'Is the regression obvious?'
A cold sweat ran down her spine. Ariadne instinctively recalled recent events.
The part that bothered her the most was meeting the old lady, the shaman, regularly.
“A small god has no power in front of a great god. With people who worship the great god flocking to the city in droves, I am worried that the magic spells on your arm will lose their effectiveness.”
“Can you call the god you serve a hypocrite?”
Grandma suddenly got angry.
“Those petty people who get angry at objective truth are not worthy of being gods!”
Ariadne giggled, but the grandmother seemed sincere. The old woman, the priestess Salman, lived under a slightly different value system from that of ordinary people.
What mattered to her was 'how close one was to God', and according to the grandmother of the Salman clergy, her father, the second highest priest in the world of the Yesak sect, had no particular god.
After observing the Cardinal from a distance and drawing that conclusion, Priestess Salman treated the Cardinal like an ordinary man.
Ariadne didn't really object to that either. Ariadne was someone who broke away from the rules of this world in another sense.
She lived by her own thoughts, not by the rules of society.
Just because someone is your father doesn't mean he has to be respected by others.
Where is such an absurd worldview? Respect is earned, and Cardinal de Mare has never done anything to earn the respect of the old lady priestess Salman.
So, she wasn't particularly dissatisfied with the shaman's attitude.
It was not that Ariadne thought the old priestess had seen things wrong. In Ariadne's opinion, high priests were not necessarily close to the gods.
It may be something that a sincere layperson would ignore if they heard it, but there is a huge difference between being good at something close to the essence of a group and being talented at management.
Cardinal de Mare initially distinguished himself as a scholar, so he also skipped the requirement for practitioners to be deeply religious.
And he's been a very capable manager ever since.
However, her father was a rather unusual person among priests, and Ariadne was inevitably a person from the world of the priesthood.
She simply thought differently from others, but she believed in the irreversible flow of the universe itself. Didn't she return to the past?
If he is the representative of the heavenly gods, the Pope, there is no way he could not see beyond the world.
Ariadne, who was very nervous, smiled bashfully to hide her nervousness.
“You are too much, Your Holiness.”
The best defense is a good offense.
“Are you saying I look older than my age?”
The Pope raised both hands in a gesture of refusal. It worked.
“No, no, that can’t be true.”
But he didn't seem to have any intention of letting Ariadne go easily.
“I’m not saying that your appearance has aged.”
The Pope continued speaking. His expression was so mischievous that it sounded meaningful.
“It means that the gaze is not that of a young lady.”
Pope Ludovico's gaze swept over Ariadne.
Although she had been through a lot, she couldn't fathom what this old snake was thinking. Did he know what she was saying, or was she just saying it out of curiosity?
Ariadne had no intention of telling the Pope what she really felt, even if she knew something. So there was only one way.
She answered blandly, her laughter faltering.
“I guess it’s because I’ve had a hard time.”
What on earth is the second daughter of Cardinal de Mare going through?
While the Pope was pondering, Ariadne quickly changed the subject.
“His Holiness the Pope does not have the eyes of an old man.”
“Hahaha!”
The Pope burst into loud laughter. This time it worked too.
Ludovico took a bite of this food. It was a topic he liked. He chewed on this new assessment.
It would have been a satisfying thing to hear that last year, before he knew he was going to die.
“Strangely enough.”
The old Pope opened his mouth.
“Even as my body grows weaker, my mind becomes clearer day by day.”
Ariadne let out a sigh of relief as she watched the Pope move on to the next topic.
He just called her old-fashioned. She lowered her head, not wanting to show that she was relieved.
However, Pope Louis misinterpreted this as a sign of sorrow.
“No, no. I don’t want this kind of subdued reaction.”
He waved his hand.
“It is a waste to even mourn over an outcome that you have no choice but to accept.”
Spending time lamenting his fate was not something he wanted to do, at least not right now.
Because time was more precious than gold to Ludovico at the time.
“There are only a few days left until I leave, but I am enjoying each and every day so much.”
Ariadne's expression belatedly became solemn as she heard this as a voice saying he did not want to die. The Pope waved his hand again.
