The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing - Chapter 67

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Ceaseless

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈

Chapter 67: The German Bible (2)

──────

Holy Roman Empire, a small village near Mainz.

The cutting November wind slipped through the gaps in an old barn, making the candle flame sway dangerously.

Crackle, pop.

At the faint sound of firewood snapping in the brazier, they flinched and hunched their shoulders.

The sin they were committing was far graver and deadlier than murder or robbery.

Joseph, a farmer from Mainz, ran his rough fingers over the paper.

"…Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Lord's kingdom…"

He was a retired soldier who had served as infantry in the Imperial army before injuring his knee.

He had never properly learned to read. He was only barely making out the meaning with the few German letters he had picked up on the battlefield and from a traveling merchant who had secretly slipped into the village a few days ago.

His wife Elsa and their two daughters barely dared breathe as they watched his lips.

Fear and awe flickered strangely together in their eyes.

"Dear… is that really true?"

His wife swallowed hard. Her voice trembled, thin as a reed.

"Does it really say that in there? That's different from what Father said."

"Yes, without a doubt. It clearly says so in this book."

Joseph could not tear his eyes from the movable type printed on the paper. Confusion raged through his mind like a storm.

The sermons he had heard all his life said nothing like this.

Every week, the village parish priest shouted from the pulpit, spittle flying, that the poor were those abandoned by God, that without gold coins one could not enter heaven, and that without money to buy indulgences, one would suffer in the flames of purgatory even after death.

Yet the German Bible in Joseph's hands told the exact opposite story.

[Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.]

[Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.]

As Joseph read on, he felt something growing hot in his chest.

Joy? No.

Only a bitter sense of betrayal, one that sank into his bones, boiled within him.

"We've been deceived…"

Joseph's hoarse voice slipped out.

"We've been deceived our whole lives."

He clenched the pages so tightly that the paper crumpled.

He wanted to know more. He had to learn what they had hidden, what Jesus had truly left for them to hear.

Then.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

"Open the door! Open it now!"

With a sharp shout, the plank door shrieked beneath the pounding.

"Aah!"

His wife screamed and pulled the children into her arms. Joseph's heart sank.

His mind, hot with rage a moment ago, cooled instantly as if doused with ice water.

He reflexively tried to shove the Bible into his clothes.

But he was too late.

Crack!

The worn hinges tore away beneath a violent kick, and a blade-sharp winter wind rushed through the opening.

The first thing to enter was a thick leather boot.

"So this is where the little rats have been hiding and squirming…"

The rancid smell of alcohol and greasy meat filled the cramped room in an instant.

Wrapped in an expensive fox-fur coat and putting on airs, the man looked no different from a fat pig dressed in leather.

It was Klaus, the village parish priest.

Two of the lord's soldiers, carrying spears, followed him inside.

Their expressions were stiff, and it was obvious that they followed Klaus only because they had been cowed by his forceful manner.

"F-Father Klaus…"

Joseph instinctively shrank back. The Bible he had tried to hide protruded from the folds of his clothes.

"What is that abomination in your hands?"

"This is…"

Joseph did not even have time to answer.

Klaus strode forward, roughly snatched the bundle of papers from Joseph's hand, and held the pages to the torchlight.

[Im Anfang war das Wort…]

Klaus's eyes went wide.

"T-This…! Isn't this that cursed Bohemian heretical book?!"

The German Bible had recently begun spreading in secret throughout the Empire.

The Bishop of Mainz had strictly declared it forbidden, issuing a harsh order that anyone found possessing it was to be executed on the spot.

"How dare filthy peasants steal a look at God's word and trespass into the priests' domain? Do you truly have no fear of hell?!"

"Father, that's not…"

"Silence!"

Smack!

The priest's thick palm struck Joseph hard across the cheek.

Joseph's head snapped to the side. His mouth split, and the metallic taste of blood spread across his tongue.

"Dear!"

"Father!"

His wife and daughters, huddled in the corner, screamed.

Klaus shouted and sprayed spittle across Joseph's face.

"This is poison brewed by the Devil! Ignorant fools like you have neither the right to read it nor the intelligence to understand it! You should spend your whole lives plowing fields and making offerings as you're told. How dare you grow presumptuous enough to read letters!"

Smack! Smack!

The priest's palm struck Joseph's cheeks again and again.

Blood dripped from Joseph's split lips, but the priest's rage did not stop.

"Save your excuses for the heresy tribunal! Though you'll be burned at the stake anyway."

Klaus gestured with his chin toward Joseph's wife and two daughters crouching in the corner.

"Drag those women out too! We need to wipe out a heretic's bloodline. Especially that older one. Before her questioning, I'll have to give her some special instruction myself."

Klaus's gaze lingered on Emma's chest. That greedy, sticky look crawled over the young girl's body.

Joseph's heart dropped.

"No! Don't touch my children! Kill me instead!"

His wife screamed and clutched both daughters to her chest. Klaus merely snorted and waved a hand.

"What are you doing? I said drag them out now!"

At Klaus's roar, the soldiers from the estate hesitantly stepped forward.

"I'm sorry, ma'am. We have no choice…"

As they tried to drag the wife and children away by force, the barn instantly became chaos.

"Aaaah!"

"Please save us!"

The children's cries and his wife's desperate screams rang in Joseph's ears.

"Please! Please show mercy, Father!"

Joseph seized the priest's trouser leg and begged.

But what came back was not God's mercy, but cold violence.

"How dare you touch me with those filthy hands!"

Thud!

A mud-caked leather boot drove mercilessly into Joseph's solar plexus.

