Klein rubbed his temples as he stepped out of the church.
Agrippa spotted Klein and nodded in greeting.
“Sorcerer, is your witchcraft all done?” Agrippa said to Klein with a smile.
Sorcerer…
as if Klein were some kind of blue thing.
Klein rolled his eyes in exasperation.
“Who are you calling a Sorcerer?
Who are you calling a Sorcerer?!”
“Your teacher claims to be the inheritor of wisdom from the era of the ancient Witch King, and you say you’re not a Sorcerer?” Agrippa laughed out loud.
Hearing Lucretius described as a “Sorcerer” did not strike Klein as strange.
Not long after meeting Lucretius, Klein had already detected traces of psychic imprints around him and understood that his teacher was also a wild psyker.
But Klein wasn’t particularly worried about Lucretius being some kind of Tzeentch cultist.
The reason was simple: Mr.
Tzeentch might be a Chaos God, but he also screened for academic credentials, screened for intelligence, screened for psychic ability.
Under Teacher Tzeentch, if your psychic power was enough, you might not necessarily receive any reward, but if your psychic power was insufficient, punishment was certain.
And as for Lucretius’s psychic level, how to put it, if Klein left such obvious psychic imprints around himself, Greyfax would definitely make him sample the Inquisition’s traditional craftsmanship.
From what Agrippa said, Lucretius’s psychic skills were probably learned from those excavated artifacts…
Crude and unstructured, rough and utterly lacking in beauty, not even reaching the lowest tier of the Inquisition’s psychic skill ratings, belonging purely to back-alley grade.
The psychic power of such back-alley grade psykers, even if strong, invariably had obvious flaws…
Such as mental instability, such as requiring time to cast spells, such as only knowing how to brute-force things by blasting people with psychic power, and the most common flaw of all: no matter what psychic spells they used, they had to shout them out loud.
These kinds of psykers were also very easy to deal with; the method used against them on the Black Ships was to put a gag on them, so that even if they had high-level psychic power above Level 11 Zeta, they couldn’t use it.
Being lumped together with a back-alley grade psyker like Lucretius annoyed Klein to some degree, so naturally he wasn’t too fond of the title “Sorcerer.”
“By the way.”
Looking at Agrippa, Klein suddenly thought of something.
“Do you know Ollanius?”
“Hm?” Agrippa raised an eyebrow, as if he hadn’t expected Klein to bring up that name.
“You know him?”
“No, I just thought the name looked familiar.” Klein shook his head.
Agrippa pondered for a moment.
“Ollanius was the previous bishop of this church.
He served here for many years.”
“Back then, he took part as a soldier in Konor’s campaign to Illyrium, and it was in that war that he carried me back when I had lost a leg.”
“And after that?
Where did he go?” Klein asked.
“After he handed this church over to me, he left Macragge.
He may well be dead by now.” Agrippa waved his hand. Find the original chapter at g.com.
Klein almost immediately detected a flaw in Agrippa’s account.
The name Ollanius was one Klein had seen on the donor list for the church’s construction, displayed beneath the mosaic.
And this church was ancient, far older than a matter of mere decades.
Yet Agrippa spoke of Ollanius as if he were still alive…
Was he lying?
One eyebrow arched slightly.
A simple Telepathy psychic trick confirmed that Agrippa had not lied.
Which meant it was that Ollanius who had lied.
Could that Ollanius truly have lived from thousands of years ago until now?
No, wait…
Ollanius…
Oll…
If this Ollanius was the person Klein thought he was, then he had lived far longer than a mere few millennia.
But according to Agrippa, that individual was no longer on Macragge.
What a shame…
Klein shook his head, waved goodbye to Agrippa, and walked over to a shelf in the corner of the church.
A girl named Diana was tidying the shelves there.
Though the prices were a bit steep, Klein had to admit, this church’s bread was delicious.
He intended to buy extra and take some back for Dita to try.
And while he was at it, to replace that damned fish sauce.
That bottle of Talassar fish sauce truly made Klein suspect it had received some manner of Blessing of Nurgle.
“Six bread, and one bottle of fish sauce,” Klein said, bowing slightly toward Diana.
Diana’s eyes lit up at once.
She swiftly took the bread and fish sauce from the shelves and packed them up.
Klein reached for his coin purse, then froze for a moment.
He had only two As left, the pocket money Dita had given him earlier.
That was not nearly enough to cover the bread and fish sauce.
All that remained were the denarii silver coins Lucretius had given him.
Klein shook his head and pulled a single denarius silver coin from his pocket.
“Keep the change.” He held out his hand and placed the silver coin before Diana.
The child looked slightly thinner than others her age.
Her hair was a bit dry.
Though healthy, it was clear her everyday meals were not particularly good.
It was plain to see, Agrippa’s family was breathtakingly poor.
Klein had just seen a Flying Spaghetti Monsterist church right here in the Temple District.
Hard to imagine that thing had survived to this day too.
Klein was confident he would not be short of money for long, so he felt no regret parting with that single denarius silver coin, though if Dita found out, he would probably get an earful.
Diana watched the denarius silver coin glint faintly in the candlelight of the church.
Her eyes instantly went wide.
When she heard Klein say to keep the change, she let out a gasp, then solemnly accepted the silver coin from his hand with both of hers.
The young girl’s reaction made Klein unable to hold back a laugh.
One denarius was roughly enough to cover an ordinary person’s meals for three or four days, not exactly a small sum, but Diana’s response was honestly a little over the top.
Especially the way Diana was looking at Klein right now.
That look could almost be described as something approaching admiration…
God of Denarii above…
“…Hm?” Klein thought he heard Diana’s voice.
But it didn’t come from the Materium, it came from the Warp.
Klein blinked, somewhat surprised to discover that his psychic potential had actually risen, if only by a little.
How could that be…
Wait, could it be…
Klein felt the corner of his eye twitch.
He remembered now.
The first time he awakened the Emperor’s memories, he hadn’t acquired any skills.
But when he awakened memories earlier, he had gained that damnable skill, 169 Love Quotes Every Roman Must Know.
That meant when he awakened the Emperor’s memories, he could learn the Emperor’s skills.
The first time, he had likely also gained a skill, he simply hadn’t noticed it at the time.
It seemed he could…
draw psychic power from worship, or rather, from faith.
For a moment, Klein didn’t know whether to say this skill’s definition of faith was far too broad, or that Diana’s faith came far too easily.
And this young girl…
God of Denarii, what the hell, what was she even thinking.
It was really fortunate that this faith was directed at Klein, truly fortunate that this was Macragge.
In some other place, careless praying like that could genuinely attract troublesome things.
Klein walked out of the church carrying the bread and fish sauce.
Outside the church, the sky had gone completely dark.
The four round moons had risen to their zenith, their bright moonlight illuminating nearly the entire pitch-black night sky, dimming even the stars.
Only one star, hanging in the northwest, still shone brightly, like a single glowing eye gazing at Klein as he made his way down from the mountain and back into the core area of the Temple District.
Just then, Klein suddenly spotted a figure he was quite familiar with, emerging from the Temple of Simonetta.
Seeing those unmistakable red leather shoes, Klein couldn’t help but let a small smile tug at the corner of his mouth.
“Cicero, my dearest friend!”
(Translated by yourtl.app)