Oscalt's first impression could be condensed into a few words.
Tension, and bleakness.
Brüs too had the tension of war hanging over it, but it had still been a city with some life in it.
Oscalt, by contrast, had no dreams and no hopes.
There was no broad street to run and play in, so no children's laughter could be heard; there was no square to set up stalls, so no merchants' shouting could be heard either.
Kallen spoke with his face screwed up.
"The smell is foul."
"The sewers don't seem to be properly maintained."
All manner of unidentifiable filth had piled up in the streets and the ditches beside them.
For a moment I imagined a scene of shoveling and hauling shit as part of the troublesome work I would take on in Oscalt.
Chasing the Luxeon Cult only to end up scooping shit out of nowhere, that must never happen.
Oscalt was a city neither so large nor particularly small.
After walking a fair while, a shabby old inn appeared.
I hesitated briefly, but with no telling how long it would take to find a better inn, I pushed the shabby door open in the end.
A stale reek of mold rushed in through the gaps of my helm.
At the sound of the hinges, the innkeeper, who had been lying down, lifted his head.
"I'd like some rooms."
"How many?"
I considered for a moment.
If by some chance Findel's side noticed us and sent someone, being in the same room was better than being apart.
Kallen's safety, or respect for his privacy?
After a short hesitation, I answered.
"Two."
"Six coppers a night. There's no breakfast, so don't bother getting up early."
The innkeeper counted the coins I handed over and buried his head again.
In many ways he was a man like a sick horse.
Kallen and I headed to the inn's second floor.
One step of the stairs was broken, and there was a mishap in which Kallen nearly fell, but in the end we reached our lodgings safely.
"Ugh...... that hurts. My shoulder just made a strange sound."
"You should've just fallen, then. That's what you get for forcing yourself to grab the railing."
Grumbling, Kallen disappeared into his room.
He had volunteered to keep all the baggage himself, so I carried nothing.
In the end I too went into my room.
A narrow room with no furniture at all save a bed that barely retained its wooden frame.
A state befitting three coppers.
Perhaps the one small window was some consolation.
I took in the view from the inn's second floor through that window.
It was only the second floor, but the inn itself stood on fairly high ground, and the houses packed tightly together came into view.
Oscalt's internal layout was, quite literally, a mess.
Alleys spreading like a spiderweb without a single main road.
Lose your way, and Findel Morein would be the least of your problems; you would end up a lost child yourself.
Among the plain buildings, the only thing that drew the eye was the cathedral.
It was a cathedral of a size suited to Oscalt's scale.
It was at a level embarrassing to compare with the Talios Order in Pirberg, but in truth it was the Talios Order occupying the inner keep that was abnormal; building a separate cathedral like this was the norm.
Having confirmed that much, I turned away.
Rather than observing from afar, I meant to walk the city myself.
"Kallen, I'm going to look into the city a little more. Will you come along?"
I knocked on his door, but no answer came.
When I paid attention, I could hear groaning from inside.
Kallen was sprawled on the bed, moaning.
"What is it?"
"Damn stairs. My shoulder's completely dislocated."
"......Did you try putting it back in?"
"That's why I'm lying down. I put it in wrong. I think it might be broken......."
"......."
My plan to pull Kallen's shoulder back out and reset it was blocked by his desperate, absolute refusal.
"What would you have me do, then?"
"Please do nothing at all. For now it looks like you'll have to survey the city on your own."
Saying he would sort it out himself, Kallen showed me the door.
It seemed I was not particularly trustworthy in his eyes.
I left the inn.
For a start I walked the streets wherever my feet took me.
The filthy streets held no crowds; only the chirping of the occasional bird could be heard.
There were three moves Findel Morein could take in Oscalt.
Hide, flee, or approach me.
If he hid, finding him would take considerable time; if he fled, tracking him would be hard.
If he approached me, it meant Luxeon's forces in Oscalt were enough to deal with me.
The reason a hidden Findel Morein would be hard to find was that he was an individual.
Finding a needle on a sandy beach is no easy task.
'......Should I search for the Luxeon Cult itself?'
I needed to consider why Findel Morein had come to Oscalt of all places.
It was not particularly close to Pirberg, and above all, there was the risk of the undead.
Which meant he had needed to come to Erbern even at the cost of some risk.
Why?
Assuming Findel Morein knew me as I was seventy years ago, he would not have expected the undead to stop me.
Then the most likely remaining reason was that the Luxeon Cult was in Erbern.
If the Luxeon Cult was here, finding it would obviously be easier than finding Findel.
It is only natural that a group stands out more than an individual.
The reason for catching Findel Morein in the first place was to step on Luxeon's tail, was it not?
It felt somehow like host and guest had traded places, but whichever road I took, all that mattered was arriving where I meant to go.
By drawing us to Oscalt, Findel Morein had as good as leaked a certain amount of information already.
At that moment, a bell rang out somewhere across the city.
The source of the sound was almost directly overhead.
