Wings of Madness
Rachel felt as though she might be crushed beneath that gaze.
It was the kind of look one gave to something beneath them. The kind of look reserved for the lowly and vulgar.
She had never encountered such a stare in her entire life, and it ignited a burning rage in her chest. She was not someone who should ever have to endure a look like that.
How dare he look at me that way.
Who did he think she was?
She was a saintess. The savior of this village. How dare he!
“Bring the high priest here at once!”
Rachel shouted at the top of her lungs.
Yes, if it was High Priest Carleon, he would surely be able to crush that arrogant man beneath his heel!
But then—
“H-his Eminence the High Priest… has not been seen for several days.”
At the servant’s answer, Rachel’s mind went completely blank.
The high priest had disappeared?
It wasn’t an unusual occurrence. The high priest, who was fond of wine and women, often spent days at a time rolling around in the village taverns.
But why now, of all times!
It was then that a horrified voice rang out.
“O-over there…”
Someone pointed with a trembling hand.
“His Eminence the High Priest is over there!”
Everyone’s heads turned in the same direction at once.
The high priest had seen God.
“O God, why have you not granted me holy power?”
Then God answered.
It is all part of my plan.
“What is this plan? Do you truly not understand how wretched the life of a priest born without holy power can be?”
The high priest sobbed loudly as he confessed his long-held feelings of inferiority.
“Born without holy power, I was no better than a defective product. Do you not know the contempt I received from the Great Temple and from my fellow priests?”
Tears streamed down his face as he cried out. Once again, God answered.
It is all part of my plan.
“What exactly is this plan! Why would you make me a defective product!”
It was the moment God smiled.
“……!”
His back split open with a wet tearing sound.
The sensation of his spine splitting in half was horrifying, yet strangely, he felt no pain.
“Ah!”
When he looked behind him, he gasped in disbelief. Wings had sprouted from his back.
Wings!
Overjoyed, the high priest soared high into the sky.
“Aaaaaah!”
In an instant, the world grew small beneath him. He flew freely, looking down upon everything.
“Hahaha!”
So that was it. You gave me wings!
That’s why you didn’t give me holy power!
Occasionally, priests without holy power were born in the Great Temple.
However, to preserve its dignity, the temple concealed this fact. Thanks to that, Carleon had been able to live as a priest just like any other holy power user.
But he could never truly be the same.
Carleon had lived his entire life as a priest without ever knowing what holy power truly was. It had been an unbearably cruel existence.
“You gave me wings! That’s why you did it!”
Pure white wings. Were they not the very symbol of the divine?
The high priest flew higher and higher into the sky.
Higher. Even higher!
“……”
The expression vanished from Rachel’s face.
She wasn’t the only one. Every single person who witnessed the scene had turned deathly pale.
“Ahahahahahaha!”
Where had his dignified white robes gone?
The high priest, wearing nothing but his undergarments, was flapping his plump arms like wings and prancing around.
“T-this can’t be!”
“His Eminence has fallen to the madness!”
Shock rippled through the crowd.
Not just anyone, but a priest of the Great Temple—the one said to be closest to God. For him to have been consumed by evil!
“Duchess Valentino!”
Rachel’s eyes blazed like wildfire.
“What are you all doing?! We must purify the Duchess of Valentino at once! Only then—”
“Purify?”
Canna cut Rachel off with a soft laugh.
“I wonder… is purification really necessary?”
Now that the high priest had arrived, the stage was finally set.
Canna gave an order.
“Sir Claude, please escort His Eminence over here.”
From somewhere, one of Canna’s shadow-like guards appeared and gave the high priest a few gentle pushes from behind, guiding him onto the platform so he could continue flapping his “wings.”
Canna took out a small vial from her pocket.
She had brought every kind of medicine imaginable to Pailon Island in case of emergencies, and this was one of them.
It was an antidote that neutralized harmful substances that had entered the body.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
The moment Canna began pouring the medicine into the high priest’s mouth, Rachel rushed forward to stop her.
Or at least, she tried to.
