Chapter 3 - Volume 1 (2/2)

Inside of the church, there were several women that were all embracing infants like me.

Standing in front of a statue of the goddess was an old man wearing blue clothes, it seemed that he would be the one carrying out the blessings.

I was scared. But there was no escape.

My turn came, and Mother walked before the old man while holding me in her arms.

“Archbishop-sama. It has been a long time since we last met.”

Mother bowed to the old man. So this person… was an archbishop-sama.

“Well if it isn’t Riastea-sama. It has been a long time indeed. My apologies for troubling you to come in person.”

It seemed like they were acquainted from how the old man kindly laughed and greeted Mother.

“So…this child must be….”

“Yes. She is my child…Yurushia.”

My cheeks slightly stiffened in response to the strong gaze the old man gave me, as if he was checking  something.

“…..Well then, let us begin.”

Around ten minutes had passed… and in the end, nothing happened.

At the moment when holy water was poured over my head, I couldn’t help but feel like crying, but it didn’t burn nor did I turn into a beast. To my relief, I received the holy magic [Blessing] without any problems.

When it was finished, the old man gently patted my head, which made me smile extremely happily.

Though, seeing as how I was fine with holy magic that was supposed to repel demons, I had to reconsider the first hypothesis I had made about myself.

Although I was under the impression that I was a demon that successfully manifested, but it might be that I wasn’t a [Human-like Demon], but instead, a [Demon-like Human].

As for this, whether I had been reborn as a human or not… was hard to say, but I thought that the situation was exceedingly close to it.

It was an accident I say, an accident. An act of god.

And so, after we left the church, we went shopping before heading back home.

During the shopping, the three women would take turns in carrying me in their arms, but when I took a closer look around my surroundings, I saw that the wealthy looking people would use something that looked like a baby stroller for their children.

I wonder why we didn’t have one?　Even though a one-year-old must be fairly heavy.

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The Holy Kingdom Taterudo

It was one of the major powers of this world with a total population of several million if you were to include the five outer town areas outside of the capital Tariasu.

In one of those outer towns, in an area to the west of the territory that was governed by duke Koeru, named Touru.

Most of the nobles that lived within the territory of Touru were retainers to duke Koeru, who all dedicated the same amount of loyalty to him as they did to His Majesty the King.

Within that area, 60% of the citizens were religious. For Archbishop Molt, the chief officer in charge of Touru’s territory, as well as the state church of the deity of good harvest, the goddess Kostoru, every morning was a busy one.

He had not changed his lifestyle even though he had already passed the age of 60. He rose together with the morning sun, and offered a prayer to the goddess. Afterwards he would head to his personal farmland in the back of the church, and only once he finished looking after the land would he take breakfast.

Giving instructions to his followers while drinking tea after his meal, he finally finishing the first part of his day. Molt solemnly stood up from his chair as he rubbed his shoulders with a tired face that he wouldn’t display in front of the church devotees.

This year was an extremely busy one. All due to the influence of that one event.

A large-scale demon summoning incident had happened within the outskirts of Touru territory, caused by a demon worshiping organization.

Including the twelve summoners involved, the names of several nobles were found to be among the dozens of that organization’s members, and while nearly all of them were wiped out or arrested, there were also dozens of casualties from the knight order as well as regular soldiers.

What was found to be drawn in a garden that was in the possession of a certain noble was a gigantic summoning circle that could cleanly fit onto the grounds of a small mansion.

Aiming for the moment when the summoning would already be taking place so as to capture all of the culprits, an armed force including the reinforcements from the imperial capital, comprising of forty five knights, two hundred soldiers, and thirty holy magic wielding Kostoru priests, commenced an assault against that organization, only to encounter demons that were lying in ambush.

Demons. Those that were on the opposite side of the material plane, in one of the realms of the spiritual world. The inhabitants of the demon realm.

With figures covered all over in dark grimy fur, they walked on two legs as they trampled on the soldiers with speed and strength that exceeded that of beasts.

Possessing strange, large bodies, their gray eyes contained hatred towards all living things, and their yellow fanged mouths were twisted as if finding delight in the humans’ fear.

There were ten of these lesser demons. Not only that, there were also three greater demons that were even larger than the lesser demons, who wielded spears and axes formed out of the combination of black horns and bones.

There was a distinct difference between lesser and greater demons, outside of their physique and weapons.

That difference lied in their intelligence, and magic.

Every action taken by spirits and demons, the inhabitants of the spiritual world, was accompanied by magical power. In the case of a lesser demon, a simple punch from the demon would crush the internal organs of a human, and a normal weapon wouldn’t be able to wound the demon’s magic infused body.

Greater demons, however, were capable of shooting out fireballs or ice arrows like rain with but a single scream, without even needing to chant the magic spell.

There were many factors that attributed victory to the kingdom’s soldiers. One was due to the many anti-demon magic weapons that they carried.

Another was that they had a great number of anti-demon specialist priests among their ranks.

Finally, it was because the person they had invited from the magical academy, to act as an adviser in summoning magic, so that they were able to use powerful spirit magic.

