My Possession Became a Ghost Story - Chapter 211

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Of course. What Nakir is seeing would be a face marred with burn scars.

But it wasn’t a hallucination. I had simply asked Rico to have one of the shape-shifting ‘rats’ transform to look like burn scars and stick to my face.

Nakir’s hands trembled violently. He dropped the veil he was holding, causing it to flutter down and block his view again. Rico must have been nervous too, as I could hear him let out a very quiet sigh that only I could hear.

“Viscount Nakir? What’s wrong?”

As Nakir stared at his own hands while trembling all over, the knights beside him looked at him strangely. Instead, Nakir lunged at the knight who had come to check on him and grabbed him by the collar.

“I, I couldn’t have made a mistake, right? Did you just see that? Did you see it too?”

“Gah…, my lord… please let go of my… neck.”

“Viscount Nakir, calm down! What exactly did you see!”

“Are you saying I misjudged? Why, why are there burn scars?”

Nakir rambled incoherently to the knights around him, insisting this couldn’t be right. The knight whose throat was caught by Nakir gasped as if he couldn’t breathe, causing several others to rush over and restrain Nakir, creating quite a commotion.

I couldn’t let this perfect opportunity slip by. I whispered quietly to Rico, who was covering my face.

“Rico. Have you ever heard Bishop Marik’s voice?”

“Huh? Yes. When I was transformed as Count Gabriel and imprisoned, Bishop Marik visited once.”

“Then repeat what I say quietly in Bishop Marik’s voice. Can you do it?”

“Yes… I’ll try.”

Since the rat was attached to my face, they wouldn’t think the sound was coming from a strange place. This is an otherworldly voice modulator.

“Viscount Nakir.”

“Viscount Nakir.”

I would ventriloquize and whisper quietly, Rico would repeat those words, and then I would just move my lips like lip-syncing.

Good, let’s do it this way. After practicing once, I deliberately lifted the veil slightly to show the scars. This was to show not only Nakir but also the other knights that I was ‘Bishop Marik.’

“…Bi, Bishop Marik.”

Nakir, who had been frozen, now realized he had made a grave mistake seeing both the burn scars and hearing the same voice. His face turned pale as he immediately let go.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I was foolish and committed a great discourtesy to Your Grace…”

Nakir bowed deeply. His voice was so gloomy and trembling that his desperate state of mind was clearly revealed.

Harut was looking strangely at Nakir, who was bowing. He had expected to be caught when the veil was lifted, but instead received an apology, so naturally he found it strange.

“It’s fine. Viscount Nakir was just worried about me and acted somewhat aggressively, wasn’t he?”

Rico repeated the words I had told him. After matching with Rico several times, even the lip-syncing became natural. When I smiled slightly in satisfaction, Nakir seemed to think I was smiling at him and looked moved, clasping his hands together with shining eyes.

“Your Grace…!”

His eyes looked moist. This Nakir fellow must be quite a devoted follower of Bishop Marik. His behavior somehow reminded me of Michel from the Pararos Knights.

“Time is pressing, so I should go in now.”

Rico did quite well imitating Bishop Marik’s voice. Even Bishop Marik’s follower didn’t seem to notice. I had been confused about what to do, but by having the veil lifted, I instead gained certainty that I was Bishop Marik, so it was ultimately beneficial.

Instead of blocking our way as before, Nakir even showed the courtesy of personally opening the bell tower door for us. It wasn’t an exaggeration to say I had treated Nakir like a groveling dog before Bishop Marik.

Nakir apologized once more and hurriedly went outside.

It seemed like he was running away before I might change my mind and punish him for his rudeness.

After quietly confirming that Nakir’s footsteps had faded away, I told them they could speak freely now. Harut let out a big sigh as his tension was released.

“You have quite a talent for acting.”

“So do you, Priest.”

“You don’t need to flatter me unnecessarily. I just realized I have no talent for acting…”

Leaving the dejected Harut behind, I examined the interior of the bell tower. Upon entering the bell tower, I could see stairs leading up toward the soaring sky. Probably after climbing all those stairs, there would be the room where Jelly was imprisoned.

“Shall we go then?”

Before that, I told Rico he could return to his rat form. Rico seemed relieved that he no longer had to act as my voice modulator and hurriedly returned to rat form.

I placed the rat that had climbed down my shoulder onto Pudding. The bell tower stairs were too steep for a rat to climb.

The interior of the bell tower was structured with stairs continuously leading upward along the walls to reach the top. There were railings, but they looked so shabby that they seemed like they would collapse the moment you leaned on them if you misjudged the weight. One wrong move and you’d fall straight down.

The interior was already dark, and with the veil on top of that, I couldn’t distinguish things well, so I unhesitatingly removed the veil. Since I couldn’t carelessly drop Bishop Marik’s belongings around, the veil returned to Harut’s hands.

Seeing that the revealed face was just pale and white, Harut asked with a puzzled expression.

“So what exactly did you do that made Viscount Nakir fall for it even when seeing a face not covered in burn scars?”

“Well. Something interesting?”

