Antagonist Protection Service-Chapter 58: Presence of Divinity

The following day was the weekend, meaning there were no lessons at the academy.

However, being the diligent, responsible future empress she was, Lucretia studied earnestly even on this young Saturday morning. Frankly, I would never, but I understood she bore a massive weight on her shoulders and probably didn’t have much of a choice.

Since I had a bit of free time, I decided to once again try mimicking the training from the first Contract. Thankfully, my injured shoulder was healed with the magic of an ever-so-kind maid in the mansion, Isabella.

I could once again give it my best shot, this time making sure to stretch beforehand, keeping in mind the limitations of my body. Of course, even though my body had been fixed―

"Ah! Ow, tsk, damn it, again...?"

―That didn’t necessarily mean the root issue had been solved.

My training posture and technique were, apparently, just as bad as they had been the day prior, making it inevitable that I would end up injuring myself again. I didn’t have anyone to instruct me or to point out and correct my mistakes, so I suppose this was a natural result of that.

Thus, I swiftly ended up postponing such "training" once more.

’Ehh... I don’t know where Isabella is, but I guess I’ll just wait to ask her later. I’ll be fine without it for now, anyway.’

Eventually, Lucretia finished with her brief early-morning studies for the day and, during her period of morning tea, informed me that today would be rather busy.

"Enki, the schedule of my appointments? We’re going out; prepare appropriately. And must I continue to remind you to fix your posture?"

"Hm? Oh, I’ll get right to it."

’Oi, we’re going out even though it’s the weekend...? I should have looked the schedule over while I was free... now I’ll have to walk around all day with this shot shoulder. Haah, well, whatever...’

Flipping through a notebook of all her scheduled appointments, arrangements and whatnot that I had previously received in recognition of my role as Lucretia’s personal attendant, I arrived at the date for today.

’Let’s see... Prayers at the Temple... a shopping trip to buy a gift for a ’Lady Pyella’, whoever that is. Uh... attending a tea party hosted by... Lady Pyella again? Oh, a present for the host of the party, I see. And then... ah.’

As my eyes drifted to the final item on today’s agenda, I exhaled a very small sigh from my nose before closing the notebook and putting it in the safe interior pocket of my suit.

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Turning to face Lucretia, who observed me blankly, I was sure that she had no idea what lay in store for her today―or, at the very least, she had simply forgotten that today was that day.

After all, were she to be aware of it, she would certainly be upset.

"There’s a lot to do. Actually, I’m concerned it may be a little overwhelming. Remember, it’s okay to take a break if you feel like it. It’s more damaging on your health to force yourself to keep going when a burden becomes too much of a strain, so if you ever feel like you want to stop, even if you get stubborn about it, we should just return."

Putting on the usual smile, I said as much, but she only seemed to scoff at my words.

"Your concern is appreciated but unnecessary. If I am to be the flawless empress, I wouldn’t be taken out by a mere day of side duties, would I? How preposterous."

Hearing that, there was nothing I could say to argue.

...Well, I could, but I knew it wouldn’t result in anything positive, so I left it alone.

And so, after ensuring we would have enough coin to last the day, we promptly made our departure.

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Because the Christina-Rasa residence in the Imperial Capital lied practically in the middle of the city, it was close to pretty much all of the major buildings and sites, and that included the Sunlit Temple in the capital’s Eastern District.

I heard about it previously from Isabella when she healed me, and I was initially accepting of the fact that people in this world were primarily religious. In fact, she said she also received her healing magic due to her religious background, suggesting to me that the source of such magic must have been divine, or perhaps just healing magic specifically.

In my mind, the technological development of this world, at least in the capital of this Drakon-Rasa Empire, was similar to that of the Victorian Era on Earth, so it made sense for religion to prosper.

But then I remembered.

’Librarian, did you know that religious faith actually declined quite a lot in the 19th Century?’

I used to be under the assumption that religion was huge in the 1800s because it felt like quite a long time ago, but someone once corrected me with this fact in the past―that it actually wasn’t the case.

