Chapter 236: The Archbishops Suspicions (1/2)

Hadro, archbishop of Tunaya’s Brilliant White Church had been watching in secret all along.

Still, saying that he was ‘watching in secret’ wasn’t quite right since the Silver Eagle Duchy was a very small territory and was a part of the Valla Empire on paper. That was the reason it wasn’t valued much, which was why the Brilliant White Church didn’t station a larger sacred corps here.

After the sacred corps dispatched to Sotimi had been wiped out by the undead orks and he learned about the zombie dragon from the Temple of Glory, Hadro promptly ordered all remaining sacred corps to defend Tunaya.

As such, he didn’t pay much attention to the Players who arrived at Tunaya as ‘reinforcements personally invited by Angora, heir of the Faust family’.

Their appearance was too lowly after all—their random assortment of equipment made it obvious that they were not a regular military force but a ragtag bunch no different from mercenaries. Moreover, some of their equipment looked completely unable to defend themselves…

Or would those silly anglerfish helms have some special ability?

Hadro had suspected that they might be the elite forces of another church’s sacred corps deliberately disguising themselves as a ragtag army so that he would drop his guard, whereas their church would seize the opportunity to claim dominance in Tunaya which was not too important a city in the continent—in fact, many main religions in other cities had done the same: they would rescue the city in similar crises to gain support from the citizens, eventually claiming the peak position from major religions such as the Brilliant White Church and the Temple of Glory.

But he gave up on that idea after carefully observing them.

And that was because the Players had a completely different air to them even when compared to a ragtag army, let alone the elite forces of a church. One glance was enough to see that they had not gone through professional training, complete outsiders who couldn’t stop giggling when they hear the bizarre confessions of other believers.

Comparing them to the Brilliant White Church’s elites was demeaning—for the elites of Hadro’s church, that is!

Perhaps Angora was thinking about using them as cannon fodder to delay the zombie dragon’s attack on Tunaya as much as possible, so that the churches would have the time to divert champions from other bases here to save them.

That naturally made Hadro see the future duke in a different light.

To him, a liege who could steel his heart, use mercenaries as fodder to buy time for a better chance of winning was much better, when the alternative was a compassionate liege who hesitate in the face of horrific disasters out of concern over the lives of a few peasants.

After all, clerics were different from politicians because they had few paths ahead for them. Hadro himself might be tied to Tunaya for the rest of his life from the looks of things, or the Holy City of the Brilliant White Church wouldn’t so casually grant him the title of archbishop.

In the Brilliant White Church, it was an open secret that archbishops assigned to a parish without special circumstances were never returning to the Holy City.