WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
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◈ The Dark Fantasy Doctor Was Mistaken for a Saint ◈
Chapter 84: Mistaken for a Saint (2)
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On the night two people were chosen for canonization at the Apostolic Palace of the Holy Kingdom.
The Inspectorate was located within the Imperial Palace, at the heart of Sanctum Hill, the Imperial capital.
In the Empire's political world, where countless factions existed, it was a department that remained neutral at all times, inspected and mediated disputes and scandals, and protected the Empire from the shadows.
Put more simply, it was an intelligence agency that kept the Empire itself in line.
The lights in the office of the chief of the Inspectorate Intelligence Bureau's Third Division remained on late into the night.
Clatter.
In the silent office, a fountain pen fell and rolled across the desk.
“...”
Its owner quietly watched the pen roll away.
Michael Hausen.
In his thirties. Unmarried.
A man who had earned both the rank of marquis and a post as an Inspectorate division chief at a young age through recognition of his abilities.
An idle elite who handled work cleanly and efficiently, but lacked motivation in everything he did and had virtually no social life.
That was roughly how the nobles described him.
At the moment, he was half buried in an armchair, rolling a peppermint around in his mouth.
‘What a bother...’
Michael leaned back on the sofa and ran a hand through his hair.
When he lowered his gaze, he saw three sets of documents arranged on his desk.
His languid eyes passed over them.
Then he picked up the letter on the far right.
The upper left bore the Holy Emperor's seal.
The upper right bore the seal of the Heresy Inquisition.
===========================
Request for Cooperation from the Heresy Inquisition
Prior to the canonization of the two individuals described below,
we request a final inspection to determine whether their past actions contain any flaws that could damage the Church's honor.
Furthermore, we request cooperation in carrying out a large-scale memory alteration ritual to erase the two individuals' secular traces from the public's memories and records.
Candidates for canonization:
One. Doctor Schnabel. Canonization name: Black Saint.
Two. Ayla. Canonization name: Saintess of the Lantern.
===========================
After staring at the document for a long while, Michael let out a deep sigh.
The document had arrived late that afternoon.
And its contents were the reason for his sigh.
‘An inspection and a request for memory alteration...’
The inspection itself would not be difficult.
Inspection was what he did every day, after all.
It was simply an extension of his usual work. He sat at his desk, assembled the evidence sent in from the field in his mind, and drew meaningful conclusions from it.
The matter requiring inspection was not particularly difficult either.
All he had to do was determine whether the two people being canonized had any severe character flaws.
Unless a saintess or saint turned out to be some monstrous psychopathic serial killer, there was usually no issue.
The inspection request was little more than a formality.
Memory alteration was different.
‘I've had to do this a lot lately.’
Alongside inspections and dispute mediation, memory alteration was one of the Inspectorate's main duties.
It was used to protect valuable Imperial talents or erase the traces of matters the Empire had handled in secret.
The problem was that a memory alteration could collapse the instant a fatal contradiction was discovered.
That was why the important part of any large-scale memory alteration was delicately adjusting memories and evidence so that no contradictions remained.
Michael was the best person in the Inspectorate at handling that work.
He had originally practiced it only enough to conceal his status as an Imperial prince and become a bureaucrat, which better suited him.
Before he knew it, he had become one of the world's foremost authorities on memory alteration.
That was also why he had received a marquisate at such a young age.
The problem was that Michael himself hated memory alteration work more than anything.
Collecting every testimony, witness account, and trace, then rewriting or adjusting memories so they flowed naturally without contradiction, was tiresome even for him.
Michael rubbed his face and rose from his seat, as though washing away his annoyance.
His eyes ran over the request for cooperation once more.
‘Rewriting information to create mystery...’
The official request was meant to prevent contradictions from arising through a clash with the Inspectorate during the memory alteration process.
They also wanted Michael's advice as an expert in the field.
And rummaging through another country's affairs without permission would be a diplomatic discourtesy.
‘Are they trying to create another saintess like the Saintess of Victory?’
As he looked over the document, Michael suddenly recalled a saintess from history.
The Saintess of Victory.
A saintess said to have appeared simultaneously on countless battlefields and spread hope to humanity.
It was certain that she had been active on battlefields.
That had been cross-verified through numerous historical records.
However, the Heresy Inquisition had likely intervened in the tales of her exploits and in the locations where she supposedly appeared at impossible times.
The Heresy Inquisition's method was simple.
