Chapter 155 — The Missionary

At this, Heidi finally couldn't hold back. "Forgive me, but I've also seen missionaries of the Church of the Daystar traveling abroad, and none of them are like you... Were you a paladin before?"

"I'm a priest, always have been," Light said, glancing down at his muscles, once again as though it were obvious. "But preaching abroad is dangerous—you run into wild beasts and bandits and the like all the time. A priest's own combat divine arts are too few, so it's good to train the body for self-defense. And sometimes there isn't enough money on hand, so you can't avoid helping the locals with some work in exchange for food. Without a strong body, that's just not possible."

"Missionaries of the Church of the Daystar have no tradition of working for food," Heidi said, her expression odd. "An extraordinary being never needs to sell his physical labor wherever he goes, let alone sell it to ordinary people. I've never heard of such a thing."

"Ma'am, that's where you're wrong," Light said at once, his face serious. "The way of the Holy Light tells us that a man must not reap without labor, and the way of the Holy Light also tells us that all people are children of the Holy Light. So if we are all children of the Holy Light, why divide people into ordinary and extraordinary at all?"

Amber looked the big man up and down in surprise. "You actually take all that seriously?"

Light again wore that expression of its being obvious. "How can the teachings of the Holy Light be taken as false?"

Looking at this bizarre missionary, Gao Yang for a moment said nothing.

He was rapidly considering whether there was anything suspicious about this man, wondering whether he was connected to Princess Virodai's earlier visit, and weighing how much of what he said could be believed.

If it was all true, then there seemed nothing to worry about—this priest of the Holy Light had begun his travels a year ago, when Gao Yang had still been lying in his coffin, so the priest's arrival was simply an accident.

If it was all false, then a missionary of the Holy Light suddenly arriving in this territory was, in Gao Yang's view, a rather sensitive matter.

But somehow, looking at this singularly unconventional missionary of the Holy Light, Gao Yang couldn't shake the feeling that this business... really couldn't be connected to any conspiracy.

But be that as it may—even if he had grown a measure of wariness and estrangement toward the worship of all the gods in this world—as lord he could not simply drive out a missionary like this, especially when the man had broken no law whatsoever in this land and had even volunteered to help with the work and heal the sick. He certainly could not do so now; otherwise the law and order he himself was promoting would suffer a blow.

And he wanted to observe the man as well, to see just where he came from and what his purpose might be.

While Gao Yang was turning these thoughts over in his mind, the missionary Wright was also sizing up the three before him, and suddenly asked, "By the way, are the three of you interested in the way of the Holy Light?"

The three of them answered not at all in unison:

"I am a follower of the Goddess of Magic, and I will not believe in another god."

"Are you blind? I follow the Shadow!"

"Not interested, thanks."

The missionary Wright nodded. "Oh, then never mind."