WeTried Translations

Translator: [IncomeElastic]

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◈ I Became an Undetected Priest Impersonator ◈

Chapter 17

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I Became a Head Priest

"Take this too, please."

"That's far too much compared to what I paid."

"Oh my, I'd feel even worse taking money from the man who saved my son."

I couldn't help showing how awkward the overly generous kindness made me feel.

It was because I'd received far more than the amount I'd paid for.

"Then I'll accept just this once."

"That's not something you get to decide, Priest, is it?"

‘What a riot.’

The answer was firm, even stubborn, and I realized that arguing further was pointless.

Still, it wasn't as if I couldn't understand how they felt.

Most of the soldiers who had survived a brush with death were these people's sons, husbands and fathers. Or they might have been neighbors or friends.

Which made it only natural that the market merchants were so kind to me.

‘Four copper coins for enough food to last half a month, if I stretch it a little. That's one way to put it.’

I looked down at the baskets in both hands.

They were full of the merchants' goodwill, and it would have been faster to look for what wasn't in there, from grain to vegetables to fruit.

Had there not been a limit to what I could carry, I might well have taken on far more than this.

‘And on top of that, I ended up with meat I can't even eat.’

I looked at the large hunk of meat sitting on one side of the basket.

I'd thought about going back to return at least the meat, but then I thought of Priest Malja and changed my mind.

Priest Malja was a girl of barely fifteen.

She was at an age where she was still growing, so a balanced diet mattered.

‘Just because I don't eat meat doesn't mean I can stop a kid from eating it.’

I recalled that even monks fed meat to their young novices, and gripped the baskets firmly.

By the time I got back to the church, I was drenched in sweat from the sheer load.

"You bought all this?"

Priest Malja's eyes went round as soon as I stepped into the living quarters.

"The merchants gave it to me out of kindness. I'm grateful for it."

"Wow, it's incredible."

Priest Malja spun around the baskets, making a fuss.

She had reason to. The baskets weren't just packed with every kind of ingredient, some of it was piled high enough to block the view.

"Oh, by the way, did the workers have the stew?"

I remembered late as I was setting the load down, and asked.

"Yes! They must have been hungry, they scraped the pot clean!"

"..That's a relief."

In more ways than one.

Probably the biggest of those was the fact that not a drop of that slop had been left.

"Let's move the ingredients first."

I tried to lift a basket as if nothing were wrong.

That was when it happened.

Boom!

A heavy crash rang out from beyond the building.

It sounded like something huge had fallen over.

Judging by the direction, it had to have come from the chapel.

"Could you sort out the ingredients in my place? I'll go check on the chapel for a moment."

"Oh, okay!"

The chapel was the building right next to the living quarters.

They were practically attached, but the buildings themselves were separate, so I had to go outside.

When I opened the door and stepped into the chapel, the first thing to catch my eye was a hazy cloud of dust.

‘Hmm.’

A commotion had already broken out inside.

In the middle of the floor lay the goddess statue, the bouquet still held to its chest.

No, it wasn't merely toppled.

It lay sprawled on the floor, split in two at the waist.

And beneath the rubble, a person's legs were visible.

"Are you all right?"

I came to my senses late and rushed over.

The workers standing frozen around it turned to me, their faces drained of color.

"We deserve to die! Priest!"

"..?"

Their reaction was strange.

But now wasn't the time to ask why.

"Let's get the person who's pinned out first."

I headed straight for the fallen statue.

The statue was only about 160 centimeters tall, but being stone, even half of it looked quite heavy.

Yet the workers around it only glanced at one another and wouldn't move.

"What are you doing?"

Urging them made no difference.

A few approached cautiously, but none of them could reach out a hand toward the broken statue.

"Lift it, now."

"Well, that's..."

"There's a person trapped under it, isn't there?"

Irritation crept into my voice, but they still hesitated.

I had no idea what the reason was, but I couldn't stand by and watch like this.

‘Power of Bless.’

I cast the buff on myself.

When the radiant light wrapped around my body, strength surged into my muscles in an instant.

It was a physical enhancement buff that I almost never used, since it wasn't very efficient unless you were a melee Awakener.

But a statue snapped in two should be something I could manage to lift somehow.

