Apprentice Shrine Maiden Volume 4 Page 15

  “Please, Sister Myne! Help! Please save Dirk!” she screamed in desperation. But I had my hands completely full pouring mana into my ring’s feystone to maintain the wind shield and hold back the immense amount of mana radiating from the High Priest and Bindewald. Protecting Dad, Fran, and the unconscious Damuel was my priority; I didn’t have the leeway to go and help Delia and Dirk.

  “Come into the shield yourself if you want to be safe. I can’t move.”

  Delia leaned forward to protect Dirk from the flying sparks, desperately dodging the Crushing waves as she made her way over. Her footsteps were heavy as though she was being pushed toward the ground.

  “Sister Myne, you are going to help Delia?” Fran asked reproachfully.

  I shook my head. “I don’t have the leeway to help her. But if she wants to get inside the shield herself, she’s free to do so.”

  “But...” Fran continued before trailing off, dissatisfied.

  I lowered my eyes. I could understand his disapproval, and I did remember that he had told me to cut Delia off entirely, but I didn’t think it was right to leave them to face the mana out there and let them die together. Dirk in particular was already on the verge of death, having been forced into a contract and then forcibly drained of mana. He wasn’t at fault here.

  Once I explained this to Fran he swallowed his reproach, but there was still a pained look on his face. All he did was whisper, “Please don’t let her exploit you.”

  Delia inched her way into the shield, then collapsed in exhaustion. But not even that was enough for her to let go of Dirk. As she sat with him in her arms, she looked up at me, her crimson hair fluttering behind her. “Thank you ever so much, Sister Myne.”

  “Delia, I will allow you inside the shield because I do not wish for either of you to die. But that does not mean I have forgotten what you did. Please be aware of that.”

  “...Of course.”

  The High Bishop’s attendants saw that and seemed to think that even if I wouldn’t forgive them, I would at least spare their lives. “Sister Myne, may we please enter as well?” they said, each trudging over and wanting to enter the shield too.

  “If you can enter, then certainly.”

  “We thank you.”

  But of the three who tried to enter the wind shield, only one was successful. The other two were blown back by the wind.

  “Kyaah?!”

  “Noo!”

  Delia and the shrine maiden inside the shield both blinked as they watched the other two get blown away.

  “But why...?”

  “Those with ill intent can’t pass the shield.”

  It wasn’t my fault they had been blown away; the shield fundamentally wouldn’t allow passage to anyone who meant harm to those within it. Those two shrine maidens had intended to harm either me, for hitting the High Bishop with mana; Dad, for hitting their fellow shrine maiden Jenni; or Delia and Dirk, possibly for entering the shield first. I wasn’t enough of a saint to try to save people who meant me or those close to me harm, nor did I have the time to care.

  “It’s a shame they couldn’t enter, but that’s all there is to it,” I murmured right as the High Priest spoke some words, his mana swelling immensely. Just as everything was about to explode, the door behind us creaked open.

  “Kept ya waiting, huh Myne?” Sylvester said with a grin as he and Karstedt stepped out, just as mana shot out of the High Priest’s and Bindewald’s wands. “Wh-What the heck is going on?!” he yelped.

  “Both of you, get inside the shield! And please shut the door!” I yelled as I watched two enormous beams of mana collide in front of my eyes.

  The Source of Strife

  Sylvester and Karstedt, exhibiting truly praiseworthy reaction times, shut the door and leapt behind the wind shield in the blink of an eye. I poured as much mana as I could into the shield to strengthen it; I had to protect everyone inside, no matter what.

  The beams of mana that the High Priest and Bindewald had shot from their wands smashed together so hard that they began to surge around each other, excess energy whipping around. But there was an obvious difference in the size and power of their mana, and in no time at all the High Priest’s mana overwhelmed Bindewald, pushing his beam back until it hit him and sent him flying. He slammed hard against the wall before falling to the ground with a thud. He was covered in burns just like Dad was, and rolled on the ground letting out pained groans that made him sound even more like a toad.

