My Disciples Became Scoundrels - Chapter 51

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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It was Jeremiah’s voice. She knew exactly that I was here.
Surprise came before fear, and doubt came before surprise.
Even if I’d lost the skill of my prime, I hadn’t forgotten how to deaden my footsteps.
She couldn’t have heard the sound I made. And besides, her eyes didn’t work.
Was she truly a prophet? It might have been better to run. I stared at the door for a moment, then rose from where I sat.
I turned the doorknob. Jeremiah was standing right there. I spoke in a deflated, cautious voice.
“How did you know I was here?”
She’d called me not “Dein” but “Demian.” Not everything had been discovered. Jeremiah smiled gently as she spoke.
“I’m a prophet, aren’t I? I knew you’d come looking for something, and that you’d visit my room.”
And yet she’d welcomed me anyway?
It was something she could never have done if she’d known I was Dein Balanus. In response to that, I continued to play the boy.
“I’m sorry, Jeremiah. I came in looking for something worth money.”
“It’s fine. The pickpocket children often do the same.”
So she knew I was looking for something, but not what. I looked down at her and asked.
“What happened to those children?”
“You’ve already met Brock, and the others have moved on to their own lives.”
None punished, none cast out. She seemed less a prophet and more like a saint.
The woman before me still felt like mist. I couldn’t gauge her intentions or her nature. She whispered near my ear.
“Don’t go rummaging around too much. I’d prefer if neither of us ended up in an awkward position.”
Her voice was oddly tepid. Jeremiah smiled and gently pushed me away. It meant I should leave.
I left her room slowly. From below the stairs, I looked up at Jeremiah and asked.
“Why don’t you drive away the children who steal?”
What reason lay behind this mercy? She lifted the corners of her mouth into a smile, but somehow it looked lonely.
“Because I know what it means to have nowhere to return to.”
I descended the stairs without further word. There was no need to ask anything else.
Because I, too, knew what it meant to have nowhere to return to.
And so I left the tower and headed toward where the children played. As I passed beneath a tree, Jenia suddenly appeared from above.
“Ten minutes have gone by. You’re early?”
I gave a bitter smile to her, hanging upside down among the branches.
“The prophet found me out.”
“Then what? Do we run?”
“There’s no need. She may not be a fake, but she’s not entirely genuine either.”
I recalled the pattern I’d found in the room. It was damaged, so not precise, but there was something I could guess at.
Jeremiah did seem to have the Prophetic Bloodline. The issue was only with her ability.
“So the prophecy about Balanus could be true, or it could be false?”
I nodded, and Jenia’s expression grew serious. I reached up and stroked my disciple’s head.
Our goal was twofold. First, to undermine the credibility of the prophecy and dismantle the prophecy concerning Balanus.
Second, to uncover whether the prophecy about Balanus was genuine or false.
If it was real, I needed to prepare a countermeasure. If it was false, I needed to find out why they’d done this.
Jenia’s face turned thoughtful.
“How can we tell which is the real fake?”
“I’ll have to ask her directly. Though she won’t answer willingly.”
The necklace she’d hidden alone would be enough to coerce her, but it was better to have a more solid card.
I looked toward the tower for a moment. From the first floor to the fourth, and just now on the fifth floor—the moments came back to me.
“I noticed each floor has lower ceiling height than it appears from outside. Especially the fifth. There must be a hidden space.”
When I’d entered the fifth floor, the gap between my head and the ceiling was noticeably short. That alone was a worthy discovery from visiting the fifth floor.
“Oh! Let me search for it! Just trust me.”
At my words, Jenia’s eyes gleamed. This was right up Jenia’s alley. And I had two more capable disciples besides.
“Your brothers may have found something too. Let’s keep our hopes up.”
I thought of my disciples in the Mist Mountains. Even if they bickered, they’d be doing their part well enough. Probably.
* * *
“Hey, turn up the temperature a bit, will you? Are we just going to waste magic while cooking stew?!”
“You need to learn to speak politely.”
Low voices echoed through the misty forest. In the thick dawn mist, Arkel and Cesare were there.
It was the morning of the fourth night sleeping rough. Cesare muttered as he examined broken branches and the tracks of magical beasts.
“I thought I’d freeze to death at dawn. Is it really so difficult to raise body heat with magic?”
“Get up and run. There’s no reason to waste mana.”
“What a tightwad in every way.”
Arkel was also reading the remaining mana in the forest. Since there was nothing particular, his expression didn’t change.
“If only the mist would clear, things might be a little easier. Master and Jenia should be all right, shouldn’t they?”
Arkel didn’t answer. Cesare didn’t seem to expect one either. His fingers moved faster across the trampled grass, tracing the disturbance.
“This whole situation troubles me. The way the children follow the Prophetess so faithfully, for one. Still, if it turns out she’s a charlatan….”
