The Game Difficulty
Is
Crazy
15 years ago.
At that time, Grazia Delleda, who was in her mid-twenties, was dispatched to Haven as a high-ranking inquisitor of the Inquisition.
‘I heard rumors that the Black Cult was active in Haven back then, so the goal was to grab their tail.’
However, even after staying at the assignment location for over ten days and searching thoroughly, Grazia was unable to find the Black Cult.
And on the very day her dispatch ended, she saved a young boy who was being attacked by monsters in a mine in Haven.
—Why are you in a place like this?
At her characteristically indifferent question, the boy said nothing and only clutched the hem of the inquisitor’s clothes.
After a brief inquiry, she learned that the child was an orphan, and Grazia Delleda returned to the capital with him.
—Henri……?
—That’s your name.
The child murmured his name several times, then soon smiled brightly.
—My name… is Henri!
A trace of vitality filled her eyes, which had been utterly emotionless and cold.
Until the moment she died, Grazia would never forget that child’s smile.
And today.
Once again, something happened to her that she would never forget for the rest of her life.
“Fuck… when you told me to wait, and now you do this…!”
A face twisted with rage and hatred.
The young man who had grown up diligently while saying he wanted to become her pride was showing a face he had never once shown to Grazia before.
“……What are you so angry about?”
“You think I wouldn’t be pissed? I believed the words of that bastard bishop and served you for a full fifteen years, and now he suddenly says he doesn’t know anything and tells me to deal with it myself, that fucked-up bullshit!”
It seemed that in the words Glenn had asked her to deliver, there was a code that only he could understand.
Grazia raised her head, and a gradually chilling cold spread through her deep sea-colored eyes.
“So you hated it that much.”
“What?”
“I asked whether the fifteen years you spent under me were that painful and hateful.”
“……Ha.”
Letting out a hollow laugh, Henri—no, Basili—opened his bloodshot eyes wide and glared at Grazia.
“Isn’t that obvious?”
“…….”
“For fifteen years, living among the hypocritical bastards I despise more than anything, and having to fill my body with holy power I never wanted—do you think I’d be happy?”
Suddenly, Basili tore open the front of his clothes.
“…….”
Grazia’s lips parted slightly.
Between the torn fabric, thin scars covered the young man’s chest, as if the surface had been slashed repeatedly with a knife.
He utterly despised storing holy power within his body.
Seeing that, Grazia thought—
This won’t do.
This young man truly worships Kalungod, not Minis.
Everything he had said in front of her for fifteen years had not been sincere—
it had merely been an act to make her let her guard down.
“I’ll ask just one last thing.”
“What?”
“Why reveal yourself now? If you had pretended not to know until the end, I would never have suspected you.”
Basili had a chance.
Even after hearing the coded message through Grazia, if he had continued to feign ignorance, she could have let it pass.
“If your intention is confession and repentance, there will be mercy from God accordingly.”
This was the final chance Grazia was giving Basili.
Of course, now that he had revealed himself as a follower of the Black Cult, death was unavoidable.
But with this final question, she wanted to give him a chance to repent.
“Haa…… This is why hypocritical bastards like the followers of Minis are no good.”
But Basili slapped away her last kindness with a sneer.
“Why bother hiding it when it’s already exposed?”
“……I told you. If you had pretended not to know, I would have dropped my suspicion.”
“Heh heh heh. Who would believe the lies spouted by a hypocrite? You’re obviously in cahoots with that bastard Glenn anyway.”
Even after spending a full fifteen years together, Basili did not trust Grazia in the slightest.
“You think I wouldn’t know this was a trick to catch me after lowering my guard?”
“……Fine. I won’t ask any more.”
In the end, Grazia withdrew the final hand of mercy she had extended to him.
The last trace of vitality remaining in her eyes faded away.
There was no child named Henri.
What stood before her was a heretic wearing Henri’s shell.
“Surrender quietly. Then I’ll at least grant you a religious trial.”
“Go to hell.”
Basili did not give up.
He quickly thrust his hand into his chest.
“You and I will die together here today—!”
Slash—
But in the next moment.
Basili’s arm fell to the floor.
Before he could even pull something out from his chest, Grazia was already standing in front of him with a hand axe.
“Ghk… Kuaaaaaaah! You fucking bitch!!”
He screamed and rolled on the floor.
But Grazia swung the axe once more, severing Basili’s remaining arm.
“Kuaaaaaah!”
As a result, even his attempt to pretend to writhe in pain and use the item he had taken out was thwarted.
Grazia picked up the item Basili had tried to use and held it in her hand.
“Dark matter……. Were you planning to use this to die together with me?”
“Grrrrk……! All hypocrites will go to hell…!”
With the whites of his eyes showing, Basili crawled across the floor and slammed his head against Grazia’s leg.
Grazia quietly raised the hand axe and brought it down on his head.
Soon, silence fell.
“Your Eminence! What’s going on?!”
“Are you all ri— Ah, Sir Henri?!”
Two inquisitors burst into the office after hearing Basili’s scream, then froze in shock.
“Your Eminence……?”
Grazia Delleda was looking at them with her usual calm face, holding an axe in her hand.
“What on earth happened…….”
“Search Henri’s—no, this man’s room immediately.”
“…Yes? What do you mean—.”
At the cardinal’s gaze, the two inquisitors said no more and left the office.
Left alone once again, Grazia quietly looked down at Basili’s corpse.
“What a truly ridiculous thing.”
—My name… is Henri!
—Your Eminence. I have officially received my knighthood this time. I will continue to work hard.
