Kapitel 70: The Necromancer and the Priestess (4)

Although Yin Mei was already pretty used to seeing gore filled scenes (a zombie apocalypse world really did wonders to her mindset), she still closed the surveillance camera. She may be used to it, but that didn't mean that she was interested in watching it like some sort of weird pervert.

Several days later, while Yin Mei was messing around with magic and still in the midst of contemplating her next move, the Bishop payed her a visit. According to Celestina's memories, this man would visit her at least once a week.

Celestina didn't have much of an opinion, if any at all, of this person.

Yin Mei, seeing him in person, could only think that he looked really young - maybe late 20s at the oldest.

He had long hair, and a stern and dignified aura. If Celestina's holy aura was like a warm and peaceful spring sun, then his was like the harsh and unforgiving summer sun. His robes were white, with a red trim.

Yin Mei felt that he slightly reminded her of Ming Wei, but just slightly. It wasn't really in his appearance or the way he acted either, but just some sort of vague feel that he gave off. Or maybe she was just being delusional. Ah, perhaps that was it. He was similar in that they would both do anything for the sake of their goal.

The two of them were in the church's garden, with guards posted every five feet at a distance that did not intrude upon them, but would still allow them to react in time should anything happen. Yin Mei sat at a small table under a gazebo, sipping at a delicate cup of black tea, while the Bishop stood with his hands behind his back, facing outwards.

"I heard that you recently requested for a knight and even took in some slave girl to work in the inner sanctum," He said, his voice just as dignified as the rest of him. It was a sort of dignity that came deep from within his bones, carefully cultivated over several years. "It is quite rare for you to take interest in people outside of your childhood friends."

Yin Mei lowered her eyes, the thick lashes creating a shadow that covered their expression. Hum, she really didn't know how to react to this guy.

Seeing that she was remaining silent, the Bishop also didn't bring up the matter any further. In his eyes, Celestina was a small bird who couldn't do anything but sit in this golden cage of hers as she watched the outside world move by her. She was weak willed and obedient, never straying from the path she was told to take and never going against the flow of the river. Especially with her childhood friends in his hands, she would never disobey an order of his.

Of course, with Celestina's soul switched out, the new person inside couldn't really care less about these childhood friends of Celestina's that barely had any appearance time in the original plot line...

The Bishop had already looked into the identities of the two people that Celestina had dragged to her side. The man called Kai had nothing of ill to speak about - his reputation among the Knights Templar was very good, and he had fairly decent skill. He was loyal and passionate in his work, and had been fervently pursuing the criminal El before being transferred to the inner sanctum.

As for the slave girl, she had been sold by her parents when her village faced a drought and there was no more food to go around. It wasn't anything rare. She was then later bought by Kiel, the childhood friend of Celestina and a professor of the magic academy who had a good reputation both as a teacher and a scholar. The Bishop recalled that this person had gone missing for a period of time during the epidemic several years back. It was assumed that he had died, but he had reappeared a few weeks after. Because of this, the Bishop was slightly suspicious of him, and what had happened in that time, but he had no proof of anything else.

"You don't have to worry about anything," Yin Mei finally said, after a long time of consideration. "Those two are 'good' people." Yin Mei had on an earnest expression. Yes, that's right. They were "good" people, at least, by normal standards. But this "good" person mask - she really wanted to rip it right off their faces and reveal the ugliness that lay underneath.

The Bishop felt that the way that Celestina had said "good" was slightly odd, but he didn't think too much into it - this was Celestina after all. She probably sincerely thought this.

And after considering for a bit, he decided to let it be. After all, though Celestina had been unable to leave the church since a young age, she had good instincts. Her affinity with the light element allowed her to easily sense those who had bad intentions toward her or just in general. In addition, those people who were faced with Celestina's holy aura for too long would begin to be plagued with guilt and quickly repent on their actions.

This was why the selection process for the guards and priestesses in the inner sanctum needed to be so strict - it wasn't just because they needed the best of the best protecting Celestina, but also because they needed those with strong wills and a clean conscience, so that Celestina's holy aura wouldn't adversely affect them in any way.

Well, he would have his people first observe them. There was no harm in letting Celestina do what she wanted, as long as she didn't go too far. After all, an obedient child should be given sweets occasionally, right?

