The Saint’s Manual for Redemption - Chapter 57

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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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Chapter 57
I was well aware that Arden and I hadn’t built one hundred percent trust yet, but the fact that Vivian had picked up on it was something else. I tried to console myself by thinking it was simply her keen eye at work.
Even with that consolation, a small sting of disappointment remained unavoidable.
“Well, how do I put this… hmm.”
Vivian deliberated for a long moment before shaking her head.
“Ah, I can’t quite explain it. The way he looks at you does go beyond just seeing a person he’s meant to protect, but it doesn’t feel like love or affection either. Anyway.”
“Then could it be paternal affection?”
“Absolutely not. If a man looked at his daughter that way, he’d be hauled off in chains. Clang, clang. He’d need to buy an indulgence.”
“Not even erotic, then?”
“Ugh… I don’t know.”
She added the next words with an uncharacteristic gravity.
“Don’t give him too much of your heart. If you do, I have a feeling you’re the only one who’ll end up hurt.”
To my sister’s oddly sharp intuition, I found myself momentarily at a loss for words. Remarks like that would normally be easy to brush off as a joke, but the problem was that Vivian’s hunches had rarely, if ever, missed the mark.
“I understand.”
I nodded and let my gaze fall back to the five portraits. So I really did have to pick just one from among them…
After some deliberation, I established my own criteria and made my selection. I was certain it would not align with the hierarchy’s intentions. It never did.
They’d barely won once by taking a hostage, and yet they keep charging in with such confidence. Tsk!
When did their learning capacity drop to the level of those fools in the Ecclesia Church? Or did the Empire-wide decline in average intelligence extend beyond just the Ecclesia Church?
***
Saint Sierra’s Festival was held every year, but the air this year was distinctly different.
The plaza before the Main Temple had filled with crowds since early morning, and the sounds of polishing the statue, footsteps laying down flowers, and the choir’s tuning blended into a murmur.
Because the Main Temple had recently been busy with the Saint selection, the investiture ceremony, and such, the priests attached to it bore the visible marks of exhaustion even as they prepared for the festival. Yet Saint Sierra’s Festival was the grandest event of all, so they could not afford to skimp on preparations.
After grinding through the priests of the Main Temple, the orphans attached to it, and the priests dispatched from other branch temples, Saint Sierra’s Festival at last arrived on the day itself.
Prior to the parade, the Main Temple proceeded first with the Flower Offering Ceremony to mark Saint Sierra’s Festival.
The temple bell tolled low and long, and a translucent veil was drawn over the head of the Saint Sierra Statue.
Incense rose, and its familiar scent slowly filled the space. The priests and deacons stepped back to either side, opening a path.
Today’s flower offering was, both in form and significance, the current Saint’s responsibility to perform.
I advanced toward the altar and looked up at the Saint Sierra Statue.
Carved from marble, it could not render color, but the face refined through records and tradition was both familiar and strange to me.
It bore the mark of centuries of prayers and expectations laid upon it, yet when I recalled that this had once been me, an odd feeling stirred in my chest.
From the awkwardly standing Priest Calianna, I received the Blue Rose Flower Basket, which had once been my symbol.
Our fingertips brushed lightly, then paused. Calianna offered me a greeting with a blink of her eyes.
Well, here I was—uttering prayers for my own soul. The sensation of offering flowers to myself felt decidedly strange.
I carefully set down the Blue Rose Flower Basket, with its brilliant, vivid coloring, at the foot of the statue.
At that moment, the priests began to chant in unison.
“In honor of the great Saint Sierra.”
As a praise prayer—the Caritas Church version, utterly brimming with sentences lauding me—echoed through the space, I did not bow my head.
It was a bit embarrassing to hear my own eulogy spoken directly to the back of my head, but what of it? It wasn’t even a false biography; these were real things that had actually happened.
Instead, I gazed directly at the statue.
It wasn’t a statue of the Caritas Church founder, but my own face, so calling that sacrilege would have been awkward.