"Guhk…!"

Joseph rolled across the floor, gasping for breath. His face plunged into the ground, caked with cow dung and mud.

Just as flashes of light filled his vision and his mind began to fade, one verse from the Bible, soaked with muddy water, came into view.

[It is harder for a rich man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.]

At that moment, something snapped in Joseph's mind.

His body moved before he could think. He grabbed the pitchfork beside the hearth and swung it.

It was a movement too swift to believe from a retired soldier with a bad leg.

Whoosh. Thud!

A dull, horrific tearing sound split the air in the barn.

"Uh…?"

The priest stared blankly into empty space.

Three rusty tines of the pitchfork were buried deep in the back of Klaus's head.

Without even letting out a final cry, Klaus toppled forward like a log.

Thump.

That greasy body collapsed into the dung and filth on the floor. Red blood soaked the black priest's robe and slowly spread outward.

In a silence that seemed to stop time itself, Joseph stood gripping the bloodied pitchfork, breathing heavily.

"Huff… huff…"

Neither the soldiers, his wife, nor even Joseph himself could believe what they were seeing.

Only then did Joseph come to his senses.

And realize what he had done.

'I-I… killed a priest!'

He had killed God's representative, a clergyman who held the keys to heaven.

With a pitchfork used to till fields, he had pierced the head of a noble figure whom a mere peasant could not even dare look in the eye.

"Ah, aaaaah…!"

Joseph's knees buckled. Extreme terror began gnawing at his soul.

This was not something that would end with the crime of murder. It was the most terrible blasphemy a human being could commit.

The medieval fear of hellfire that would not go out even after death, and of both himself and his family being cursed forever, crushed him.

"I'm… I'm going to hell. I killed Father Klaus. The Devil will come for me…"

Trembling, Joseph crawled across the floor.

Even the soldiers were so shocked by the sight that they stood frozen, unable even to raise their spears.

Then Joseph's gaze fell again on the scattered sheets on the floor, on the German text in movable type.

[Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.]

Joseph stopped trembling.

False prophets.

Ravenous wolves.

He looked down at Father Klaus's corpse, sprawled on the floor.

The revolting smell of alcohol, the greasy lump of flesh, and those eyes that had gleamed with greed.

'Was this man really God's representative?'

This was the man who took the last offerings from poor widows to buy furs, who monopolized God's word to keep them trapped in ignorance their whole lives?

"…No."

He tightened his shaking hand around the pitchfork.

"I'm not the one going to hell."

Slowly, he raised his head. The terror in his eyes gradually turned into anger, then conviction.

"That bastard, that bastard was a devil."

Nowhere in the Bible he had just read did it say that priests should sell indulgences, violate maidens, or suck the lifeblood from the poor.

Jesus was the friend of the poor.

Jesus overturned the merchants' tables in the temple.

Jesus… despised pigs like this.

"The Lord gave us His word, and that bastard tried to take it from us. He's the thief. He's the wolf."

"J-Joseph…"

One of the lord's soldiers, finally coming to his senses, raised his spear as he stammered.

It was Frederick of Saxony.

He was the neighboring blacksmith's son, a young man who had once played on Joseph's shoulders as a snot-nosed child.

"A-Are you insane? You killed a priest! We're finished now! If the lord finds out, we're all going to die!"

The soldiers' spearheads pointed at Joseph, but their hands shook violently. They were just as terrified of the situation.

Yet there was no fear left in Joseph's eyes.

Only the savage glare of a beast driven to the edge of a cliff burned there like fire.

"Frederick of Saxony, you saw it too. What that pig did to your younger sister last week!"

Frederick of Saxony's face went pale. The spearpoint drooped weakly.

The previous week, Frederick of Saxony's sister had returned crying from confession with her clothes torn.

When the family asked what had happened at the rectory, she could not say a word. She had only trembled.

Frederick of Saxony had been furious, but he had not dared defy a priest. He had been taught that doing so meant going against God's will.

"Michael, you're the same! When your mother was laid up sick, have you forgotten how your mother died because this bastard collected the tithes? That was the money for your mother's medicine!"

Michael's lips quivered.

The last sight of Michael's mother dying cold in bed that night flashed through their mind.

Before them stood a murderer who had killed a priest.

At the same time, Joseph was the neighbor they had lived alongside their whole lives.

And the corpse on the floor was the greedy tyrant they had always loathed.

"We haven't committed a sin."

Joseph grabbed the Bible that had fallen to the floor with a bloodied hand.

"We… passed judgment."

"P-Passed judgment…? This is murder!"

"No! It's written in this book!"

Joseph opened the German Bible and thrust it before the soldiers' eyes.

"Those bastards are devils! Those men who disguised themselves as sheep, deceived us and robbed us, violated our daughters, and starved our parents to death are the pack of wolves Jesus warned us about!"

Joseph's shout thundered through the cramped barn.

"What do you want to do? Will you protect greedy pigs for the rest of your lives and die like dogs? Or will you follow the true will of God, as written in this book?"

His voice no longer belonged to a cringing peasant.

"…!"

The soldiers' eyes shifted between the Bible in Joseph's hand and the priest's corpse on the floor.

Their struggle did not last long.

Their hearts, too, were already full of suppressed rage.

The German Bible verses Joseph had thrown at them were only a small spark cast upon it.

"…You're right, Uncle Joseph."

Tears streamed down Frederick of Saxony's face.

"You didn't kill a priest. You killed the beast that ruined my sister."

Michael silently lowered their spear as well. Their gaze had already turned cold.

They knew.

There was no going back now.