  “Urr... Grurrrr...”

  The High Bishop had survived thanks to the bands of light wrapped around him, but he was completely frozen, his eyes wide open. It must have been terrifying to see the huge beams of mana colliding right in front of him. The gray shrine maidens and collapsed Devouring soldiers, however, were nowhere to be seen; they had no means of protecting themselves from the explosion of mana that had erased them from existence.

  “Myne, this is how you destroy evidence. Be thorough if you’re going to do it. None of these people are supposed to be in here in the first place,” the High Priest said as he looked down at the toad with cold eyes and thrust out his wand without mercy. Bindewald squealed and crawled away as fast as he could, but the High Priest caught up in just a few steps. His lack of mercy was much appreciated when he was a friend, but I would never, ever want him as an enemy.

  ...The High Priest is kinda terrifying.

  “Ferdinand, isn’t that enough?” said Sylvester. “And Myne, get rid of the shield. We don’t need it anymore.” He wasn’t wearing the blue robes of a priest but rather a fancier outfit that one might expect a noble to wear. He stepped forward, whipping his bright yellow cape behind him. I stopped pouring mana into the shield as instructed, letting it fade, and the High Priest made his wand disappear as well.

  “Stand down, Ferdinand.” Sylvester jutted up his chin as he made the order. In response, the High Priest stepped back and knelt before Sylvester, arms crossed in front of his chest.

  “...Um?” My jaw dropped at the sight of the High Priest kneeling. All blue priests were equal in status within the temple, and it was taught that there was no need for them to kneel to each other here, so the High Priest wouldn’t be bowing before Sylvester like that if he was a blue priest.

  ...I thought Brother Sylvester was just a particularly high-status priest, but was he maybe a fake all along?

  I knew from how close they had seemed over Spring Prayer that he and the High Priest went way back, but the High Priest had never done anything to express such a clear gap in status before. Were I to assume that I had seen a more personal side to their relationship during Spring Prayer, then this would be how they acted during official public business. In other words, not only was Sylvester not a blue priest, he was of a high enough status that someone with higher status than anyone in the Knight’s Order would kneel before him.

  ...Am I about to be adopted by someone ridiculously important?

  I felt a cold sweat run down my back. Sylvester was of a high enough status to suppress the High Bishop and make the High Priest kneel. To be fair, he had to be to save me and everyone else, but it was still coming out of left field for me. My heart pounded as I tried to process the situation.

  “Aah, Sylvester! You’ve come at the perfect time. Do me a favor and order this insolent fool to undo these bindings,” the High Bishop said while looking between him and the High Priest, still bound by the bands of light. They seemed to know each other. But all Sylvester did was glance in the kneeling High Priest’s direction without ordering him to undo the bindings.

  “I hurried back at the call of the Knight’s Order, and this mess is what I find? What happened here?”

  “...Wh-Who’re you?” Bindewald croaked out, his head shooting back and forth between Sylvester and the High Bishop. He wasn’t keeping up with the situation at all.

  Karstedt took a step in front of Sylvester and, with his feet planted firmly and his head held high, glared down at Bindewald. “You sit before Aub Ehrenfest himself
.”

  “Wh... Wh-Wh-What?!” Bindewald pointed at Sylvester, shaking. “That can’t be! This is a lie!” he repeated over and over. Personally, I had absolutely no idea why he was shaking like a frog staring down the open mouth of a snake.

  As I tilted my head in confusion, I heard a rustling as Dad got up so that he could kneel as well. I scooted over and whispered “Dad, do you know who that is?” in a quiet voice.

  “There’s only one person in the duchy that has the same name as this city, and that’s the archduke,” he replied quietly, a grim look on his face.

  ...WHAT?! The adult-sized elementary schooler Sylvester is the archduke? I wanted to scream, but clamped a hand over my mouth and swallowed my surprise.

