Chapter 178
Do-Jin’s expectations were correct to a degree. He had assumed that a high-ranking cleric would recognize an artifact still holding Bella’s divine power. In this world where Bella’s influence faded more each year, almost nothing existed that still held this much star-born energy.
There was one thing he had overlooked, however. A simple high-level priest and a Saintess who inherited the sacred stigma were not viewing things through the same lens.
Mariola felt as if chills were crawling across her entire body. This... this was what it truly was...?
She had spent half her life inside the Celestial See, and exposure to strong divinity was a familiar issue. Even if that divinity had declined to a pathetic remnant of its old glory, the Celestial See was still the Celestial See.
But the ecstasy recorded in ancient texts, the feeling of a mortal soul reconnecting to the Star they served, was something her generation could never feel. She would have to go back not one or two generations, but several. The sensation remained only as a written memory passed down by the Saintesses of an era long gone.
Mariola understood instinctively, or rather, it felt like the memories engraved in the stigma itself whispered the truth to her. For the first time since inheriting the Saintess’s stigma, she felt like a real Saintess instead of a ceremonial ornament belonging to the Celestial See.
“Excuse me...?” Do-Jin called out to the trembling Saintess in confusion.
He had simply wanted to show her an artifact more authentic than the ones the Celestial See locked away, then use its origin to negotiate. Even if this relic had no direct link to the modern Church of Creation, the existence of a religious group that worshiped Bella since ancient times would still carry enormous meaning.
Depending on how it was used, it could become a tool to restore the crumbling authority of the Church of Creation. He planned to present the relic, use its provenance as leverage, and leverage what he knew to build allies inside the Celestial See.
That was the plan, anyway, but why the hell is she suddenly having a seizure?
From the moment she saw the original artifact, something had felt off. Now, she curled in on herself and shook violently.
The priest next to her panicked. Unable to touch her, he could only flail his hands in the air while shouting, “Saintess, Saintess, what is happening to you!”
The priest wasn’t doing anything helpful, but she also wasn’t physically injured, so a healer wouldn’t know what to do anyway.
“Stop making noise and move!” Do-Jin stepped onto the table and vaulted over it, kicking Keilo aside when he got in the way. The kick, accelerated by Psychokinesis, sent Keilo rolling across the floor with a strangled groan.
Do-Jin turned the Saintess over to at least stabilize her breathing, but he realized that she was perfectly fine. “What...?”
She was shaking because she’d curled up and was sobbing uncontrollably. Do-Jin stood there, stunned and at a loss for words. Keilo scrambled back up, shouting about how he dared treat the Saintess like that, and the noise made Do-Jin want to roast the bastard’s skull on the spot.
“You... you truly saw Her...! You met Her directly...” Mariola’s voice scattered like loose beads, and her eyes grew more clouded with confusion.
As the stigma awakened and expanded her sight, she began to see the duality inside Do-Jin. Warm Starlight lingered around him, the kind only left behind when a Star descended. Yet, at the same time, a blood-colored darkness that no human should’ve possessed burned in his eyes.
When Do-Jin noticed her gaze locked precisely onto his eyes, he clicked his tongue.
She noticed this?
There should have been one veil over his body and another over the entire space. She was never supposed to see past either.
“What... what exactly are you?”
Star, shadow, and human. Mariola saw all three tangled inside him and couldn’t find any category to shove him into.
Nothing was going the way Do-Jin had planned. Perhaps that was the result of a plan stitched together on the spot.
Suppressing the irritation crawling up his throat, Do-Jin glanced at the relic again before speaking, “Let me start by asking something. How much of it can you actually see?”
“Why would you ask that? Are you planning to tell me only what falls within my sight? Can’t you just tell me everything?”
“Because you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”
“What if I could believe you?”
“No. You wouldn’t. And if someone believed me after hearing the full truth, I’d stop talking to them. Anyone who accepted that story without hesitation had something wrong with them.”
Mariola went silent for a moment. Then, convinced by Do-Jin’s blunt certainty, she explained what she had seen and felt: the relic reacting to her stigma, the lingering presence of a Star, and the fact that the same Starlight had settled on him as well.
“And She stayed with you too. But why do your eyes carry such deep darkness?”
“It’s because of the Magic Eye that was bestowed upon me. They always look ominous and dark by default. Otherwise, why would mages give people such a creepy impression?”
“No, this is far beyond that. This is not something a human being should be able to endure.”
“It was made so endurance wouldn’t be necessary. The creator was an exceptionally skilled mage.”
Mariola couldn’t say anything to that. It would have been ridiculous to ask who the creator was when she was speaking to the apprentice of Sion Grace. And Do-Jin knew that was exactly why it worked.
“The one you pray to didn’t seem bothered by them either,” Do-Jin said.
He’d been deliberately keeping his mouth shut about meeting Bella because he didn’t feel like getting slapped while someone screamed blasphemy, but since she was prying on her own, there was no point in pretending.
“Why... why is it you...! We were the ones who called Her for so long...”
Shock hit her first, then something sharp and jealous flickered across her expression. She leaned forward, trembling. “How was it? How did She speak? Why has She never answered our prayers? Did She not say anything? Why respond elsewhere but not to us?”
Bella had never once descended to the mortal world without a reason. Whether it was through the Saintess or by some other means, Bella had always come to the world below with a clear purpose. Because of that, the Saintess believed that if Do-Jin had been present at the place where Bella descended, then he must have heard the reason as well. And in truth, that was exactly the case.
“The place where this relic was kept had been corrupted for various reasons. I purified it. A lot happened during the process, but... at the end of the day, I was able to meet Bella directly.”
