Fake Saint of the Year

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Translator: Tsukii

Editor: Geli

Read at Watashi wa Sugoi Desu!

Chapter 57: A Poor Imitation

I immediately went to a certain place as the search for Eterna began. It was the pond behind the school building.

To put it bluntly, it was too troublesome to search every area in the school, so I opted for a more convenient method instead.

Nothing happened initially as I approached the pond, but I then touched water and lightly sent mana into it. 

Then as the water surface lifted, the turtle showed its face.

“Oh, you called Elrise?”

“Yes. I want to borrow your power for a bit.”

“It seems something has happened?”

This turtle was capable of seeing most of the things that occurred in this world.

However,  it only had one brain so this obviously limited the amount of information it could process at the time. As such, it was not like it knew everything that was going on in this world right as it was happening.

What it could do was see things that it happened to focus on at that moment.

To put it in Earth terms, if this turtle used its power to see things that were happening in New York City, USA, then it would be unable to see things that were happening in Japan at the same moment.

It was like a TV channel.

It was up to the viewer which channel they wished to watch, but if they chose one program, they would be unable to watch other programs at the same time.

If one wanted to watch the SASUKE Year-End Special, one would be unable to watch Kodoku no Gurume, which runs at the same time. It was something like that.

That was why it wouldn’t be a good thing for the Turtle if the Witch managed to teleport.

In case the Witch deployed a barrier that prevented her from being observed, the turtle could just locate a “place where it couldn’t observe anything” and speculate that perhaps that was where the Witch might be located.

Even if the Witch successfully teleported away, this turtle could predict where she might have gone.

But a prediction was still just a prediction, not a prophecy. It had said before that it was possible for its prediction to be wrong.

So, in case the Witch teleported away to a place which wasn’t within the turtle’s  prediction… Then the turtle had to survey the whole of Fiori just to search for a “place which couldn’t be observed.”

In the end, this turtle’s ability was convenient, but not absolute, and it couldn’t observe everything at the same time.

And it seemed it was currently looking somewhere outside of the Academy.

Otherwise it wouldn’t have said “It seems something has happened?”

“Yes. A person has gone missing from this Academy”

“I see. It seems that this is not the right time to watch over the Kamekichi and Kamemi couple quarrel.”

What was this turtle watching again?

This really wasn’t the right time to watch such a thing.

Or rather, to watch other people… nay, another turtle couple quarrel, it sure had such a bad hobby.

Anyway, let’s leave that bad hobby aside.

What was needed right this time was its clairvoyance.

“Surely you know about Eterna-san, right? I need you to find out where she is right now.”

“I see.”

Regarding Eterna’s identity, surely it didn’t need to be explained.

This turtle knew I was a fake Saint.

In that case, it already knew that Eterna was the real Saint, so that was all I needed to say.

Turtle closed its eyes. After “observing” something for a bit, it opened its mouth.

“Found her. But something weird seems to be going on.”

“Something’s weird?”

“Yes. She is still inside the Academy, but… somehow, she has been pushed into a strange place.”

A strange place, huh. Was she being pushed into a locker?

While I thought that, I probably should listen to the turtle more intead.

“A hidden passage… It seems to be that kind of thing. It looks like a secret room was deliberately built behind one of the walls in the academy. Eterna is being confined there, but… it’s not just her. Several students have also been captured.”

Hoon, a hidden passage? So such a thing existed in this academy.

No, well, Diaz must’ve used his authority as headmaster to create such a thing.

I had thought it was only Eterna who got captured, but it seemed like there were other people huh.

I didn’t know why they were kidnapped as well, but all I needed to do was catch the culprit and interrogate them about it.

Even if I didn’t know the culprit’s main purpose, I still had to rescue them all first anyway.

“Do you see the culprit?”

“Uhm… There is a girl nearby that’s enveloped in darkness. I guess she seems to be the obvious culprit.” 

“Is it Alexia?”

“No, it’s not. Alexia is still underground.”

The description of a woman enveloped in darkness initially brought to mind the possibility that it was the Witch.

If the turtle wasn’t here, then I might’ve ended up misunderstanding that the culprit of this incident was Alexia.

This was because I’ve never actually met Alexia before.

I’ve seen her through the game, but there could be several differences between a mere illustration drawn on screen versus a real person. If I saw a person with a similar hair color and build, I might end up mistaking her for someone else.

Actually, I even mistook myself as Eterna when I first saw myself.

“Mu, they’re moving from the hidden passage toward the rooftop. On top of that, tentacles made out of darkness have snared the students… it seems they plan to bring them along as well.”

Mu, I didn’t know what they planned to do, but it seemed that the culprit was moving toward the rooftop of the academy, which was a more visible place.