Aside from that, the two didn't really have anything to talk about. The Bishop mentioned a few things, such as the return of a squadron of the Knights Templar from Gloom Forest, and anything else that Celestina would need to take note of as a high priestess. Which wasn't a lot, simply because Celestina never really personally acted most of the time. She would occasionally reveal her face for publicity, or heal a member of the main church that was injured too severely for anyone else to heal, but that was about it. Her duties were mostly just to exist - as long as she was alive, the seal would remain intact.

And she would have to live like this until the day that someone who could inherit her position was found. Apparently, her predecessor had waited a grand total of 700 years for Celestina before finally being freed. He was now traversing the world, and almost never checked in with the church.

Ah! Yin Mei realized that finding someone to inherit her position was also a potential option. But no such person with that ability existed at this time. From how long Celestina's predecessor had waited, it could be seen just how rare it was for a person to be born with a strong enough affinity to be able to act as the seal's mediator.

She sighed inwardly. It seemed that the first option was still the best. In addition, the mission wasn't actually to free Celestina from the seal, but rather to unseal the demon. She paused, thinking this was slightly odd considering that El's end goal should be the former. But the result was the same, so she didn't think too much into it.

The Bishop didn't stay much longer, bidding Yin Mei farewell as he took a portion of the guards with him as he left. After all, compared to Yin Mei, the Bishop was much busier and he handled most of the duties of governing the church.

On the other hand, Celestina had no such duties, so spent most of her time playing with small animals, reading, watching the scenery, or playing games with the priestesses.

In other words, Yin Mei had so much free time - she was way too bored. She practically had a headache from thinking so much these last few days, she honestly just wanted to go outside and explore the world. Such a fantasy like world with knights, dragons, and mages, yet she couldn't step a single foot outside of these godd*amn church walls!

This was so important that she needed to emphasize it and repeat it multiple times. At least several times a day she had to curse her fate to remain stuck inside this stupid church.

But, no matter.

Since she found it hard to think, she would continue experimenting with magic. El was not the only one who could experiment with magic - Yin Mei decided she would too and try to potentially find another method that could work. Although the magic books in the church's library were a little complicated, they weren't too bad. She was able to make great gains in this short amount of time, in part because magic bore some similarity to cultivation.

She was currently thinking of whether or not she could summon someone from another world. Yes, she wanted to turn this into an another world genre, because f*ck it, she could! When thinking of stories, she knew that this genre was very popular - people being summoned, reincarnating to, or just appearing in another world that was filled with fantasy and magic. They would be granted a variety of cheats, and in general be very OP. Bringing out this sort of protagonist to compete with the original protagonist, Yin Mei wondered if it was a good idea. And in some of the novels, these summoned kids weren't as easy to trick into doing what the summoner wanted. But, she resolved that it was worth a try... it wasn't just because she was feeling spiteful toward the "good" guy knight in shining armor type protagonist.

But, she had already started testing out normal summoning. So far, she had been able to summon a light spirit - the little white bird familiar. Summoning was a researched subcategory of the light element system. In fact, all the elemental branches could summon spirits of their own element, but the those of the light element (and dark element) could specifically summon a variety of other things as well. The light element had a vast reach in the world of magic, along with dark magic. Because of this, aside from the extremely rare time and space element affinities, people with these affinities were extremely sought after and the two were considered one the strongest elements simply for how versatile they were.

The thing that concerned Yin Mei was that summoning a person from another world would require the help of a space affinity mage.

She did know of one space affinity mage in the plot line, so at least there was that. She was just a little concerned because of this person's identity.

In addition, she wondered if this weird round about way of doing things was really worth all this effort.

She didn't even know what benefit this summoning would have to herself, except for potentially inconveniencing the male lead and giving her another pawn to work with, or maybe another obstacle to deal with. Another pawn sounded good, but that was under the conditions that she could manipulate the person being summoned well - which she didn't have all the confidence in the world to do.

She wondered if she could specifically choose who she would want to summon, like they sometimes did in the novels. But, she had long discovered that things never went as well in real life as they did in the stories (which should be obvious).

But, this matter should be saved until she made contact with the space affinity mage.

She sighed. She really didn't want to get in touch with a troublemaker like him, but she guessed that there was no choice. Aside from the matter of summoning someone from another world, that person would also be very useful later on. After all, he was one of the male lead's allies in the original plot line that had aided him in defeating the great demon.

And to top it off, he was the second male lead! He was both Kai's ally and love rival.

She let out yet another sigh. One male lead was already such a troublesome existence, but to add a second male lead into the mix... she really wasn't sure how this would end up.