She couldn’t. Callen’s arm shot out in an instant, blocking her path.
Looking down at her with cold eyes, Callen spoke.
“Just watch.”
“Watch?! How can I just watch when you’re feeding His Eminence some unknown drug—!”
“You’re mistaken, my lady.”
His voice was quiet, but it carried a clear warning.
“Does it look like I’m making a suggestion?”
“……!”
It was a brazen threat.
If she didn’t stay quiet, he would make sure she stayed quiet. The warning was unmistakable.
Rachel could not take another step forward.
Why is everyone just standing there watching? Why?!
The villagers.
Her father, the lord.
The lord’s knights.
Everyone stood frozen, completely overwhelmed, as if spellbound by the scene.
Sir Jerome!
Tears welled up in her eyes. As expected, the only one on her side was Sir Jerome!
How long had it been since Canna poured the medicine into the high priest’s mouth?
“……Huh?”
The effect was astonishingly immediate.
The high priest, who had been flapping and prancing about like a bird, suddenly froze. Then, a moment later—
“W-what…?”
Carleon lifted his flushed red face. His trembling eyes scanned his surroundings.
Every person on the island was staring at him.
W-what is this?!
To think he had been running around naked, flapping his arms like wings!
The high priest was mortified. The fact that he remembered everything only made it worse.
W-what in the world did I just experience?
It was then that Canna approached him.
In his extreme confusion, Carleon had completely forgotten about his quarrel with Canna the previous day.
“Your Eminence, are you alright?”
“J-just now…!”
“You experienced the same madness that the villagers have been suffering from.”
At that, the high priest’s face twisted in fury.
“Madness?! How could the tricks of the Black Apostles possibly work on a priest of God like me!”
“Of course. I thought the same thing.”
“What?”
“As you can see, you recovered after taking the antidote.”
“Antidote…?”
Canna held the bottle up high for everyone to see.
In that moment, the sunlight caught the glass vial, making it sparkle like a holy relic.
“Yes. This is the antidote.”
The impact of her words was enormous.
“An antidote? Like a cure for poison?”
“That can’t be!”
“Then… you’re saying it wasn’t madness, but poisoning?”
A murmur spread through the crowd that had been watching in stunned silence. Confusion, doubt, and disbelief mixed together in a rising clamor.
Canna let them talk for a moment before speaking again once the noise died down.
“There was poison in the rye that the villagers were eating.”
More precisely, there had been a fungus.
However, in this era—especially among the commoners of this isolated village—few would understand the concept of microorganisms, so she used more familiar terms.
“P-poison?”
“Are you saying someone deliberately put poison in it?”
At someone’s shout, Canna quietly shook her head.
“No. It occurred naturally.”
And that was the truth.
“During the rainy season, the weather becomes very humid. Especially here on an island surrounded by sea, the humidity is extreme. So much so that the rye harvested during that time grows mold.”
“……”
“The hallucinations were caused by the toxin produced by that mold.”
When a certain amount of the fungus—commonly known as ergot—was ingested, it caused poisoning. In such cases—
“The side effect is severe hallucinations.”
And they were extremely intense hallucinations at that.
The hallucinations were so powerful that in Juhwa’s world, one of the raw ingredients for certain drugs had been derived from this very fungus found in rye—ergot.
It was a perfect storm of geographical and climatic conditions.
Islands surrounded by sea naturally had high humidity. When the rainy season overlapped with that, the humidity reached its peak and ruined the rye.
In short—
It was all just a ridiculous comedy caused by eating spoiled food.
“So there was no scheme by the Black Apostles or anything of the sort. You all were simply unfortunate enough to have been eating bad food this whole time.”
She gave a bright smile and shrugged.
“In fact, ever since we stopped eating rye, no one has suffered from the madness anymore. Isn’t that right?”
“Y-yes, that’s true!”
The high priest, who desperately needed to prove he hadn’t been afflicted by madness, quickly chimed in.
“How could a high priest like me possibly suffer from such madness! I too ate rye bread right before the hallucinations began!”