The Life of a Wise Cult Leader - Chapter 176

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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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Chapter 176

 

“Northern Dungeon pork stew…?”

 

Celestia’s face crumpled. Wasn’t she someone who had always been wrapped in the Central Church’s protective embrace, wearing fine clothes?

 

But suddenly, the food she said was delicious was…

 

From some unknown dungeon, a wild boar with a gamey smell…

 

A mercenary-style stew with only some dried, withered unknown weeds, potatoes, and a few carrots as ingredients?

 

‘The first offering for God… is it really okay for it to be something like this?’

 

Celestia, who possessed the intelligence to complete multiple spell formulas in an instant, agonized intensely…

 

‘Usually wild boars in dungeons are monsters… Then what the Ascetic ate was a monster… Why would he eat a monster…?’

 

‘He said it was delicious, so should I offer that? Hmm, can he even consume anything in his current state?’

 

‘What if he just said it was delicious to go along with everyone?’

 

Celestia answered with a weary but resolute expression.

 

“Let’s go. To the north.”

 

Erendor spoke casually.

 

“Time is of the essence, is it really necessary to go get that? Why not just send mercenaries?”

 

“Ah.”

 

*

 

They moved busily until the northern mercenaries could procure the wild boar called Pugru or whatever it was, and the supplies for the mercenary-style stew.

 

Separate from recovering memories, the physical body the current Savior was using was far too unstable, so they had to stabilize it.

 

However, who could stabilize a god’s body… and how would they even do it?

 

It was like trying to invent and use a mobile phone without electricity.

 

It was like starting from scratch to the degree of becoming Einstein by headbutting bare ground.

 

The ones suffering the most here were Archmage Celestia and her disciple Cardil.

 

Professor Ellara also helped the research wholeheartedly, but she was enjoying the very fact of it…

 

In the end, only Celestia could stop Professor Ellara from constantly trying to cross the line.

 

“Aaaah! I told you! Instead of lifting the access ban, don’t damage the Savior! What are these torn veil marks! When did you tear this off again!”

 

Professor Ellara chuckled.

 

“Can’t you overlook this much as charming?”

 

Pop!

 

The sound of something in Celestia… probably her patience, bursting could be heard.

 

“Get out!!!”

 

Thud!

 

Professor Ellara, who got kicked in the rear and expelled outside the Cradle of Stars, scratched her disheveled hair.

 

“Oh my, how disappointing.”

 

Professor Ellara didn’t even think to dust off her clothes and knelt while pounding on the door. Professor Ellara’s knees, which lost all pride and everything else in front of research, were cheaper than anything.

 

“I was wrong, Tower Master! I was blinded by curiosity!”

 

“…”

 

When no voice came from inside the door, Professor Ellara leaned against the door and sat down. Then she began grumbling.

 

“The Tower Master is really petty too. It’s just a 3cm piece of veil! If we analyze the divine power-infused fiber tissue, it could be a clue to stabilization. So stingy. The Tower Master’s character is really… This isn’t why I agreed to make her Tower Master.”

 

Creak.

 

Through the door crack, Celestia smiled eerily.

 

“Professor Ellara? I heard everything.”

 

“I said it for you to hear. Anyway, without me, there’s no one else who can research properly, right? Come on, let me in quickly.”

 

Celestia looked down at Professor Ellara speaking boldly.

 

Celestia really wanted to hit her just once. She pressed her brow firmly and let Professor Ellara back into the Cradle of Stars.

 

“Sigh… This isn’t research, it’s treatment for the Savior.”

 

Professor Ellara didn’t listen at all.

 

And she began working again on the most interesting and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of investigating, researching, and solving problems related to a god – a very very interesting and fun problem.

 

“Now! Mage Cardil. Cast any non-attribute magic and put it into this device.”

 

“Is this an artifact you invented, Professor?”

 

“You could say that. If other attribute magic goes in, it’ll go boom! and explode.”

 

“You’re giving me something that dangerous right now?”