“Don’t do that!”
What he wanted to say was a little different.
“I really like the new people I meet at the end of my life.”
He hesitated for a moment to use the word 'friend'. What could he not do when he was dying?
“New friends.”
Ariadne looked up in surprise at the word 'friend'. She felt sorry for having kept herself so tightly shut a moment ago, not wanting to reveal information to the Pope.
“Life has never been this vivid. Every day I laugh, gain new insights, and discover things I didn’t know before.”
Ariadne, who had finally begun to sincerely engage in conversation with the Pope, asked cautiously.
“...Aren’t you disappointed?”
“If I say I don’t regret it, it’s a lie. Death is scary and frightening. They say we return to His embrace, but we are sent back into the great flow of reincarnation.”
Ariadne asked.
“You can escape the cycle of reincarnation and become truly free.”
In the doctrine of Yesak, it is said that when a person becomes a saint, he or she will no longer reincarnate and will preach the teachings of the gods while maintaining his or her memory and form.
Salman the Shaman told the same story from a slightly different angle. She said that when you become an 'awakened one', you are free from the karma of reincarnation that lasts for billions of years.
The usual Ludovico would have smiled lukewarmly, but now he was completely unrestrained. He burst into laughter.
“If a person like me escapes the cycle of reincarnation, then that is proof that the teachings of Yesak are wrong!”
Ariadne opened her eyes wide.
“I’m not an saint. I’m not that kind of person. I think of myself as a manager. I’m someone who worked in the field and the surrounding waterways so that the true believers could sow the seeds of faith in God.”
Ariadne realized at this moment that this man was essentially the same as her father.
The story of the return was probably just a rumor. He was very quick-witted and did not believe in the world of God.
She regretted keeping the old lady, the priestess Salman, away from the Pope during his stay at the de Mare mansion, in case she had any spiritual powers.
Ariadne, who had been thinking about meeting the old priestess soon, suddenly returned to her place at the Pope's words.
“I did my best to live a happy life, but I don’t think it was necessarily a spiritual or noble life. Of course, it’s a secret! The Pope shouldn’t go around saying such things.”
He winked.
“Tell your father well. The Pope should not act shamefully. That is the courtesy he shows to the believers who believe in the Heavenly God and Yesak’s Gon.”
“I will definitely pass it on.”
“As a manager, you can receive a lot of love. I received a lot of love.”
Ludovico de Giustini closed his eyes tightly.
Many of his subordinate priests and disciples followed him. His mother and father raised him with great care. His childhood was filled with love... And Arthur.
The one and only successor he loved the most, who tried to kill him.
“I received too much love.”
As he was chanting, the carriage glided smoothly like a drop of water on the surface of water and stopped in place.
Although the coachman did not say anything, the Pope knew immediately where he had arrived as soon as the carriage stopped.
“This is the Rambouillet Relief Home.”
"Yes."
Ludovico raised one arm, and Ariadne helped the Pope out of the carriage.
The people of Rambouillet center were confused by the sight of the unfamiliar carriage, but when they saw Ariadne, they ran towards her and found the Pope.
“Sir, Your Holiness?!”
The Pope simply waved his hand to indicate his refusal to the officials, who were flustered and trying to prepare for the ceremony.
Ariadne also nodded slightly to the caretaker of the relief center to indicate that it was okay.
“I can show you myself.”
The Pope, who was near death, and the Countess, who was young but not young, walked very slowly around the Rambouillet hospice. This was a place where life was springing up.
“...This is the ‘Scuola di Greta’, a school. It provides basic education and job placement for young people.”
The Pope smiled.
“You’re trying to defy gravity.”
"Yes?"
But the old pope was careful with his words.
At some point, he gave up the belief that small human efforts could lead to a continent-wide prosperity for all people.
If the young men of San Carlo were to receive excellent education and sweep the commercial world, the young men of Taranto would lose their jobs, and if the manpower of the Etruscan kingdom were equally excellent, the young men of the Gallico kingdom would lose their comparative competitiveness.
