmed over the documents.
Soon after, he picked up the letter on the far right.
Looking at the upper left, he saw the seal of the Holy Pontiff.
Looking at the upper right, he saw the seal of the Inquisition Bureau.
===========================
Request for Cooperation from the Inquisition Bureau
Prior to the canonization of the two individuals described below,
we request a final inspection to determine whether their past actions contain any blemishes that might tarnish the church's honor,
and furthermore request your cooperation in carrying out a large-scale cognition-alteration ritual to erase the two individuals' worldly traces from future records of public perception.
— Subjects of canonization.
하나. Dr. Schnabel — canonization name: Black Saint.
둘. Aila — canonization name: Saintess of the Lamp.
===========================
Michael, after staring at the documents for a long while, let out a sigh so heavy it seemed to sink the ground.
This document, which had arrived late this afternoon,
was because of the contents written in it.
‘An inspection and a request for cognition alteration, huh....’
The inspection itself wasn't that difficult.
After all, inspection was something he did regularly anyway.
It was simply an extension of the work of combining evidence sent from the field in his mind and extracting meaningful information.
What he had to inspect wasn't that difficult either.
He only had to confirm whether the two people being canonized this time had any serious personality defects.
That was all.
As long as the saintess or saint wasn't some infamous, once-in-a-generation psychopathic serial killer,
the inspection request itself was practically nothing more than a formality.
But cognition alteration was different.
‘Lately, there's been a lot of this kind of work.’
Cognition alteration, along with inspection and dispute mediation, was one of the Inspectorate's main duties.
It was work meant to protect valuable talent for the empire, or to erase traces of things the empire had dealt with in the dark.
The problem was that cognition alteration could break the moment a fatal contradiction was found.
For that reason, the most important part of a large-scale cognition alteration was to delicately adjust memories and traces so that no contradictions arose from event to event.
The person in the Inspectorate who handled that best was Michael.
Though he was of royal blood, his temperament suited bureaucracy, so after he half-heartedly honed himself to launder his identity into that of a civil servant,
before he knew it, he had become one of the world's leading authorities on cognition alteration.
That was also why he could receive a marquisate at such a young age.
The problem was that, at the very least, the person involved hated cognition alteration work the most.
Since the work of gathering all the testimonies, witness accounts, and traces and then naturally rewriting or adjusting memories without contradiction was an awfully troublesome task for him as well.
Michael scrubbed his face as if washing away his annoyance, and stood up.
Once again, his gaze skimmed over the cooperation request.
‘To fabricate mystery by altering information....’
The cooperation request was a procedure to prevent contradictions from arising by clashing with the Inspectorate during that cognition-alteration process.
It was also to solicit the advice of Michael, an expert in this field.
And besides, if you went around snooping in another country without permission, it'd be a diplomatic discourtesy.
‘Are they trying to create yet another saintess like the Saintess of Victory, I wonder.’
As he looked at the request, a historical saintess from the records suddenly came to Michael's mind.
The Saintess of Victory.
A saintess said to have appeared simultaneously on countless battlefields, spreading hope to humanity.
There was no doubt that the saintess had been active on the battlefield.
That much had been cross-checked through numerous historical records.
However, the places where she appeared that didn't match the tales or the timeline probably involved the Inquisition Bureau.
The Inquisition Bureau's method was this.
Based on fact, they piled on a little falsehood to maximize the miracle.
That was probably what they were doing this time too.
Holiness comes from ambiguity.
They were probably trying to maximize the achievements of the saint and saintess.
‘So the work's already started, huh. They say they saved a patient whose heart had stopped and another struck by lightning.’
From Michael's perspective, the work seemed to have already started.
A patient whose entire body had been charred by lightning. A patient whose heart had stopped for five minutes.
They apparently made them get up and walk again.
Naturally, that would be the Inquisition Bureau's doing.
‘There's no reason to object.’
Michael didn't think that badly of the church's actions.
Humanity's present state was far too desperate.
People needed hope, and he understood that sometimes that hope needed to be kept alive with the lie of a religious miracle.
Of course, Michael, whose eyes could see the truth of miracles far too clearly, couldn't have hope himself.
And he didn't need to.
‘Since it can't go on like this forever, then let's sort through the information.’
