The Priest of Corruption - Chapter 257
Camouflage?
Camouflage?
“why? no answer? Marnak?”
I think Cardi Show misunderstood something.
No, if you look at it, isn’t it a misunderstanding? It’s true that he knew what Arter and Pearly did to Cardisho’s body and was hiding it from her.
How should I respond to minimize conflicts?
Right now, my priority was to ensure Dakiane’s safety rather than intervene in Master Friediya’s fight. That’s why it was the worst situation to collide here with Cardisho, who has become a mass of tentacles.
Besides, I had no idea how strong Cardisho would be in that form.
Seeing that he doesn’t attack me right away, he seems to have much more reason than he did during the runaway before. After a moment of thought, I slowly opened my mouth.
“Can I be honest with you?”
Cardisho looked at me with red eyes and nodded.
“I wish I could tell you without a single lie.”
“The story is going to be a bit long, so I’ll talk about it while moving.”
“I get it.”
Thanks to Cardisho’s unexpectedly obedient listening to me, we slowly began to cross the empty streets.
“To be honest, I knew Cardisho’s body was not in normal condition.”
“I guess so. Seeing that Pearly knew about my physical condition, there was no way that you, who often hung out with her, would not have known.”
“Could you tell me how far you know? I think that would be easier to explain.”
Cardisho’s red eyes deepened at my question.
“Tell me what you know first. Marnac. After checking how far I know, don’t think about it. I will judge the truth in your words.”
It doesn’t come over easily either. I clicked my tongue briefly in my mind and opened my mouth again. So, is it just a frontal breakthrough? If I tried to roll my head here and got caught in the gap of a lie I made up on the spot, I could have gone into a much worse situation than when I broke through head-on.
“In fact, I knew from the first time we met that Cardisho’s physical condition was special. It’s because I was the one who subdued Cardi Show, who ran wild in the first place.”
“…As expected, the vague memories of defeat were made by Marnak. Then how did Pearly know how I was?”
After thinking about it with my eyes closed for a while, I realized that this is not a problem in my area of responsibility.
Soon I made a quick decision.
I have to sell Pearly unconditionally.
After a small apology to Pearly in my heart, I opened my mouth.
“That’s because the person who renovated the dying cardi show was the one Pearly sponsored.”
“…what?”
“Knowing that it was a place where a worshiper of an evil god was conspiring, Cardisho stormed into it, and the research there was very misleading at first glance, in a form that was very misleading. . It’s a pretty messed up state. To be precise, they said they were all dying.”
She replied in a low growl.
“So you used me as a test subject to get revenge for the rampage in the lab?”
“Then he must have been locked up in a test tube, still unconscious. Your body modification was entirely to save you from dying. Think about it. Did me or Pearly ever stop you from leaving? no. I’ve never had one. Cardisho, you stayed with us of your own free will.”
I did my best to face the caddy show in a serious mood.
“Think about it one more time. Do you really think we were there to keep an eye on the test subjects?”
A heavy silence fell. Cardisho just walked beside me without saying a word.
‘killing…?’
A word from the mother, “Did it work…?”
I hoped that my sincerity would reach Cardisho. I didn’t want to make a new enemy at this moment when things weren’t even finished yet. I especially hated turning people I knew into enemies.
After a longer silence than expected, Cardisho spoke to me in a heavy voice.
“…In the end, the only way to get a proper answer is to ask Perley, not you, Marnak. If you look at your story, it’s close to what I heard from Pearly.”
At first, I let out a sigh of relief as I seemed to have no special feelings.
“Then would you please cooperate until we find Pearly?”
“It is. Maybe Marnak next to you is the fastest way to find Pearly.”
She pondered for a moment, twitching her tentacle mouth, then asked me.
“By the way, don’t you know how to get back to normal in this state? At this rate, I think it’s perfect to be misunderstood as a monster.”
I didn’t know anything either. In the first place, I didn’t even know that Cardi Show could be like that.
“I haven’t heard anything about it either. But how did that look come about?”
Cardisho glanced at Master and Havas, who were rampaging in the center of the capital, and briefly explained the situation he was in.
To sum up, he was in danger of dying while fighting someone who looked just like that Havas, and came to his senses after becoming this kind of body.
“You’ve worked hard.”
“The biggest hardship was avoiding the other priests after that. Isn’t it obvious what will happen if you face them in this state of body?”
A woman whose entire body is made of wriggling tentacles. It was clear that Nara, too, would have immediately recognized the current cardisho as an enemy and prepared for an attack if it encountered it on the roadside.
“If you can’t come back in your original form, wouldn’t it be better to put on some clothes?”
“Right. Marnac, you are right.”
There is no one on this street that looks like a shopping mall, and given the situation, it would be okay to bring one or two sets of clothes.
We first entered a building that appeared to be a nearby clothing store and grabbed a large robe for Cardisho. Cardisho put on the robe I gave him, pulled his hat down, and went to other stores to find a red mask he didn’t know where he got it and put it on his face.
