Chapter 134
A grand festival that would set all of Bellaria abuzz.
This was a grueling task for the staffers who had to carry out all sorts of sundry preparations on-site, but it was hardly easy for the planners who had to give them their instructions, either.
“So how on earth are we supposed to structure the festival?”
Memorial events generally had some kind of established procedure.
Things like ceremoniously burning something elaborate to announce the festival's opening, having some high-ranking person give a speech onstage, or making the participants sing together—things like that.
If this had been an event with history and tradition, the planners wouldn't have had much to worry about.
They could simply follow what the elders of old had done, or change a few details depending on the times and other circumstances.
But this time, there was nothing of the sort.
The event itself had only just been created, so what traditions or anything else could it possibly have?
“Why don't we just take care of the opening and closing ceremonies and tell everyone to handle the rest themselves? They're all going to be focused on eating and drinking anyway.”
“That won't do. This isn't just any event—the Guardian Deity is involved. If we make it too brief and half-hearted, it could look as though we're insulting even the Guardian Deity's authority.”
“Then we should make it as splendid and solemn as possible. We can make the procedures complicated enough for people to feel the authority behind them.”
“No, no, you're all thinking about this the wrong way. What is the motivation behind this festival? Isn't it an event commemorating the priestess going to the Guardian Deity's side? That means we'll have to repeat this every time a priestess appears in the future, so if we plan a festival that's too extravagant, it will become an enormous burden going forward.”
It mustn't look too half-hearted.
It needed to be dignified and splendid enough to attract people's interest, with a packed schedule, while also minimizing the burden on the organizers.
After several rounds of discussion, the planners soon reached what they considered a perfectly reasonable and satisfactory conclusion.
“Then we simply need to maximize the priestess's role in the festival.”
That conclusion amounted to simply working the priestess as hard as possible.
They would make her sing in front of people, have her dance, and even hold something like a handshake event.
The pretext was plausible enough.
At an event commemorating the priestess and the Guardian Deity, the Guardian Deity was an entity that could not interact with people, so who could object to shining the spotlight on the priestess instead?
Of course, while it was convenient for the organizers, the priestess would be physically and mentally ground down by that brutal schedule. But that wasn't a problem for the planners to worry about.
What could the priestess do just because they were forcing an unreasonable schedule on her?
After all, whether she was a priestess or not, once she left for the Guardian Deity's side, they would never have to see her face again, would they?
The planners were satisfied with the perfect plan they had devised and went to bed in high spirits.
Then, before long, a shocking rumor began circulating throughout Bellaria: ‘When a priestess evolves, she becomes a Guardian Deity!’
The planners—in other words, the senior retainers of the Carnelian family—were quite relaxed when they first heard the rumor.
They should not be dismissed as mere retainers of an ordinary family.
The head of the Carnelian family was a lord in name only; in practice, he was closer to the king of Bellaria.
That meant the retainers working under the family head were effectively high-ranking nobles by the standards of other countries.
They heard a great deal, and possessed the ability to think in a more ‘rational’ and ‘reasonable’ manner, befitting their lofty positions.
A priestess becoming a Guardian Deity? How could that possibly make sense?
“Did you sleep peacefully last night, Lady Grace?”
“Ah, yes. More or less.”
That confidence was utterly shattered the moment they saw the family head bow to the priestess without the slightest regard for what anyone else thought.
The retainers had no idea that the family head, who had not only been beaten by a beggar but had also been polishing and oiling the surface of an oak barrel every day, had now simply lost his mind and entered a let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may mode. From their perspective, they had no choice but to conclude that there really was something special about Grace.
And so, a very simple quiz show was held inside their minds.
Q. The girl we bullied because she seemed easy to pick on turns out to be the next ruler of the country. What should we do?
A. Tsk, you actually believe that? What a pathetic level of intelligence.
Q. But our family head is speaking formally to that girl and bowing his head to her?
A. A corpse is talking.
The original plan to work the priestess to the bone was scrapped in its entirety.
The schedules Grace had been ‘required’ to attend were changed to an optional, ‘Come if you feel like it, and don't if you don't’ format. Even then, they were afraid it might look like indirect coercion, so the overall schedule was drastically reduced.