  ...This guy poked the cheek of a girl he’d just met, made her say “pooey,” snatched away her hair stick, performed acrobatic stunts in front of farmers, went hunting in the lower city’s forest without any guards... and he’s the archduke? A weirdo like him, the archduke? Um, what? Is this duchy going to be okay?

  “You dare continue to play the fool?! Your rudeness will get you killed! That is not how one speaks to Aub Ehrenfest! Kneel, now!” barked Karstedt, interrupting my much more disrespectful thoughts.

  “Y-Yes sir!” I jumped in surprise as Karstedt yelled at Bindewald, and I immediately knelt on the ground.

  “...Myne. What in the world are you doing over there?” Karstedt called over in a voice tinged with both exasperation and confusion. I timidly lifted my head and saw that while everyone else was kneeling with their arms across their chests, only I was groveling with my forehead pressed against the floor. Everyone was looking at me like I was a weirdo and it kinda hurt.

  “W-Well, you said to kneel, so it kind of just... happened.” Apparently I had just made a fool of myself in the middle of something very important. I hurriedly fixed my posture and knelt properly, at which point Sylvester leisurely scanned the hallway. His expression was strict and deadly serious, unlike any I had seen him wear before. Had he been like this the first time I saw him, I wouldn’t have been surprised at all to learn that he was the archduke.

  Sylvester’s gaze fell on the High Bishop, whereupon he narrowed his eyes. “Now then, could you explain what happened here, uncle?”

  In a shocking twist, Sylvester and the High Bishop were relatives. That meant that, if Sylvester adopted me, I would end up related to the High Bishop too.

  Nooo thank you! I don’t need a great-uncle like him!

  “Aah, I knew you would listen, Sylvester!”

  And so the High Bishop told his story, which was more than a little twisted in his favor: Count Bindewald had been summoned here because of me; it ended up in a mess that brought Sylvester back because of me; it was all my fault for not just letting myself get imprisoned; it was my fault he was suffering in the High Priest’s bands of light; and all the problems in the temple were caused by a commoner like me being given blue robes.

  In the end, everything was apparently about eighty percent my fault, plus twenty percent the High Priest’s fault. We had supposedly used Sylvester’s absence to trick him and lead him into a trap. To be honest, it was all so paper thin that I honestly had to question whether the High Bishop was just plain stupid or not. Like, I had been doing pretty much all the math in the temple’s financial ledgers while helping the High Priest; I knew well that he wasn’t trying to trap the High Bishop while Sylvester was gone. That was just completely off base—the High Priest was much scarier than that.

  “Count Bindewald, are you of the same perspective?” Sylvester asked, moving his eyes to Bindewald and frowning with annoyance after the High Bishop started repeating himself. The burned-up toad was pretty much on the same page as the High Bishop, blaming me, the commoner, for everything.

  Isn’t it kind of unreasonable to blame those burns on me? I mean, come on.

  “Now then, Ferdinand. Please present your evidence and testimony.”

  “As you wish.”

  The High Priest began to dryly list off everything that had happened after Bindewald entered the city using a forged permit. He included a report on me being attacked in the lower city, seeking my father’s perspective as a guard at the east gate where the problem had first occurred, which strengthened his testimony further. Judging by how much the High Priest knew, he must have been magically contacted in his room somehow, which was possibly why he had left his hidden room in the first place.

  “As I am not from this duchy, I had no way of knowing that the rules had changed, or that my permit was forged. I was invited and came, nothing more. Is that a crime?” Bindewald insisted the incident in the lower city had nothing to do with him, and that he was just another victim here. “Aub Ehrenfest, I had no idea that this document was forged. I thought for certain that you had signed it yourself,” he said with a forced smile while taking out a document from his coat pocket.

  Karstedt retrieved it and handed the document to Sylvester, who looked over it before giving a slight grin. I could see him going “Hell yeah, evidence get!” on the inside, which made me realize something—there were some other documents I wanted him to get from Bindewald.

  “Count Bindewald tricked Dirk into a submission contract by claiming it was an adoption form. Would that document count as forged as well?”

