“Y-Your Grace,” Silvien stuttered, taking a step back inside the guild.

  I felt bad for them and having to do this with every one of them around, so as not to draw them in, if they were really planning to ‘vanquish me’, I took out my coin purse and gave it to Melsa.

  “Little Arthur, go take the others and go eat something nice, something sweet, huh?”

  “C-Can I weally?” the small dog boy asked, unsure.

  His words made me chuckle despite the situation I was in, so I patted him gently. “Of course. Enjoy yourself while I talk to these gentlemen here.”

  “Yipee!”

  Arthur began jumping from sheer happiness while the others looked at me, dumbfounded. All but Melsa, who only smiled sadly at me, mouthing a quiet thank you before they re-entered the guild, closing the door behind them, leaving me, Enna, the Templars, and the gathering crowd present.

  But my eyes were still locked onto the memory of the small boy and his wide smile at the promise of sweets, making me remember the regret I felt when I saw Julia realize she would never be able to have children because she was dying.

  It was never a requirement of mine; on the contrary, I was always pushing back on the thought, fearing any children we would have would look like me, suffer the same fate I did back on Earth.

  I couldn’t help but imagine how wide Julia’s smile would have been if she’d become a mother and how much joy it would have brought her. I pictured us raising a child or two, watching them grow into proper adults. Growing old together. Watching them leave our home to build lives of their own in that wide world, leaving us alone once more.

  I imagined her smile turning wrinkled with age, softer but no less beautiful. I imagined her leaning close to whisper a quiet "I love you" as I lay on my deathbed, surrounded by everything we had built together. And as the darkness took me, as my life faded into nothingness, I would have been happy. Truly happy. Knowing I had lived beside her. Waiting to see her again when her time came.

  That was my dream once. The life I still believed would have been the best I could ever live.

  And it was that dream that steadied me now, as I fought back the blood-filled tears in my eyes and turned to face the Templars.

  The Templars stood in white armor veined with gold, the holy filigree crawling across their plates and shoulder pads like frozen sunlight... Or at least that's what I made from what little of them was visible peeking out from behind the human-sized shields that they were using to hide behind.

  Their faces were buried beneath matching helms, reminding me of the Great Helms of the High Middle Ages, while spears and swords made of the same glorious white stood pointed at me.

  They stood in three lines, forming a tight shield wall with only one opening between them, staring me down like I was an arch-demon worthy of banishment back to the depths of Hell.

  It also didn’t take much to look at them and feel the magic radiating from them as if it were the sun, somehow making the air emanating from them considerably warmer and more annoying to look at. But still, I looked.

  And despite how much they annoyed me, and the situation I was in, they were proper holy knights, emanating holiness as if the fuckers forgot what a sin was. But fuck did they look cool. The geek in me wanted that armor with all my being, only so that I could stare at it and imagine warriors of old fighting in it.

  But all that vanished when, from behind those lines, a man clad in armor twice as glorious as the fuckers in front of him passed through the opening.

  “Sister Enna,” he bowed gently, hand over his steel-clad chest. “Is this the man you have reported about?”

  “Holy Brother,” Enna bowed deeply, hair falling over her face. “Yes, he is the one.”

  [Recommendation.]

  [Move away from the Guild.]

  [Go Along with their Request.]

  “Forgive me,” I said, walking down the steps of the guild as gently and non-threateningly as possible, following Ephe’s recommendation without a second thought. “Could we please relocate to a more… proper place for discussion? The Adventurer’s Guild is hardly the place to do it.”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  The man behind the helm stared at me, his magic turning to me as if attempting to stare into my soul and deduce my intentions. But there was nothing that he could see in there. My soul was with Julia, not here with me.

  So he nodded to my request, realizing the crowd that gathered around us.

  “Then… sir,” he said, his voice muffled from behind the helm. “Are you willing to come to the City’s High Temple and talk there?”

  So that’s what they wanted to do. Fuck it, better to have them trust and talk with me in their own home rather than distrust me outside the city and really vanquish me.

  “Of course,” I nodded. “Lead the way.”

  At my casual agreement, Enna looked at me for a moment as if confused, but I couldn’t care less about that now, focusing instead on the leader of this Templar group starting to bark orders to his men who surrounded Enna and me before we began walking.