 

“You’re non-attribute, aren’t you? Come on, quickly! Time is finite~!”

 

“You’ll take responsibility if it explodes, right?”

 

“What do you take me for? Of course.”

 

The artifact was fine until the second one, but exploded as soon as the third magic was put in. Cardil lay sprawled on the floor of the temporary laboratory set up in the Cradle of Stars, completely battered.

 

“I’m not doing this. I won’t do it.”

 

“Tsk, for a researcher to sulk over this level of mistake.”

 

“My life almost flew away just now.”

 

Professor Ellara didn’t listen this time either.

 

*

 

Celestia looked reluctantly at the animal carcass placed before her.

 

It looked strange… and didn’t seem like something edible…

 

“Make stew out of this thing?”

 

“It was delicious.”

 

Yelena answered while smacking her lips.

 

“For something made with survivors, it was really excellent cooking.”

 

“Hmm. I’ve never cooked once… Someone else will have to do it…”

 

Celestia trailed off with a rare expression of uncertainty.

 

Such a large monster… It was her first time seeing ingredients dead like this.

 

No matter how sheltered a noble family, a noble was still a noble.

 

Even though she had become tougher and handled various things since coming to the Magic Tower, dismantling such a creature was… Hmm. She’d rather dissect frogs or lizards…

 

She could at least manage to butcher it with precise mana blades.

 

“Then I’ll make it. I made it back then too, and I tasted it, so I know.”

 

Yelena then moved freely around Celestia’s laboratory.

 

She used her halberd to pick the mushrooms growing on the Pugru’s back, removed the head, and prepared the vegetable stems and other ingredients.

 

Cardil and Erendor also helped. Cardil had been a priest who went to battlefields, and Erendor was originally a mercenary who had lived practically homeless.

 

“What size should I cut this to?”

 

“Just cut it roughly. About… half a bite size? You don’t need to be particularly delicate, and just taste it roughly too.”

 

“Even if it’s not exactly the same as back then, shouldn’t it taste somewhat similar?”

 

“If we make it roughly, it’ll taste roughly similar.”

 

The two men completed the stew under the command of Yelena, who had her blonde hair tied up high.

 

Erendor, who insisted on tasting it, took a spoonful and smacked his lips.

 

“It’s better than I thought. But there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly special…”

 

“I suppose so. We made it with limited spices and limited ingredients… Well, it would be strange to expect restaurant-quality food in a ruined place, right?”

 

“The Ascetic looks like he’d only eat fancy things.”

 

“Hmm, that’s true. Appearances matter… Anyway, let’s go serve the meal now!”

 

Yelena walked briskly toward the Cradle of Stars, carrying the pot of stew with her bare hands with all her strength.

 

“Isn’t it hot?”

 

“No. Not particularly?”

 

Cardil was disgusted by her absurd level of toughness.

 

*

 

“Sernuan, try eating some.”

 

They proposed as one of the elements for regaining memories from their lifetime.

 

1. Change in how they’re addressed.

 

They suggested this.

 

To call him Sernuan or Cel.

 

And another thing was….

 

“Now, hold the spoon like this and eat it up.”

 

2. Using comfortable speech.

 

Family members don’t use extreme honorifics or add titles like -nim to each other.

 

“He’s just staring blankly. Is there still something wrong with his head?”

 

“Oh my. What kind of thing is that to say to Sernuan?”

 

“Didn’t you tell me to be a friend with a bad personality first? I’m just doing what you asked.”

 

Erendor spoke as if mocking. Yelena didn’t back down either.

 

“Oh really? Then when will you finish that other role of finding spirits? You said you were really really capable, right? If you’re a spirit master, why can’t you find them?”

 

“Aha, so this is how you’re going to play it?”

 

While Yelena and Erendor bickered with words, the massive Savior standing before them was just staring blankly at the stew in the large pot.

 

Celestia grabbed the Savior’s hand and pulled it. Then she pressed a plate into it.

