Chapter 137
#Chapter 137 Beggar Gritz (13) - The Classic Royal-Road Cliché
Usurp the Guardian Deity’s position by exploiting the residents’ perceptions.
To make this operation succeed, Grace first needed to demonstrate before the people that she could wield the Guardian Deity’s abilities.
A “candidate who would inherit the power after the Guardian Deity died” and a “prospective Guardian Deity who already possessed the Guardian Deity’s abilities” were entirely different things.
At the same time, however, this operation absolutely could not be allowed to become a long-term campaign.
No matter how passive the Guardian Deity might be by nature, expecting it to remain docile even while its power was being directly stolen would have been far too optimistic.
Thus, the operation Gritz and Grace had devised proceeded as follows.
First, they would plant subtle rumors—hints that Grace might become the next Guardian Deity, couched as the possibility that such a thing might happen.
Then, at the moment when the greatest number of people had gathered, such as on the final day of the festival, they would put on a grand spectacle before the eyes of countless onlookers.
The strategy of laying down dry kindling and oil before setting the fire in earnest had succeeded, and rumors of Grace’s miracle spread through the entire territory with astonishing speed.
Now only one step remained.
They merely had to quiet the Guardian Deity, which might go mad with rage as it watched its own possessions diminish in real time.
“This way.”
It was a dark night when even the moonlight was faint.
The Carnelian lord’s face, as he led the way toward the temple dedicated to the Guardian Deity, was rigid with tension and anxiety.
Only the successive heads of the family knew the secret path to the temple, but if that had been all there was to it, the lord would not have needed to volunteer as their guide.
Before the operation began in earnest, he could have shown Gritz the way in advance and simply waited at home.
Yet the lord chose to go himself.
Partly, it was a calculation that if he had to kneel before Gritz and Grace anyway, he might as well kneel thoroughly; partly, it was desperation born of wanting to stop serving as a minion to the monster his ancestors had created.
When the lord standing before the imposing iron gate, as though determined not to permit even a single intruder inside, opened it with the key he carried, the scene beyond greeted the three of them.
“Gasp.”
“Ugh.”
The lord’s and Grace’s faces twisted at once.
The temple had been built by surrounding part of the Carnelian family’s land with special iron bars, so it was not itself a massive building.
Since it was not truly divided into indoors and outdoors, there should have been no reason for the air to be different.
Yet merely crossing a single gate made both of them feel as though their breath had suddenly stopped.
The air was sticky.
It felt almost like being in a sealed room filled with vapor made from oil.
That was not the only abnormality.
“G-grass…!”
Originally, a well-paved stone path ran from the temple’s main gate all the way to its inner sanctum.
But now countless weeds had grown between the stones, waving their leaves languidly.
The lord frowned and tried to push the grass aside as he advanced, but his attempt was immediately thwarted.
Slice!
“Huh!?”
He tried to brush the grass aside with his shoe, but the shoe that touched the leaves was sliced clean through instead.
It looked as though someone had placed tofu against a stationary blade.
His foot itself had nearly been severed, and the lord’s face went pale. Seeing him like that, Gritz spoke.
“You should go back now. You’ve guided us far enough.”
“B-but…”
“I won’t say it twice. Stand guard outside the gate so no other fools get dragged into this for no reason.”
The lord had been cautiously watching Gritz’s mood, but only after Gritz assigned him a new role did he return with a slightly relieved expression. That left only Gritz and Grace inside the gate.
“You can go back too. I’m enough to handle the fight on my own anyway.”
“No.”
Grace rejected him flatly.
“This is a battle that will decide what happens to my life from now on. You expect me to sit quietly at home and just accept whatever scraps fall from the table?”
“Even if you come, what else will you do besides watch? You’ll just become dead weight, so leave before that happens.”
“Whether I’ll be dead weight or not is something we’ll only know after I go.”
With that, Grace strode forward.
Then she stomped without hesitation on the weed the lord had just tried to brush aside and nearly lost his foot to.