Michael stood up and began checking the information the Inspectorate had on the saintess.
Aila, the Saintess of the Lamp.
The little girl said to have played the biggest role in this tragedy at the northern gate.
According to the testimony of those around her, she had never once been sick a day in her life.
The number of times she cast Refresh during this incident alone reached into the thousands.
It was a figure far beyond what an advanced healer could manage in a single day.
He had never seen her use the highest-grade divine magic recorded in scripture.
But she had brought about miracles on par with it.
In the surgeries she participated in, even those whose heads had been destroyed, whose bellies had been pierced, and even those whose hearts had briefly stopped all came back to life.
And since she showed the potential to use the highest-grade divine magic in the distant future, that criterion was also considered satisfied.
Lastly, even though no one had ever seen her praying, her divine power never seemed to run dry.
‘She fits the five principles of a saintess.’
Michael thought that as he turned to the next page.
— The girl always carried a mana lantern. She would shine its light into every dark corner of the ward as she went. The patients whose beds that lantern visited would, by the next day, generally be back on their feet.
— Some of the patients, after waking up in their beds, stated that an angel had visited them in their dreams.
“So that's why she's the Saintess of the Lamp.”
A truly fitting epithet.
With that brief impression, Michael organized the information on Aila.
Michael's fountain pen began to move.
[Can be deleted. Can be deleted. Preserve at Grade 1. Can be deleted. Downgrade to Grade 2, then transfer to the Inquisition Bureau.]
The paperwork to send to the Inquisition Bureau was completed in no time.
Once he sent this over, they would use it as a basis to make the cognition alteration and the saintess's past traces seem far more mysterious.
Like saying she hatched from an egg, or that she'd been winning theological debates against theologians since childhood.
They'd probably flesh out her childhood with all sorts of details.
‘The virgin birth setup... I can't do that.’
She has a sister, so something like that isn't possible.
Instead, they were likely to use weather records or astronomical records from the day she was born.
Like saying the clouds parted that day and sunlight shone down on only her house, or that the constellations were unusually bright.
— Three holy knights dispatched by the church are due to arrive soon, and after this girl's formal canonization, the remaining family members are to be relocated to housing under church protection.
That was also attached as an appendix to the document.
But to Michael, it wasn't particularly meaningful information.
And so the matter of Aila was dealt with in an instant.
The problem was next.
‘... Julian Schnabel.’
The Black Saint.
Dr. Schnabel.
To the public, the man known as Shun Isa, Michael's brother-in-law.
His real name was Julian Schnabel.
But even that real name was publicly recognized as Julian Nihirit.
This was because, back when Shun Isa had made the vaccine, as part of protective surveillance the name Julian Schnabel had been erased from the world.
Instead, the figures Julian Nihirit and Dr. Schnabel were newly introduced to the world.
Michael remembered it clearly because he had been the one handling that job.
It had been such a huge-scale cognition alteration that he had been pulling overtime for months.
The Inquisition Bureau was requesting information on Shun Isa among that lot.
This wasn't a problem.
Shun Isa was originally the sort of man who only wore a mask and appeared at work, with as little social activity as Michael himself.
If all he had to hand over was information on Shun Isa, there'd be no major contradictions in the cognition alteration.
The problem was elsewhere.
Michael turned his head to the left.
The far left of the three documents laid side by side on the desk.
There lay a military document with its seal broken.
=========================
Official Document No. 47 from the Imperial Military Personnel Staff
To: Marquis Hausen, Chief of Internal Inspection at the Inspectorate
From: Edmund, Chief of Personnel Staff, Imperial Military
Subject: Request for inspection of the identity of Baronial Heir Julian Nihirit.
———
This military command keenly feels the gap in its anti-black-magic capabilities in Imperial Year 1049,
and therefore, as a fundamental countermeasure, has decided to establish a regular course titled 「Regular Tactical Course on Countering Black Magic」 for elite hero corps,
and hereby inform you in advance that we have in mind the following individual for appointment as the inaugural professor of said course.
— Subject: Julian Nihirit, baronial heir of House Nihirit.
.
.
.
———
March 12, Imperial Year 1049. Chief of the Imperial Military Personnel Staff Edmund — personally signed.
=========================
Michael's brow furrowed deeply.
