Wizard: I am a goblin

Chapter 224 The King's Confession

High in the inner city tower, an elderly man with white hair knelt serenely before a stone altar in prayer. His aged back could no longer bend completely, but this did not diminish the old man's humble devotion.

Outside the door, an officer in golden armor led an elderly nobleman in silk robes to the door. The officer gently pushed open half of the oak door, saw the old man praying, paused for a moment, placed his knuckles on the wooden door, and was about to knock.

The elegantly dressed old man stopped the officer's impetuous behavior and gestured for him to be quiet. The officer immediately bowed his head in apology. The nobleman waved to the officer, dismissing him and the dozen or so soldiers who had been following closely behind.

Only two elderly men remained in the room. One was murmuring a prayer, while the other waited patiently and silently behind him.

The old man who was waiting bowed his head and prayed silently with the others. He placed his right hand on his left chest, where his heart was, and the lion ring on his index finger, representing the Kane royal family, shone with a dark golden light in the morning sun.

"Domine meus et servator————God's protection."

The white-haired old man finished his prayer, gave a standard sacrament to the Oubak emblem on the stone table, and was about to get up when the royal elder behind him quickly took two steps forward and helped him up.

"oh!"

The white-haired old man seemed surprised, yet remained calm as he spoke.

His voice had a reassuring magnetism, as if some mysterious and firm power resonated within the old man's chest.

"May God protect you, Your Majesty, I did not see you standing there. My apologies."

"May God bless you. Dear Holy Father, I did not disturb your prayers. I know that your ears are filled with the Lord's teachings, and you probably cannot hear me enter the door."

Philip II Kane the Pious, the tenth king of the Holy Kane Kingdom, nodded amiably to Patriarch Paul V of the Holy See of Oback.

"You might as well say that I'm so old that I can't even hear someone come in."

"Me too. This morning when I looked in the mirror, I felt like I was looking at a shriveled testicle. I don't know when we both turned into old men."

"This is probably not the language a king should use, Your Majesty."

"I thought your hearing wasn't working properly, but you can hear everything."

The two elderly men, both well past their eighties, exchanged a smile, sharing a moment of tacit understanding like two old friends. If one didn't know beforehand, few would recognize them as the two most powerful men in the western part of the continent: one wielding secular power in the old kingdom, the other the supreme and sole leader of the Holy See.

The king supported the patriarch, and the two old men sat side by side on a bench by the window.

Outside the window, the distant Giant Mountains are covered in snow, and cold air is slowly descending towards the coastline as it passes over the mountains.

"Winter is here," the Patriarch said.

"Tomorrow is the festival of séance, God's protection, another year has passed in the blink of an eye. — We left the Holy Capital in the spring, didn't we? The journey of several months felt like a fleeting moment. The days in Shanhaiguan flew by even faster. As I get older, the days seem to grow shorter and shorter — perhaps, the moment I return to O'Bak's side is not far off."

The king's brows furrowed slightly as he looked down at his aged face reflected on the mirror-like stone platform and couldn't help but sigh softly.

When the Patriarch heard his old friend's concern, he smiled kindly, revealing deep lines at the corners of his eyes, like the feet of a crow—marks of his frequent smiles.

He was older than King Kane and appeared physically more frail, but he was mentally superior to the old king, with no trace of slackness in his wise eyes.

"Time waits for no one, but you need not be afraid, Philip. The trials of this world are but a moment, while the blissful beyond that promised by Oubak is eternal."

Hearing the patriarch's words of comfort, the old king raised his eyes, feeling somewhat relieved.

"Holy Father, you always know how to guide the lost sheep. I—I am ashamed that at my age, my heart is still full of doubt and sorrow. I am not a qualified king, much less a devout believer."

"If you, known as Philip the Pious, are not truly pious, then there is probably no one in the entire Holy Kingdom of Kane who is not a heretic." The Patriarch smiled, placed his hand on the old king's hand, patted it gently, and said, "I can see that Your Majesty has something on your mind."

The old king looked into the patriarch's eyes, his gaze shifted for a moment, and then met his eyes.

"I...I don't know."

