Hello, Readers! I am celebrating my birthday with extra chapter updates, so please enjoy this special chapter release of 4 bonus chapters! 🥳

(Lurelia’s Birthday Bonus – Update 4/4 🎉)

♡ To all readers who purchased these chapters before my Birthday: I can’t express this enough – Thank you for your support. (*ˊᗜˋ*)/ᵗᑋᵃᐢᵏ ᵞᵒᵘ*

***

The power of foresight that showed people’s past and future made Jusepe Aria Sernadel the fairest judge of all.

His judgment was called divine punishment and was always impartial, regardless of status, wealth, age, or gender.

Even when his power eventually turned inward, purging the festering boils of the temple that no one dared touch, the priests couldn’t dare to speak up.

Because Jusepe Aria Sernadel was the Cardinal leading the Holy Light, the strongest holy knight order in the Holy Empire, and a man so pure that not even a speck of dust clung to him.

Jusepe’s world was always clearly divided into black and white.

Right and wrong.

Good and evil.

The criteria were so clear, and his power never made mistakes.

Therefore, the Belinda Blanche that Jusepe saw was wrong and evil, blackness itself.

“You must pay the price for your loose tongue. Rip out its tongue root immediately.”

“You beg for mercy? Then I’ll be generous and spare you from seeing what your tongue root looks like with your own eyes. Instead, try not to utter a single word while you’re being flogged.”

“Does this one have a fiancé? Ah, a servant working in the stables, you say? Good. Call him. Tell him his experience in the stables is needed for some whipping.”

How terribly the stench emanated from the ugly core hidden beneath that beautiful exterior.

Perhaps, like everyone else, she might have had reasons for being the way she was.

But Jusepe didn’t justify those reasons.

There were certainly people who wouldn’t make evil choices even in the same situation, and whatever circumstances she might have had would be no consolation to the victims.

That’s why it was quite unexpected when Belinda readily sent her escort knight.

Although she urged it as a way to save everyone, it was a decision that required unwavering trust and a spirit of sacrifice towards the other party.

But she didn’t hesitate to send the escort knight.

Actions that the Belinda Blanche he had seen through his power would never have taken.

How did she notice in the first place that a landslide might occur?

Why did she appear at a battle site with monsters where her life could be in danger?

Jusepe pondered these discrepancies as he stood on the mountainside overlooking the village, with Lionel’s help.

“Your Eminence, you must return to the temple and rest. You need to pray to God to recover your sight as quickly as possible.”

Lionel had been pleading earnestly with Jusepe for hours now, seemingly tireless.

But Jusepe was just as stubborn.

He stubbornly refused to move from that spot, watching what he would first see when his sight returned.

By the time the sun had risen high in the sky and the exhausted Lionel had finally fallen silent by his side.

Light began to return to his vision, which had been filled with pitch-black darkness like the back side of the world, like the first rays of dawn breaking.

As Jusepe blinked a few times, light and life returned to his eyes.

His eyes were so deep and beautiful that even the ugliest things reflected in them could be mistaken for beauty.

Those eyes now reflected the terrible scene before him.

“……”

The village, with only roofs barely visible under mounds of earth.

As if trampled by a giant, the village was crushed to pieces.

Jusepe saw everything – how many people were buried down there, and how many were still being buried.

He saw, but as always, he couldn’t prevent it.

Because he was a fair judge, but also merely human.

However, unlike other times, he felt a slight disillusionment instead of resignation.

“I will join.”

When Belinda’s knight came, he felt, ever so slightly, hope that perhaps the prophecy could be changed.

If reinforcements hadn’t come, Jusepe would have ultimately caused the landslide with his own hands to bury that enormous monster alive.

That was the only way he, having lost his sight, could stop the monster.

It was an obvious future, even without seeing through his power, that if Cerberus escaped and reached a nearby city, it would become an even greater disaster.

Sacrificing the few for the many.

That was his principle of action.

Even if he himself was included in that few.

Although they were able to stop the monster without causing a landslide, what was meant to happen still happened in the end.

That momentary hope, is so fleeting.

“…My sight has returned.”

Jusepe said quietly as he turned around, having confirmed the result of the prophecy.

There was much to be done.

The injured and displaced needed to be moved to the temple for care, and the deceased needed to be taken care of.

It was work he had always done.

The aftermath of all fates.

Yet today, that duty felt unusually heavy.

What meaning could all of this have?

Even if he helped rebuild the village, the people who were there already…

“Mom, Dad! Look at that! Our house has disappeared!”

“Mother, I’m so glad you’re safe.”