It wasn’t content that a priest would applaud and cheer about if he heard it. Moreover, since I didn’t completely trust Harut, I couldn’t tell him everything straightforwardly. Harut seemed to roughly guess why I wasn’t telling him the whole story and didn’t ask any more questions.

The stairs continued endlessly toward the sky. If my stamina hadn’t supported me, I would have stopped to rest intermittently. If Harut couldn’t keep up, I would have left him behind, but Harut stubbornly followed my pace like a tenacious person.

While quietly climbing the stairs, I suddenly remembered the mention of storing holy water at the top of the bell tower. So that means they carry holy water up this path.

Just walking was precarious, but carrying holy water on top of that would be even more dangerous. Yet was there really a need to risk the danger to store holy water at the top of the bell tower? Since it was a place difficult to make round trips to, I wondered if it served as some kind of theft prevention, so I asked Harut.

“Why do they store holy water in high places?”

Isn’t it usually stored underground? No, that’s wine. The answer was surprisingly simple.

“Because it’s closer to the sun. Thanks to that, only the people carrying it suffer.”

Harut grumbled that they were making the priests suffer unnecessarily. He also rambled about how storing holy water in the bell tower was killing the priests, and that the priest who proposed this idea was a lazy fellow with a heavy rear end.

Harut was a truly strange person. He definitely had faith, but unlike other priests, he seemed to care more about people than the Sun God. In other words, he was humane.

Why would such a person help me? Judging by his sharp tone, he clearly disliked me.

“Priest Harut is Bishop Marik’s close associate, right? But why are you helping me?”

Harut fell silent at my words, but I didn’t press him. He must have his own reasons, and I thought it might be inconsiderate to pry into his circumstances when Harut’s answer came back.

“Bishop Marik is my benefactor, but…”

Harut hesitantly continued.

“He’s not someone who’s kind to everyone.”

“Are you talking about heretics?”

“…Yes.”

Harut nodded. Then, as if lost in thought, his steps became slower.

“I’m an orphan, so Bishop Marik took me in when I was young. Additionally, the Bishop sometimes took charge of my education too.”

Bishop Marik must have paid quite a bit of attention to Harut. So that’s why he called him his benefactor.

“One day I saw a child my age in the Bishop’s room. That child was a heretic’s child, and instead of being executed immediately, seemed to be receiving education after getting a chance to repent. The Bishop apologized to me for making me face a child who hadn’t been purified yet. The child’s clothes were shabby and dirty, so I thought that’s what he meant by not being clean.”

But that wasn’t what Bishop Marik meant. To Bishop Marik, heretics would be dirty filth.

If it was when Harut was young, that would be about 20 years ago? Bishop Marik seems to have been quite a consistent person then and now. Well, the heretic massacre that happened before was also said to have occurred under Bishop Marik’s leadership.

“I never saw that child again after that one encounter. Bishop Marik said we simply couldn’t meet because there was much to learn, but I only learned the truth recently.”

Harut’s voice was calm but held hidden complexity.

“To the Bishop, a heretic’s child is likewise just a heretic. That child must have died along with their parents for their parents’ sins.”

Perhaps even the education was just a pretext to make excuses to Harut. Since Harut was ahead of me, I couldn’t see his expression. But just from his voice, it seemed like he would have a crying face.

“Lately when I look at the Bishop, strangely that child comes to mind a lot. I suppose I unconsciously feel guilty. Maybe if I had known the truth then, I could have stopped the Bishop. How many people died like that?”

Harut erased his gloomy mood and returned to his defiant tone to declare.

“So I’m trying to stop the Bishop even now.”

So Harut isn’t helping me, but rather supporting me to stop Bishop Marik.

“If I, who grew up under the protection of the reputation the Bishop built by killing heretics and piling up their corpses, want to pay for my sins, I can only do it this way.”

So he decided to betray the temple and help a demon – he was no ordinary priest.

“If Bishop Marik catches you, you’ll lose your head, you know?”

“Well, dying wouldn’t be so bad either. Then I wouldn’t have any more nightmares.”

Harut seemed remarkable in a new way. He respected Bishop Marik but didn’t respect his ideology, and while his faith in God was firm, he knew how to sympathize even with heretic children.

Ah. I realized why Harut felt different from other temple people. This priest was someone who cared more about people than God. I looked with fresh eyes at his back, exhausted from climbing stairs without rest.

I heard him muttering quietly.

“I’m sick of Saraka’s nightmares now.”

Who did he say?

“…Saraka?”

It was an overly familiar sound.

Because that’s the name Bishop Marik uses when revealing his bare face as a maid.

Based on the context, Saraka must be the name of that heretic child Harut had met. Heat flared up inside me. Just what kind of conscience does he have to be able to use the name of a child he killed as an alias?

I cursed Bishop Marik furiously in my mind. But even so, the uncomfortable feeling wouldn’t go away. Was my cursing not enough? Before I could properly identify what that sticky residue was, Harut stopped walking. We had already reached the end of the stairs.

“It’s right there.”

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