After that, a man with light green hair grown naturally down to his chest appeared with a clear smile.
Gentle, softly curved eyes and pale skin.
He had an impression that looked a little loose, almost airheaded, with a constant grin, but rather than handsome, he was far more pretty.
Unlike the robes of the priests who followed behind him, the garment embroidered with gold thread made it immediately clear who the High Priest was.
“Wow, everyone is here. I am High Priest Chael Jude.”
Chael walked over with a light, fluttering step that did not quite suit his position.
The constantly smiling expression and the oddly empty-headed way of speaking were distinctive.
Liselotte remembered seeing him once when she was very young.
‘When I entered the temple to receive a blessing. I only saw him once. He looks exactly the same.’
Back then, the High Priest had been young as well.
Surprisingly, even then he had smiled brightly like this, looking around as if the world itself were fascinating.
He seemed to be someone who was simply born cheerful.
At the time, she had already been upset from failing to receive a blessing, and seeing Chael’s smiling face had made her even more irritated.
‘Still, it is fortunate that he is a High Priest, or I might have openly beaten him…’
Though the fact that she had scribbled on the statue of the god Donia still weighed on her mind.
Hoping he had forgotten, Liselotte stood up and offered a greeting.
“I am Liselotte Keilos. It has been a while.”
He looked at her and tilted his head.
Thump, thump. Because she had a guilty conscience, her heart began to pound fiercely after so long.
For a moment, green eyes stared straight at Liselotte’s face, then he went smiling.
“You were supposedly at death’s door, yet the person who offered three times the donation looks incredibly healthy?”
‘Oh wow, that startled me. I thought he was going to say something else.’
“Ah… I must have recovered quickly. I could probably chew rocks at this point.”
After all, it had only been an excuse she planned to use to demand compensation from the East.
Rolling her eyes, Liselotte replied with an equally shameless bright smile.
“As expected from the High Priest. You noticed immediately.”
Just from seeing her face once, he had completely seen through her health.
That alone made her confident he could properly treat the old lady.
Chael promptly sat lightly on the chair Hedmilton had placed beside the bed and burst into laughter.
Whatever amused him so much, the smile never left his face.
“Ahaha, so Her Highness the Princess likes stones. Come to think of it, you used to enjoy scribbling on statues too, didn’t you?”
Eyes gathered on the flinching Liselotte.
When even Eren looked over indifferently, she smiled broadly and hurriedly protested.
“I think I wanted to carve my name because the statue of the god Donia was just too tempting. When you’re young, you do childish things like claiming ownership of things you like, right?”
“It is all right. The holy god Donia would have forgiven that as well. That must be why he guided us here today.”
With a light tone, his sweet voice, almost like singing, soothed her.
It was undeniably light, yet strangely carried weight. She thought he had not become High Priest for nothing.
Lady Rovans stared at him with a dazed expression.
“You have gone to such lengths for the sake of a single old woman.”
“That is my job. And most of them came of their own will. Though they are all a bit lacking in stamina since all they do is pray.”
As he took the lady’s hand and smiled with his eyes closed, the priests behind him fidgeted.
“H-High Priest, we are not that bad…”
“It is fine. If your knees give out, I will treat you. I am the High Priest, so I must protect my priests.”
The embarrassed priests lowered their heads and averted their gaze, pretending not to hear.
Chael settled himself and looked at Lady Rovans, then broke into a bright smile.
A pale green light seeped gently from between their lightly clasped hands.
It was a light that carried a strong sense of vitality.
Even as he emitted that costly light, Chael’s expression remained cheerfully unchanged.
After several minutes, he tilted his head and blinked.
Watching anxiously from the other side of the bed, Hedmilton asked carefully,
“W-Why? Is there some kind of problem?”
“Hmm, this is harder than I thought.”
Hard enough that even the High Priest found it difficult?
Startled, Liselotte straightened in her seat and asked,
“Is a complete recovery impossible?”
“Shh, prayers should be quiet.”
Speaking softly as if soothing a child, Chael closed his eyes and clasped the old lady’s hand between both of his, as though in prayer.
The sight of him resting his forehead there was endlessly sacred.
“It will take some time to heal her. An hour or so. I will try, even if I have to whine to God.”
Then, as if something occurred to him, he turned his head and glanced slyly at Liselotte, trailing off at the end of his sentence.
“But, there were actually two people scheduled to receive treatment…”
“Ah, once I saw the High Priest’s face, I felt completely cured.”
“Faces do not have healing power, though.”
“Maybe it was a mental issue. They say looking at something pretty lowers your anxiety, right?”
“Ah. So my face is pretty?”
‘Well, that is how it turned out.’
Even at a glance, Chael was on the beautiful side.
The composed elegance that surfaced when he closed his eyes was enough to make one believe God had chosen the High Priest based on his face alone.
There was a worry-free clarity about him that made him seem like someone who lived easily.
People like that usually lived long lives. As a priest, he likely had few worldly concerns as well.
Liselotte roughly went along with his rhythm.
“That is true.”
“Alright. Then look at me plenty while I treat Lady Rovans.”
Chael smiled broadly and nodded.
Somehow, he seemed even more pure than before. Even though she had only crossed paths with him once when she was young.
Eren, who watched the scene calmly, remained silent.
Before the High Priest arrived, he had seemed merely a bit awkward, but now his expression had stiffened into something distinctly unpleasant.
‘Is he nervous…?’
It did not feel quite like that either.
She was not sure why they had come along, but there were quite a few priests lined up in a row behind them.
Among them, a middle-aged priest with noticeable age stepped forward, clutching something tightly in one hand as he bowed awkwardly.
“Madam, I am not sure if you remember me.”
Leaning against the bed as she received treatment from Chael, the old Lady recognized him and smiled faintly.
“Aren’t you the innkeeper’s son? You have grown so fine that I almost did not recognize you, in your priest robe.”
“You remember?”
“Of course I remember.”
The priest rubbed his reddened eyes roughly with the back of his hand and continued.
“When my father passed away and my mother was thrown out onto the streets. You gave us money and told us to try running an inn, and with that, I made it here. Our family has never lived a day without remembering you, Madam.”
“Haha, that wasn’t such a big thing. Running the inn was all your mother’s effort.”
As if recalling old times, she looked at him warmly.
Perhaps because she was receiving treatment, color had returned to her face.
The priest tightly clenched the religious token he held during prayer and went on.
“Every time the harsh season came, you sent bread and meat too… When the request for your treatment came in, I was so shocked.”
The grown man welled up with tears like a child.
“You have to live a long time. I lived thinking of you as my own grandmother.”
“Oh my, my own grandson is not even crying, so why is someone else’s child crying, I wonder.”
Though her tone was rough, there was still a glimpse of the spirit of the Head of a House who had once rebuilt her family, even if her strength had faded.
Liselotte quietly looked at the religious token the priest was holding.
It was clasped in the same shape as the old lady’s hand, when it had kept twitching.
‘So she was praying.’
With no money left, and in a place where no one came except Hedmilton’s family.
It seemed she had been offering prayers alone for Hedmilton’s ruined family.
So much so that even without a religious token, her hand twitched out of habit.
“And Baroness Belle, after all that, still intended to demand even this estate as part of her inheritance?”
Was that not beyond shameless?
As everyone spoke with the old Lady, Liselotte’s eyes grew cold.
