Chapter 49: Otherworld Mythology in Comics (1)
“I came to praise my little sister for winning the tournament, only for the Church’s officially certified Saintess, holy aura practically gushing from her, to cling to me and beg.”
...In order to explain this bewildering situation, which, depending on the observer, might very well get me treated like trash.
It was necessary to briefly rewind and reconstruct the events leading up to it.
First, the first incident.
“Oppa! What on earth did you do for them to find out who you are!
Do you know how much they pestered me over the last two days, asking me to let them meet you?!”
“What? No, how did that happen?”
“How should I know! You must have done something wrong, so they found out.”
Rena’s delightful friends had discovered my identity.
As for how they found out... honestly, there were far too many likely possibilities.
After all, among the guests who had come to watch this martial arts tournament, I was rather unusual and eye-catching.
“Hey. Look at that man. I’ve never seen him before, so how did he receive a special invitation from the Academy?”
“If I don’t remember his face, he’s probably not from a great noble family, and he doesn’t seem to have any hidden authority or wealth either.”
“Then why is Lord Aria walking around with a man like that?
Even Duke Lucid, who’s said to be closest to Lord Aria, has never done that, if I recall correctly...”
Aria might have stopped performing recently, but she was still, in name and reality, a superstar minstrel, and I was walking around with her at my side like a secretary.
And yet I wasn’t from a great noble family, nor did I possess any particular power or wealth?
“Would it make sense if I said it felt like becoming the commoner heroine walking around with her chaebol boyfriend in a drama?”
Naturally, attention had no choice but to gather on me.
And afterward, it was only inevitable that people would start wondering, How? Who are you?
After that, once curious people began investigating, it was only natural that they would find out.
It wasn’t as though I had been trying so thoroughly to keep it secret that I’d issued a gag order or made people swear oaths of secrecy in the first place.
There were quite a few people inside the Academy who knew about me.
If someone made up their mind to look into it, it probably wasn’t that difficult.
“It was about time people found out.”
On the first day of the martial arts tournament, people weren’t sure enough, so I managed to muddle through.
“Author Way? Are you truly Author Way?!
I’m a fan! May I please have your autograph?
Let’s see, I should contact someone to bring my preservation copies right away...”
“To think I would meet the apostle of culture who is shaking the kingdom in a place like this!
And I never dreamed you would be so young.”
“By any chance, when do you plan to write your next work?”
“What do you mean, next work!
You are going to keep serializing The Genius Mage of the Slums next too, right?”
But starting from the second day, once people had accurately grasped my identity, the attention on me exploded.
Aside from the time spent watching the tournament matches, people who wanted to speak with me were always crowding around.
“Hehe. This is the first time I’ve been in a situation where I receive this little attention, so it feels quite refreshing.”
“Ah. Um, I’m somehow sorry.”
“No, no. I truly mean nothing more than that it feels refreshing.
I fully understand how everyone feels about wanting to speak with you, Lord Wade.”
Even though Aria was standing perfectly fine right beside me, they ignored her and came only to me.
What was more, most of them were favorable toward me.
“Every one of Author Way’s works was original, shocking, and most of all, entertaining!
So much so that I would believe it if you said you came from a future far ahead of us!”
The most common were people purely praising the literary quality of my works.
“Thanks to you, Author, the walls between social classes have been lowered, the troublesome slums have been reformed, and people’s leisure lives have changed in a much more positive direction.
It would not be an exaggeration to call this a truly great achievement!”
There were also people who highly valued the social influence I had exerted and practically revered me like some great figure.
“Novels, plays, comics, even games! Are you truly the apostle of culture, Author?!
To think you created such a variety of cultures.
You have probably advanced the kingdom’s cultural development by a hundred years.”
“I even heard that you gave up enormous profits so that as many people as possible could enjoy those benefits!
I truly respect you! We would like to lend our humble strength as well.”
There were also people who praised the development of the cultural industry, which had been my original goal.
They were the fewest in number, but they were the ones I liked the most.
After all, that meant they were people looking in the same direction as me.
They said they were following my lead and providing various kinds of help for cultural development, too.
“The phrase ‘apostle of culture’ is a little embarrassing, though.”
If I gathered their strength, I felt like we could do something worthwhile together, but I’d have to think through the plan a bit more.
If necessary, I could involve the Publishing Guild and the Merchant Guild too.
Anyway.
As I talked with all sorts of people like that, I suspected that my identity had reached Rena’s friends through them.
Even if we excluded Bay, who was from the slums, Joshua, the young lord of a duke’s house, and the Saintess would have quite a few channels through which to hear that kind of information.
“Ugh. From the moment they found out who you were, everyone shoved the tournament to the back burner and kept pestering me to let them meet you!
Do you know how hard it was to convince them and make them focus on the tournament?!”
Well, thanks to that, it seemed the sparks had unexpectedly flown toward Rena and caused her some suffering.
The key members of a team that was all but certain to win had suddenly lost all interest in the tournament, so for Rena, who was basically just along for the ride, it was only natural to be horrified.
If she hadn’t entered the tournament in the first place, that would be one thing, but if she brought this lineup and got eliminated early because they couldn’t focus?
