The Life of a Wise Cult Leader - Chapter 210

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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 210

When the cold air swept across the entire continent in an instant despite it being summer, the blacksmith Kail in the small village of ‘Orden’ located at the eastern edge of the Empire put down his heavy hammer.

“Miracles? That strange thing about us performing miracles was real?”

“Yeah! Dergal prayed for his father yesterday and it worked!”

“How is that possible…?”

“Even that famous merchant with the golden touch or whatever. His daughter had an incurable disease, but that incurable disease was cured and she’s running around everywhere now, right?”

“Then wouldn’t praying for gold coins to fall from the sky work too?”

“If it worked, would I be living in a village like this?”

Yesterday evening. Suddenly ringing in their heads, as natural as knowing how to breathe, came the ‘method of handling miracles.’

It wasn’t something only she had heard. The village was all abuzz with yesterday’s talk, and there were even stories flying around about how to handle it, or about trying out those miracles.

‘They’re all heretics.’

She was thinking of reporting them all to the Inquisitor.

For us to handle miracles. We’re just servants of Lumensia!

Such wicked things must surely be black magic or experiments from the Magic Tower. The Magic Tower often does strange things…

Kail memorized the appearance and clothing of the two young men who had been chattering outside. Actually, there was no need to memorize them. James and Koncheov were the village’s famous duo.

Still, since they were young children, Kail’s own conscience was pricked at the thought of tattling to the Inquisitor… She left the blacksmith shop to stop those two.

Just as she was about to call out to the two young men, the sky was strange.

It should have been time for the sunset, but what shone through the clouds wasn’t the orange sun but bizarre cracks like shattered glass.

“What, what is that?”

“Was there ever such a thing…?”

Every time purple lightning poured through those gaps and licked the earth, the villagers felt instinctive terror.

“Mom, the sky looks like it’s in pain.”

For several days now, despite it being the height of summer with blazing sun, cold winds like winter had begun to blow.

Villagers and laypeople, priests and bishops alike gathered at the temple, busy praying that Lumensia must surely be angry with them.

Even that crack split wide open in the sky… What were those cracks like broken glass or stained glass that might be found in the Central Church?

It must be because they had been neglectful of Lumensia. Kail picked up her daughter and headed toward the Central Church temple in the village.

“Oh, Lumensia! Save us from this calamity!”

“Was our faith insufficient? Please withdraw this wrath!”

Since Orden was quite a large village, many had gathered at the temple.

They abandoned their livelihoods and were busy bowing their heads and praying earnestly.

Rumble—

From somewhere came a roar and the ground shook.

“Kyaaah!”

“Aah! Oh Lumensia! Please save us!”

Screams from here and there along with prayers offered to Lumensia filled the temple. However, the earthquake did not stop.

Eventually, when the earthquake half-destroyed the temple and people died crushed under the debris, the strange trembling subsided.

She wiped her face, covered in tears and dust, and prayed to Lumensia.

“Mom!”

“Yes, if we pray to Lumensia… If we pray, Her protection will guard us…”

“No, no… Mom! Look at that!”

Her daughter poked her face out from her embrace and pointed at the sky with her finger.

People nearby and even the Central Church people who were recovering bodies and rescuing the injured looked up at the sky as if entranced.

The crack in the sky opened wider, and brilliant white radiance poured down.

And angels from the scriptures—pure white with wings, without eyes, nose, ears, or mouth—descended through the crack to the earth, holding spears.

“The angels will save us!”

Saying this, her faithful friend Deneb ran out with arms spread wide, smiling brightly as she went to greet the angels. She nodded her head. Someone like Deneb could certainly enjoy the honor of being the first to welcome the angels.

Then, the angel’s spear pierced through Deneb’s heart. Afterward, an alien voice rang through the village.

[These wretched beings have defiled the earth by impersonating me. I bring down the flames of purification upon the pitiful sinners who betray God and mimic miracles themselves…!]

The thunderous voice made heaven and earth tremble.

People were instantly seized by terror.

Among them, some laughed or cried like madmen, kneeling and rubbing their palms together, then died skewered without resistance by the spears the angels thrust.

With what presence of mind she had, she ran without hesitation, holding her child.

She was undoubtedly a faithful servant of Lumensia, but… she had a child who wouldn’t hurt even if placed in her eyes.

Even if that were God’s punishment that she would gladly accept, if her innocent child were to die skewered on that spear… she didn’t want to imagine it.

Kail instinctively knew that if she didn’t have a child to protect, she would have ended up like those lying there bleeding from the angel’s spear.

She carried her child on her back and ran. Her shoes came off and she ran barefoot on the ground and debris, bleeding. But such things didn’t concern her in the slightest.

She turned the familiar alley corner and headed for the blacksmith shop. She hurriedly set the child down as if throwing her and closed the door.

After that, she closed the blacksmith shop windows and fitted the locks, and blocked every place that could be called a door with various tools and implements. And she held her most familiar hammer in one hand and tucked a sword she barely knew how to use at her waist.