  It was a five-minute walk toward the High Temple. If you could call that a temple. It was far more than that, really.

  The first building we walked through was the main Temple itself, the place of worship of the main religion in this part of the Ashtara Kingdom. Sanachism.

  Sanachism, from what Enna and Stevin told me back at the castle, was a polytheistic religion, formed of five Gods who maintained the order of the World. The difference from other religions was that the Gods in this case were believed to be real people, just like the Asatru faith or the Norse Paganism, as it was better known back on Earth. Odin, Thor, Freyr, Freya, and the entire Pantheon of Gods were believed to be living beings or at least capable of taking human shape and walk Midgard as mortal men and women.

  For this chain of High Temples, and Sanachism as a whole, it seemed they believed the same.

  The main temple was, even as we passed, quite full with worshipers, caught deep in prayer, as none really paid attention to us as we passed.

  But taking a door near the side of the Temple, we’ve arrived in what Enna described to me as the real part of the High Temples, the part closed off from the normal public. The Holy Grounds, as both Templars and Enna called them.

  The Holy Grounds were composed of five more Temples, one fancier than the next, each dedicated to one of the five Gods. Inside each one, Priestesses dressed in proper white dresses, unlike Enna, may I add, were heading in and out as we passed.

  They looked at all of us but asked no questions as we walked through the enormous grounds, behind the Temples, only to arrive at a Chapel.

  “That is where we are headed,” the lead Templar spoke out. “Our High Priests and the head of our Order will be there to ask you questions and decide what you are.”

  “All I know is that I am peaceful,” I replied casually. “I find it hard to believe anyone with bad intentions would walk into this place.”

  “We’ll see,” the man shrugged, his armor clanking. “In this place, whether you are a King or not does not matter. Please, keep that in mind.”

  Believe me, brother with cool armor, if I knew none of you bastards would go after the others next, I would’ve been back at my castle in an instant. But knowing how “Holy” people tend to be, I would rather not. So here we are.

  But of course, I said none of those words; instead, I just nodded along with his words until we were in front of the doors of the Chapel.

  “Your first test begins here, Vampire Lord,” said the Templar. “Enter the Chapel.”

  With a look at Enna, more out of spite and anger than anything, I pushed the wooden doors open, seeing some old bastards sitting down on chairs past the lines of Priestesses and Templars waiting inside.

  Such a glorious arrangement for such a stupid thing… it could only make a man sigh. But still, before the Templars behind me could draw a conclusion and impale one of those sharp-looking spears in my rectum, I decided to walk inside.

  And guess what.

  Elio did not burn to ash, attacked by holy magic to protect the good from the apparent evil that I was. Nothing happened, and that seemed to surprise some of the people in front of or behind me, including Enna.

  It seemed I was no great evil, after all.

  Which meant that, whether they wanted to or not, they now really had to talk with me. So suck it, Enna. I told you, yet you failed to believe me, you fake attempt at a… You know what, let me be the bigger man.

  So I kept on walking through the line of Priestesses and Templars until I reached the old bastards in front of me. Bastards who, by the looks of their faces, ought to be dead for about two decades now.

  Still, they were clearly not, as one of them began speaking.

  “King… of the Great Velvet Forests. Vampire Lord. Elio Welchia, correct?”

  What’s with the random pauses?

  “Yes,” I nodded. “High Priests of… the High Temples.”

  My words seemed to have amused the bold, bearded fucker in the middle of them as he got to his feet with far too much ease for how his frail body looked.

  “My name is Gavriel, Saint-Priest of the High Temples, of the Holy Road,” he said, putting his hand forward.

  A hand that I shook without issue, looking into the old man’s eyes. But he stared back, studying my eyes with heavy focus.

  Once he was satisfied with what he saw, he spoke again, letting go of my hand. “Come, let us grab you a seat and talk, King.”

  But I couldn’t move. Not after hearing Ephe’s voice in my head. Not after seeing past the man’s robes, and seeing the same shattered reality that stood above all our heads.

  [Directive 'Detect Fracture 7-B' Followed - Registered.]

  [Fracture 7-B - Detected]

  [Reign Index Increased: 0.41% → 0.45%]

  [New Directive: Kill the Saint-Priest]

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