Paladin of a Ruined Order - Chapter 83

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Translator/Editor: Order

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◈ Paladin of a Ruined Order

Chapter 83

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Suspect

Elbridge forgot how to respond for a moment.

Thinking about it, this was an entirely natural direction for the conversation to take.

He almost wondered why he hadn't thought of it sooner himself.

Either way, the situation had arrived, so he had to handle it somehow.

The first method Elbridge chose was acting, with everything he had.

"Right. I wonder where the Silent Paladin could possibly be."

"That's what I'd like to know too."

Matilda answered that way while still staring straight at Elbridge.

There was even a faint smile hanging at the corner of her mouth. The kind of look a mother wears after discovering her son's secret.

"..."

Matilda had spent years dealing with all sorts of people. Fooling her with clumsy acting had been a ridiculous idea from the start.

'Forget the acting. All I have left to rely on is my tongue.'

There were two keys to a good lie.

First, don't try to deny every fact.

Second, back up the claim with something plausible.

"Matilda. I understand what you're thinking. But it's an absurd idea."

"Is it? Absurd?"

"The person who went searching for the rumored seal was me. You know that, don't you, Matilda?"

"Yes. I heard."

"I saw it clearly myself. There was no trace of the original Sir Elbridge in that underground stone chamber. Which makes sense, honestly. Two hundred years is plenty of time for a person to live out their life and have every trace of them vanish."

"Hmm. But the Silent Paladin wasn't an ordinary person. Couldn't he still be alive even now?"

Elbridge shook his head.

"Heroes far greater than the Silent Paladin couldn't outlast time either. Unless we're talking about elves or dwarves..."

"But the Silent Paladin was trapped in a seal, wasn't he? Being sealed might make things different somehow."

Matilda laid out the possibilities one by one, methodically.

But backing down here would practically be a confession, so Elbridge pressed on with his argument.

"Besides, it bothers me that the archdemon's seal broke so easily. Isn't it far more realistic to think the seal weakened when the original Sir Elbridge passed away?"

That should round things out well enough, more or less. Elbridge thought so as he looked at Matilda.

But Matilda's expression remained just as suspicious as before.

'...'

Neither the acting nor the lying was working. So what was he supposed to do?

Fortunately, employer Elbridge had a third option.

"Oh, right. There's something I wanted to propose to you, Matilda."

"A proposal?"

"Now that the church has settled down quite a bit, you don't need to stay on as a freelance priest anymore, do you? Matilda. Have you considered becoming a full priest?"

Treatment as a full priest at a mid-tier church beat freelance administrative work by a wide margin.

Sure enough, for the first time since the conversation began, Matilda's eyes wavered.

'That was the right move.'

And this proposal was good for the Order of the Rusted Shield too.

Matilda's current role in the church carried real weight. If she stayed on and kept helping the church for years to come, it would be an enormous benefit. Expenses would rise a little, but that wasn't a real problem.

"A full priest, huh..."

"I'd wanted to bring it up for a while, but I was slow to ask for your opinion. Things have been busy. The title would be Chief Administrative Priest. What do you think?"

Chief Administrative Priest wasn't a high rank within a church hierarchy.

But at the same time, it was a respected post recognized by any church. For a freelance-level administrative priest to become Chief Administrative Priest of a mid-tier church was a considerable rise in status.

Matilda answered with a serious expression.

"I'll do my best to make sure those baseless rumors don't spread any further."

Archbishop Elbridge had made an ally.

A few days later.

Elbridge pulled his robe's hood down low and headed for a run-down tavern.

The tavern's sign read [Scorched Kettle].

Creak.

He pushed the door open to find the typical scene of an empty tavern.

The interior was dim, there were more cobwebs than customers, and a musty smell reached him before the smell of alcohol did.

In one corner of the tavern sat two people, hoods pulled low just like Elbridge's.

As Elbridge sat down across from them, a familiar voice reached his ears.

"Well, if it isn't the Silent Paladin."

Marcus looked like he found the whole situation hilarious, grinning nonstop.

Rombel, sitting beside him, wore a much less pleasant expression.

"Rombel. Why the face?"

"Because I've been getting hounded by the Order of the Golden Tray. Every time I open my eyes lately, they're showing up at the Magic Tower to nag me... ugh."

Elbridge silently cheered for the Order of the Golden Tray.

