WeTried Translations

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◈ I Became the Dark Knight in the Game World ◈

Chapter 8: There Are Too Many Abysses (1)

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In the end, Kriel was the one who shut Orisin up.

"Hey."

[Hahahaha! Did you see that? I emerged victorious from my showdown with that wicked witch─]

"That's nothing to celebrate."

[What?]

"It means even as a Saintess, she can't purify your curse. Unless several priests gather and perform a Grand Rite, you'll have to live stained by the Abyss forever."

[Huh? Wait. Does that... does that mean...?]

Orisin fell silent for a while, then vanished into the Bicorn Horn with a cry of, "This wasn't supposed to be my fate!"

Kriel had hoped he could finally enjoy a peaceful dinner, but instead, he had to face Morgina, who made no effort to hide her irritation.

With a tray in hand, Morgina flopped down in the seat directly across from Kriel and whispered in a very quiet voice.

"...It's not that I lack the skill."

"I know."

Kriel replied calmly. As far as he knew, Morgina was the most capable priest there was. If she could not resolve it despite giving it her all, the curse must have been impossible to resolve by any individual from the start.

"It must be a particularly vicious curse."

"The curse itself isn't that strong. The problem is its wick."

"Its wick?"

"The thing that forms the Core of the curse. Something that's eating away at that crazy horsehead's soul. I used a blessing to purify Spirits again and again, but I couldn't cleanse its deepest source."

Unless the Core of the curse was cleansed, the corruption would continue to progress, even if only little by little. Kriel asked,

"Wait. If it's a structural problem, wouldn't something like a Grand Rite be useless too?"

"If we poured in that much Divine Power like mad, I can't guarantee the result.... But in principle, it's impossible. Blessings borrow the laws of the gods, so you need to understand exactly which law is acting and how."

Morgina gave him a brief example. Someone had contracted a fatal illness and received a blessing to cure disease several times. Their condition improved somewhat, but the illness never went away.

The person had not actually been sick. They had been infected with parasites.

"Well, some collections say the real cause was parasites, while others say poison. That's not important. It's a story meant to teach that if you use blessings recklessly without proper understanding, you can't solve the problem at its root."

Kriel held the Bicorn Horn in his hand and studied it. If there was no way to resolve the corruption, what should he do with this?

Orisin's voice suddenly rang out in his head.

[W-wait. We've still built up some affection over these past few days. You aren't going to go snap or crunch on me here, are you?]

Kriel did not answer. After hearing about eight variations of Orisin pleading for him to wait because it was not a good time, Morgina, still wearing a deeply sulky expression, muttered,

"That poor sap came all this way. I can't let it end like this...."

"Hey. Give me that."

"The horn?"

"Yeah. I'll figure something out."

[Wait! You're going to hand me over to that thug! Kriel! Sir Knight!]

Orisin shouted desperately. Unlike the mental noise pollution from earlier, Orisin must have been too frantic to use a thought wave this time, because everyone could hear it.

"Orisin."

[Are you going to save me?!]

"There's a saying that you get back what you give. You should've watched your mouth."

Ignoring Orisin's screams, Kriel handed the horn to Morgina. He was not doing it simply to torment Orisin. It was a preemptive measure to prevent the corruption from worsening.

Morgina smiled fiercely.

* * *

Kriel saw Morgina again after three days and nights had passed. Unlike the Morgina who was always full of energy or Blood Energy, her hollow eyes made quite an impression.

"Take it."

What Morgina tossed to him was a dagger in an elegant leather sheath. Both the hilt and sheath were black, so from a distance, it might have looked like a short black baton.

Kriel drew the dagger. The sharply honed blade was the color of bone from a freshly slaughtered animal.

The blade itself was white, but a faint red glow lingered at its center, as though not all the blood had drained from it.

The strangely wavy blade flashed whenever it caught the light, taking on the unique appearance of sea foam or flames.

At that moment, the now-familiar chattering voice pierced his ears.

[So much happened. I'm really tired.]

"What is this?"

"A dagger made from that horn. The sheath has a Silence Effect on it. That thing was seriously noisy."

The Bicorn Horn was sharp enough to slice through even plate armor. Yet that sharpness had been concentrated at its tip. It must have taken considerable effort to spread it across the entire blade like this.

