24 The Grey-Robed Monk 11

Francisco was clearly in earnest when he said those words.

Unfortunately, he was still young, and having just finished a bout of crying, he looked quite pathetic. When Phyllis looked at the boy—who was making a solemn vow while simultaneously blowing a snot bubble from his nose—she couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry.

She didn't consider herself a particularly kind person. At the very least, she could not be like Brother Salvatore, willing to help anyone unconditionally, even a complete stranger.

She was helping the boy only because she was fairly certain he had a cold rather than the plague, and he happened to have shown her kindness not long ago. As a human being, she simply couldn't bring herself to watch a life that could be saved just disappear.

Once he regained consciousness, Francisco was no longer as unreasonable as he had been while delirious; in fact, he could be called quite docile.

Phyllis handed him the lukewarm medicine, and he drank it all in one gulp without asking what was in it. He then managed to gnaw on half a piece of boiled tree bark and eat a small chunk of bread before lying back down.

Perhaps because he had slept through an entire day, he didn't close his eyes even after lying down. He just stared with wide, bright eyes, silently locking gazes with Phyllis, who had also had too much sleep.

Phyllis: “…………”

Phyllis asked helplessly, “Can’t you sleep?”

“Yeah, a little…” The boy turned over and suddenly whispered to the girl standing by the edge of the bed, “Do you want to hear a secret?”

“A secret?” Phyllis looked at the child—who, in the modern world, would only be in junior high—and suddenly felt a playful urge. “What kind of earth-shattering secret could you possibly have?”

Detecting the skepticism in her voice, the boy wasn’t annoyed. Instead, he beckoned her to come closer, then lowered his voice. “I was serious about wanting to repay you… I have a brilliant idea to make a fortune. If it works, I will definitely become the richest person in Velis within twenty years!”

“Oh my! This child is quite interesting.” Professor Paleruzzo had drifted back in from outside and, upon hearing this, immediately chuckled, urging her, “Go on, ask him what this brilliant idea is!”

Phyllis rolled her eyes internally at the old man who loved to watch the drama unfold, but she shook her head at the boy. “If it’s that kind of secret, never mind. If it gets out, you might lose your chance to get rich.”

“It’s fine to tell you. I trust you won’t tell anyone…” The dark environment seemed to make Francisco particularly eager to express himself, and he continued despite her rejection. “Actually, I wasn’t going to Rona City to rely on relatives. None of my relatives are successful enough to own property in the Holy City where His Holiness the Pope resides… They were all ordinary people living in Pula Town and Velis, and they’ve all died in this plague. Who else could I have gone to?”

“My mother was the last… I knew she was in poor health and was prepared for the end, but I never expected that when she needed a priest for confession the most, not only had the priest from our church fled, but Velis itself had turned into that hellish state…”

In the darkness, the boy’s low voice was suddenly tinged with an uncontrollable rage.

“I came to Velis with enough money for ten confessions—yes, it’s unbelievable, right? Nowadays, you even have to pay gold coins to get a priest to come to your home for confession! But that’s the reality. I was the one begging them, so paying didn’t matter… but five gold coins weren't enough to satisfy them; they demanded ten! If I sold my family’s inn, I’d only have fifty gold coins, and they demanded ten at a single word!”

“What could I do? To get their noble feet to step out of the church, I had to agree.”

“I went home to get the money and returned, but just as I reached the church gate, a group of people swarmed me, beat me up, and stole all the money I had!”

“The priests saw it! They saw it! But they closed the doors as if they hadn’t seen anything at all…”

Listening to the tremor in his voice, Phyllis’s memory drifted back to the day she first met Francisco.

Back then, the boy was covered in dust like a beggar, with several bleeding wounds on his face and body.

Those wounds had mostly healed by now.

However, because they had been in a hurry to get on their way and he hadn't brought it up later, Phyllis had naturally not paid much attention to the oddity of it all. She hadn't expected that he had gone through all that before even reaching the monastery for help…

“……It’s all in the past now.”

Phyllis searched hard for words of comfort, but since she wasn't good at it, she could only say dryly, “At least you met Brother Salvatore.”