Under normal circumstances, it would not have been strange for her entire foot to be sliced into strips of flesh.
Yet Grace was unharmed.
Her shoe was perfectly intact, and the weed beneath her foot had lost all the sharpness it had possessed moments ago, withering completely and crumbling into powder.
“See? It’s not as though I’ve just been sitting around playing all this time.”
Placing both hands on her hips, Grace thrust out her chest proudly.
“Oh?”
Gritz let out a low exclamation of admiration.
It was not sarcasm. There was a considerable amount of genuine admiration in it.
Strengthening plants and turning them into blades and traps had been the Guardian Deity’s divine power.
And now Grace had counteracted that power with her own, causing the grass to wither where it stood.
Considering that Grace had begun handling divine power only a few days ago, and that her power had truly begun to grow only this afternoon, her rate of growth was astonishing.
“The prerequisites are troublesome, but divine power really is something else. If those swordsmen or mages had seen this, they would have wailed at us not to cheat.”
“If they’re unhappy, they can become candidates for living sacrifice themselves and spend every day with their hearts pounding.”
After lightly shrugging her shoulders, Grace spoke with a serious expression.
“Let me come with you to the end. I don’t know whether I’ll be of any help, but at least I won’t get in your way.”
“Hmm. Fine, do as you like.”
Gritz did not disregard her determination.
In truth, he had only asked one more time for confirmation. He had never seriously intended to leave her behind.
If he had, he would not have brought Grace this far in the first place, nor explained the entire plan to her.
Rumble. The sound of the Oak Barrel rolling.
Crush. The sound of a person stepping on grass as they advanced.
Accompanied by those two different sounds, the pair moved forward.
The farther they went, the stickier the air became, and the more bizarre the shapes and ecology of the plants grew.
And at last, they reached the innermost depths of the enclosure.
On the roof of a stone building about the size of a small house,
“It” and the two of them locked gazes.
At first glance, it looked like a person draped in gold and green clothing and countless ornaments.
But it was not.
Half of its upper body was shaped like a beautiful human, while the other half seemed to consist of densely gathered green leaves and golden ears of grain.
Its right wing resembled a bird with white feathers, but where its left wing should have been, countless plant stems and roots stretched out like tentacles.
It had no lower body. Instead, beneath its upper body, countless human bones were clinging together in a tangled mass.
“──.”
Grace unconsciously swallowed.
To be honest, Grace had never really understood the lord’s attitude until now.
If the Guardian Deity had been that troublesome, he could have secretly gathered soldiers and tried to exterminate it or something, yet the lord had never chosen that path.
It would have been one thing if he had already tried and failed, but he had not even attempted it in the first place.
But after seeing the god with her own two eyes, she understood.
This was a monster.
Yet it was a god.
It was disgusting yet beautiful, blasphemous yet divine.
-You are late, priestess.
It opened its mouth. The Guardian Deity spoke. The monster stared at Grace.
-I know you have resorted to petty tricks. I know that this is rebellion. But I shall forgive you.
-Humans are all like foolish children. They blindly fear and call evil whatever they do not understand.
-Your ignorance led you to choose folly. As the parent of this land, how could I scold you for that?
-Come, it is not too late yet. Approach me and pray. Take shelter in my embrace, and your predecessors will tell you what you must do.
The Guardian Deity’s voice was exceedingly benevolent.
Its gaze was gentle, as though it were looking at a child wrapped in a blanket.
Suddenly, Grace felt as though her mind were filling with sweet honey.
The Guardian Deity’s face felt like that of biological parents she had never seen before, while the human bones attached beneath its torso had somehow transformed into beautiful women who beckoned Grace to come closer.
Grace took a step toward the Guardian Deity almost unconsciously.
The smiles of the Guardian Deity and the former priestesses deepened further.
Smack!
“No. I refuse to be your priestess.”
Yet Grace had been bewitched for only a single step.
After smacking her own cheek and regaining her senses, Grace glared straight at the Guardian Deity and declared her answer.
Grace drew up her divine power.