"If you go around stabbing people with that, the corruption will be purified. Cleaning up the root is impossible because that horsehead's mind is hopeless, but you can wash it away every time it gets stained."

Morgina made it sound trivial, but the effort she had put in rivaled preparations for the temple's grand festival.

Eve Kaha was the goddess who guided the war dead. Naturally, she also possessed the nature of a war goddess. At times, honorable battle itself became an offering made to her.

Using that, Morgina bestowed a blessing that elevated battles fought with the Horn Dagger into rituals offered to Eve Kaha. As long as Kriel did not set down the dagger, the horse would not suddenly go wild and charge at him.

"All right, get ready."

"Ready?"

"I told you. In a few days, we're meeting the Priest-King. Are you going to enter wearing that heavy-looking armor? It's an audience, after all."

Kriel's objection that armor was a knight's formal attire became meaningless when Morgina threw clothes at him.

The neat but unflashy uniform was raven-black like Morgina's clothes. A raven was embroidered over its chest in red thread, making it easy to recognize as the uniform of the Church of Eve Kaha.

When Morgina saw Kriel after he changed, she nodded with a satisfied expression.

"Clothes really do make the man. Let's go."

* * *

The Priest-King hated his position.

The Priest-King should have realized something was strange from the moment no one volunteered during the election. It had looked like the height of temple authority, only to turn out to be the height of administrative work. It was a scam.

"Gods of the Pantheon...."

Please shorten the Priest-King's term. The Priest-King could not bring himself to say the rest aloud. Not out of concern for blasphemy, but because there was no point in saying it.

"Your Holiness. The Saints of the various churches have arrived."

An elderly priest's voice delivered the news from outside the office. If the Priest-King could trade positions with that priest, he would have paid even a fortune in gold.

"Please tell them all to come in."

The office door opened, and the Saints slowly entered. At the beginning of the term, they had all been away from the Holy City of Temlis and had seemed unfamiliar, but by now, after meeting several times, their faces had become familiar.

'Hm?'

There was a stranger among the gathered Saints. The Priest-King had said, "I will assign you a task, so you may bring trustworthy companions who can carry it out with you." Since it would be a secret mission, each group was limited to three people at most.

Some Saints had followed that recommendation and brought one or two paladins from their churches. The Priest-King knew all of them.

To be more exact, the Priest-King knew every priest who visited the Holy City. As the supreme ruler of the Sacred Kingdom, he presided over clerical appointments and promotions, memorizing the faces of every clergy member he encountered.

But the white-haired paladin, identifiable by the mark of the Church of Eve Kaha's Champion, was someone the Priest-King had never seen before.

"Morgina. Who is that?"

"Our church's Champion. I appointed him two days ago."

The Priest-King considered it for a moment, then nodded. The authority to appoint a Champion belonged solely to each church. Unless it had merely been Morgina acting alone, a decision made by the Church of Eve Kaha itself could be trusted.

"I assume you have all heard a brief explanation of the situation. Abyssal artifacts have been found."

"How many are there, for you to summon us all?"

"A lot."

"How many, exactly?"

The one pressing for an answer was an elderly man visibly packed with well-trained muscles. He was a Martial monk, an expert in unarmed combat. When the old Martial monk asked again, the Priest-King picked up a pouch from the table and turned it over.

Metal fragments fell out in layers with a clinking sound. Once every fragment had fallen from the pouch, the Priest-King untied another pouch.

Then another, and another. Heaps of metal fragments piled up.

"These are all Abyssal Wedges."

"Such tiny fragments? Aren't they too small to be artifacts?"

The Priest-King was about to explain when Morgina pressed two fingers lightly against the Champion's shoulder.

"...Yes, you're right. They are all Abyssal artifacts."

Oh? Interest flickered in the Priest-King's eyes. Whoever he was, he clearly possessed exceptional senses to have been chosen as the church's Champion.

"But they are not separate artifacts. It seems one artifact has been divided into many─"

That was astonishing perception. The Priest-King clapped.

"Damn it, Morgina. Where did you find someone like that? He's like a human Temple Gate!"

Kriel, who had nearly been driven away without even being allowed into the Holy City because of that very Temple Gate, had no idea what expression to make.

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