 

The plate that more than filled both of Celestia’s hands looked like a small cup when it went into his pure white, inhuman-looking hands.

 

Cardil spoke to Professor Ellara who was standing beside him with her arms crossed.

 

“Is it really okay for him to keep not eating anything and not doing anything like this?”

 

“No. As long as he doesn’t go to the divine realm, the entropy here is a rule that must be followed. Even gods are no exception to that.”

 

“Couldn’t he maintain his physical form through faith alone?”

 

“Originally, that would have been the case. But…. Does he look like he’s in a state where he can do that right now?”

 

“….”

 

Professor Ellara waved her quill pen while looking at the Savior who was blankly holding a bowl in one hand.

 

“Just not going insane from seeing a god up close like this, he’s probably using all his strength right now. The records say the fate of people who saw gods up close wasn’t very good…. They either went mad, killed others, or committed suicide.”

 

“Hmm, yes. Well. I can clearly see that we can’t leave him like this any longer.”

 

“Faith only helps maintain his current appearance. The ritual that was supposed to use demons as sacrifices might have gone wrong somehow, or it might have been a mistake to try an incomplete resurrection from the beginning.”

 

“It’s not Kalebrin’s fault!”

 

“Yes, Inquisitor. We scholars and researchers…. Adventurers who travel into the unknown assume there are multiple new routes available. The attitude of definitively saying something isn’t the case, well, that’s not a very good attitude.”

 

Professor Ellara chuckled and pushed up her round glasses. The Savior still didn’t seem to understand what the act of consumption was. What this was now. What the current situation was.

 

“At this rate, his intelligence isn’t even at amoeba level. This is serious. Family roleplay doesn’t seem to work either.”

 

“Oh, amoeba?”

 

“What’s an amoeba?”

 

“Even a mouse will crack open a peanut by itself when you give it one. At this rate, Lumensia might kill the Savior as soon as tomorrow. Oh dear.”

 

Celestia sat down heavily while looking at the stew on the brazier. She thought he would at least know to pick up utensils if he saw them, but he was just doing nothing.

 

“But at first…. At first he healed everyone’s wounds and patted their heads…. He stopped fights too. He even spoke…. Why, why does he only keep getting worse?”

 

Celestia hung her head while crouching down. Yelena sat beside her.

 

“It’s time to use strong measures.”

 

Cardil, who seemed tired of standing, also sat down beside them, and Erendor perched on a box.

 

On the opposite side of those gathered around the brazier, the Savior was blankly looking down at this scene. The bowl of cooling stew was still held in his hands.

 

Celestia buried her face in her knees, feeling despair.

 

A god who had forgotten speech, actions, and even survival instincts.

 

The fear struck her that at this rate, he might self-destruct before Lumensia could even make a move.

 

Just as Celestia’s thoughts reached ‘Should I contact that widow who beat me nearly to death? She seemed to know a damn lot, so contacting her might be worth trying as a last resort.’

 

Clatter.

 

Then, a very small sound broke the silence.

 

“…!”

 

Celestia’s head shot up. Surprisingly, the Savior was holding a spoon.

 

“Why is he suddenly moving? Does he only perform eating behavior when multiple people are sitting? Even though we knew from the beginning that his organ structure was a body that didn’t need food, then the act of eating was imprinted from birth….”

 

Ellara muttered while frantically moving her quill pen, but no one paid attention to her words. Everyone’s gaze was fixed on the Savior’s fingertips.

 

The Savior lifted what looked like a teaspoon and put it inside his veil. The action was only performed a couple of times and then stopped, but the stew had quietly decreased.

 

The basic act of eating food had been accomplished.

 

While everyone was rejoicing.

 

Another ominous hypothesis was being written in Ellara’s notebook.

 

[Is it a simple manifestation of memory? Or… is it the instinct of a parasite that needs the warmth of others to maintain its life force? It’s impossible to know as of now, but the intimacy between memory and soul is worth proving.]

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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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