"What does Your Majesty not know?"

"I don't know if what we're doing is the right thing?"

The king finally spoke.

The patriarch paused for a moment. In that instant, a cold wind blew by, causing the curtains to sway and making the thin shadows flicker.

Patriarch Paul V did not immediately answer the King's question. He knew the weight behind it: King Kane was referring to peace talks with the Empire to end the Thirty Years' War.

Thirty years ago, with the support of King Philip, Paul's predecessor, Patriarch Antilian I, launched the "Imperial Expedition" against the Golden Sun Red Earth Empire, which had seized the territory of the Duchy of a Thousand Lakes.

The Thirteen Knights of the Holy Order, along with the "Evangelists" of the Old and New Kingdoms, marched into the Thousand Lakes Plain under the banner of the Holy Church of Obak, engaging in a difficult and bloody battle against the Imperial Army and the local "heretic forces" of the Thousand Lakes. This less-than-successful military operation ignited the fuse for three thousand years of turmoil that followed.

Beyond the battlefield, this religious war, personally permitted by the King of the Old Kingdom and led by the Patriarch, brought an end to the conflict between theocracy and secular power within the Old Kingdom:

Does the army belong to the king or the church?

For this issue, the Kane royal family and the Holy See have been locked in a power struggle for centuries since the end of the anti-Fascist movement. Nominally, the Holy See army, led by the Thirteen Knights, is subordinate to King Kane, but both King Kane and the Holy See army are legally obligated to uphold the Holy See and declare war on its enemies (the Rose Royal Family of the New Kingdom has the same obligation).

When a powerful king meets a weak patriarch, the balance of power tilts in favor of the royal family, and vice versa.

Antilian I, the apologist, was an iron-fisted patriarch who had not been seen in a century. By exercising the powers of the papacy and the inquisition, he firmly held the Knights Thirteen and the nobility of the kingdom in the hands of the church. Thirty years earlier, Philip II, who had just succeeded to the throne, was a marginal prince who had grown up in a monastery and had no ability or will to confront the entire church.

This wasn't the first time in a thousand years that a patriarch had waged war in the name of religion, but never on such a scale or for such a long duration. During his thirty-year reign in Antilian, Philip II accomplished almost nothing of note. Rumors circulated that the king merely followed the iron-fisted patriarch in prayer, repeating his words as if afraid of offending the gods by uttering a single wrong word.

But no one understood this pious king better than Paul V (who wasn't yet called that at the time). Before his accession, in the monastery of St. King's Palace, Paul was Philip's teacher and confidant. He knew the boy before him was a sensitive and meticulous person. After Philip ascended the throne, he always followed Antilian I's wishes in matters of state: because his wishes were the wishes of the Church, and thus the wishes of the faithful. He could not be the one to betray the faithful and compromise with the Empire—the people would not allow it, the Church would not allow it, and even the royal family of the Kingdom of the Blessed Rose, the eternal ally of the old kingdom, would not allow it.

The reformist forces within the New Kingdom Church were already restless, and only through the efforts of Paul IV (the architect of the legalization of San Vandu wine) did the Church maintain stability and peace. The two kingdoms were geographically distant, culturally different, and their wealth levels were widening; the only thing firmly binding their alliance was the Church of Oebac. The war severely impacted the New Kingdom's trade—from the royal family and the Church to ordinary merchants, no one wanted the war to continue. Reformist bishops who called for resistance against the Holy See (such as Titian) grew increasingly powerful as the war continued. The conflict between the conservative-controlled Holy See and the New Kingdom's reformists had escalated to an irreconcilable point, especially in the years leading up to Antilian I's death: inquisitors from the Old Kingdom attempted to arrest reformist priests from the New Kingdom across borders, even clashing with the Rose Royal Family.

If the old kingdom's royal family and church cannot unite as one, then the new kingdom's church may split off at any time and start anew—then the Rose Royal Family will no longer have a legal obligation to maintain its alliance with the Kingdom of Kane, and the Holy Kingdom of Kane may split into two halves, north and south—even a complete kingdom will find it difficult to stand up to the emerging empire, while a divided kingdom will certainly be defeated one by one.