“Surely it was the Saint who protected us. To have survived like this…”

“Thank you, Your Eminence. Thank you so much.”

Suddenly, Jusepe’s steps halted as he approached the temple.

His ears caught the commotion that shouldn’t have been possible.

Jusepe tried not to hope, yet with inevitably shaky steps, he moved into the temple.

And there he witnessed the surviving villagers embracing each other, crying, grieving, and shedding tears of joy.

For the first time, the prophecy had been wrong.

“How…”

Just five people.

That was the number of survivors Jusepe had seen in his prophecy.

Knowing this, Jusepe had asked Lionel to evacuate the villagers, hoping to save even one more lucky person that fate might mercifully overlook.

But how could so many people have survived by taking shelter in the temple?

How did they know the temple wouldn’t be swept away by the landslide?

Even that was a future he hadn’t seen.

“Why did you evacuate people to the temple, Sir Lionel?”

It might have sounded like a reproach, but fortunately, Lionel didn’t misunderstand Jusepe’s words.

He too had doubted whether this was the right thing to do as he led the villagers up the mountain to avoid the landslide.

“I originally intended to evacuate them outside the village, but Lady Blanche was so insistent that we should take refuge in the temple… I made the decision on my own. In the end, Lady Blanche’s judgment was correct. If we had evacuated outside the village, I and all these people would have been caught in the landslide.”

Belinda Blanche.

That name left a strange resonance in his ears.

“Where is Lady Blanche now?”

“She’s preparing to leave the village. She said she’d leave quickly, worried about the atmosphere not being good as the villagers misunderstood her as a relic thief. So I lent her the temple’s carriage… Your Eminence? Wh-where are you going?”

Jusepe rushed out of the temple, ignoring Lionel’s protests.

He had doubts.

Belinda’s unseen future.

Only beings from another world are free from God’s fate and prophecies.

Therefore, while their past can be glimpsed, their future cannot be seen.

However, his experience of resignation so far didn’t allow him to water the seeds of hope.

So, so he had suspected she might be a dark mage.

“I don’t believe in things like fate or prophecies.”

“If you believe in God, there’s no room for human will to intervene. It means all of this is God’s will, but isn’t such a life too meaningless?”

Jusepe’s brow furrowed as he recalled Belinda’s words.

The religion of this world was divided into following or resisting, under the natural belief in God’s existence.

Therefore, not believing in God didn’t mean denying the existence of the absolute being, but literally just indicated whether one was a believer or not.

Even magicians, the typical non-believers, don’t deny God’s existence.

They just resist God’s will and intentions.

But Belinda’s words seemed more like those of someone who had lived in a world where God’s existence wasn’t a given, rather than a non-believer.

As if God’s existence depended on her belief.

‘I should have used the ‘Eye of Truth’ then, even if it was risky.’

As Jusepe regretted belatedly, his blurry vision caught sight of a white carriage crossing the ruins in the distance.

He needed to catch her and ask.

He had been looking for someone who had escaped this world’s fate all along.

To try and prevent even a little of the future of doom that the priests granted with the power of foresight had been seeing for hundreds of years.

But suddenly he had doubts.

What if she could change the predetermined fate to something even more terrible?

Because she was…

“An evil being.”

Jusepe’s steps slowly slowed and eventually came to a complete stop.

‘There’s no need to hurry.’

Everything is still just speculation.

He shouldn’t jump to conclusions hastily.

Instead of chasing after the carriage, Jusepe watched it for a long time until it disappeared beyond the horizon.

***

Despite being away from the villa for only 3 days, my whole body felt weary as if I had returned home after 3 years.

The villa’s employees were more than a little flustered by our sudden disappearance and equally sudden return.

The mercenaries immediately picked up Leo and hugged him one by one, as if handling a beloved doll found after years.

“I was… I was so worried… thinking you had run away feeling betrayed after I told you the truth about seawater being salty…!”

After rescuing Leo from the sobbing mercenaries, I suffered from muscle pain for the next two days.

‘We just went to the dungeon for target practice, how did things end up like this?’

It was when I had finally recovered and was preparing to return to the royal capital.

“I’ll have to tie ropes around those noisy beasts’ necks and drag them around. That should make them know their place and shut up.”

“She means she wants to take the puppies for a walk. Cerberus really loves walks.”

“I hired you on my butler’s recommendation, but what are you dissatisfied with?”

“She says thank you for guarding us well and she’ll grant whatever you want.”

For some reason, Leo started following me around, and surprisingly, he accurately translated my words and relayed them to everyone.