Chapter 12
Chasing only profit and money, he had secretly begun capturing those of the Consecrated Bloodline—who could produce large amounts of holy water—to make and sell it.
But.
‘Where is all this holy water coming from? His Holiness the Pope should be resting…’
As people began to sense something odd about the endlessly supplied holy water, he could no longer openly capture the Consecrated Bloodline to mass-produce and sell it.
That’s when Lekia came up with an idea.
Why not make someone from the Consecrated Bloodline the Pope?
A Pope who would obey his every word!
The result was Ian.
Evaluating the Pope’s qualifications? Calling this Pope a miracle? All of that was nothing more than a story concocted by Lekia to sound good.
It was true that in the previous generation, to counter the people of Archion who sought to unite around the Consecrated Bloodline, Beakin had killed those of Archion’s Consecrated Bloodline.
But the one who had caught him, the sole survivor who had escaped that calamity, and tried to wring him dry was the church’s—Archion’s—Lekia.
And in the year Ian turned six.
Accompanying Lekia as a page to the Continental Peace Conference hosted by the Beakin Emperor, Ian seized a chance to escape.
Even if the Beakin people wouldn’t welcome someone from Archion like him, he thought it would be better to live persecuted in Beakin than to stay in Archion and be squeezed dry by Lekia. So he ran.
And the place he reached at the end of his flight was a random forest, where the young boy…
‘……It’s a boy?’
‘H-hide me, please.’
…met a girl his own age.
Even as a child, she possessed an elegant bearing, a girl with jade-green hair and emerald eyes, radiating a truly fresh, vibrant aura. If you stared quietly into those eyes, you could even see a hint of blue—a fascinating sight—so during his stay in her log house, he would often just gaze into them.
‘Are you really okay with not going home?’
‘Yeah, I want to live here.’
They didn’t know who the other was, and they didn’t ask.
But they became friends.
Being from Archion, Ian couldn’t reveal his identity, and the girl, saying he would hate her if he knew who she was, didn’t tell hers either. So they didn’t even know each other’s names.
Ian only realized later, when he grew up.
That blond hair like his was only born in Archion.
His very existence revealed he was from Archion, and the girl had known that.
A girl of Beakin’s noble lineage who, knowing that, had still treated him kindly.
But that girl had died because of him.
‘Got him!’
He never imagined they would search the entire, vast forest.
But Lekia’s holy knights finally caught him, going so far as to set the forest ablaze.
To a child’s eyes, it was a large forest, but thinking back now, it was a small one.
And so the forest burned. He prayed the girl had escaped, but…
On the way back, being hauled in the carriage, he overheard:
‘No one who saw the Consecrated Bloodline can remain.’
‘No one escaped the forest. All have been dealt with.’
At those words, he wept. To the struggling boy, Lekia carved a brand into his heart.
So that he could not refuse him.
From that day on, he became the perfect Pope, unable to defy Lekia’s will.
If he tried to oppose that will, an insane pain would seize his heart, and his powerful divine power would keep its owner just barely alive.
In short, it meant he couldn’t even faint and had to endure that immense agony in full consciousness.
Lekia probably hoped that fear of the pain would make him obedient.
“…….”
But Ian was different.
On the day the brand was carved into his heart—
The day the girl, who had known who he was and still hid him, had likely burned to death because of him.
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