“Yes, I’m lucky to have met you all… I understand, not everyone has such fortune.”

In the darkness, the emotion in the boy’s voice slowly faded, turning cold.

“This is a lesson I learned firsthand, Phyllis… Priests, merchants, beggars, robbers… fundamentally, there is no difference between them anymore…”

“Money, money, money! Money is the standard for everyone!”

“Money can make a bishop pray to the devil, and it can make a robber turn over a new leaf! Whatever virtue or justice there is, the rule of this world is money!”

He suddenly sat up and grabbed Phyllis’s arm, staring straight at her, enunciating every word. “I want to earn more money, enough to trample those people under my feet… One day, I will do it! Everyone says that after the war between Roland and Mali, life has become difficult, and they don’t know how many more years it will last, but I know this is an opportunity… I will make those cowards realize… I will earn more money than they could ever make in several lifetimes…”

His speech slowly became slurred. Although his eyes were still wide open, they had lost their focus.

Phyllis checked the boy’s forehead and, sure enough, found he was starting to sweat again. She quickly pressed him back onto the bed.

“You need to rest,” she said. “Don’t think about these things anymore. Get a good night’s sleep, and when you wake up, everything will be better.”

Perhaps because his body was still weak, or perhaps because he was tired from talking so much, Francisco fell asleep quickly after being pushed back down. Phyllis, however, found herself completely devoid of sleep.

Seeing her staring deeply into the rain outside the window, Paleruzzo couldn't help but sigh in his heart.

“The corruption of the Holy See is nothing new. They always build such magnificent cathedrals while driving away the beggars gathered at their gates.” Seeing the girl’s expression remain somber, the ghost sighed again. “They don't allow any critical voices. Several of my mentors were captured as heretics just for saying a few words during their lectures… Compared to those days, the current Pope is already much better.”

Phyllis turned her head slowly toward him. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but seemed to hesitate, lingering for a long time before finally speaking.

“……He just said that Mali and Roland are at war. Is that true?”

“Huh?”

Perhaps not expecting her to ask this question, the ghost made a short sound before snapping back to reality. “Of course. This is the eleventh year already.”

Seeming to sense her shock, Professor Paleruzzo offered a thoughtful piece of comfort: “Mali and Roland have always had frequent conflicts, clashing every three to five years. This time, it’s just lasted a bit longer…”

“Then why have they been fighting for so long this time?” Phyllis interrupted before he could finish.

“Well, that, of course, has many reasons…”

Since it was rare for her to ask a good question, Professor Paleruzzo organized his thoughts slightly before explaining carefully: “At the beginning, it was the issue of the County of Valain. That’s a historical problem. Ever since the Count of Valain submitted to Roland decades ago, the County of Valain has theoretically been a fief of the Kingdom of Roland. But the Roland royal family always encounters various troubles when coming to collect taxes, and at times, they’ve even had to send mercenaries to Valain to suppress merchants who refused to pay…”

“Furthermore, Valain’s most important textile industry has long relied on wool imported from Mali. Whenever tensions arise between Mali and Roland, as soon as the Malians cut off the wool supply, the local workers and merchants in Valain inevitably defect to the side of Mali. Twenty years ago, they even drove the then-Count of Valain out of the territory because he was too close to the Roland royal family, and it was the Roland King himself who helped him suppress the uprising…” As he spoke, he seemed to recall something amusing and chuckled a few times before continuing. “Oh, right, after this war started, that Count of Valain was driven out of his territory again because he banned all merchants within Valain from importing Malian wool! Later, to show his loyalty to the Roland King, he and his son participated in the Battle of Pent, and both of them died there! So, although the County of Valain nominally belongs to his eldest daughter, it is actually already under the control of the Kingdom of Mali and the local merchants…”

“Wait… is this the cause of the war?”

Phyllis interrupted again, trying to pull the conversation back from its tangent. “Because one county is closer to Mali, they started a war?”