Rombel had run his little scheme, and Elbridge was suffering nearly as much as the Order of the Golden Tray for it, wasn't he?

"You should be grateful that's all it is. If I were Vice Bishop Heinz, I'd have sent assassins after you."

Rombel grumbled.

"Who's just going to die that easily... And Elbridge, you don't get to act wronged."

"Why not me?"

"It's not like I spread the rumor without a word to anyone. I wasn't the only one who failed to think through what would happen once people started throwing around the name Silent Paladin. You missed it too, Elbridge. So did Marcus. So did the Goddess of the Rusted Shield. So did the God of Fox Rain. Everyone missed it. So it's a shared responsibility, isn't it?"

As Rombel spun out that piece of sophistry, an oracle came down on Elbridge at once.

- Elbridge. Tell that foolish dwarf that your goddess does not symbolize wisdom, and that she shows her true worth in other areas...

Elbridge relayed the oracle word for word, and Marcus chimed in too.

"The God of Fox Rain says that while he doesn't symbolize wisdom either, he knew this would happen."

"Then why didn't you give us a heads-up?"

"He thought this way would be more entertaining..."

Elbridge's expression soured a little. The God of Fox Rain had a bit of a mean streak.

'No, wait. Maybe it wasn't just a whim. Maybe he thought this situation would benefit the Order of the God of Fox Rain more...'

Just then, another oracle came down to Elbridge's ears.

- Elbridge. Tell them your goddess knew everything too, actually.

Her pride seemed to have taken a hit.

But Elbridge didn't relay the goddess's oracle. He judged that keeping it to himself would do more for her dignity.

Rombel pulled his chair in closer and asked Elbridge, "So, how are things these days?"

Elbridge shrugged.

"Better than a few days ago. Mostly thanks to the Marquis of Solenion. Oh, and Matilda too."

Back on the day Elbridge had been invited by the Marquis of Solenion, the marquis had promised to arrange things so other nobles would find it difficult to guess Elbridge's true identity. By fabricating false records and a fake portrait of the Silent Paladin and having them quietly discovered.

That courtesy, which even Elbridge had half forgotten about, had recently started paying off.

The forged portrait on old parchment had played an especially large role. In the fake portrait, the Silent Paladin had a large scar across his face, and much heavier features than Elbridge's own. A face anyone would say looked nothing like the real Elbridge.

People who believed they'd uncovered the truth before everyone else tended to get loud about it.

Those who found the fake portrait went around insisting Elbridge wasn't the Silent Paladin. Exactly what Elbridge and the Marquis of Solenion had hoped for.

"Still doesn't seem like enough to put people's suspicions to rest completely, though."

"No, it isn't. Only a fraction of people have actually seen the portrait... Today alone, dozens of people asked me if I was the Silent Paladin."

"Why not just bravely tell them the truth? 'I'm Elbridge, and I've devoted two hundred years to all of you!' Sounds pretty cool, doesn't it?"

At that, Elbridge snorted.

"Rombel. Just today, someone tried to set our temple on fire. Apparently I neglected my duty and let a demon loose on the world... If I told people the truth, arson attempts would go up about twentyfold."

If people either believed everything or believed nothing at all once the truth came out, it would've been convenient.

But people tended to pick and choose only the parts they wanted to believe.

"Ngh."

Rombel groaned and scratched his cheek.

'Guess he feels a little guilty about all this.'

Well, he ought to, if he had any shame left.

"Still, you'll get found out eventually. Elbridge. Your track record's been way too flashy."

"I know. Even I think it'd be stranger if I didn't get caught. But for now, I have to keep denying it."

"Until when?"

"Until people stop questioning my motives."

When would that day ever come?

Maybe once he'd hunted enough demons, or finally sealed every last one, or died fighting a demon himself. Only then, perhaps.

As they kept chatting like that, the tavern door opened.

Creak.

Another robed figure walked in. He looked around the room, then came over and sat down at Elbridge's table.

"It hasn't been that long, has it."

The eastern diocese head of the Order of the Golden Tray. Vice Bishop Heinz.

The reason he'd shown up here was simple. Vice Bishop Heinz was the one who'd gathered Elbridge and the others at this spot, saying he had important news.

"What's the important news? Is it about...?"

At Elbridge's question, Heinz nodded.

"We've got a lead."

Nothing beat sheer numbers when it came to gathering information.