“Now, whatever it is, you swing this at anything trying to hurt you. Got it?”

She earnestly instructed the child and put the lance she could handle best into her hands. Despite the sudden situation that should have been confusing, the child remained calm throughout and followed her words.

Soon the ground shook again as if there were another earthquake. She brought the Bible from the prayer stand and earnestly recited prayers of repentance and atonement, but the earth’s trembling showed no signs of stopping.

She prayed fervently and thought. Deneb had been a more sincere and devoted servant of Lumensia than herself. Perhaps those angels had thrust that spear into her friend in order to save her?

However, she was a blacksmith, and she could tell just by looking how a spear could pierce a person’s heart well.

The moment the spear was thrust. Deneb’s expression was pained and bewildered. Even if that spear truly sent us in the afterlife to paradise, it wouldn’t have been done that way… That was the expression of someone being cast into the Abyss.

Rumble…

Crash!

As if lightning had struck from the sky, the nearby ground shook. The windows and doors blocked with various furniture rattled eerily.

Thump, thump!

From outside came sounds like something knocking. And screams as well.

Whether it was people knocking on her blacksmith shop door or those angels knocking to take her daughter, she couldn’t tell, but it was enough to terrify her.

“Kyaaaah!”

“Save me, please save me! What did I, what did I do wrong to deserve this! Why, why me! I’m sorry, I was wrong—”

Kail now truly felt deep in her skin and bones that the angels would kill her and her daughter just for living in the same village as heretics.

She was faithful, but… God did not answer her.

‘If He had, He wouldn’t have killed Deneb!’

‘I’m a faithful servant of Lumensia, so why did He put me in this situation?’

‘Even if not all our villagers were as faithful as me or Deneb, they still offered their faith to Lumensia…’

Doubt began to sprout and grow vigorously in Kail’s heart.

‘If I could protect my daughter now, even that strange voice would be good…’

Thump, thump, thump…

The knocking on the door grew louder, and soon the sturdy wooden door of the blacksmith shop began to crack. When a ray of light entered through the gap, she never knew that light that should feel sacred could feel so terrifying.

“Anna! Quick! Hide!”

“M-Mom…! I don’t want to, I don’t want to…”

She confronted the thing outside with one wooden door, swinging her hammer, but God’s agent sent from heaven was more powerful than a mere blacksmith shop door.

In an instant the door shattered and the furniture blocking the door burst forth and struck her.

“Aah!”

“Mom!”

Her lower body was crushed under the collapsed wall, door, and furniture. More than the pain, she feared the spear tip aimed at her daughter.

“Anna!”

With the illusion that the world was flowing slowly, an angel roughly squeezed through the collapsed door and wall. And when the pure white spear in its hand was thrown from the angel’s grasp toward her child…

‘No. Not Anna.’

Kail screamed, clawing at the floor. Her nails turned back and her fingertips were crushed, blood seeping out, but her gaze was fixed only on Anna.

In that moment, what flashed through Kail’s mind like fragments were not prayers to God, but trivial memories of her daughter.

The face covered in flour, smiling innocently, the small lips humming along to the blacksmith’s hammer sounds, the warmth of her hand held tight in sleep.

More than any scripture passage Lumensia had given, this small child’s breathing was the one and only absolute gospel to Kail.

For the first time in her life, Kail screamed as if cursing Lumensia.

“Not my daughter…!!!”

And in the midst of that curse, she recalled the strange voice from the previous day. That voice that said ‘pray for each other.’

‘Please! Whether you’re a demon, some nameless vagrant, or the dregs of the world, I don’t care! You can tear my soul apart and burn it, just don’t touch my daughter! From that pure white murderer, let me protect my Anna!’

Please! Whatever it is, just let me protect my daughter…

“Anna….”

The moment Kail reached out her hand toward Anna, the dust particles in the air transformed into golden particles and swirled.

Ting—!

The spear of light thrown by the Angel struck a transparent wall that rose from the void and was deflected. The spear made a thunderous sound as it embedded in the anvil on the wall and shattered.

Kail was momentarily bewildered.

‘Did I just perform a Miracle?’

The Angel also seemed momentarily confused, but immediately gathered light in the void to create another spear. Kail quickly put her mind to work. She was not a foolish Human.

“Anna! Trust Mother! You must pray that you will protect Mother…!”

Struggling with her pinned leg, Kail shouted in a hoarse voice. Anna hurriedly ran to Kail and clasped her Hand.

As Anna, who had been trembling with fear, wiped away her tears and tightly grasped Kail’s Hand, the earnest warmth conveyed from the small Hand resonated with Kail’s Ether.

When the two mother and daughter’s will to ‘save each other’ became intertwined as one, the entire Blacksmith Shop was covered with a brilliant Golden Sphere so dazzling it was blinding.

“Ah…”

It was a Miracle.

By a Human, for a Human.

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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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