“So then, what did you do? We should have been the ones to hear Her answer... Why does She ignore us? Why respond to you and not to us?”
The Saintess’s words came out tangled. Her voice was a mess, and her heart was probably worse. Maybe everything she’d been holding back had finally snapped. For a religious figure, a god who had always answered suddenly going silent must have felt like the end of the world.
“I didn’t ask anything like that. I don’t really care.”
“You...! Do you even understand how important that is to us? The fate of the world might very well depend on the answer!”
“Bella asked if there was anything I wanted.” Do-Jin cut through her rising panic with a blunt sentence.
The moment she heard that Bella had asked for a wish, Mariola fell into her own thoughts. If such a moment had come to her, she would have fixed everything in an instant. Every frustration, every wall, every question left unanswered.
“What kind of wish would you have made, Saintess?”
Mariola answered without hesitation. “I would have asked Her to hear our prayers again. Nothing else matters. If our sins caused this silence, I would have begged Her for forgiveness and pleaded for one more chance. That is what you should have asked as well.”
Her eyes burned with judgment. Anything selfish would be unforgivable in her view.
Do-Jin looked at her and let out a short laugh. “I expected a Saintess to be different, but you’re exactly the same.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why do you assume Bella abandoned you? Why do you assume She turned Her back on everyone?”
“That is because...”
The Saintess was about to repeat the standard teachings that were drilled into the believers, with the typical rhetoric that the punishment was being inflicted because of humanity’s sins and its ugly nature, but she stopped and closed her mouth.
“I asked the Star to live longer,” Do-Jin revealed.
Her eyes widened. “What...”
“I told Her to live longer. I never once thought Bella abandoned this world. People say Her light is fading, that She is growing distant, but to me it only looked like She was losing strength.”
“What does that even mea—”
“The Star wants to answer you. The Star wants to protect you. The Star wants to love this world, just like before, even now. It’s just that She can’t do it anymore. That is why I made that wish. I told Her to take care of Herself, and not us.”
Shock washed over Mariola’s face. She had always believed her wish would be noble, pure, something offered for the world rather than personal desire. But in all of it, she hadn’t spared even a single thought for the Star itself.
“Most people place expectations on their faith. For them, a god is nothing more than a vending machine of blessings. Some people shove in their prayers and expect comfort to come out. But no one worries about the god. No one worries about the star above their heads.”
“That is natural... Bella is an absolute being. Worrying about Her is something that borders on blasphemy...” Mariola argued.
“You say that as if you asked Her personally.”
Do-Jin decided to go with the nuclear option. Everyone knew that one believer who claimed they had spoken to God directly and insisted people should trust them. His words carried the same implication, but they landed in a way that was far more infuriating.
“Where is She? Tell me. I will go myself and ask.”
“You can’t. She does not want visitors.”
Mariola froze. There was no way he could reveal that the place was the Floating Continent. One sentence would ignite a war. He would be kicking off the Great War with nothing but his tongue.
“In any case, you should stop meddling with me over anything involving vampires. This is not something your side has the right to judge. The one who gave me the clue to break their curse was Bella Herself.”
“Then why did you make everything this complicated? You could have said that from the beginning.”
“You’re joking. You would never have believed me. If I weren’t from Elthomagia and did not have Sion Grace protecting my back, you would have dragged me to a pyre the moment you heard the accusation.”
There was another reason. If the Celestial See had faltered upon receiving that report, those from the Church of Ruin would instantly burrow deeper underground. Tracking them would become that much more difficult. When the time came, he could blow everything open all at once, but right now the Celestial See needed to stay quiet.
“And if possible, I want everything we discussed here to remain between us, at least until I finish the task Bella gave me.”
“So She gave you a task. Then the Celestial See should support you.”
“If that were acceptable, I doubt She would have given the task to me. If you want to shout this across the continent, you’re free to do so, provided you’re trying to sabotage Bella’s will with your own hands.”
This was the only leash Do-Jin could put on the Saintess’s mouth. If she ignored it, that was her choice, but he doubted she would. She’d practically accused herself of standing in her own god’s way. No true believer broke a vow after being told that doing so would violate it.
“Then how do you intend to prove your innocence without revealing anything?” the priest asked.
“I had complicated plans, but that no longer seems necessary. The Saintess can use her authority instead.”
“This relic was already something I planned to give you. Say it was stored in Elthomagia. With the weight of this artifact, the Star’s power lingering in it, and the name of Sion Grace, clearing my charges should not be that difficult.”
He might as well go all in. He had already talked to their precious Star, become Her apostle, and done everything short of showing the Status Window. It was almost disappointing that he couldn’t shove the system messages in their faces.
“But this is not such a simple issue. I have no real power,” the Saintess said.
Do-Jin had almost forgotten about that. Having already prepared for this moment, he placed one more card on the table. “The loudest mouth in the Celestial See right now belongs to that man named Bman. Track down a man called Hose Fuadigo. You will find that nearly every high-end brothel in every major city has him listed as a VIP client.”
“What does that mean all of a sudden?”
This man used so many identities that the name he used when he died of intercourse-induced death was something even Do-Jin had to spend money to dig up.
“As I continue the work She gave me, there will come a time when the Celestial See must step forward. If you want the Celestial See to function properly when that time comes, it cannot stay in this state. Filthy men with filthy secrets need to be cut out.”
He’d prepared it as a hidden blade, something to get him through the situation without revealing anything about Bella or his status as the Star’s apostle. He could have chosen not to use it, but there was no reason to hold back a tool he’d already readied. Besides, the sooner a cancer was cut out, the better the results.