To summarize the military's document, it was saying they wanted Julian Nihirit formally appointed as a professor of black magic countermeasures.
‘Did that guy finally succeed in persuading them?’
Michael thought of his half-brother.
Prince Edmund.
A man positioned at the opposite pole from himself.
A muscle-brained man who hated sitting still even when he was supposed to be at a desk.
According to Michael's memory, Prince Edmund had spent the past year pushing to establish a black magic course as part of military reform.
In the process, he ran into opposition from the nobility, the mage towers, and the church.
But somehow, Edmund succeeded in winning the Grand Sage's support.
And with that support at his back, he went and opened the course at last.
And before appointing Julian Nihirit as a professor to that course,
it was the same old ordinary request to confirm whether he had any personality defects.
There was nothing wrong with this request itself.
But the moment it was placed side by side with the canonization request for the Black Saint, a headache-inducing synergy was created.
‘On one side, they're trying to make Julian Nihirit a noble, and on the other, they're trying to make Schnabel a saint.’
The military was currently trying to turn Julian Nihirit into a noble.
If he were judged to meet the qualifications for a noble title, the military wouldn't hesitate to grant him one.
The problem was that he was already scheduled to be canonized as a saint.
‘Nobility and the priesthood, huh....’
Normally, those two could not be held at the same time.
So Michael had to reject one of the two documents.
Considering his position as an imperial civil servant, he ought to have rejected the Holy Pontiff's official document for the sake of the empire.
But what had made him agonize so much was the document placed in the middle of the three.
“... Father. What future in the world did you see, exactly?”
The emperor's edict in the middle.
— I have finished speaking with the Holy Pontiff. Approve both of them.
It had no context whatsoever, but its meaning was clear.
Since he was Charlotte's father as well as his own, there was no need to ask how he had foreseen it in advance.
Only, if there was one question—
‘Is that boy really such a great man that you'd care about him that much?’
Michael still couldn't understand what his biological father was thinking.
Julian Schnabel was indeed a remarkable man.
But was he worth enough to make an exception that had never existed once in a thousand years?
Michael couldn't understand.
Why it had to go this far.
But that thought didn't last long.
Michael had never really understood the emperor in the first place.
Even his younger sister Charlotte couldn't read their father's inner thoughts.
So even if he knew the emperor had taken an interest in Julian, there was no way to know what he meant by it.
And he didn't need to know.
He picked up the fountain pen that had rolled across the desk.
Chief of Internal Inspection Michael Hausen. — Inspection completed before canonization. No disqualifying issues. Application for the cognition-alteration ritual approved.
Chief of Internal Inspection Michael Hausen. — Inspection before the grant of title completed. No disqualifying issues. Permission granted for the on-site appointment to proceed.
Once the two signatures were done, the last peppermint candy had melted away completely in his mouth.
Lastly, he fed the emperor's secret edict into the incinerator.
Michael sank back deep into his chair.
Today's work was finally over.
Sorting and picking out the information to send to both sides was also a fairly grueling task for him.
“Adjutant.”
Ding-dong.
Michael called to his own adjutant.
“Send these documents out separately, and close the drawer for me.”
Michael's adjutant sent him a look that practically cursed him out.
Sending out the documents was one thing, but couldn't he at least close the drawer himself?
But Michael, having already used up his exercise for the day, seemed to have no intention of moving.
In the end, his adjutant pushed the drawer shut right in front of Michael, picked up the two document envelopes, and left the office.
Michael watched his adjutant's retreating back with languid eyes for a while, then muttered to himself.
“... Charlotte's going to have a rough time because of that fiancé of hers.”
No, wait?
Wouldn't she actually like the trouble caused by her fiancé more?
Maybe that was the case.
Unlike back when she spent her days alone in the detached palace like a dead-eyed doll,
these days, dealing with the incidents her future father-in-law kept bringing her seemed to have made life worth living again.
Having his one and only little sister regain her vitality wasn't exactly bad news for Michael either.
‘A woman who loves trouble and a man who brings trouble wherever he goes.... Maybe... a match made in heaven....’
Michael's thoughts did not continue.
He gave in to the drowsiness he'd been putting off and closed his eyes.
A fountain pen rolled once more with a clatter from the edge of the desk.