That's not all. If the Central Continent becomes capable, the small villages of the Moorish Empire will be exploited. In the end, it's like taking out the lower stones and destroying the upper stones.
The young woman in front of him didn't seem to think so.
Even if she gets hit with a stick and gets stoned, she doesn't care, and she doesn't consider even the smallest progress insignificant, and she takes steps forward, starting with what she can do.
It would have been nice to have met her a little earlier. But even that was too much. Pope Ludovico just smiled brightly.
It had been more than half a year since he had eaten properly. Even though he had a body that resembled a general rather than a priest, he was reduced to skin and bones.
The neat teeth and the haggard face create a strange juxtaposition. For the first time in his life, Ludovico de Giustini looked like a priest.
He suddenly said.
"Thank you."
"Yes?"
“Thank you for staying young. Thank you for not giving up.”
Perhaps he had been too careless with the time given to him.
Of course, he did not just play. He planned and successfully completed the Fourth Crusade.
The Crusaders who captured Yesak were the first. He believed that by reclaiming the holy city of Yesak, he could appease the hearts of the believers.
But there were definitely small pieces of time that had been wasted. He could have tried a little harder. It was a shame. But that, too, was in the past.
“You said the Cardinal was coming in the afternoon?”
“Yes. There is still some follow-up work to be done regarding the council, so he said he would bring a meeting with the bishops of the Gredo Kingdom.”
"Great."
The Pope took a deep breath. He had work to do.
“This afternoon, we will discuss what to do with Philip IV of Gallico. He will not likely surrender the port of Pisarino willingly.”
There wasn't much time left, so he had to use it very well.
Pope Louis had little time left to tell Cardinal de Mare and his daughter, his new friends, everything.
He was planning to just pass it on.
While Cardinal de Mare was meeting Pope Louis, who had returned from his inspection of the Rambouillet Relief Home, Zanotta, the wife of the butler Niccolo, was hurrying to meet Isabella.
Her husband, Nicolo, had warned her never to meet outsiders, and that included Isabella, but Zanotta had no intention of listening to him.
'Damn human.'
A cold sweat ran down her spine. Ariadne instinctively recalled recent events.
The part that bothered her the most was meeting the old lady, the shaman, regularly.
“A small god has no power in front of a great god. With people who worship the great god flocking to the city in droves, I am worried that the magic spells on your arm will lose their effectiveness.”
“Can you call the god you serve a hypocrite?”
Grandma suddenly got angry.
“Those petty people who get angry at objective truth are not worthy of being gods!”
Ariadne giggled, but the grandmother seemed sincere. The old woman, the priestess Salman, lived under a slightly different value system from that of ordinary people.
What mattered to her was 'how close one was to God', and according to the grandmother of the Salman clergy, her father, the second highest priest in the world of the Yesak sect, had no particular god.
After observing the Cardinal from a distance and drawing that conclusion, Priestess Salman treated the Cardinal like an ordinary man.
Ariadne didn't really object to that either. Ariadne was someone who broke away from the rules of this world in another sense.
She lived by her own thoughts, not by the rules of society.
Just because someone is your father doesn't mean he has to be respected by others.
Where is such an absurd worldview? Respect is earned, and Cardinal de Mare has never done anything to earn the respect of the old lady priestess Salman.
So, she wasn't particularly dissatisfied with the shaman's attitude.
It was not that Ariadne thought the old priestess had seen things wrong. In Ariadne's opinion, high priests were not necessarily close to the gods.
It may be something that a sincere layperson would ignore if they heard it, but there is a huge difference between being good at something close to the essence of a group and being talented at management.
Cardinal de Mare initially distinguished himself as a scholar, so he also skipped the requirement for practitioners to be deeply religious.
And he's been a very capable manager ever since.
However, her father was a rather unusual person among priests, and Ariadne was inevitably a person from the world of the priesthood.
She simply thought differently from others, but she believed in the irreversible flow of the universe itself. Didn't she return to the past?
If he is the representative of the heavenly gods, the Pope, there is no way he could not see beyond the world.
Ariadne, who was very nervous, smiled bashfully to hide her nervousness.
