Chapter 152
Some kids had told him he needed to go somewhere and pray in the middle of the night, giving him strange directions that led him out of the temple at night. After wandering around for a long time, someone who followed him pushed him, making both his clothes and body a mess.
He remembered returning after being injured like that.
But thinking about it now, that wasn’t the end; he seemed to have met someone after returning. He vaguely remembered someone looking for him near the apprentice priest dormitory.
And a face that clicked its tongue while tending to his wounds came to mind, blurry as if diluted in water.
‘You think I’m pathetic, don’t you?’
Abel stared intently at that person and suddenly said. The voice, still breaking, calmly replied.
‘Should I say that?’
‘Tell me what you think. Stop avoiding answering like an adult every time.’
Then the fog-like person smiled faintly.
‘I think you’re amazing. You still have expectations of people.’
‘That’s a clever way of saying I’m foolishly gullible.’
‘A cleric needs to have faith in humans. Even in a world where God shows that He is alive, human distrust never ceases. They keep making the same mistakes. Priests who try to guide them to the right path must have patience and be foolish in their steadfastness. In that sense, I think you have the makings of a proper priest.’
‘Everyone just talks about how impressive your divine power is.’
‘Well, I….’
The other person just shrugged at that. With the vivid memory, it felt as if the young Abel’s feelings from back then were being transmitted through the past.
At that time, Abel admired and respected the other person, and embarrassingly, even felt jealous, because the other was an apprentice priest with talents everyone praised, and a temperament that was that of a true priest, which made Abel feel inferior.
Every time they spoke, they said such humble things.
Yes. There was such a child.
But why was this memory suddenly coming back? That person and the woman in front of him must be different people. That person would have become an excellent priest. Not a fugitive criminal like a failure.
But suddenly his head throbbed painfully, and Abel lowered his head.
Several memories fell into place in his mind.
Probasc Temple. The child who turned away in surprise when he stripped naked to go swimming together. The child who taught him the duties of being a priest.
He even remembered waving goodbye at their final parting, promising to meet again as high priests, but that face remained blurry. And he gradually sensed that the reason for that blurry face was due to the witch’s spell.
Because that person too was a ‘priest,’ as the woman had said.
Which meant undeniably that the priest was the same person as the woman standing before him. How did such a promising apprentice priest become a fugitive, and even after that, how could she still say she had no intention of returning as a priest? Unable to understand, Abel suddenly asked.
“Why did you run away?”
As if speaking to that apprentice priest in his memory, with an informal manner and naive tone.
Then the woman before him answered just like that apprentice priest from back then.
“I’ll tell you later. If you’re worried I might run away, you can make a divine oath.”
“That’s…….”
Abel tried to stop her.
Because breaking such an oath would have severe consequences. If Abel harbored ill intentions and prevented her from reaching the Central Temple, or if something happened to cause that outcome, the woman would receive a major divine punishment.
Incomparable to the consequences of lying. But while Abel was halfway through trying to stop her, the woman had already made the oath.
She muttered some divine words, and as she swore, a white light rotated around them in large, circular, complex patterns. And at the end, it turned into a butterfly and flew away.
Abel, seeing for the first time an oath that only high priests could make, involuntarily opened his mouth.
But he couldn’t stay dumbfounded forever.
He finally rose to his feet. As Abel suddenly stood up in the narrow prayer room, Eir stepped back in surprise.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you think? You asked me to take you. We need to leave before sunrise.”
So they hurriedly prepared and got ready to escape the mansion.
While Abel left a long letter for his family, Eir put on a male servant’s clothes that Abel had brought from somewhere.
After finishing all preparations and leaving the mansion, Abel habitually manipulated the protective barrier surrounding the entire mansion to create a gap, then turned to the woman.
But when he turned around, the woman had already torn through the barrier herself and even restored it to its original state.
Abel narrowed his eyebrows, feeling a sense of relative deprivation after a long time.
“Why did you ask me for help if you could come out by yourself like this?”
“I can’t ride a horse.”
“Just because of that?”
“How is that ‘just’?”
As Eir raised her eyebrows, Abel exhaled a sigh. Even though he was a promising priest, this was the moment when he had to become a coachman.
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