When silver and ash-gray divine power, contrasting with the Guardian Deity’s golden divine power, wrapped around her body, the illusion that had bewitched her eyes was dispelled.
The Guardian Deity’s face, once filled with benevolence and goodness, stared at Grace with every emotion erased from its expression. The former priestesses, whose faces had been filled with kindness and cheers as though welcoming their youngest sister, now shed tears of blood and directed gazes filled with jealousy and resentment at her.
“Hahaha! Well, you certainly keep your word!”
Gritz burst into hearty laughter.
Realizing that he meant her promise that she would at least not be a hindrance, a smile appeared at the corners of Grace’s lips.
The Oak Barrel containing Gritz spun around in place.
Every forest in the surrounding area was filled with the golden divine power emitted by the Guardian Deity.
The power of faith accumulated steadily over a span of centuries far exceeding a mere few hundred years.
Even though a pipe had been connected to that enormous reservoir to create an outlet for its contents, it would still take a great deal of time to drain all the divine power.
If so, what they needed to do was clear.
“Hey.”
“That’s a better form of address than ‘you wench,’ but I’d still prefer it if you called me by my name.”
“Enough. Pray hard. No—meditate? A battle of wills? Whatever. Just accelerate the flow of divine power coming from that thing and suck it all in. Since we’ve come this close anyway, wouldn’t it be more fun to be the hero of the victory than a spectator?”
“I understand, but is it really okay to say that so openly right in front of that thing? Is this some high-level strategy to use me as bait?”
“What, you don’t trust me?”
Grace gave a small laugh, then knelt in place and folded her hands while sitting upright.
It was a posture that seemed to offer a prayer to something—an utterly defenseless posture in a certain sense.
At the same time, the silver and ash-gray flowing from Grace’s body began to erode the golden color filling the surroundings bit by bit.
-Foolish. How very foolish.
At the Guardian Deity’s declaration, the plant stems attached to its body like wings—or rather, things that ought to be called tentacles—surged toward Grace.
The attack did not end there.
Leaves fluttering through the surrounding forest flew at her like shuriken.
Pollen carrying poison and malice advanced toward her respiratory system.
Roots beneath the ground thrust upward like spears, while pests that caused plants to wither beat their wings.
It was a god’s feat.
The power it had accumulated by making sacrifices of steadfast faith and exceptional talent into parts of itself had reached a level that an ordinary avatar could not withstand.
Despite the ferocity of the resistance, the Oak Barrel protecting Grace broke apart first.
The tentacles pierced the Oak Barrel, and its fragments scattered mercilessly.
Having eliminated the hindrance in an instant, the Guardian Deity extended its tentacles toward Grace once more.
Even though she must have heard the ominous sound of the rupture, Grace did not move from her position with her eyes closed and hands folded.
That was the gray girl’s trust in Gritz.
Just as a tentacle was about to pierce her throat,
“─I agree. Truly foolish.”
There was light.
There was impact.
And the sound came last.
Brrrrrrrrrrr!!
The tentacles, the blade-like leaves, the poisonous pollen, the roots imitating spears, and the vicious venomous insects were crushed and driven backward in a single instant.
The Guardian Deity’s eyes opened halfway.
It might have been the emotion humans called astonishment.
Amid the swirling dust, hair like grains of gold fluttered.
“But I like fools.”
The man wearing the Oak Barrel’s fragments overturned across his face like a mask spoke in a strangely pleased voice.
The Guardian Deity’s reason sounded an alarm.
The being before it was different from before.
Its speech, its gestures, its atmosphere, and above all its presence belonged to an entirely different realm.
This thing before it was not some uncivilized life-form that a god could trample however it pleased.
It spoke.
“By the way, do you know the very venerable and classic cliché about a beggar and a prince?”
The Guardian Deity did not answer.
It was a question it could not understand.
Thus, instead of answering, the Guardian Deity unleashed a fresh attack.
The man responded in kind.
On a stage where the only audience was a single person with her eyes closed, a battle that reached the realm of legend unfolded.