“You are too much, Your Holiness.”
The best defense is a good offense.
“Are you saying I look older than my age?”
The Pope raised both hands in a gesture of refusal. It worked.
“No, no, that can’t be true.”
But he didn't seem to have any intention of letting Ariadne go easily.
“I’m not saying that your appearance has aged.”
The Pope continued speaking. His expression was so mischievous that it sounded meaningful.
“It means that the gaze is not that of a young lady.”
Pope Ludovico's gaze swept over Ariadne.
Although she had been through a lot, she couldn't fathom what this old snake was thinking. Did he know what she was saying, or was she just saying it out of curiosity?
Ariadne had no intention of telling the Pope what she really felt, even if she knew something. So there was only one way.
She answered blandly, her laughter faltering.
“I guess it’s because I’ve had a hard time.”
What on earth is the second daughter of Cardinal de Mare going through?
While the Pope was pondering, Ariadne quickly changed the subject.
“His Holiness the Pope does not have the eyes of an old man.”
“Hahaha!”
The Pope burst into loud laughter. This time it worked too.
Ludovico took a bite of this food. It was a topic he liked. He chewed on this new assessment.
It would have been a satisfying thing to hear that last year, before he knew he was going to die.
“Strangely enough.”
The old Pope opened his mouth.
“Even as my body grows weaker, my mind becomes clearer day by day.”
Ariadne let out a sigh of relief as she watched the Pope move on to the next topic.
He just called her old-fashioned. She lowered her head, not wanting to show that she was relieved.
However, Pope Louis misinterpreted this as a sign of sorrow.
“No, no. I don’t want this kind of subdued reaction.”
He waved his hand.
“It is a waste to even mourn over an outcome that you have no choice but to accept.”
Spending time lamenting his fate was not something he wanted to do, at least not right now.
Because time was more precious than gold to Ludovico at the time.
“There are only a few days left until I leave, but I am enjoying each and every day so much.”
Ariadne's expression belatedly became solemn as she heard this as a voice saying he did not want to die. The Pope waved his hand again.
“Don’t do that!”
What he wanted to say was a little different.
“I really like the new people I meet at the end of my life.”
He hesitated for a moment to use the word 'friend'. What could he not do when he was dying?
“New friends.”
Ariadne looked up in surprise at the word 'friend'. She felt sorry for having kept herself so tightly shut a moment ago, not wanting to reveal information to the Pope.
“Life has never been this vivid. Every day I laugh, gain new insights, and discover things I didn’t know before.”
Ariadne, who had finally begun to sincerely engage in conversation with the Pope, asked cautiously.
“...Aren’t you disappointed?”
“If I say I don’t regret it, it’s a lie. Death is scary and frightening. They say we return to His embrace, but we are sent back into the great flow of reincarnation.”
Ariadne asked.
“You can escape the cycle of reincarnation and become truly free.”
In the doctrine of Yesak, it is said that when a person becomes a saint, he or she will no longer reincarnate and will preach the teachings of the gods while maintaining his or her memory and form.
Salman the Shaman told the same story from a slightly different angle. She said that when you become an 'awakened one', you are free from the karma of reincarnation that lasts for billions of years.
The usual Ludovico would have smiled lukewarmly, but now he was completely unrestrained. He burst into laughter.
“If a person like me escapes the cycle of reincarnation, then that is proof that the teachings of Yesak are wrong!”
Ariadne opened her eyes wide.
“I’m not an saint. I’m not that kind of person. I think of myself as a manager. I’m someone who worked in the field and the surrounding waterways so that the true believers could sow the seeds of faith in God.”
Ariadne realized at this moment that this man was essentially the same as her father.
The story of the return was probably just a rumor. He was very quick-witted and did not believe in the world of God.
She regretted keeping the old lady, the priestess Salman, away from the Pope during his stay at the de Mare mansion, in case she had any spiritual powers.
Ariadne, who had been thinking about meeting the old priestess soon, suddenly returned to her place at the Pope's words.
