Chapter 175
That day on the snowfield, the Pope barely managed to escape.
He fled like a dog, groveling in utter humiliation, clinging to nothing but his life. He had shoved every Holy Knight sent to execute him forward as a sacrifice and fled alone. It was hardly surprising.
Watching the Pope’s retreating back, Hailon killed the men who had once been his comrades—those brainwashed into fanatical loyalty to the Pope. No amount of persuasion would have broken their blind devotion, so Hailon’s hand never wavered. They screamed curses at him, voices thick with rage and terror, their howls sounding like souls wailing from the bottom of hell itself.
Yet Hailon felt nothing. He simply carried out the executions with an expressionless face.
After dyeing the once-white snowfield entirely crimson with blood, Hailon was finally able to return to the Holy Empire.
The reason he had risked everything to go back was simple.
Because the child was there.
He had forced his way back to the Holy Empire, but…
The child had already been taken to the Fairy Kingdom.
“…….”
He temporarily overloaded his divine power and shattered the restraints. After fighting in a body pushed past its limits by the forced surge, then racing back to the Holy Empire without a moment’s rest, it would not have been strange if he had collapsed right there.
Every inch of him screamed in pain, yet Hailon did not stop to rest.
He kept moving.
He went to find the one who should have protected the child even in his absence.
Count Basilian was in no better condition than Hailon.
“Heretic Inquisitor.”
In just a few days, Count Basilian had grown razor-sharp, his red eyes blazing as he smiled.
“Or should I say… traitor to the Holy Empire now.”
Hailon had been publicly declared a traitor to the Holy Empire. Naturally—after all, he had tried to kill the Pope. Cast out of the most honorable position reserved for the greatest Holy Knights, yet Hailon did not care. He had never wanted that seat to begin with. He had simply become the Heretic Inquisitor while chasing Lichesia.
Hailon, who accepted the new title without hesitation, spoke as a traitor to the Holy Empire.
“I will become the new Pope.”
Only then could he tear out every last root.
The reason he had deliberately revealed his intention to Count Basilian was simple.
He wanted the man’s support.
After all, what Kierne Basilian desired was the same as what Hailon desired. There was no reason to refuse help.
At Hailon’s declaration, Count Basilian smiled.
It was the same smooth, polished smile as always, yet this time it could not completely hide a faint tremor of instability beneath the perfect mask.
“I should naturally assist you. After all, we are in the same boat, aren’t we? However, I have just one request.”
Count Basilian’s breathing faltered.
He forced the corners of his trembling lips upward and smiled again.
“I know a way to reach the Fairy Kingdom.”
He had once captured a fairy and interrogated it. At the time he had pretended to gain little information, but in truth he had brainwashed the creature and extracted everything possible.
The reason he now released the information he had kept solely for himself was one.
“But… that place cannot be entered by humans.”
Breathing hard, Count Basilian swept a hand down his face.
“If I use black magic, there might be consequences for the child…. I haven’t even dared to try, but divine power may work…”
“I will go.”
Count Basilian was silent for a moment, then murmured with a face drained of all color.
“I have never once regretted any choice I made…. But lately, I feel a little regret.”
It might have been better if I had never become a black mage.
Having whispered those words, Count Basilian told Hailon the method to reach the Fairy Kingdom.
Hailon, being human, could not enter the Fairy Kingdom directly either.
But he could send the holy relic—the Chains of Condemnation—inside the kingdom.
He had hoped it would serve as a warning to the fairies.
Yet Chesha did not return.
In the end, Hailon began using the Chains of Condemnation to seize fairies from the kingdom one after another, at random.
He believed that for the fairies’ sake, the child would appear.
But even after forcibly dragging every fairy out of the kingdom, the child never showed herself.
“You cannot defy fate. No matter how you struggle, she is our queen.”
At the fairies’ words, Hailon slowly narrowed his eyes.
A wave of dizziness struck him.
Only then, with his vision blurring, did he realize.
He had not slept for far too long.
Since the massacre of the Holy Knights in the snowfield, he had not taken a single proper rest.
Hailon slowly closed and opened his eyes, biting down on the flesh inside his mouth to force himself alert. Swallowing the blood, he extended the Chains of Condemnation.
He bound countless fairies with the chains and locked them away in the place Count Basilian had prepared.
He could feel his already ruined body collapsing beyond repair, yet he paid it no mind.
If she had chosen to become queen in the end, she would return at least to save the fairies.
So Hailon did everything he could and waited for the child.
First he contacted the Holy Knights and brought them to his side—his former adjutant Daren, other heretic inquisitors, holy knights, and even some holy priests.
All of them gladly joined Hailon’s rebellion.
With the help of the Basilian family, he also gathered nobles and royals across the continent who harbored discontent toward the Holy Empire and built a force.
He prepared step by step, waiting and waiting, and waiting still.
But the child did not return.
Around the time a full year had passed, Hailon suddenly realized.
Chesha… and Lichesia too…
Perhaps they would never come back.
There had been no foundation for his belief that they would return—only his own empty wish.
It had been a truly foolish faith.
Hailon could endure no longer.
“I must enter the Fairy Kingdom myself.”
Once he became Pope of the Holy Empire, he would gain access to the treasury that stored every kind of holy relic.
There, he might find something that could help him step inside the Fairy Kingdom.
It was a faint hope, but now he had to try anything.
To do that, the first and highest priority was to remove the current Pope and seize the position.
“I will end it at the Palen Emperor’s birthday banquet.”
It was earlier than planned, yet Count Basilian raised no objection.
He simply answered with a smile reeking of blood.
“I will prepare everything accordingly.”
To infiltrate the Palen Emperor’s birthday banquet, Hailon changed the color of his hair and cast a subtle recognition-disrupting spell.
Then, together with a few of the Holy Knights he trusted most, he slipped into the imperial palace and scouted the interior, including the banquet hall.
He judged that carrying out the plan would present no major obstacles.
At least until, during the reconnaissance, a child suddenly appeared before him.
The three Basilian brothers, who had not been scheduled to attend the banquet, had unexpectedly shown up, so he had followed them.
He had meant to drive them out, fearing they might become variables that ruined everything, but…
“…Chesha?”
The moment he saw the one he had longed for with every fiber of his being, he forgot it all.
