Chapter 65: Black Fangs vs. Holy Church (4)
Chapter 65: Black Fangs vs. Holy Church (4)
Chapter 65: Black Fangs vs. Holy Church (4)
“I understand the situation. I’ll gather the others and head there shortly.”
The man on the screen spoke those words.
Given the emergency, it was only natural that the entire leadership of the Holy Church would gather to discuss the next steps.
“Yes, I understand,” Caron replied with his usual, insincere smile before terminating the teleportation spell.
However, contrary to his words, Caron had no intention of waiting for them to arrive.
In a way, it was to be expected.
Even though they were both cardinals, Caron and that man were worlds apart.
Unlike the others, Caron was privy to the Holy Church’s deepest secret, shared with him by the now-vanished Pope.
The power he wielded and his abilities were incomparable to anyone else’s.After all, Caron was the cardinal responsible for the most important empire, a position that granted him unparalleled authority within the Holy Church.
It wasn’t for nothing that people called him the next Pope.
‘If those fools come, they’ll only get in my way,’ he thought.
They were all hypocrites. Just by looking at that man, he could tell.
When power grows, corruption is inevitable. Caron knew this, and although he was aware of some of the things happening, he believed a solution was necessary.
Even if something is broken beyond repair, one should at least try to fix it.
‘Utterly disgusting,’ Caron thought with disdain.
Whether they were like that man, nurturing a field of flowers in their heads while feigning piety, or indulging in all kinds of corruption behind the scenes while pretending to be virtuous, the Holy Church was full of such vermin.
The latter group was at least somewhat reasonable, but…
Even they balked at the idea of grinding orphans to create a Holy Grail, an efficient method in Caron’s eyes.
He had once suggested it, only to be rejected outright—no matter how desperate the situation, they couldn’t bring themselves to commit such a sin, they said.
Caron knew this because they had refused, fearing divine punishment.
Fortunately, their immediate rejection allowed him to kill and silence them on the spot.
‘They’re all so frustratingly narrow-minded.’
One could obtain as much divine power as needed by using people.
These vermin hypocritically rejected the idea of using humans as resources.
But Caron was convinced—there was no more efficient material than humans.
That’s how he had risen to his current position. He had caught the eye of the Pope, who understood his methods, and was named as his successor.
However, this efficient approach was only possible within the empire.
Those hypocrites would surely reject this rational means of utilizing divine power.
As a result, Caron had to waste time ensuring thorough security for nothing.
The mass production of the Holy Grail could have been far more efficient, but it wasn’t.
‘Thanks to them, everything is becoming a hassle.’
It was already troublesome enough to deal with the leader of the Black Fangs, but now he had to clean up any evidence just because those idiots were coming.
First, Caron needed to quickly hand over the hero’s corpse to the Empire.
He had long-standing ties with the Second Prince, so it would be easy enough to ask him for a favor.
If he left it to that cunning emperor, he’d surely lose all ownership of the body. That prince was the perfect choice.
“...?”
Why was it?
Why did a sudden, uneasy feeling creep up on him?
A sense of foreboding washed over him, as if he was making the wrong choice.
But Caron was a rational man.
He wouldn’t abandon the most efficient plan just because of an unstable factor like intuition.
“...Ca-Cardinal! The preparations for the ritual are complete!”
Just as Caron was diligently cleaning up the evidence, a subordinate reported to him.
Caron quickly moved his feet.
Reciting an incantation, a hidden passageway appeared before him—stairs leading down to the underground cathedral.
As he walked through the dark corridor, he arrived at a spring filled with crimson liquid.
The Holy Blood.
An artifact that had existed for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Made from the bones and flesh of a saint who had fulfilled her duty, it was the most powerful object in the possession of the Holy Church—a relic that embodied the very history of the church.
This was Caron’s final trump card, one he had carefully preserved until now.
It was a bit of a waste, but a trump card is meant to be used at times like this.
There was no moment more urgent than now.
He had to act before the leader of the Black Fangs exposed his deepest secret.
Caron immersed himself in the spring.
His white robes were dyed a deep red.
He could feel the overwhelmingly powerful energy enveloping his entire body.
No matter how strong the leader of the Black Fangs was, he wouldn’t be able to withstand this.
