Hush Now, Saintess!

Chapter 55

Translator: Yonnee

—

“It was definitely like that, but thanks to the apology I have received from Your Eminence today, I believe that my shattered heart has healed a little.”

“…Reverend.”

“From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your sincere apology, Saintess.”

Looking at his warm smile, I felt an itch at the tip of my nose.

“I must thank you as well for your forgiveness.”

It was at that moment.

When I bent my torso forward into a bow for the last time.

The dust hovering over the back of the priest’s back dispersed and disappeared into the air.

Besides that, ding—! Another system window popped up to announce the mission success.

When I checked it, I unknowingly smiled brightly.

〈 Hidden mission accomplished!

: A sincere apology has healed the priest’s heart!

– Mission success reward: Bug extermination / Healed the priest’s broken heart / Reputation +2 〉

* * *

After leading Roella to the donation room—

When he turned around, the high-ranked priest named Joseph smiled and thought,

‘Huh. What a surprise. I didn’t believe it at first, but…’

Truthfully, even after he had heard about it directly from Victor, he couldn’t easily believe that the saintess had changed.

And the mistrust he held against her still remained even after he heard that she had recovered a sacred relic after receiving a prophecy about it.

After all, the last impression that the saintess had left him with was…

“I don’t like the way that person looks. I just don’t like everything about him. If you don’t change my teacher right this instant, I won’t stay still!”

She had mocked him right in front of him.

So, today.

He was meeting the ducal lady for the first time after about a year, so he was very nervous.

‘She might not even remember me…’

However, contrary to his expectations, it was the ducal lady who greeted him first.

And, it didn’t end at a cordial greeting.

Right after that, she apologized to him.

Of course, at first, he thought that she was just being two-faced.

But he soon found out that the prejudices he had been holding against her were wrong.

He could feel the sincerity laced in her voice and expression, and she bowed down as deeply as she could in front of him while constantly giving him apologies.

Besides that, there was also that small bit about his ‘physiognomy’.

‘She must have just made that up to console me.’

Even thinking like so, he didn’t feel terrible about it.

Wasn’t it that she made up a completely new thing called ‘physiognomy’ just for the sake of consoling him, going so far as to talk about it so seriously and so convincingly?

Everything just felt so sincere and genuine.

At that point, the ducal lady had become a cute niece to him.

Though her words during that day felt as sharp as daggers, in hindsight, it sounded just like a child’s whining.

In the end, the reason behind his pain had vanished.

“Hohoho.”

Now, he could smile pleasantly again.

‘Although, what was she talking about a while ago?’

After he chuckled, another question suddenly crossed his mind.

As the time for apologies and forgiveness had come to a close, he led the saintess to the donation room.

And on the way, she suddenly brought this up.

—By the way, I noticed that there’s a bit of a commotion in the temple today.

—Pardon? A commotion here?

—Yes. I saw many people scrambling around as if they were looking for something. Has something gone wrong?

He thought it over for a while, but eventually, he just shook his head. He didn’t know anything about it.

—Hmm, I’m not quite certain. I haven’t heard about it…

—Oh, so I guess it’s not such a big deal.

That’s how the conversation ended.

However, strangely, he couldn’t help but feel bothered about it.

The department he was in charge of within the temple was the management of donations from noble households.

So, he would usually hear about news from other departments a bit late, but…

‘If it’s a disturbance that even an outsider has noticed, it should have reached my ears by now.’

Wondering about this, he turned around.

“I’ll have to find out.”

* * *

Ding—!

〈 Mission accomplished: Let’s make our first donation!

– Congratulations!
You’ve made your first donation.

Donation amount: 10,000,000 shillings

– Mission reward: Reputation +2 / Bonus Stats +5 / 11,000,000 coins 〉

“Ugh, I’m spent.”

I checked the mission success window that appeared before me, wiping the sweat trickling down my forehead.

There were two methods to donate money to the temple.

The first method was through direct communication with the temple.

The second method was through personally going to the donation room and putting it into the tithe box.

I chose the latter.

I went with this method because I wanted to make sure and check if the mission success window would appear after it’s finished, just as it did now.

‘But I didn’t know it was gonna be so much hard labor.’

I had asked Oliver and Gaston to set the bags of money down right in front of the tithe box, so it’s a mess.

If I had told them to leave it by the entrance, it would have taken me half a day just dragging them all the way to the donation room.

How the heck did those two carry all five of these heavy bags?