[Spirits] and [Demons], beings that were inhabitants of the same spiritual world, were considered to be of equal rank.

However, while lesser demons had limited intelligence, spirits still possessed high intelligence even if they were of a lower class.

Although physically strong, the demons could only manage temporary manifestations due to incomplete sacrificial offerings, and, unable to resist against the magic, they were destroyed by the summoned spirits.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

The demons had been summoned beforehand to act as guards, sacrificial pawns buying time so that their [Hearts Desire] could be summoned from the gigantic summoning circle.

Spirits that were summoned into the material world manifest in the form of one of the four elements in the material world: fire, wind, water or earth. Hence, their powers were stable, and are usually stronger than unstable demons. However, if a demon that possessed an even higher intelligence than a greater demon appeared… If that being was to gain a vessel and manifest, it would become an existence on the same level as a spirit king.

The lesser demons had all been destroyed. The soldiers and knights who were covered all over in wounds were bringing down the final greater demon that was guarding the demon worshipers.

But the moment the heart of the last remaining summoner was pierced through by a knight’s sword, from behind of the collapsing summoner’s corpse, [Something] had appeared in the gigantic summoning magic circle.

It was… a small golden cat, overflowing with beauty.

Charming…is what they had thought. So lovely…everyone on the scene was captivated by that beauty, so sublime.

Was it truly a demon…..? Was it not instead a divine messenger that was mistakenly summoned from heaven?

However, that expectation was betrayed by a few spoken words.

“[…..Golden…beast….]”

When the last remaining greater demon uttered those words as it vanished, they knew that the golden beast was one of those existences among demons…a superior demon.

If this beast was to run amock, what would become of our country? All of them were holding that thought in their chest and not making a single move, when the summoning circle that had lost its summoner in the middle of the summoning, lost its light.

At the same time the summoning was cancelled, the demon called the golden beast turned into a golden light and disappeared into the sky.

Disappeared into the sky. That was the problem.

A demon that had its summoning interrupted would disappear into the summoning circle and return to the demon realm. That being the case, where could this demon have disappeared to?

Together, the Holy Kingdom and the church began a search for the demon called [Golden Beast].

There was also the possibility that it had returned to the demon realm. Another likelihood was that its existence was erased. However, if that demon was a superior individual, and if it somehow gained a vessel, then the possibility of it becoming a terrible threat was highly probable.

They searched spiritual locations… in other words environments with high magical power, to no avail. As a last resort, the church decided to gather every child that was born within a year since the occurrence of that incident. If this endeavor were to fail and the demon was not uncovered, then the demon would be assumed to have perished.

During these several months, Molt had blessed over a hundred infants.

Of course, there were more infants than that in the territory of Touru, but the ones that he granted blessings to were the children that were proved, through a government investigation of utmost secrecy, to possess [Magical Power], as well as the possibility of becoming the vessel of a demon.

If it was just creating holy water through holy magic, then other priests would have been fine. However, there weren’t many that could use the holy magic blessing, and those that could were in other lands performing their own screening operations, so that was why Molt had no choice but to bless the children himself.

And those that he was responsible for blessing were the children with the highest possibility of being the demon.

It was only natural that Molt was exhausted, but he couldn’t afford to lose focus, blessing one child after another.

“Is today the last…?”

When Molt muttered those words, the middle-aged priest walking by his side affirmatively replied.

“Yes. Although there are still a large number of children remaining, today is the last of the children with high magical power that requires Molt-sama’s assistance.”

“Okay”

Even though it was just a confirmation, Molt was satisfied by the expected response.

As a clergyman and as the archbishop, it wasn’t something he would be praised for, but nonetheless, he thought it would be alright, for tonight, at least, to drink some alcohol along with the produce from his vegetable garden as appetizers.

With that goal in mind, he was performing the blessings in high spirits when the final person appeared.

The mother was the daughter of a viscount he was acquainted with. The woman was someone he had known from the time she was a child, and though he was unmarried, he thought of her as his own blood-related daughter.

The lovely young lady from back then had become an adult, and was now even more beautiful.

He was apologetic towards the viscount in thinking this, but as far as he was concerned, her daughter was his grandchild too.

Yurushia. The child was lovely like an angel, so dazzling that Molt squinted his eyes.

（…..What’s this?）

The child appeared to be frightened by something.

Certainly, most children that came into contact with an adult they were meeting for the first time and having water poured over their heads would feel frightened.

But in those cases, most of the time the children would cry and shout, but until now, none of them had been as scared as this girl.

For a moment, he stared at her with suspicion. But when he saw Yurushia about to cry the moment he poured the holy water over her head and afterwards being comforted by a panicking Riastea, he dismissed his previous suspicion as overthinking it.

He put his all into blessing Yurushia, and when finally he gave the puzzled looking girl a gentle pat on the head while grinning widely, Yurushia showed Molt a most brilliant and angelic smile.

Molt thought to himself.

‘If a child capable of such a smile was a demon, this world would be overflowing with demons, and would have been destroyed long ago.’

Molt firmly believed that today, the shadow of the demon hanging over the territory of Tuul was now gone.