I came to my senses with a start and realized I had walked all the way to Oscalt's cathedral without noticing.
For some reason the cathedral was bustling with a huge crowd.
Everywhere else in Oscalt was deserted, yet the cathedral alone was packed with people.
'......Have they smeared honey on it?'
Orders do carry greater influence in a fortress city than in an ordinary one.
The harder life is, the more people turn to the gods, and life in a fortress city cannot help but be hard.
But even accounting for that, the crowd filling the cathedral was unnatural.
A priest controlling the crowd at the cathedral's main gate shouted.
"Form a line! Everyone here can receive the blessing, so don't push!"
A blessing.
A clergyman bestowing power through a god's divine authority.
It was not something to be brought up in a cathedral of this size.
Puzzled, I approached the priest.
"Hey, there's something I want to ask."
"Yes, brother. What is it?"
The emblem on the priest's robes told me this cathedral belonged to the Ecclesia Order.
The Ecclesia Order was not merely sanctioned by the Empire; it was treated outright as the state religion.
This was because the Empire clung to the rather strange policy of recognizing freedom of religion while openly backing the Ecclesia Order.
"What's going on here?"
"Ah, you must have arrived recently."
"I arrived this morning."
The priest was a pleasant-looking woman.
She spoke with a bright, beaming smile.
"So then, you know which order we are, don't you?"
"The Ecclesia Order, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's right. The order that serves Ecclesia, god of mercy and recovery. As Ecclesia's proxies, our order took up the mission of healing the sick and ailing weak. So the bishop treats Oscalt's sick free of charge. We call that process a blessing."
"A blessing? He divides divine power among all these people?"
"And why not? Ecclesia spares no mercy toward anyone in need of healing."
They save everyone solely because a god told them to.
Whatever the order, the bastards who listen to a god's words are all madmen.
Does the Talios Order not throw its bodies onto spears and blades over a single word from Talios?
In the end, whatever the state of their minds, by results alone they were doing good.
Setting aside whether it was even possible, healing every sick person was undoubtedly a good deed.
"Can I meet the bishop now?"
"Of course. The Ecclesia Order's doors are open to anyone. Is there somewhere you're hurting?"
"No. Before that, I'd like to see the blessing performed. I'd be entrusting my body to it, wouldn't I? I'd rather see it for myself."
"Yes, as much as you like. Follow me."
The priest led me into the cathedral without any particular suspicion.
The line of people that began outside continued deep into the interior.
All of them wore unmoved faces, as though used to the process.
The priest's footsteps and mine echoed.
Lamps set sparsely at regular intervals lit the drab interior of the cathedral.
The crowd sent sticky stares along with intermittent coughing.
They might have been curious about my identity, or might merely have been looking at the priest.
Before long the priest's steps came to a halt.
It was an unremarkable wooden door.
She pushed the door open, and the inside of an equally ordinary-looking room was revealed.
In truth, calling it a room was inaccurate.
For the place where the man who appeared to be the bishop stood was not particularly cut off from the other spaces.
The bishop, receiving people one after another, was a man with a face you might see anywhere.
Having seated a man holding a crutch in a chair, the middle-aged man who had been sitting opposite with his eyes closed turned his head toward us.
"What is it, Priest Liria?"
"This brother here said he wanted to see you bestow a blessing. Is it all right to show him?"
The bishop smiled.
I felt something I could not name in that smile.
A boundlessly kind and merciful smile.
The bishop was a man who resembled the god he served.
"Of course. I am sorry that I have no seat to offer you; I hope you will forgive it."
I nodded without meaning to.
Not only his smile but every word he spoke carried a force that could not be defied.
The bishop closed his eyes again, and the person facing him flinched.
My body twitched, but the priest only watched with a soft smile.
Soon a light gathered.
"......."
It was a miracle that deserved to be called a blessing.
There was no conspicuous rite performed.
The bishop closed his eyes, and after a light briefly settled over the man's whole body, he threw away his crutch and stood.
"Ahh...... th-thank you. Thank you, Bishop......."
The nature of divine power is not something you can know by sight.
Direct contact, like with Formel's pendant, might be another matter, but you cannot analyze the divine power working a wonder from visible phenomena alone.
So, judging boldly by what the naked eye could see alone, Ecclesia was a holier god than anything I knew.
"......This is absurd."
Even having worked a miracle, the middle-aged bishop only spoke calmly.
"Priest Liria, please show in the next person."
"Yes, Bishop."
However great a god Ecclesia might be, this made no sense.
Even in small amounts, using a god's divine authority certainly required that much divine power.
No matter how vast the divine power Ecclesia sent down, it was useless if the bishop, the medium of that power, was not a vessel capable of receiving it.
And so far as I knew, no vessel capable of doing this for the entire crowd outside existed anywhere in this world.
In the end, having witnessed this incomprehensible sight, a miracle in the true sense, there was only one conclusion I could draw.
The Ecclesia Order was a group that should not exist.