“I did my best to live a happy life, but I don’t think it was necessarily a spiritual or noble life. Of course, it’s a secret! The Pope shouldn’t go around saying such things.”
He winked.
“Tell your father well. The Pope should not act shamefully. That is the courtesy he shows to the believers who believe in the Heavenly God and Yesak’s Gon.”
“I will definitely pass it on.”
“As a manager, you can receive a lot of love. I received a lot of love.”
Ludovico de Giustini closed his eyes tightly.
Many of his subordinate priests and disciples followed him. His mother and father raised him with great care. His childhood was filled with love... And Arthur.
The one and only successor he loved the most, who tried to kill him.
“I received too much love.”
As he was chanting, the carriage glided smoothly like a drop of water on the surface of water and stopped in place.
Although the coachman did not say anything, the Pope knew immediately where he had arrived as soon as the carriage stopped.
“This is the Rambouillet Relief Home.”
"Yes."
Ludovico raised one arm, and Ariadne helped the Pope out of the carriage.
The people of Rambouillet center were confused by the sight of the unfamiliar carriage, but when they saw Ariadne, they ran towards her and found the Pope.
“Sir, Your Holiness?!”
The Pope simply waved his hand to indicate his refusal to the officials, who were flustered and trying to prepare for the ceremony.
Ariadne also nodded slightly to the caretaker of the relief center to indicate that it was okay.
“I can show you myself.”
The Pope, who was near death, and the Countess, who was young but not young, walked very slowly around the Rambouillet hospice. This was a place where life was springing up.
“...This is the ‘Scuola di Greta’, a school. It provides basic education and job placement for young people.”
The Pope smiled.
“You’re trying to defy gravity.”
"Yes?"
But the old pope was careful with his words.
At some point, he gave up the belief that small human efforts could lead to a continent-wide prosperity for all people.
If the young men of San Carlo were to receive excellent education and sweep the commercial world, the young men of Taranto would lose their jobs, and if the manpower of the Etruscan kingdom were equally excellent, the young men of the Gallico kingdom would lose their comparative competitiveness.
That's not all. If the Central Continent becomes capable, the small villages of the Moorish Empire will be exploited. In the end, it's like taking out the lower stones and destroying the upper stones.
The young woman in front of him didn't seem to think so.
Even if she gets hit with a stick and gets stoned, she doesn't care, and she doesn't consider even the smallest progress insignificant, and she takes steps forward, starting with what she can do.
It would have been nice to have met her a little earlier. But even that was too much. Pope Ludovico just smiled brightly.
It had been more than half a year since he had eaten properly. Even though he had a body that resembled a general rather than a priest, he was reduced to skin and bones.
The neat teeth and the haggard face create a strange juxtaposition. For the first time in his life, Ludovico de Giustini looked like a priest.
He suddenly said.
"Thank you."
"Yes?"
“Thank you for staying young. Thank you for not giving up.”
Perhaps he had been too careless with the time given to him.
Of course, he did not just play. He planned and successfully completed the Fourth Crusade.
The Crusaders who captured Yesak were the first. He believed that by reclaiming the holy city of Yesak, he could appease the hearts of the believers.
But there were definitely small pieces of time that had been wasted. He could have tried a little harder. It was a shame. But that, too, was in the past.
“You said the Cardinal was coming in the afternoon?”
“Yes. There is still some follow-up work to be done regarding the council, so he said he would bring a meeting with the bishops of the Gredo Kingdom.”
"Great."
The Pope took a deep breath. He had work to do.
“This afternoon, we will discuss what to do with Philip IV of Gallico. He will not likely surrender the port of Pisarino willingly.”
There wasn't much time left, so he had to use it very well.
Pope Louis had little time left to tell Cardinal de Mare and his daughter, his new friends, everything.
He was planning to just pass it on.
***
While Cardinal de Mare was meeting Pope Louis, who had returned from his inspection of the Rambouillet Relief Home, Zanotta, the wife of the butler Niccolo, was hurrying to meet Isabella.
Her husband, Nicolo, had warned her never to meet outsiders, and that included Isabella, but Zanotta had no intention of listening to him.
'Damn human.'
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