"Around the same time, in a nearby village, someone tried to place a request with the exact same wording, apparently. Didn't wear the priest robes of the Order of the Golden Tray, but... the build he had matches Deter's testimony — large. Oh, and there's also the fact that he used old-fashioned speech."

Extremely interesting information.

But something about the way Heinz was speaking nagged at Elbridge.

Until recently, Vice Bishop Heinz had spoken to Elbridge as an equal, and now he was quietly lowering his own status in comparison. Vice Bishop Heinz had clearly caught wind of the rumors making the rounds too.

Of course, this wasn't the moment to worry about that.

"Is that everything?"

Heinz shook his head.

"Of course not. There was someone who nearly brokered the request, and someone else who carried the client to the village by carriage. We tracked down where the carriage departed from... it was Dickens Viscounty."

Dickens. Dickens. The name wasn't unfamiliar.

'Where did I hear that?'

Elbridge's fingers tapped a steady rhythm on the table. Tap tap tap, tap tap tap.

Then Elbridge remembered where he'd heard the name.

Right after he'd been freed from the seal.

When he and old knight Walter had hunted the wolf demonic beast together and arrived at Riverford Barony.

The lord who'd come to see Baron Riverford, claiming every last person in his territory had vanished by a demon's doing, had been none other than Viscount Dickens.

It felt like too much of a coincidence that the one who'd broken the archdemon's seal had come from Dickens Viscounty.

'But the demon that leveled Dickens Viscounty was... the black giant.'

The demon that had appeared in Solenion at the end of last year. The black giant.

When they'd estimated the black giant's direction of movement and where it would end up, one piece of information they'd used as a reference point had been the timing of Dickens Viscounty's destruction.

The moment that thought crossed his mind, one memory surfaced in Elbridge's head.

The story Viscount Dickens had told when he'd come to Riverford Barony.

'There was no one left in my territory.'

'I'm sorry? No one at all?'

'Exactly what I said. No one. Not the elderly, not children, not men, not women, not farmers, not merchants, not even my own retainers and family. What's stranger still, there were no bloodstains. No burn marks. Not even signs that people had simply left.'

There had been no trace at all in Dickens Viscounty that people had been killed, or attacked.

If the black giant had been the demon that wiped out Dickens Viscounty, there should have been collapsed buildings and clear signs of an attack left behind.

Tap tap tap, tap tap tap.

Elbridge's fingers were still tapping against the table.

The situation was rebuilding itself in his mind.

'What if the demon that struck Dickens Viscounty wasn't the black giant?'

He didn't know. The pieces didn't line up exactly.

But Elbridge's instincts were screaming at him. Don't let this pass lightly.

And right now, by sheer coincidence, the person who could confirm whether his instincts were right sat right in front of him.

Elbridge asked Heinz, "Diocese head."

"Go ahead."

"I heard that last winter, in Ashfen, paladins of the Order of the Golden Tray fought the black giant too."

Elbridge hadn't taken part in that battle himself.

But Felix of the Order of the Bloodstained Spear had said as much, quite clearly.

'He'd been furious that the Order of the Golden Tray wasted time in Ashfen.'

Vice Bishop Heinz answered.

"That's right."

"I heard that while rescuing villagers, the branded ones died."

"Correct. The ones whose brands burned all the way through died in agony."

"By any chance... did the bodies disappear?"

Vice Bishop Heinz thought it over for a moment, then shook his head.

"I heard they were buried. Whether the buried bodies vanished from the ground afterward, I couldn't say... that's not something we'd know. Why do you ask?"

Elbridge didn't answer. He closed his eyes instead.

Viscount Dickens, a lord and a knight.

A large build. Speech different from a commoner's. Enough physical strength to easily overpower three ordinary people.

The one who'd broken the seal.

The place he'd boarded that carriage from was Dickens Viscounty.

Unlike the people killed by the black giant, the people of Dickens Viscounty whose bodies had vanished entirely.

Dickens Viscounty, swept up by a demon right after Elbridge had been freed from the seal...

Tap tap tap, tap tap tap.

Elbridge's fingers, tapping the table in that steady rhythm, went still.

"Viscount Dickens was the demon's first victim... but at the same time, it seems he's also a suspect."

Viscount Dickens had lost so much that no one had thought to suspect him.

But an arsonist usually carries burns, and a murderer's hands tend to carry cuts.