Chapter 55: Hyde Exorcising a Ghost from a Woman’s Body! (1)

21st Century.

Religion wanted to discuss lofty things.

They avoided mentioning things like demons, angels, heaven, and hell.

It became like an intellectual game for intellectuals.

But.

Those who wanted to talk about God also had to believe in absurd things like demons, hell, and ghosts.

It’s written in the Bible.

I also thought so, but I didn’t have any experience with “demons” or “hell,” so it didn’t quite hit home─.

“Abbess Midnar, who exactly is Lucy Emma?”

The recent events made me feel like my horizons were broadening.

Lucy Emma.

She was sound asleep, curled up on the stone floor of the solitary confinement cell until I woke her up.

Then what was the being I talked to standing in front of the door?

What was it that existed beyond the door?

“Did you come to see me this late just to ask that?”

Abbess Midnar narrowed her stern eyes under the lamplight. Soon, she rummaged through a drawer and pulled out a pipe, lit it, and puffed out smoke.

As the pungent smell filled the air, Midnar said,

“It seems you’ve seen something.”

“I’ve come to think that Lady Lucy’s symptoms might not be a simple medical condition. Is she really possessed by a ghost?”

“……”

Midnar looked at my face instead of answering.

She exhaled another puff of smoke and tapped the ash from her pipe onto the parchment on the desk.

“You seem quite pleased, Hyde.”

I’m pleased?

Did I look that way?

In a way, she was right.

Those who think about God shouldn’t ignore the existence of demons and ghosts.

And vice versa.

If there were possessed people and demons, then the great God must also inevitably exist.

From the beginning, I believed that I had communicated with an absolute and personal being more than anyone else.

Struck by lightning while sitting in front of a computer.

Suddenly dropped into this strange world─.

I experienced the miracle of turning back time through the “Holy Grail.”

I am living proof of a miracle.

A sign that God exists in the world.

The appearance of Lady Lucy Emma, who was in trouble, before me seemed like providence, a stage set for a grand plan.

Perhaps everything was leading up to this day.

Abbess Midnar rose from her seat.

She closed the window, drew the curtains, and double-checked that the door was locked. Then, she sat back down and sighed deeply.

As if preparing for a long journey.

Finally, the old nun spoke after a long hesitation.

“Lucy’s mother was a high-class prostitute. She was a young, beautiful, and intelligent woman. We lived in the same city. She did dirty work, but her soul was brighter than anyone else’s.”

A prostitute with a bright soul.

Is that even possible?

Was she like Mary Magdalene from the Bible?

I had many questions, but I thought I shouldn’t interrupt the flow of the conversation, so I kept my mouth shut.

Midnar glanced at me and continued,

“Even though she was a prostitute, she was loved by God more than anyone else. As proof, she had a gift from God. The gift of prophecy.”

The gift of prophecy.

It meant the ability to make various prophecies.

It was a common story in the Bible, and it could be considered a basic ability possessed by prophets and spiritual leaders.

Was a mere prostitute endowed with such a thing?

“Is that true? You weren’t mistaken?”

“Her prophecies were accurate. She accurately predicted when it would rain or when a customer would visit. She─Emma said it was a coincidence, but I knew it was no coincidence.”

“……”

“I wanted to save Emma from that filthy mud. So, I called someone from the Church. I wanted her to give up her life as a prostitute and become a nun. But looking back, it was a foolish thing to do. It was like I rescued her from the mud only to throw her into a fire pit. Emma was tormented by the Church priests and eventually became a being who only prophesied terrible doom.”

“Terrible doom, you say?”

“Yes, things like a great war breaking out─or the Whore of Babylon giving birth to a mass murderer. There was a lot of nonsense, but a lot of it was true.”

The prophet of doom.

I had heard that name before when I was active as the Deadly Sin Lust and trying to invade the royal capital, Royalroad.

A saint who prophesies doom lives on an island─.

The truth of that story was revealed at this moment.

That saint wasn’t Midnar.

“It was inherited.”

“Yes, the seeds of sin were inherited. Lucy is that Emma’s daughter. And she’s the shame that someone wants to hide the most. Boy, do you know who the priest dispatched from the Church to handle Emma was?”

“Was it perhaps Arud Gregory?”

“Yes, you’re a smart boy, as if you have oil rubbed on your head. Arud Gregory, the fool who’s now called the Pope, was Emma’s priest.”

I see.

It felt like my puzzle pieces were falling into place.

Pope Arud Gregory.

He rose from a mere priest to the position of Pope, above all others, through Emma’s prophecies.

And I think Lucy’s identity was Pope Gregory’s weakness.

The Pope’s illegitimate child.

So to speak, the hidden princess of this United Kingdom.

There was a reason why she wasn’t allowed to leave this island.

Lucy’s existence itself could be a fang that bites Gregory. That’s why they kept her hidden until the moment the Deadly Sins attacked the royal capital.

Now it made sense.

“Lucy inherited her mother’s talent. But what we thought was a gift became a sinister curse. Lucy, that poor girl, will only utter unwanted doom.”

So it wasn’t just a simple tic.

Prophecies and doom.

Honestly, it didn’t feel real.

