The Nerd Next Door Turned Out To Be The Magic Tower Master [Novel] Chapter 32

A dim night, where faint moonlight was all there was.

Cecilia, tossing and turning without falling asleep, finally threw off her blanket and sat up. Tomorrow was finally the Relief Festival ceremony. Perhaps it was the tension — despite it being the day that would conclude her long training, she simply could not fall asleep.

‘No, maybe it’s for a different reason.’

Cecilia absentmindedly fingered the pendant hanging at her neck. Ever since meeting Rien, whenever she had a spare moment, she found herself recalling things like his large, warm hands, his bright smile like sunlight, and his blind gaze that looked only at her.

The stirring emotions refused to settle, so Cecilia finally climbed down from her bed and shoved her feet into her slippers. Since she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep lying here with her eyes closed anyway, she planned to go to the kitchen herself and get a cup of warm milk.

Cecilia lit the lamp sitting at the edge of her desk, then carefully left her room.

The corridor was silent and dark. The candelabras hanging on the walls held cheap candles made from animal fat instead of beeswax, but even those weren’t lit, as if they were being conserved. In the end, relying on the dim lamplight, Cecilia carefully crossed the dark corridor.

Walking down the empty path where only her footsteps echoed, she felt a little like giving up, but if you draw your sword, you have to cut something, right?

As a result of pressing forward with determination, Cecilia arrived safely.

Not at her destination, the kitchen, but at a completely wrong place.

‘Maybe I should have brought Sena along.’

She’d set out alone to avoid waking the children who would be fast asleep. If she’d known she’d get hopelessly lost, she would have shamelessly asked for guidance.

Because the children brought meals directly to her room every day, she’d had no opportunity to learn where the kitchen was.

Excuses aside, she was lost right now. With a deep sigh, she looked around.

‘This is…’

A dead end with no windows. A place guarded by an iron door that looked heavy just by looking at it. The mysterious room that always had holy knights standing guard whenever she passed by.

Even though it was quite late, a holy knight was still firmly guarding the door. Though he was nodding off, unable to fight his fatigue.

Even though she approached with quiet footsteps, the knight showed no sign of waking. Cecilia silently expressed her regret and quietly put her hand on the door handle.

‘This seems like a room where the temple stores its treasures.’

If so, wouldn’t the ‘divine record’ Kiar mentioned be here too? Of course, once she received approval from the capital and was officially appointed as ‘saintess,’ she could check it openly, but…

‘Who knows when that will be?’

Rather than obediently waiting for an indefinite future, she decided to seize this opportunity that God had surely given her.

Having arbitrarily compromised with herself, Cecilia applied force to her hand. And, as expected, the door didn’t budge.

‘As I thought, it won’t open. …Huh?’

Click!

Regardless of her will, white light seeped from the hand gripping the door handle, and the door opened absurdly easily.

‘What, am I allowed to enter?’

She hesitated a little, but the hesitation was brief. Cecilia boldly pushed her body through the doorway and raised her lamp to chest level.

The interior was dark, so she could barely make out only the range the small flame reached, and inside a round, transparent dome sitting on a marble table were objects that looked quite familiar.

‘These are all implements used in ceremonies.’

She’d expected it to be full of amazing divine relics like the staffs of several generations of saintesses, ceremonial chalices made of gold, or legendary holy swords used by nameless heroes. Just as she was feeling deflated after encountering shabby, modest objects—

Cecilia, who had reached the innermost wall, discovered something strange. Unlike the other walls filled with tables, statues, or bookshelves, nothing was displayed here.

Looking more closely, the spacing between the bricks forming the wall was subtly misaligned. Just like a secret door…

‘No, this really does seem like a secret door?’

Cecilia fumbled around, searching for a handle or button somewhere on the wall.

Thud! The moment something with a different texture from the hard stone touched her hand, a voice that shouldn’t be heard rang out from behind her.

“Saintess?”

Startled by the quiet call, she whirled around. A familiar figure stood blankly in the carelessly opened doorway.

“…Pope.”

‘Fuck.’

Cold sweat trickled down her spine. No matter how you looked at it, wasn’t she someone who had illegally trespassed with sinister ulterior motives?