“Of course not; that’s just one of the reasons.” Professor Paleruzzo shattered her hopes without hesitation, continuing like a storyteller. “The main reason is that twenty years ago, the direct line of the Roland royal family died out, and the crown of Roland fell into the hands of a collateral branch. However, this new king was arrogant and rash. Counting on the fact that the young King of Mali had just succeeded to the throne, he was intentionally difficult during the homage ceremony, leading to the two parting on bad terms before the ceremony was even completed. Later, he used this as an excuse to strip the King of Mali of his title as Duke of Aquia and declared that the Duchy of Aquia would be annexed by the Roland royal family…”

“Please wait a moment…”

Phyllis, dizzy from all the names, interrupted him once more, asking in surprise, “Why would the King of Mali have to pay homage to the King of Roland, and how could he strip him of his territory? Aren’t they both kings?”

Upon hearing this, Professor Paleruzzo was equally surprised. “Because the Duchy of Aquia is, after all, a fief of the Kingdom of Roland. Although Aquia has always had a great deal of autonomy, all successive Dukes of Aquia have had to pay homage to the King of Roland; otherwise, the Roland King certainly has the right to reclaim his fief.”

…So, why would the King of Mali have a piece of land in Roland in the first place!

Although the question was on the tip of her tongue, thinking that asking it might bring up even more unfamiliar names, Phyllis had to hold it back and focus on the original question. “In other words, the reason Mali and Roland are at war is because they both want this duchy?”

“Yes, I believe that is the most direct reason.”

Before Phyllis could breathe a sigh of relief, Professor Paleruzzo, who hadn't lectured in a long time, continued with lingering interest: “Although there are rumors everywhere that ‘The King of Mali claims to be the legitimate heir to the Kingdom of Roland and that he attacked Roland to reclaim the throne usurped by a collateral branch,’ one only has to think about it to know it’s impossible. Even if his mother was a Roland princess, if Roland truly allowed female heirs to inherit the throne, then according to the line of succession, the one who should have obtained the throne would be the current Queen of Nafa—a Roland princess who came from the direct line of the Roland royal family and was married to a member of the Roland royal family—not him, the son of a princess who married out…”

*Buzz————*

A sudden ringing filled her head.

The worst hypothesis in her mind had been confirmed. Phyllis stood stunned for a few seconds, then slowly squatted down and silently covered her face.

Before this, she had been trying to find an “anchor point” to connect the fragmented historical knowledge in her brain so that she could avoid some major disasters… Now, this “anchor point” had finally appeared.

Although she hadn't heard of “Valain,” “Aquia,” or “Nafa,” in the Middle Ages, a long-term war between Roland and Mali, with the King of Mali claiming inheritance rights to the Kingdom of Roland—Phyllis only had one answer in her head for a major historical event that fit these three conditions…

She had heard of the Black Death, and she had heard of the Hundred Years’ War, but she truly didn’t know that these two events were happening at the same time!

And if this were true, it was currently the beginning phase of the Hundred Years’ War, the eleventh year… which meant that the Black Death, which was rumored to have taken away one-third of the population of the Old World, hadn’t even stopped these two countries from beating each other up for at least ninety years…

Ninety years!

What kind of grudge could last that long! Did one of these kings kill the other’s entire family?!

*Rustle…*

The slight friction of fabric pulled Phyllis’s reason back sharply.

She immediately turned to look, but the room was pitch black and she couldn't see anything. After straining her eyes for a few seconds, she could vaguely see that it was Brother Salvatore turning over.

“……Hey, are you okay?”

Professor Paleruzzo beside her was clearly bewildered by her series of actions. “What on earth is wrong with you?”

“…………”

Phyllis stared at the lumpy shape for a long time, only withdrawing her gaze after Professor Paleruzzo asked twice more.

“Nothing…” She walked back to the only empty bed in the room, answering in a breathy voice, “I’m just a bit sleepy.”

“……Then go to sleep.”

“You’ve worked hard today, too. Get a good night’s sleep; by tomorrow, everything will be better…”

After repeated questioning was met with several shakes of her head, the ghost standing by the bed sighed and placed his hand above her forehead. “May the Holy Mother bless you with sweet dreams, Phyllis Lynn.”