Build on the truth, add a little falsehood, and magnify the miracle.
This time would likely be no different.
Holiness came from ambiguity.
They were probably trying to magnify the achievements of the saint and saintess.
‘Have they already begun? They say they saved a patient whose heart had stopped, and someone struck by lightning.’
From Michael's perspective, the work had likely already begun.
A patient whose entire body had been burned by lightning. A patient whose heart had stopped for five minutes.
They had supposedly made them stand and walk again.
Naturally, the Heresy Inquisition must have been involved.
‘There is no reason to oppose it.’
Michael did not think the Church's actions were particularly bad.
Humanity's current circumstances were far too desperate.
People needed hope, and he understood that sometimes they needed to preserve that hope with a lie called a religious miracle.
Of course, Michael could not feel hope when the truth behind miracles was so plainly visible to him.
Nor did he need to.
‘This cannot go on forever. Shall I sort through the information, then?’
Michael rose and began reviewing the Inspectorate's information on the saintess.
Ayla, the Saintess of the Lantern.
A little girl said to have done the most during the tragedy at the northern gate.
According to the accounts of those around her, she had never even suffered from minor illnesses in her life.
During the incident, she had cast Refresh nearly a thousand times.
That far surpassed the number of times a high-grade healer could cast it in a day.
No one had witnessed her use the supreme divine magic recorded in scripture.
However, she had produced miracles equivalent to it.
In the operations she participated in, people with crushed heads, pierced abdomens, and even briefly stopped hearts had returned to life.
And since she showed the potential to use supreme divine magic in the distant future, that condition was also considered fulfilled.
Finally, although no one had seen her pray, her divine power had never run dry.
‘She meets the five criteria for a saintess.’
With that thought, Michael turned the page.
The girl always carried a magic-stone lamp. She passed through the dark wards, shining its light into every corner. Patients in beds visited by that lantern usually rose from their beds the next day.
Some patients stated that after awakening in their beds, an angel had come to them in their dreams.
“So that is why she is the Saintess of the Lantern.”
It was a truly fitting epithet.
With that brief thought, Michael organized the information on Ayla.
His fountain pen began to move.
[Can be deleted. Can be deleted. Preservation Grade 1. Can be deleted. Downgrade to Preservation Grade 2 and transfer to the Heresy Inquisition.]
The documents to be sent to the Heresy Inquisition were completed in no time.
Once he sent them, they would use the information to make the saintess's past traces far more mysterious through memory alteration.
Perhaps they would claim she had been born from an egg, or that she had debated theology with scholars from childhood and defeated them.
They would surely embellish her early years with all sorts of things.
‘They cannot give her a virgin birth story...’
Not when she had an older sister.
Instead, they would likely use the weather or astronomical records from the day of her birth.
They might say the clouds parted and sunlight fell only upon her house, or that the stars had shone unusually brightly that night.
Three holy knights dispatched by the Church are scheduled to arrive soon for the family. Following the girl's formal canonization, the remaining members of her household will be relocated to a residence under Church protection.
That information had also been attached to the documents.
But it meant little to Michael.
The matters concerning Ayla were dealt with quickly.
The next file was the problem.
‘...Julian Schnabel.’
The Black Saint.
Doctor Schnabel.
Known to the public as Director Schun, and Michael's brother-in-law.
His real name was Julian Schnabel.
Yet even that real name was publicly recognized as Julian Nihirit.
When Director Schun had created the vaccine in the past, the name Julian Schnabel had vanished from the world as part of protective oversight.
In its place, Julian Nihirit and Doctor Schnabel had appeared in the world.
Michael remembered clearly because he had handled that work.
It had been such a large-scale memory alteration that he had worked overtime for months.
The Heresy Inquisition was requesting information on Director Schun.
That was not a problem.
Director Schun had always appeared at work wearing a mask and had as little social activity as Michael himself.
As long as they only handed over information on Director Schun, no major contradiction would arise from the memory alteration.
The problem lay elsewhere.
Michael turned his head to the left.
On the far left among the three documents on his desk was an unsealed official notice from the military.
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Imperial Military Personnel Staff Official Notice No. 47, Original
To: Marquis Hausen, Chief of Internal Inspections, Inspectorate
From: Edmund, Chief of the Imperial Military Personnel Staff
Subject: Request for identity inspection of Julian Nihirit, son of Baron Nihirit.
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The Imperial military recognizes the lack of effective countermeasures against black magic in Imperial Year 1049.