This was the manifestation of a living miracle, a power accumulated over dozens of generations of saints.
It was on a completely different level from the Holy Grail.
Only a monster like the Emperor of the Empire could hope to stand against it. Otherwise, the leader would soon lose his mind and become a mere puppet of the Holy Church.
He would pay the price.
The price for daring to challenge someone he should never have provoked.
The price for foolishly opposing the Holy Church.
With a smile, Caron prayed in the sacred spring.
To the leader of the Black Fangs.
Tap, tap.
To let him into his mind.
******
“...Uh, Cardinal, are you alright?”
A voice called out to him.
Caron, irritated, grabbed his forehead and responded sharply,
“Nothing happened. Stop distracting me and keep your mouth shut.”
His tone was unusually forceful, completely devoid of his usual pretense. His subordinate, caught off guard by the abrupt change, hesitated, but Caron didn’t have the luxury to care about that.
It was only natural.
Nothing happened...
That was a lie.
Too much had happened. His head was spinning from the effort.
‘What on earth was that?’
Why was his mental landscape filled with... human excrement and... vulgar pictures of an old woman?
It wasn’t just a matter of having a twisted taste; there was a palpable hatred toward those things.
But if he hated them so much, why did they dominate his mental world so thoroughly?
It was as if he had been forced to confront them all day long.
‘No, that wasn’t the only strange thing.’
Fur Suit—
A mascot costume worn out of an overwhelming love for beastmen.
A costume that cost him an entire month’s salary, which he cherished.
A muscular hand holding a stone engraved with electrical patterns to the cloaca of a yellow rat.
The unsettling breath of that yellow rat, its cold sweat, and its flushed expression that refused to leave his memory no matter how hard he tried.
And worse still...
There were images and videos so disturbing that just thinking about them felt like his entire understanding of the world was crumbling.
The more he explored this mental landscape, the more bizarre and grotesque things he uncovered.
No matter how much he tried, Caron couldn’t make sense of the kind of mindset this person had or the life they had led.
But one thing was clear.
This man was definitely not the leader of the Black Fangs.
There was no way someone like this could be the leader of the Black Fangs.
It just wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.
To think that such a subhuman…
No, something even less than human could be leading an organization that had pushed the Holy Church into a corner—Caron simply couldn’t accept it.
‘...How did this happen?’
Caron was thrown into confusion.
It was a mental world so bizarre, so grotesque, that it defied all logic.
Realizing the oddity of the situation and sensing the imminent threat to his sanity, Caron had swiftly returned from that place before his mind could be completely shattered.
No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t make sense of what had just happened.
Tap, tap.
The man was indeed known as the leader of the Black Fangs.
He was a figure the Empire had put out a nationwide bounty on—so it would be stranger not to know him.
Yet, that man, didn’t resemble the leader of the Black Fangs at all.
If that’s the case… was it all just a mistake by the Empire?
Was everything they knew wrong?
Even though the Empire had devoted all its resources to the investigation, could all those imperial soldiers be making such a blunder?
‘Could that even be possible?’
How could a colossal force like the Empire confuse such a fool with the leader of the Black Fangs?
How could something so bizarre even happen?
But… looking at the current situation, there was no other explanation. There was no other way to make sense of it.
“Uh, uh, Cardinal...”
As Caron wrestled with his confusion, his oblivious subordinate kept trying to speak to him.
“I told you to shut up.”
He was losing control over his temper.
Once again, sharp words, stripped of any pretense, spilled from Caron’s lips.
But oddly, his subordinate didn’t obey his command.
“Uh, uh… Are you sure that’s okay?”
Already deeply unsettled, Caron’s frustration boiled over at his subordinate’s persistence. He was about to lash out at the man in front of him when...
He froze.
He had no choice but to stop.
His subordinate was trembling, pointing at something with a shaking hand.
When Caron followed the direction of the finger, he saw it—a shocking anomaly.
“What… what is this…?”
The most powerful relic in the possession of the Holy Church.
An object that had been passed down through centuries, perhaps millennia, along with the history of the Holy Church.
A treasure among treasures.
The miraculous spring had dwindled.
In just a short span of time, nearly half of the Holy Blood had evaporated.
The moment the history of the Holy Church had been halved in exchange for indulging in furry memes.
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