The child who had breathed life into her emotionless eyes.
—Heh heh heh. Who would believe the lies of a hypocrite? You’re in cahoots with that bastard Glenn anyway.
—Grrrrk……! Hypocritical bastard…!
That fifteen years later, she herself had taken away that light again—
the reality was nothing but absurd.
“Heh…….”
Under the moonlight streaming through the window, Cardinal Grazia Delleda let out a short, hollow laugh.
Because she stood with her back to the window, no one could see what expression she was wearing.
The next morning.
At Cardinal Grazia’s summons, Glenn headed to the main headquarters of the Inquisition.
Originally, he was supposed to meet her late that afternoon.
‘Looks like something happened. I can pretty much guess what it is…’
The poison that breathes life.
An event that happens to Grazia Delleda in the original work.
In the middle of the original story—
That is, when the holy war against the Demon King’s Army was in full swing—
Grazia Delleda is nearly assassinated by poisoning by the apprentice knight she had taken in fifteen years earlier.
That apprentice knight was actually a follower of the Black Cult, and because it was a plan carefully prepared over a long fifteen years, it became a fairly well-known event among Gray Eden users.
‘And since the outcome goes badly for the player, I have to stop it.’
Because of this event, Grazia—whose strength rivaled that of a Demon King Army corps commander—would permanently leave the battlefield.
As a result, an entire front would collapse, and one territory would be completely devastated, creating a massive snowball effect.
That was why Glenn, just like with Saintess Luceria, had to prevent this event from happening.
‘And I can gain some trust while I’m at it.’
He was somewhat worried since he wasn’t handling it directly himself, but—
“Sorry for calling you so early.”
Fortunately, Grazia Delleda, who appeared in the reception room, looked healthy.
Her expression and atmosphere felt harsher than yesterday, but considering the flow of events, it was only natural.
‘He was like a son she raised.’
“First, let me thank you.”
“I only feel sorry for having to say such things to you, Your Eminence.”
“On the contrary, you’re the benefactor who saved my life. Don’t worry about it. And—”
Grazia looked at Glenn and slightly raised the corner of her lips.
“As the head of the Inquisition, wouldn’t you say it’s rather fortunate that we discovered and dealt with an enemy of the Order?”
Objectively speaking, she wasn’t wrong.
But the gaze with which Grazia looked at Glenn was unfocused, directed somewhere far away.
Glenn couldn’t meet that faintly precarious gaze directly.
Doing the right thing while breaking someone’s heart in the process was not a pleasant experience.
After that, Grazia briefly explained to Glenn what had happened the previous day.
“……When I mentioned the phrase you told me, he suddenly changed and revealed his true identity.”
“And…… when we had personnel rush to his office and thoroughly search his private room, we found letters from an unknown sender.”
“It seems he had various small missions in addition to the task of eliminating me.”
In fact, over the past few years, there had been incidents where inquisitors who carried out missions together with Henri lost their lives due to accidents.
“Now that I think about it, it was probably Henri—no, Basili—who orchestrated those things. As the head of the Inquisition, I can only feel ashamed.”
In any case, the outcome seemed to have ended much as Glenn expected.
And because of that, Cardinal Grazia decided to trust Glenn’s words.
“Until the Black Cult is eradicated, the Inquisition will spare no support.”
The answer he had been hoping for.
Glenn smiled brightly.
“That’s more reassuring than anyone else.”
“Hmph. But if you try to use it for personal reasons, I will punish you.”
Speaking lightly as a joke, Grazia brought her teacup to her lips.
“There is something I want to ask you.”
“If you plan to withdraw your support depending on how I answer, I’ll have to refuse.”
“Heh. You’re probably the only man who treats a cardinal of the Order like this.”
No matter what answer he gave, she said she would never withhold support, and Grazia laughed it off.
“It’s about what you know.”
So it was coming.
“What I know?”
“Yes. Even if you say you’ve been tracking the Black Cult for a long time, knowing about an infiltrator as specific as Basili, and identifying the mysterious phrase that made him reveal himself, wouldn’t be easy.”
For a brief moment, a sharp light passed through Grazia’s deep sea-colored eyes.
‘Of course she’d be curious.’
A young noble from the frontier knowing secrets of the Black Cult that even the Inquisition couldn’t uncover.
“The answer to that question is in what I told you yesterday.”
“The story?”
“Yes. I told you I found a Black Cult diocese in Haven. From the bishop we captured there, we extracted a confession about Basili and the coded message that was to be delivered to him.”
“……I see. Understood.”
But Grazia’s expression as she said that didn’t look very satisfied.
What Glenn said was practically impossible.
A bishop of the Black Cult, infamous for their fanaticism, would never confess so easily, and decoding their ciphered messages was even more absurd.
Glenn’s answer was essentially no different from saying nothing at all.
‘Still, what can she do? It’s not like she’ll dig into my past.’
No matter how suspicious it was, she wouldn’t interrogate the benefactor who saved her life.
Of course, she would also be considering the possibility that Glenn Wordsworth might be connected to the Black Cult.
But that, too, would be resolved in one stroke on the day Glenn declared himself the Third Saint.
Either way, the fact that he gained the support of the neutral faction—the Inquisition—through this incident did not change.
‘This side wrapped up in just two days.’
All that remained was to check the forces gathered on Luceria’s side, set a date, and smash the Black Cult’s headquarters.
‘…Everything’s great, except for one thing that bothers me.’
Last night.
The information Romina and Ridenhall brought back after visiting the Black Cult’s archives.
That information weighed heavily on his mind.
TO BE CONTINUED....
