Otome Game no Heroine de Saikyou Survival [WN] - Chapter 148.3
A black carriage passes through the streets of the royal city late at night, making a slight noise.
Although it bears no emblem of nobility, anyone with a close connection to the royal castle would recognize it as the carriage of the Earl of Lester, the first court magician.
Even after the sun went down, the charming sounds and lights never ceased from the taverns of the royal capital until the first bell rang, the time the date changed. However, once passing through the main street and into the area lined with mansions near the aristocratic district, one did not see a soul out and about in the dark of night.
As the black carriage glided along the cobblestones and stopped at the back entrance of the temple adjacent to the Cathedral of the Holy Church, surrounded by planted trees, two maidens appeared from the temple, holding staffs lit with Magic light.
The man in charge, who was momentarily taken aback by the maidens in their pure white priestly robes, hurriedly bowed to them and opened the carriage door, revealing a young girl with gently billowing jet-black hair and morbidly white skin.
“Welcome, Carla-sama!”
“Thank you for welcoming me.”
Despite her weak vitality, she exuded an immense amount of magical power from within. The maiden’s appearance was breathtaking, but the unexpectedly sensible greeting and smile made the priestesses bow their heads, with their usual smiles on their faces.
“This way, please. I will take you to Lady Ursula.”
A secret letter arrived under Carla from Ursula, who was proclaimed the saint of the Holy Church.
The contents of the letter were euphemistic and cryptic, but Carla understood them. It said that she wanted to talk in private about the whereabouts of the princess and her escort, and why the Evil Race had entered the kingdom.
Carla did not take the story seriously. After all, it was Carla who brought the Evil Race into the kingdom, but the evidence and witnesses had already been burned.
Still, Carla went to the royal capital in secret, hoping that the Holy Church, with its nationwide information network, might be able to tell her something interesting.
“Welcome, Carla. Thank you for coming this evening.”
At the end of an empty, dimly lit corridor, in a room reserved for inviting nobles, a neat, flaxen-haired woman greeted Carla with a soft smile.
“Don’t mind me, Ursula-sama.”
“This way, please.”
Ursula led Carla to sit down on the sofa so that they were facing each other. The room was simple, with white walls and no decoration, but the stone floor was polished like a mirror and the sofa was so soft that it seemed to sink into the ground, a gem for a high-ranking nobleman.
The four female priestesses were waiting in the four corners of the room, where Ursula’s hand-brewed tea was fragrant.
“Carla-sama…in fact, there are voices within the church that it was Carla-sama who brought the Evil Race into the country.”
At Ursula’s pensive gaze, Carla smiled thinly and tilted her head.
“My, how frightening. I may look as if I’ve grown up with magic, but inside I’m just a little girl who just turned thirteen, you know? Who are you to say such a frightening thing?”
“Yes, yes, of course. I think so too, but between you and me, there is a department in the Holy Church that specializes in dealing with Wraiths.”
“Wraiths?”
It could certainly be said that Purification of Wraiths was the mission of the priests who were supposed to save people. However, the Wraith was not so easy to find compared to other undead monsters.
In the case of undead monsters, the Magic Stone left on the corpse was polluted by the miasma, and the corpse became a monster when it was combined with the residual thoughts left behind in places where the miasma was thick.
Wraiths, however, lack a body that could serve as a substitute and lack even a Magic Stone, so they could not emerge unless there was a significant amount of miasma and magical element, and perhaps a high-ranking Undead around them that spread the miasma and magical element.
What sort of department would specialize exclusively dealing with Wraiths, let alone a monster outbreak area that people could not enter?
“Someone must have been holding a grudge against this world. The remaining thoughts were also incoherent and filled with a horrifying madness, and the Wraith was shouting with resentment about the Evil Race and a certain noblewoman.”
“Heh…”
Ursula looked at Carla around where she mentioned noble young lady, and Carla’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“I don’t believe any of this Wraith nonsense, but… the Holy Church has a very interesting counterintelligence department… it seems?”
Ursula moistened her lips with a cup of tea, and Carla took the steaming cup and sipped it.
Perhaps there was a department that handled the “Wraith Magic,” a technique that did not specialize in purification of wraiths, but rather obtained information by injecting miasma by some means and creating wraiths.
The Wraith Magic was forbidden on this continent, and even having research materials from the past was a crime punishable by death. It was a bad joke that it was the Holy Church that had decreed that it was forbidden to do so. Ursula was astonished at Carla, who had drawn the furthest conclusion from a few words.
“I knew what the monk said was true. The light of this country is blocked by ‘evil’.”
As Ursula spoke these words, the maidens in the four corners quietly stepped forward.
“You don’t have to kill the little girl, just enough to prevent her from returning to the school. It should be to “educate” her, and welcome her to be the next in line for the queen’s position.”
Ursula did not accept Carla’s “education” from Nathaniel because he was the grandson of the Temple Director. If he tried to use Ursula and her dedication team solely for his own personal greed, without going through the temple director, Ursula, would have been merciless and would have educated Nathaniel as well.
However, Ursula had long been told by the head of the temple about a special mission from the upper echelons of the temple, the Fandora Kingdom, where the headquarters of the Sarth Continent Holy Church was located.
The mission was to appoint a woman of the Holy Church as one of the three Queen candidates.
For several years, the head of the temple had been planning to appoint a daughter of a noble family related to the temple as a candidate for the Crown Prince’s betrothed, but several influential noble families, including Duke Fudale, interfered, and the duke’s daughter was forced to become a candidate.
But there was no need to give up just yet, and Ursula, after hearing Carla’s story, thought that there was still a chance to make up for it if things went well, and accepted Nathaniel’s proposal.
Carla, who wandered alone in the dungeons and could no longer keep the Crown Prince, would not be as much of a problem as the princess even if she were to disappear at any time. Then, Ursula could even get a connection with the Earl Lester, who was also beginning to have a daughter of his own, and draw him to our side.
After that, they could get closer to their goal by transferring the name of Ursula’s Saint to a moderately foolish noble young lady with the attribute of light.
“Carla-sama, isn’t it about time the poison began to take effect?”
“…”
Slowly getting up, Ursula’s smirk deepened only with her condescending eyes.
Carla, who had not moved from the couch with her cup in her hand, was approached by dedication squad maidens with needle daggers at the ready from all sides to surround her.
“My… the poison of the cefriore flower. That tastes so familiar.”
“!!!”
At that moment, one of the maidens, sensing something, held out the Needle Dagger with surprising speed.
The Dedication Corps Maidens, all of whom were Rank 3 Light Magic Masters and warriors, closed in on Carla. However, just before the blade, which was unleashed at such a terrifying speed, touched Carla’s thin neck, the white hand with a “pattern of black thorns” gripped her arm.
Goooooooh!!!
“—-!!!”
Scarlet flames blazed from Carla’s hand, and as she gripped the arm of the half-burned maiden who screamed inaudibly, Carla smiled euphorically as she took another sip of the nostalgic tasting tea she had sipped so many times in the dungeon to gain poison resistance.
“It smells so good.”
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Also check out my other novels: Reincarnated into a Game as the Hero’s Friend, Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, and A Girl Who Was Told “You Have No Talent” Turned Out To Be A Talented Monster