“Then who do you think the arrows would be aimed at!
Obviously me, the most useless one!
They would’ve said I was the reason we lost the championship and hung me out to dry in high society!”
“Oh. So you did know you were the most useless?”
“Of course I knew!
I’m already mad, so are you going to keep teasing me?”
Rena wouldn’t have been able to handle the aftermath.
So in the end, she apparently managed to calm them down by saying she would introduce me if they won.
“To think you sold me off so arbitrarily.”
“Be quiet. This happened because of you in the first place.”
Hmm. So I was the driving force behind their victory.
I felt a little happy, but also frightened by that obsession.
No wonder their team name had felt ominous from the start.
At any rate, that was roughly how the situation unfolded.
And here was the second incident.
Surprisingly enough, this one was close to being my own fault.
“Pardon? The Church’s image has been a little poor recently?
Because of the ‘Betrayed Hero’ I wrote?”
“Ah, of course, we are absolutely not blaming you, Author!
It is undeniably true that such an unfortunate incident occurred in the past, and it is karma that our Church must bear.
However, because that past has come to light, the number of people who harbor slight doubts toward the Church has increased...”
Because one of the traitors who appeared in my first work, The Betrayed Hero Takes Revenge, had been a Saintess, the Church’s image had been damaged.
Of course, at the time, the Church had been an era in which corruption was widespread among its leadership, and the Saintess had not been formally chosen by the Goddess but arbitrarily appointed by them.
And considering that the Church had quickly completed its normalization afterward and had since operated as a proper Church without being involved in corruption or politics, there was certainly room for extenuating circumstances.
But they had been unable to stop their image from falling among readers who had already begun to harbor suspicion.
“That certainly is a big problem.”
If that was true, I had done something rather regrettable to the Church.
If you thought about it, didn’t that mean I had gone around blabbing about a shameful secret the Church hadn’t wanted to reveal?
“Looking at it now, didn’t I do something incredibly dangerous?”
Because of my memories from my previous life, I had thoughtlessly put the Saintess in the traitor position too.
But thinking about it, that was basically me openly picking a fight with the Church.
What if the contents hadn’t turned out to be true?
Or what if the Church, instead of silently enduring the criticism, had declared vengeance against me for insulting them?
“Oh. I almost ended up going to start my third run at life.”
If the Church hadn’t let it slide, my third run at life really would have been right around the corner.
It was enough to clearly engrave into my mind the thought that from now on, I had to be extremely careful when writing.
Anyway, for that reason, it was difficult to refuse the Saintess’s ensuing request.
“Therefore, in order to restore the Church’s tarnished image, we would humbly like to request your cooperation, Author Way.
If it is you, Author Way, who possesses an outstanding ability to change people’s perceptions, as you did with the slums and the Academy, you will surely be of great help!”
It wasn’t exactly because of me, but they wanted to reverse the image decline that had been triggered by me.
My conscience was pricking me far too sharply to refuse helping with that.
“...Oppa. Can’t you help the Saintess?
The current Saintess and the Church are really kind and proper.
It’s pitiful for them to be lumped together and cursed because of bad people from long ago.”
And she was one of my little sister’s few precious friends, too.
“Well, why not give it a try?
I’m already being called something like the apostle of culture, so shouldn’t I live up to the name?”
“Th-thank you!
If you help us, then the Church will also formally consider recognizing Author Way as an apostle of culture bestowed upon us by the Goddess...”
“No! I don’t actually want that, so you don’t have to!”
Whew.
I almost ended up playing the role of an apostle, something that was never in my fate.
There was a difference between people calling me that and the Church officially recognizing it.
I had absolutely no confidence that I could become like the Saintess, whose nobility and holiness seemed to pour from her like an aura!
After that brief commotion passed.
The Saintess, having calmed her excitement, asked me.
“Then, by any chance, do you have any idea what we should do?”
“Hmm. As it happens, one suitable method did come to mind.”
“Truly?! As expected of Author Way!
I never imagined you would think of a method this quickly!”
To the Saintess, who got excited again and started hopping up and down at my words that there was a way, I explained my plan.
“First, as one premise, I do not plan to make excuses by explaining or defending the Church’s situation at the time.”
“Pardon?”
The Saintess froze with an expression that seemed to ask, Then what exactly are you going to do?
Please don’t be too surprised, and listen to the end.
“People who won’t believe it won’t believe it no matter what we say.
And negative content, by its nature, leaves a deeper impression and spreads negative perceptions the more you mention it.”
That was why negative campaigning had been favored in my previous life.
No matter how much I shouted, “The current Church is safe! Please rest assured and go about your livelihoods!” it wouldn’t spread well, and there was a high possibility it would backfire instead.
Then what would we do?
“At times like this, the best course is to divert people’s attention in an entirely different direction.”
And of course, that substitute had to be something that would unconsciously restore the Church’s image.
No, not merely restore its image.
A method that might also have the double effect of naturally teaching people the Church’s history and doctrine!
“How about drawing the Church’s myths as comics?”
It was time to make Otherworld Mythology in Comics.