Therefore, Philip II preferred to be a weak monarch rather than a sinner who divided the church and the country. Paul V saw all this. He was willing to listen to his old friend's complaints and became the king's most reliable shoulder to lean on.

Nearly thirty years into the war, a turning point occurred: the death of Patriarch Antilian dealt a major blow to the conservative faction within the Holy See. With the war's setbacks and the hopelessness of the Thousand Lakes Plains' recapture, even the Church of the Thousand Lakes had been excommunicated—anti-war sentiment was running high in the old kingdom, and unrest was brewing within the Church itself. Rather than the conservatives who advocated continuing the war, the Church longed for a rational and stable leader.

Cardinal Benedict, the leader of the conservative faction, lost the patriarchal election by one vote to Cardinal Paul, a centrist who had always kept a low profile. This event became a turning point in the direction of the Old Kingdom church.

After Paul V ascended the throne, with the full support of Philip II, he promoted peace talks with the Empire. Just as the Emperor died and a new Emperor ascended the throne, the young new Emperor agreed to the peace talks and personally came to the front lines of the war to negotiate with the Kingdom's leaders across the Shanhaiguan Pass.

This peace was hard-won. No one understood this better than Philip II and Paul V.

This is why Paul V took the king's hesitation so seriously: one person's indecisiveness could cost millions of lives.

"I have pondered this question countless times, Your Majesty," the Patriarch said slowly, nodding and closing his eyes. "For thirty years, countless Holy Knights have shed their blood on that land. Will our act of reconciliation render their sacrifices meaningless? Neither you nor I can escape this question. However, when I cannot trust my own decisions, I always turn to the Holy Decrees for answers."

"The Lord once said: The blood shed yesterday, the blood shed today, and the blood to be shed tomorrow—the blood of our allies, the blood of our enemies, and the blood of the innocent—will all flow in the valley leading to the Promised Land."

"Matthew 8:19," the king said involuntarily.

"Thirty years ago, we chose war. It was the Lord's will that made us take up swords. Now, we choose peace because the Lord wants us to lay down our swords. If you recall, in Oebak's time, he did not exterminate his enemies. The wizards and their evil beasts fled to the Giant Mountains, the Onsar Basin, the Thousand Lakes Plain, and even further afield, across the sea—was it because Oebak did not have enough divine power to continue pursuing them and completely annihilate them? No. Yet He still chose to ascend to divinity, leaving us to continue His unfinished battle: this is not abandonment, but supreme trust. We have fought, and now we should lay down our weapons and hand over the power of choice to the next generation."

"—Father, you are right. My worries—stem from my shortcomings. I am too fixated on thinking things through, and after making a decision, I often regret it—I have been crowned king for thirty years, yet not a day has passed without me feeling inadequate for this position."

"This is your calling, Your Majesty, just as our calling is to serve the gods." Paul placed his hand on the old king's shoulder, encouraging him. "Believe me, no one in this world is more deserving of this crown than you."

The king instinctively reached for the crown on his head. A fleeting determination flashed in his eyes, but then dimmed.

"But—my prince, my heir, you know, is a cruel and unruly child. Sometimes, he frightens me."

Paul V paused for a moment. He had heard of Philip's only son's reputation. This "child" of his father's was thirty-three years old and spent his days indulging in simulated battlefield games, organizing his personal guard, and treating prisoners of war as "enemies" in a massacre called "gladiator combat."

Unlike his father, this young master had no reverence for God and had only been to church twice in his life, once at birth and once as an adult.

Paul remained silent for a moment; he had no answer to the question. Unfortunately, the king's son was not chosen through election; once he left his mother's womb, his nature was fixed. Some evils can be corrected through education, while others remain with him forever, becoming stains on his soul.

"Trust in the Lord. Trust in the transformative power of the church. Our task now is to bring peace to this land; what happens after that may not be up to us."

"I hope so."

The two old friends looked into the distance at the same time. Above the majestic Giant Mountains, thick clouds were gathering, and the wind blew through the wide valleys in the spine of the world, sounding like the wailing of an ancient giant, hollow and sorrowful.