  “This child is lying to you. I presented it as a submission contract from the very start. A noble such as myself would never adopt a commoner orphan,” Bindewald replied on the spot, glaring at me and calling me a liar.

  Delia glared back at him with a fierce look in her eyes, Dirk still in her arms. “The High Bishop and the count said it was an adoption form, and there were two layers of parchment at the top to hide the actual title.”

  “Silence!”

  “...Show us the document.”

  With the second layer of parchment already removed, there was nothing suspicious about the submission contract at all. There was consequently nothing to hide, so Bindewald took it out and presented it to Karstedt without a moment of hesitation.

  “So, Ferdinand?”

  “I was shown an adoption contract.” The High Priest glared at Bindewald, as if frustrated that he would tell such an obvious lie. My testimony as a commoner and Delia’s testimony as an apprentice gray shrine maiden meant nothing due to our lower status, but the High Priest was a noble, which meant that his testimony had weight. The fact that Sylvester had asked for his opinion showed how much trust he had in him.

  Bindewald paled, having disrespected the High Priest after thinking he was just another blue priest. “Surely you just misread. Plus, we are talking about an orphan with the Devouring here—in this case, there is not much difference between an adoption form and a submission contract. Am I wrong?”

  He was wrong, but apparently he wanted to pretend he wasn’t. Bindewald’s eyes flitted across the room; he had sensed things weren’t in his favor and was looking for a way out which, in his mind, he found when he saw me. His eyes widened in realization and he pointed at me, changing the topic out of nowhere.

  “More importantly, I ask you to punish that commoner!”

  “Commoner?” Sylvester replied, an eyebrow raised. The fact he had replied at all must have made Bindewald think he had a chance as he began ranting about me, spit shooting out of his mouth.

  “I have heard this Myne girl is a commoner who was only given blue robes due to your magnanimity, Aub. And yet, she arrogantly behaves as if she is at the top of the world. She fired her mana at me, a noble, and killed my personal guards who only fought to protect me. She is a dangerous and violent commoner. I can hardly imagine what vile corruption rots her mind.”

  His speech was so ridiculous that I couldn’t help but blink in surprise. What the heck is this toad saying? Does he have actual brain damage or something?

  “You’re the one who ordered your soldiers to kidnap me. Do you not even remember what you did just a moment ago?”

  “Do not argue with a noble, commoner!” Bindewald barke
d, glaring at me furiously. But Sylvester just grinned.

  “Count Bindewald, let me clear up a misunderstanding real fast. That girl you keep calling a commoner is my adopted daughter.”

  “Sh-She’s... What?! A commoner, adopted by an archduke?!”

  Sylvester, ignoring Bindewald’s stunned expression, gestured me over. “We’ve already finished the adoption contract. Myne, c’mere.” I walked over to him, and Sylvester pulled at the chain around my neck, exposing the necklace with the black stone. “And here’s proof of that.”

  “This girl... is your adopted daughter...?”

  “Yup. If she were a commoner, you’d be in the right here. The law would work in your favor. But Myne’s already my adopted daughter. Know what that means? Your crime isn’t just illegally entering the capital city of another duchy, it’s attacking a member of the archduke’s family. Her guards are seriously injured, and she’s saying that you attacked her with mana.” Sylvester gave a dismissive snort, then looked my way. “Tell me what the count did to you.”

  “He didn’t just attack me with mana; I was ambushed in the lower city, and he tried to force a submission contract on me. That’s when he cut me with a knife,” I explained as I spread my palm, showing the wound that had finally stopped bleeding. I listed everything I could remember while watching the toad pale with horror. “The men that attacked us during Spring Prayer were also Devouring soldiers forced into submission contracts with him. He was whining about the pawns he lost when trying to attack me, both now and in the spring.”

  My testimony as a commoner might not have meant anything, but being the daughter of the archduke changed that, whether I was adopted or not—not to mention that Sylvester had accompanied us during Spring Prayer. Count Bindewald was surely unaware of the fact, but his party had attacked the archduke directly.