Accordingly, as a fundamental response, we have decided to establish the Regular Course in Black Magic Response Tactics for elite hero corps members.
We hereby announce in advance that we are considering appointing the following individual as the first professor of this course.
Candidate: Julian Nihirit, son of Baron Nihirit.
.
.
.
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March 12, Imperial Year 1049. Edmund, Chief of the Imperial Military Personnel Staff. Personal seal.
===========================
Michael's brow furrowed deeply.
In short, the military wanted to formally appoint Julian Nihirit as a professor of Black Magic Defense.
‘So he finally succeeded in persuading them.’
Michael thought of his half brother.
Prince Edmund.
A man standing at the opposite end from himself.
A muscle-brained man who hated sitting still despite needing to work at a desk.
As Michael recalled, Prince Edmund had spent the past year pushing for a black magic course as part of military reform.
In the process, he had faced opposition from the Noble Council, the Magic Towers, and the Church.
But somehow, Edmund had managed to gain the Great Sage's support.
And with that support behind him, he had finally established the course.
The official notice was an ordinary request to verify whether Julian Nihirit had any character flaws before appointing him as a professor for the course.
There was no problem with the notice itself.
But placed beside the Black Saint's canonization notice, it created a headache-inducing synergy.
‘One side is trying to make Julian Nihirit a noble, while the other is trying to make Schnabel a saint.’
The military was trying to make Julian Nihirit a noble.
If his course was judged to fulfill the requirements for nobility, the military would not hesitate to grant him a title.
The problem was that he was already scheduled to be canonized as a saint.
‘A noble title and the priesthood...’
Ordinarily, it was impossible to hold both at once.
Therefore, Michael needed to reject one of the two documents.
As an Imperial bureaucrat, he should have rejected the Holy See's request for the sake of the Empire.
But what made him hesitate was the document between the other two.
“...Father. What future did you see?”
The Emperor's decree lay in the middle.
“I have spoken with the Holy Emperor. Permit both.”
There was no context, but its meaning was clear.
The Emperor was both Charlotte's and Michael's biological father, so there was no need to ask how he had foreseen this.
The only question was this.
‘Is that boy truly great enough to draw so much of your interest?’
Michael still could not understand his father's intentions.
Julian Schnabel was certainly an extraordinary man.
But was he truly worth creating an exception that had never existed in a thousand years?
Michael could not understand why they had to go this far.
But that thought did not last long.
Michael had never truly understood the Emperor.
Even his younger sister Charlotte could not read their father's inner thoughts.
So even if Michael knew the Emperor had taken an interest in Julian, there was no way to know what he intended.
Nor was there any need to know.
He picked up the fountain pen that had rolled across the desk.
Michael Hausen, Chief of Internal Inspections. Pre-canonization inspection complete. No grounds for disqualification. Application for a memory alteration ritual approved.
Michael Hausen, Chief of Internal Inspections. Pre-title-conferral inspection complete. No grounds for disqualification. Permission granted to submit the matter to the throne.
Once he had finished signing twice, the peppermint had completely melted away in his mouth.
Finally, he placed the Emperor's secret decree into the incinerator.
Michael buried himself deep in his chair again.
At last, today's work was finished.
Sorting and selecting the information to send to both sides had been exhausting even for him.
“Adjutant.”
Ding-dong.
Michael called for his adjutant.
“Send these documents to their respective recipients and close the drawer for me.”
Michael's adjutant cursed him with their eyes.
Sending the documents was one thing, but could he not close the drawer himself?
But Michael had already fulfilled his daily quota of exercise and showed no intention of moving.
In the end, the adjutant pushed in the drawer directly before Michael, picked up the two document envelopes, and left the office.
Michael watched the adjutant's back with languid eyes for a while before muttering to himself.
“...That Charlotte. Her fiancé is going to give her a hard time.”
Or perhaps not?
Maybe she would enjoy the trouble caused by her fiancé even more.
That might be true.
Unlike when she had lived alone in the secondary palace with dead eyes, like a lifeless doll.
Lately, she seemed to have found a reason to live while handling the incidents brought to her by her future father-in-law.
It was not bad news for Michael that his only younger sister had regained her energy.
‘A woman who loves cases, and a man who attracts them... Perhaps they really are... made for...’
Michael's thoughts did not continue.
He closed his eyes and gave himself over to the sleep he had put off.
A fountain pen clattered and rolled across the edge of the desk once more.
Footnotes:
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