"Hup!"

I grabbed the statue's upper half where it lay on the floor.

It had to be around a hundred kilograms.

Maybe more.

If it hadn't been broken in two, I'd never have dared try it alone.

Borrowing the buff's strength, I barely managed to heave the stone up and shove it aside.

Thud.

When the stone hit the floor, dust rose once again.

Only then did the condition of the worker who'd been pinned underneath become fully visible.

"Ugh.."

The worker's back was bent at a grotesque angle.

Pinned as they'd been, they seemed unable to breathe properly, and their complexion looked bad.

‘Heal.’

But as long as they weren't dead, I was confident I could save them.

Light bloomed from my fingertips and settled into the patient's body.

Crunch.

The warped spine slid back into place, one after another came the sounds of broken bones fitting together.

The body that had been twisted so grotesquely soon regained its original shape.

Only after confirming that their breathing, which had sounded like it might cut off at any moment, had evened out peacefully did I take my hand away.

After that, I turned to the workers around us.

Their faces were all still stiff.

"I'd like to hear the reason."

The gentle expression I wore whenever I played the priest was nowhere to be found.

When I looked at them with cold eyes, the workers' shoulders shrank.

It took a little time to get an answer.

After a long hesitation, one of the workers gave up and spoke up.

And after I'd heard the explanation to the end.

"..So you're telling me."

I was so dumbfounded that for a while, no words came.

"That after you knocked over the goddess statue and broke it, you didn't dare touch it because you were afraid of divine punishment if you handled it wrong?"

Nobody could answer.

A few even lowered their heads.

It was hard to hide how pathetic I found them.

Even granting that religion was powerful here, I'd never imagined that with a person dying right before their eyes, they wouldn't be able to lay a hand on it over one broken statue.

"..Do you people look at that statue and see Iris?"

The workers looked puzzled.

They gazed at the broken goddess statue as a matter of course.

It was the likeness of Iris, and I was asking if it looked like Iris? Their faces said, what on earth was I talking about?

"Don't tell me you've been worshiping a rock all this time instead of a god?"

Only then did the meaning seem to sink in, and a few of them opened their eyes wide.

"And do you think Iris is someone who'd fly into a rage because a single statue made in her image was broken?"

Honestly, I didn't know.

But a being who left even an impersonator like me alone wasn't going to get angry over something as trivial as a broken statue.

And even if she did get angry, the lightning would have struck me first.

"If anything, worrying about the statue first while a person was dying is what would be an insult to Iris."

The workers' expressions stiffened further.

"You don't seem to be in any state to work, so please go home for today."

I glanced at the worker lying on the floor.

"Take them with you and let them rest. The treatment is done, but it would be best for them to take it easy for at least a day."

"..Yes, Priest."

"And I won't be holding anyone responsible for this, either. Don't worry yourselves over nothing."

Only then did a faint trace of relief bloom on the workers' faces.

But that relief apparently wasn't enough to make them forget their fear, because they supported their injured companion and, bowing over and over, hurried out of the chapel.

"…"

Once everyone had gone, the chapel fell silent as if nothing had ever happened.

Where the dust had settled, only the broken goddess statue remained, all alone.

I plopped down on one of the chapel pews and met the statue's eyes.

Straight ahead, Iris's idol lay toppled with its lower half severed, the bouquet still held to its chest.

Maybe their reaction was only natural.

This was a world where the power of religion was extremely strong, after all.

If anything, I might be the odd one, to have lifted a divine statue and tossed it aside without the slightest hesitation.

‘Tch, even so, a person was dying.’

When I remembered the sight of them unable to reach out even as their companion was dying, I couldn't even manage a bitter laugh.

"It's so absurd I can't even laugh."

That was when it happened.

-I know, right?

A strange voice chimed in agreement, in a chapel where nobody else was.

"Am I hearing things?"

I tilted my head, wondering if I was hearing things at a voice that couldn't possibly be there, and the same voice came again.

-As if, dude.

‘It's definitely an auditory hallucination.’

The speech pattern, which I'd seen a few times on the Gallery, only made me more certain it was a hallucination, and I used the purification skill on myself.

‘Purification.’

-Pwahahaha!

But the voice was still there.

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