“They might follow her anyway.”
Arkel spoke quietly, eyes fixed ahead.
“You know it as well as I do. What an adult who takes in homeless children looks like to them.”
“……Like a god.”
Cesare’s fingers found the Acorn Necklace, turning it over in his palm. The first time he’d encountered Dein came back to him—that figure materializing before him, bleeding…….
“Ah, that’s freezing! What are you doing?”
A small chunk of ice struck Cesare’s head. Cold radiated from Arkel’s fingertips.
“Don’t scowl. You’ll get wrinkles—you already look older than you should.”
Arkel grabbed the nape of Cesare’s neck and poured magic into him. As warmth spread through his body, Cesare whined in protest.
“Now you’re finally acting like a brother.”
“I’ve always been your brother.”
“You are, true enough. The problem is you have no manners whatsoever…….”
Then both their expressions shifted at once, and they ducked behind the nearest tree. A moment later, a muffled voice drifted through the mist.
“Patrol duty before dawn? The mist is particularly thick today.”
Guard Corps members appeared dimly through the haze. The lantern’s glow let them make out the shapes barely. One soldier griped.
“The prophecies have been missing the mark, so the captain keeps ordering more patrols.”
“Quite so. Why don’t Jeremiah’s prophecies hit anymore? They always used to.”
“Not always. It was the same when we first came to this village, and after the disciples struck out on their own.”
At those words, Cesare’s brow furrowed. So the prophecies didn’t always come true?
There had to be a reason why they’d been accurate, and a reason why they weren’t now.
Arkel and Cesare crept after the guards, the mist cloaking them perfectly.
The Guard Corps members were chatting quietly when smaller footsteps approached.
“Oh? What brings you two out here?”
The guards’ voices warmed with welcome. A young voice called out from within the mist.
“We’re gathering herbs! The Prophetess is feeling a bit poorly.”
Arkel observed closely—two figures in white robes: a large man and a girl in her mid-teens.
“You shouldn’t wander out here alone, even if Brock is the finest knight the kingdom’s ever produced, according to the Prophetess.”
There was playfulness in the voice. Brock spoke shyly.
“But the Prophetess said today would be safe. And Mia came with me.”
Mia clutched something that looked like medicinal herbs. Both children seemed guileless enough.
“Still, I’ll see you back to the tower. You never know what might happen.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Their voices grew distant. When Arkel and Cesare followed them back toward the village entrance, the guards and children were doing nothing but exchanging trivial pleasantries.
Cesare exhaled softly behind the tree.
“The children haven’t come out before. Something feels off……. Brother, where are you going?”
“The direction they came from.”
Cesare’s head turned at that. Despite the mist, the trail they’d left was clear.
“My tracking is better, so stay close and keep quiet.”
The two ventured deeper along the flattened grass. With each step, Cesare felt it too—a wrongness in the air itself.
“Why would the children come to a place like this? Brother?”
Arkel approached a massive boulder and picked something up from beneath it.
“I’ve something to report to our teacher now.”
The small stone bore a carved marking: an Eight-Pointed Star.
* * *
In the dead of night, silence fell even over the bustling tower.
Jeremiah stood before the door on the fifth floor. Or rather, against the wall beside it.
She pressed tiles on the wall in sequence, as though she could see.
A low, metallic hum sounded.
She pushed the wall, and it swung open like a door, revealing a hidden space.
She climbed the stairs within. A chamber between the fifth floor and the roof appeared before her.
The air inside was still. Stone walls and stone floor—nothing else, save for several pillars supporting the ceiling.
Yet it wasn’t empty. The stone floor was covered densely with magical formulae and Magic Circles.
Carved in relief were the formulae, and among them were patterns formed by Eight-Pointed Stars.
Jeremiah settled before one such pattern and was about to channel her magic when a voice came from behind her.
“Are you summoning another Magical Beast?”
Jeremiah flinched and turned. She couldn’t see the face, but she knew who it was.
“……Dein.”
She rose unsteadily to her feet and faced him. Before she could settle on a question, Dein spoke first.
“You didn’t expect me to come? It seems your Prophecy ability isn’t whole after all.”
At those words, Jeremiah went rigid—as though this particular future had escaped her sight entirely.
“I suppose when it concerns your family, there’s little to be done.”
“…… How do you know my family?”
“The Blayu Family. The Prophetic Bloodline that grows stronger the more believers they have.”
On the necklace Dein had found, the Blayu crest was engraved.
Once they had been famous as a house that produced exceptional prophets, but when information about their bloodline leaked out, their influence had been broken. It was a clan that had never recovered its former glory.
That was why Jeremiah’s ability was only half-formed. For fifteen years, they had failed to reclaim their renown.
“So you brought the vagrant children to Domus, didn’t you? Children with nowhere to go will follow you like a god.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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