Chapter 31

“is that so?”

as the pope spoke, drinking holy water at the coronation ceremony would give me powers. last time, the ability i had was ‘rutting’ – sexual impulses caused by sex hormones. yeah, that was it. it really was a useless ability. that ability couldn’t even be applied to a target character, only to me.

with an ability that activates at any time, every time i logged in, i would attack the target character in front of me. the game, which took place without the time to build an emotional connection, ended up terribly. let alone processing the information about the holy land being taken over by the empire, i tried to attack the characters that appeared, but the attack failed and i returned as if i was being dragged into the holy land.

after that, the pope’s confinement and the toy ending followed. the pope’s bad ending was an ending that could happen in almost all routes. if you fail even a little while going through any route, you’ll be brought back to the pope and be imprisoned. no one died, so that kind of ending is pretty fun, but i wondered why the pope didn’t have an ending where he died.

“sister haniel, i think the conditions are right.”

as i stared at the holy water in the chalice, the pope added conclusively.

it’s better to not have an ability like last run. although it’s an r-rated game, physical attacks couldn’t solve everything. if you rush into it blindly, you will be hated by the target character and will only lead to a bad ending. plus, there’s only one character that avoids you if you attack just with your body.

no, even the archduke would interact with my body if i pushed him to. neither would he reveal his feelings at all. come to think of it, there wasn’t a single character that would like it if i attacked with my body, considering it’s a 19+ game.

the abilities granted by the holy water were random. there are items that can increase the chance of certain abilities to appear, but they had to be purchased in real life before they could be used. the shop is available in the game but it needs to be pre-loaded with real-life money.

of course, i didn’t have an item even after finishing three rounds and trying to buy an item. since i hadn’t paid for it, i couldn’t even use the cheapest physical recovery potion. if i knew i’d be stuck in the game, i would’ve put some money in it.

i continued to think, engulfed with regret.

the best ability was the healing ability. because it was the best, the probability of getting ‘healing’ was so small it’s practically 0%, but let’s just say it’s probably 0.3%? it was the ability that wouldn’t come even after pouring hundreds of dollars into it. if you get the healing ability, it would be easy to play the role of a saint. you can easily proceed with the attack, but you can’t solve everything with that ability. the game description says that gaining the ability creates a secret attribute, but no player has ever mentioned what it was.

it’s not mentioned, right? given that no one has ever pulled the ‘healing’ ability, it may be an ability that wouldn’t come even after spending. if i had the ability, i would definitely brag about it. why couldn’t i get it? maybe the odds were manipulated. having me locked up in the game for a thousand days, surely i could manipulate the system where i could get that ability as compensation.

i mean, i don’t need the ability, but i won’t give up just because i can’t spend money on it. as long as it’s not a useless ability like ‘rutting’, it doesn’t matter what i get in the end.

while thinking about reality, the pope wondered why my expression had grown grim.

“do you hate having powers?”

“oh, it’s not like that…”

“even if you get an ability, it will have no effect on your original abilities, so don’t worry about it.”

“right… huh?”

as i continued to answer casually, i realized how strange the pope’s words were and widened my eyes. the pope looked at me with a cool smile. what are you talking about? why did you say that…

huh?

[unexpected event! ‘the pope’s search ii’ will occur.]

[hidden route: this event will lead to ‘the pope’s abyss’.]

[if the event ends without a decrease in favorability, you can enter multiple routes.]

i held my breath and looked at the system window that floated in front of the pope’s face. didn’t that happen last time with ardal?

this incident happened while i was with ardal. these series of events increased the probability of causing a large event and were directly related to the ending or the attack. i haven’t even gotten to the empire, so what’s happening? i didn’t expect that aiming for the reverse harem ending would be this tiring.

this event happened with the pope and not ardal, who had a low difficulty, and yet it made me even more tired.

should i just choose to attack one character and watch the reverse ending harem instead?

ardal’s favorability rating is still four hearts, so there’s still a possibility…

i looked at the system window and thought seriously.

then, a system window popped up.

[if you start the ‘the pope’s search’ route, you cannot enter the individual ending.]

[if you fail to avoid ‘the pope’s search’ route, you will start the dead ending. please be mindful of your actions.]

hahaha, no.

either die or attack. i had to choose between the two. of course, i had no intention of dying, so the only option left for me was to attack.