’She did know a lot about that sort of thing...’

...Anyway, from what I had observed since my arrival here, there was not a single person who didn’t believe in the ’Holy Father’ of this empire’s religion. Isabella even informed me that there was not a more popular belief anywhere throughout the entire world.

’Considering that Victorian England and this place seem to be pretty similar in terms of technological development, disregarding the use of magic, there’s quite a discrepancy between religious beliefs. Do you know why?’

[Erm, I don’t know what that ’Victorian’ thing is, but um... is it perhaps because there are two moons to adorn the night sky? It’s a rather picturesque sight, perhaps only possible because there is a higher being, one might say!]

It was a decent guess, but wrong.

’Well, maybe that has something to do with it, but don’t you think if there were two moons from the very beginning then people would only think of it as natural? Using that argument, you could say that magic itself is a product of God, but that’s also a natural thing in this world. You can’t really use it as scientific evidence either way, let alone prove it.’

[Oh...]

It was the same on Earth with various natural phenomena, and in particular, the Tower.

There were, perhaps inevitably, those who thought the appearance of the Tower to be related to some higher existence, like a sort of biblical event.

Naturally, no evidence existed to support such a claim, and it wasn’t like the tale of the Tower of Babel was anything that matched with the Augury Tower in any sense, so even making similar connections in that way was too much of a stretch to be called a theory.

In any case, there were plenty of religions even on Earth which already used the moon as a religious symbol or deific figure or whatever. Adding an extra one or even a few wouldn’t majorly change anything.

Rather than misinterpretation or supplementation of the truth, what I was talking about was something different.

Although things like supernatural powers didn’t use to exist on Earth, they now do and have become accepted natural phenomena, to the extent that even internationally-named scientists are researching frantically to figure out how they function as we speak.

On the other hand, the existence of ’a god’ has never once been ’proven as a fact’ to be true, at least not in any scientific text I’ve ever read or heard about.

Of course, there were also people who claimed God’s existence to be true as an extension of the reality of magic, or that those who cleared the Augury Tower would be able to meet God directly, or something crazy along those lines, but again, there was no real basis for that.

At a glance, with the scientifically-proven existence of supernatural abilities that can be likened to magic, one might think that this world and Earth are similar. Magic also at least existed in the worlds of the first and second Contracts, and I had firsthand experience of witnessing each.

However, out of these four worlds, there was only one in which I have seen something that had the potential to be called definitive proof of a god existing.

―That is, the world of the ’Jackass Hero’ who possessed palpable divine power.

Enough of it to survive having a steel dagger penetrate fully through his neck, leaving a gaping hole in its wake. Something so devastating that no normal person could possibly compare.

Now, of course, to present that single guy as proof of a god or goddess’ existence was a bit far-fetched in my opinion, hence why I used the word ’potential’. Still, in that world, the healing magic used on me was cast with an incantation addressing a divine being, wasn’t it?

On Earth, such a thing would be called a literal miracle; there, it was nothing more than a tool used to restore a weary knight to his formerly pristine state.

What I had experienced could barely be called a slice of the full thing, so I was sure there was much more than just that, and for those reasons, I could accept that such a thing like an almighty god or goddess might truly be able to exist in that world.

But that belief was limited to that Illusory World and that Illusory World alone.

At a base level I could accept that, if something ridiculous like magic can exist, then something equally nonsensical existing, like a god or goddess, also isn’t completely out of the picture.

More than anything else, the fact that some kind of deity was written into the original source, which was then ported over into reality, was a big indication that it exists; since the same was true with magic, why couldn’t it be the same for a god?

In other words, I could accept it passively.

However, in this Illusory World, I had yet to witness something to convince me to actively believe.

Be that as it may, I didn’t doubt that would soon change.

Peoples’ belief here was so fervent, and I think I remember even Lucretia mentioning something about a higher being at one point, so I expected to see something worthy of being called a miracle, and soon at that.

’Ah. There.’

Just as I was contemplating these things, the Sunlit Temple came into view.