“It looks like there is no strap to hold the mask on. Is that okay?”
“If you’re going to fix it, it’s already there.”
As she held the red mask to her face, a few small tentacles extended from her face and pierced a small hole in the mask, passing through the hole and securing the mask to her face.
Cardisho must have changed not long ago, but he was using tentacles as if he were his own body. No, since it’s really your own body, is it right to use tentacles like your own body?
Cardisho pulled the robe’s hat down again and asked me.
“How is it?”
“Honestly, it looks very suspicious.”
With the robe tightly wrapped around him and even wearing a suspicious-looking mask, anyone could see that he was behind the events that took place in the capital today.
“But at least it looks human.”
“…okay.”
Cardisho said in a slightly downcast voice.
“…If this is the case, all the marriages are gone. There was even a chance when the face was even, but now it’s a tentacle monster…” “
Everything will be fine. When this job is over, I will tell Pearly to make sure Cardisho is returned to her original body somehow.”
“Can you take responsibility for that?”
“yes?”
Dark eyes flashed between the gaps in the eye sockets of the red mask.
“If I can’t return to my original body, can you take responsibility?”
Cardisho, who had approached with great strides, thrust his face very menacingly right in front of me. In response to that strange sense of intimidation, I involuntarily took a step back before finally answering.
“…I will try my best for now.”
“I will remember.”
Cardisho, who answered briefly, straightened his back, as if all of his downcast appearance had been a lie, as if my answer was quite satisfactory.
“Then what should we do first?”
“Before that, I want to ask you something.”
“Something?”
“Where have all the people on the street gone?”
“…”
Cardisho, who was silent for a moment, spoke in a slightly drooping voice.
“It has stopped now, but just before, red rain fell from the sky. The people hit by the rain called each other monsters and killed them. When someone died like that, the red rain melted the body. They all disappeared without a trace.”
As expected, the identity of the red liquid that was constantly pouring into the room where the vessel of the god was was a ritual sacrifice.
I put on the robe I got from Cardisho. Since I didn’t know where the enemy might be, my white priestly uniform was a very conspicuous target.
“For now, we’ll leave the Libertio prophet to Master, and we’ll start by looking for the others.”
It was clear that Pearly had some means of ensuring her own safety, as she told me she was welcome to go as she entered the bowl.
If he could find Dakiane while he had also taken his mother’s holy relics, he would have accomplished his goal perfectly. Even without any sacrifice.
“good night.”
Cardisho was about to nod, then paused, then stared at me.
“Can you hear Marnak too?”
“yes.”
Footsteps A series of footsteps were rapidly approaching our location. We exchanged glances for a moment, then left the store and went out into the street to confirm the identity of the footsteps.
The number is roughly four or five. A group of robed men and women appeared around the corner of the street and looked at us with delightful faces. The man standing at the front saw Cardisho and me and waved his hand vigorously.
“Did you guys survive too!”
you too
The man I had never seen before spoke to me in a friendly way, as if I had known Cardi Show for a long time.
I glanced at Cardisho and she gave a small nod. First of all, it was necessary to scrape information about who they were while matching them to their rhythm.
I cleared my throat and answered in a deliberately serious voice.
“I was lucky.”
“Yeah, I was lucky.”
Cardi Show put in a choo-im-sae, scaring me to say it, and chimed in. I continued to speak slowly, observing the crowd in front of me.
“Where are you going now?”
“Where are you going! Since the hideout collapsed and everything there was thrown back into the capital, what we have to do has been decided, right? I have to go through the ritual by recovering the ‘God’s Bowl’ that must have bounced out of the capital! It’s a strange thing anyway. If Horlu-nim was still intact, there would never be a collapse of the hideout…”
Was he also a member of the Liberatorio? But why did they mistake us for colleagues…
I understood at once why they misunderstood us as belonging to the Liberatorio when I saw Cardisho wearing a suspiciously masked robe.
In fact, the libertio is the only one who wears a robe and walks around on a street where almost all living people have died.
Seeing those who greeted me with useless naivety, I was slightly lucky.
“Have you seen the silver-haired wizard breaking into the hideout?”
“Oh that girl? We heard the call for backup and we didn’t actually see it because the hideout collapsed while we were on our way to assist the woman…”
Puck.
The man who answered me was crushed by something that fell from the sky and turned to mush. I quickly pulled up and turned the robe to stop the splatter of blood and flesh from splashing on my face.
I stopped the blood from splashing and quickly lowered my robe. The thing that had crushed the man in front of me kicked the man and woman in the head and blasted them off, then rushed straight to me.
I quickly pulled the despair from my waistband and blocked the attack on my head.
Caang!!!
The metal sound from the collision of the sword and the metal leggings resounded, and the woman’s black rabbit ears twitched as if it was unexpected that she had blocked her blow.
Desferacio, a black rabbit with a familiar face, and Lily, the woman who always hung out with me, checked my face and frowned. She grumbled in a voice full of displeasure.
“You’re that unlucky son of a bitch! Why are you here?”