Cecilia flinched and pulled her hand away from the wall, then hurriedly opened her mouth. Whether he believed it or not, she planned to make the excuse that she’d gotten lost.

“Did you get lost?”

At the Pope’s innocent and upright question that didn’t suspect her in the slightest, she found herself at a loss for words instead.

In the end, Cecilia made a wretched confession with a heart-wrenching feeling.

“Well, I was trying to get to the kitchen and happened to discover this place. Every time I passed by this area, the knights were guarding this room, so I was curious about the interior and ended up… I’m sorry.”

“Hm? If you’d asked the archbishop, he would have shown you around long ago.”

If what she’d really wanted to see was this room, that would be true. But if her goal was the ‘divine record,’ the story was different. Wasn’t it a precious divine relic that even the archbishop hadn’t been granted access to?

Unable to reveal her ulterior motives, Cecilia awkwardly closed her mouth.

“I’ll ask the archbishop to guide you, so shall we return for today? It’s gotten late.”

“Yes…”

Cecilia discreetly moved away from the wall and shuffled toward the door where the Pope stood.

When she got close enough for the lamplight to reach, only then could she properly see the Pope’s clear face. Because the Pope had been very busy, this was their first meeting since she’d been confined to the temple.

Yet when their gazes met — his endlessly gentle — her heart became surprisingly calm and comfortable.

“Here, I’ll hold the lamp.”

The Pope took away her lamp, its candle nearly melted and dim, and gave her his silver candlestick instead.

As they left the room and walked side by side down the quiet corridor, the Pope suddenly spoke.

“I was going to go out to greet you on the day you arrived at the temple, but somehow it became the day before the Relief Festival ceremony before we met. Was temple life bearable?”

“More or less. Everyone was considerate…”

Unable to tell the lie that it had been fine, she vaguely glossed over it and quickly changed the subject.

“Have you been working until this late hour, Pope?”

Having spent another busy day, the Pope wore an outdoor cloak over his white robe.

The Pope looked sheepish and tugged at his wrinkled garments here and there, smoothing them.

“Since the Relief Festival ceremony is right around the corner, the number of believers visiting the temple has increased.”

In other words, he’d been bestowing holy power on ordinary believers until this late hour.

The Pope was a position so lofty it could rival the Emperor. The dedication of personally attending to the reception of ordinary people — excluded even from Archbishop Kiar — and the treatment of the sick was so extreme it raised questions beyond respect.

“Just preparing for the ceremony must be exhausting… Aren’t you tired?”

“I believe this is the mission and role God has given me. Besides, being able to share the grace I’ve received from God with others brings me only joy.”

The thoroughly religious answer was beyond her common sense.

To feel ‘joy’ while carrying out a schedule that was no different from overwork. And the underlying reason wasn’t compensation or a sense of duty, but ‘faith.’

Determining the direction of one’s life by believing in something unproven, and having difficult work become not burdensome but rather a driving force to move forward — it was an incomprehensible realm for her.

If that amazing thing called ‘faith’ was really like that, then it was too…

“It seems blind.”

An overly honest answer popped out like a cough. Cecilia hastily bit her lower lip.

But the Pope didn’t seem particularly bothered by her impious retort. He even agreed.

“Certainly, that may be so.”

They stopped walking.

Cecilia quietly met his lake-like golden eyes. That calm gaze was as deep as someone who had lived a very long time, yet the gently smiling face also looked just like a pure boy.

As she blankly stared at the face whose age was hard to gauge, the dim ripple of light wavering over it, and the shadow that remained without fading despite it all, the Pope began walking again at a much slower pace.

“Do you know the founding myth of this empire?”

Cecilia easily recalled the story of the one god ‘Soltis’ that she’d studied diligently along with prayers and scripture.

The god appearing in the myth was by no means a single entity. But because ‘Soltis’ was the only god who directly looked down on humans and loved them, it was natural for humans — creations who received his abundant love — to serve Soltis as the one true god.

“The god who loved humans, Soltis himself, descended to this land and cared for and ruled over them?”

“Correct. But there’s a hidden story behind it.”

“A hidden story?”