O Caritas, could you perhaps grant a blessing to that statue so it might speak? Let it use its lips to tell these cursed descendants to respect and revere me.
Can’t you hear how respect and affection are just overflowing in their prayer voices?
If you showed me even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of that in my present life, I wouldn’t be drowning in stress like this.
Shortly after, the prayer concluded and silence descended upon the temple.
The ceremony honoring the past was finished. Now came only the parade, which would show the past and present together.
With Arden’s escort, I left the temple and climbed into the prepared open carriage.
Already seated inside was a woman who had been set up as the stand-in for the Saint Sierra of three generations past. Though adorned with a silver wig and ornaments, if I’m being honest, there was scarcely any resemblance. She was far removed from both the statue and the records.
She glanced at me and then smiled with practiced ease. It was clear she was someone well accustomed to such showmanship.
I could see that the temple had deliberately presented such people as candidates, asking me to choose from among them.
But the temple would not know.
That I had not selected this woman because she resembled Saint Sierra, but rather because among those five, her features seemed most likely to fade from memory.
And whose fault was it that they entrusted me with final approval and let me toy with people?
As the carriage moved, cheers erupted. Crowds lined both sides of the street, waving their hands and casting flower petals.
But the cheers that had poured down on the entire carriage gradually shifted into murmurs.
The current Saint, who resembled Saint Sierra, and the stand-in for Saint Sierra, who bore no resemblance whatsoever.
The very fact of their presence together was the picture the temple had aimed for—a way to split the people’s attention and sow confusion.
Some tilted their heads in puzzlement; others whispered to their neighbors. The question hung in the air: “Which one truly embodies Saint Sierra?”
At that moment, I struck Wilson Junior lightly against the carriage floor.
A dull thud sounded, and Holy Power radiated outward through the Mace.
It was no mere decorative blessing. It was a clear blessing—the kind one would recognize the instant it touched the body.
Light radiated outward from the carriage, enveloping the entire street. Children held their breath. Elders pressed their hands to their chests by instinct. Some straightened their spines as weariness lifted from their shoulders. Others wept without knowing why.
It was not healing, not protection—an Area Blessing that imprinted existence itself upon the soul.
In that instant, the crowd’s gaze shifted entirely to one figure.
They no longer compared the two people inside the carriage. Their bodies had already understood who had bestowed the blessing. The stand-in slipped naturally from view.
She had never resembled Saint Sierra to begin with, and now she had lost even the most essential symbol of what she was: a stand-in.
“What was that just now…….”
“Doesn’t that Holy Power match what the records describe?”
A different kind of reaction erupted from within the crowd.
***
Among them, the loudest voices belonged not to the singing faithful, but to those carrying thick books and manuscripts in their hands.
They were the people who studied and debated the life of Saint Sierra, poring over it with the obsession of devoted fans—the group known as the Saint Sierra Followers.
They never missed the Festival each year, and none scrutinized the face of the Saint Sierra stand-in more critically than they did.
They were zealots who would throw raw eggs, declaring that failure to present a convincing likeness was an insult to Saint Sierra herself.
Their eyes changed.
“That blessing—it matches the description from the final chapter of the third volume of Saint Sierra’s Biography.”
“Right, she always used that blessing in parade situations like this, hoping it would touch many people.”
“Oh yes, it’s quite similar to the detailed accounts left by those who received that blessing!”
“And look at that Mace! Isn’t it remarkably like the holy relic Mace of Saint Sierra that stands in the Inquisition Hall!”
“Now that I think about it, the current Saint resembles the Third Saint far more in appearance. How could the Temple set up such a person as a stand-in for the Third Saint?”
The whispers spread rapidly. These people knew the Third Saint as a historical figure with greater precision than anyone else.
Now, in the eyes of these followers, the current Saint Siella waving gracefully from the carriage had begun to appear as the reincarnation of the Third Saint.

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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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