I felt like I was caught in a grand myth, like a character in a biblical story.

Midnar said to me,

“Hyde, you exorcised that spirit, Lust, right? There were amazing stories written in the letter from the Church. Can you exorcise the ‘something’ that possesses Lady Lucy Emma?”

It was true that I, Hyde, had exorcised Lust.

And I could confidently say that I was a priest who was with God more than anyone else, so the answer to this question was obvious.

“Sure, let’s give it a try. But before that, I want to talk to Lady Lucy.”

Does she really make prophecies?

Is there really a ghost or a demon possessing her body?

Honestly, I couldn’t fully believe it.

A while ago.

When I stood in front of the door to release Lucy from solitary confinement, I wondered if what happened was perhaps my imagination.

---

“Psyche! Milione! Good morning!”

Lucy Emma.

She was running around the convent energetically from early morning.

Lucy hugged Psyche tightly.

Then, she hugged Milione tightly.

“You crazy bitch! Get away from me!”

Of course, Milione was disgusted by Lucy Emma.

In my opinion, Milione Archibald was the crazier one, though.

Was she unaware of her own hypocrisy?

It’s possible.

Villains like Milione are usually lenient with their own wrongdoings and magnify the wrongdoings of others.

Fortunately, Lucy Emma was a very cheerful woman, so she didn’t falter under Milione’s persecution and waved her hand at me.

“Good morning, Hyde! Look at this! I caught a stag beetle this morning!”

She showed me a huge stag beetle. It was shiny and large. I wondered where she caught such a big stag beetle.

With that thought in mind, I bowed my head.

“Good morning, Lady Lucy. It’s a fine morning.”

“Yes! I have to go draw water from the well now! See you all at breakfast!”

Lucy ran towards the well.

Watching her go, Milione clicked her tongue.

“She’s really crazy. How old is she? A grown woman still playing with bugs? She used to catch toads and centipedes, and she still hasn’t learned her lesson! She’s completely nuts!”

“No, Mili. Why do you hate Lucy so much? Is there a reason or an incident? I don’t think you hate her just because she catches bugs.”

“A reason? There is. When I was 10 years old. When my old man locked me up in this convent. That’s when I first met her. You know what she said to me then?”

“What did she say?”

“She said I would die before I turned 15! I mean, who says that to someone they just met?”

That was indeed a terrible thing to say.

Was it a tic symptom?

No, this seemed closer to schizophrenia.

I also met a schizophrenic patient when I was volunteering at the seminary. She looked at me and seriously chanted, “Crucio─.”

By the way, “Crucio” is a terrible curse spell that causes excruciating pain, from a novel.

Milione continued,

“That’s not all. That girl, she said all sorts of things like it would rain in the afternoon or survivors from a shipwreck would drift to the island!”

Could it be a prophecy of doom?

Perhaps because of my conversation with Midnar last night, these stories didn’t sound trivial to me.

“So, were those stories true?”

“True, my ass! I’m already past 15, the age she said I would die! You know how scared I was on my 15th birthday? And none of the other things she said came true!”

She said she didn’t believe it, but she seemed to have been scared of dying before her 15th birthday. I would have been too.

“That crazy bitch! She’s just spouting nonsense because she wants attention! That tic? Tourette’s? It’s probably all an act! She wants attention from people! That’s what orphans do!”

That’s what orphans do.

My heart ached a little, but it was actually a valid point.

Among the brothers and sisters in the orphanage where I grew up, there were some kids who pretended to be sick or lied to get attention from the teachers.

Perhaps their senses were distorted because they didn’t receive enough affection when they were young.

It was a sad thing.

Soon, Psyche also flared up.

“Who would pretend to be sick for attention? Milione, there’s no such person in the world! Don’t slander Lady Lucy!”

Psyche couldn’t let the “pretending to be sick” keyword slide. Even though Psyche was perfect and kind, she had pretended to be sick in her life.

Of course, Milione scoffed at Psyche.

“Because there are people like you who sympathize with her, that Lucy is doing even crazier things. That incident where she wrote with pig’s blood. ‘Sex is the meeting of penis and vagina.’ It wasn’t Anemone’s doing after all, was it?”

She was talking about the words written in blood.

That’s right.

Anemone confessed to being a witch after being tortured, but she denied writing with blood.

It was possible that Anemone was lying, but─.

If not, it meant there was a different culprit.

Lucy had pointed to Anemone as the culprit.

No, now that I think about it, she didn’t explicitly say it was Anemone. She just said she smelled the ointment.

“That bitch Lucy did it. Just wait and see. Another incident will happen soon.”

As Milione said that,

“Aaaaaah! Th, the well water!!!”

A woman’s scream came from somewhere.

We rushed over to see women crouching in terror in front of the well.

What happened?

“Sister Nora! What’s wrong?!”

Psyche asked.

Sister Nora, the freckled nun, pointed a trembling finger at the well. I looked inside, and a horrifying sight unfolded.

“Blood?”

The well was filled with crimson blood.

Everyone was shocked and panicked─.

I noticed something floating in the water.

“Bugs?”

They were dried bugs.

Small, but many in number.

“This is cochineal.”

It was a food coloring.