The staffers, suddenly ordered to change the schedule and fill in the gaps with the festival just around the corner, cursed the planners. But the planners ignored their complaints. After all, earning the resentment of their underlings was better than getting on the Guardian Deity's bad side.
“Hmm. What should I do?”
Meanwhile, Grace was not exactly enjoying herself, either.
It was certainly not because she loved her duties as a priestess all that much. The conditions simply did not allow her to enjoy herself physically.
Three minutes.
That was how long it took for Grace to go out into the street without an escort and become a stone statue, unable to move in any direction because of the crowd surrounding her.
People whose eyes gleamed with greed as they offered bribes with greasy hands were easier to deal with. But she couldn't just run away from children offering flowers with dirt-covered hands, or elderly people who silently bowed with moisture glistening in their eyes.
Nor did moving around with guards surrounding her suit Grace's tastes.
How was she supposed to enjoy the festival with a bunch of hulking men glaring fiercely from nearby?
“…Then can't I just stay quietly at home?”
“What kind of nonsense is that? People die if they stay cooped up inside, you know?”
“?”
Grace, who had turned countless homebodies against her in a single stroke, continued grumbling as she plopped herself down on top of the oak barrel.
“When you think about it, this is a festival that was started in my name, right? And yet I can't enjoy it? Is there any greater injustice than this?”
“Are you not moving your butt?”
“As if it weren't unsettling enough to be playing a god when that was never in my destiny, now I've become someone who can't even walk down the street like a normal person. They say a beauty needs a little misfortune to make her look more radiant, but my beauty is already radiant enough, so there's no need to add a misfortune trait on top of it.”
“Get off me, you little brat.”
“Oh, by the way, is everything all right on the Guardian Deity's end? It wasn't interested in the outside world to begin with, and since the family head says he's working hard to keep it in the dark, I've just been waiting. But honestly, I'm nervous.”
“……”
The moment Gritz fell silent, Grace immediately got down from the oak barrel and darted to the corner of the room. Her movements were unnecessarily quick and nimble.
Seeing the staff cautiously poke its head out from the opening of the oak barrel lying on its side before slipping back inside, Grace sighed in relief.
And at the same time, she thought:
‘As I thought, you can't see inside.’
Grace had spent a fair amount of time hanging around with Gritz.
In physical terms, it had not yet been two weeks, but for someone who needed only five minutes to become close to another person, it was plenty of time.
Yet throughout that long period, Grace had never once seen Gritz's true form.
No, she had simply never physically observed the inside of the oak barrel.
The oak barrel was not completely sealed. If it had been, it would have been impossible for arms to pop out of it or for the staff to be wielded like a limb in the first place.
One side of the oak barrel was definitely open.
But whenever she tried to peer through that opening, the result was failure for some reason.
Sometimes the angle of her vision was wrong, sometimes it was blocked by an obstruction or swallowed by shadow, and sometimes a sudden ray of sunlight or reflected glare caused her to miss the chance to see inside.
‘He really is a fascinating person.’
From the moment they first met until now.
The freak in this oak barrel was, to Grace, the very definition of an unfamiliar, strange, and entertaining outsider.
If she had once investigated his identity to forget her gloom, now Grace simply wanted to know more about Gritz as an individual.
That was also why she had become more forward in pestering him and babbling about trivial things.
“So, is there really no good way to deal with this?”
“I saved a woman who was merely waiting for the day she died, and now she wants me to provide entertainment too. You've thrown your conscience away completely.”
“Hey, repayment is repayment, and this is this. If I spent the rest of my life living gloomily just to repay a debt because I was helped, could you call that living? It would only be changing the way I die, wouldn't it?”
“…Hmm.”
For some reason, Grace instinctively knew that the corners of Gritz's mouth must have curled up as far as they could go.
Apparently, that conversation had been fairly amusing by his standards.
“All right. The real showdown won't happen until after the festival is over anyway, so it won't hurt to take a brief breather until then.”
“Oh, you have some kind of plan?”
“Yes. I'll go make some preparations, so wait here.”
“Yes!”
Grace smiled, her face lighting up.
And about three hours later.
She stared at the Oak Barrel Mk. 2 placed in front of her, her smiling face frozen like a plaster statue.
“Ride the barrel, Grace.”