That was favorable for me. I could go there immediately and catch the culprit.

For now, I decided to stealthily get there ahead of them using light refraction.

“Thank you very much, Propheter.”

“So you’re going. While I don’t think you need me to remind you, still be careful.”

At the turtle’s encouragement, I flew up toward the rooftop.

Well then, sorry for this but I’m going to have to end this quickly.

---

One of the female students was being manipulated by Octo; she walked through the hidden passage toward the Rooftop.

Elizabet Iblis¹. This was the name of the female student that Octo turned into the Witch’s double.

Her looks weren’t what people would call beautiful.

It wasn’t bad, but also wasn’t that good. Common seemed to be the most fitting word to describe her.

She had monolid eyes. The bridge of her nose was neither high nor low.

Her face was asymmetrical, and her teeth were crooked and stained yellow.

Her brown hair reached her waist, and she had a floral accessory similar to Elrise’s (if one looked closely, they could see that the flower had withered) which she had made herself.

She yearned for Elrise.

And at the same time, she was also jealous of her and slighted.

At first, it was merely envy.

She had been born to a noble family, and when she was 11 years old she had seen the Saint at the ball. She developed a yearning for that appearance.

She desperately wanted to also be like the Saint.

That was why she fitted a floral accessory similar to Elrise’s, and mimicked Elrise’s tone to seem more like her. She also matched her hair’s length to Elrise’s.

Yes, in the beginning, it was merely an amusing game of Pretend.

One mimicked what they admired. It started with one’s appearance… There was nothing strange about it.

But as she grew, her originally blond hair turned brown. No matter how you looked at it, the form reflected on the mirror was not Elrise.

This was natural. In the first place, she really wasn’t  Elrise.

It was obvious that people would look different from each other. There was nothing unusual about that at all.

Normally, one would eventually be resigned to this reality, and come to terms with themselves.

But inside of her, this yearning had transformed into something distorted.

In the beginning it was just the sentiment of, “I, too, wish to be like that.” 

Then it changed into, “If only I looked like that.”

Since she had entered the academy and got into close proximity with the object of her yearnings, this distorted feeling gradually grew even stronger, and her heart got more corrupted every time she saw Elrise..

It reached the point where her yearning had become “Why am I not Elrise?” To console herself she thought, “If only I was born under different circumstances, I could’ve become Elrise,” and fooled herself with such absurd delusions.

If she were born differently, she might have become Saint Elrise herself.

She might have had that kind of beauty.

No, she was supposed to have it. That was definitely the case.

She comforted her own twisted heart by looking away from reality and wallowing into delusion.

She dreamed of a world where she was born as Elrise, immersing herself in a happy daydream where all the cheers and fanfare, all the Saint’s glory and fame for the Saint was directed to her.

As she continued with this wild yearning, she lost herself in it, and finally what was reality and what was fantasy had become reversed in her mind.

I was the real Elrise, yet why was she the one getting worshipped as the Saint instead?!

She took away my glory, my fame. Those things are supposed to be mine! What a shady bitch!

I am the original. She merely copied me!

Shockingly, Elizabet began to think like that. 

These were absurd thoughts. They didn’t make any sense.

She was no longer capable of distinguishing between reality and her own delusions and she began to act as if she was the Saint. In her own mind, she conveniently replaced Elrise with herself and talked as if the real Elrise was an impostor.

She treated her fellow classmate with (what in her mind was) a smile of kindness, and she declared that she would protect the world.

Needless to say, everyone else around her only saw it as a blasphemous and laughable imitation.

The smile that she thought of as a smile of kindness was actually a disgusting one filled with vanity, self-satisfaction, and narcissism; the way she forcefully tried to mimic Elrise’s tone didn’t suit her at all.

There was no one who wanted to be friends with her… To begin with, this was an institution that raised knights that served the Saint. In such a place, no one wished to be associated with an idiotic woman who insulted the Saint and believed herself to be the real one.

In no time at all, she was isolated and seen as a nuisance by everyone around her.

On top of that, news of her actions and words reached her parents. Deeply ashamed by this, they apologized to the academy and applied to have Elizabet drop out from school.

On the academy’s end, they accepted her parents’ decision without hesitation and her expulsion was scheduled to take place this month.

Elizabet also received a letter from her father, wherein he expressed his shame of her and scolded her. This upset Elizabet even further.

Ah, why did no one understand?

I am Elrise. Even though I love everyone and the world so much.

As she thought that, she hated everything even more.

While she kept saying she loved everything, she also hated it, but in her mind this was not inconsistent.

Because in the end, she was merely immersed in her delusion that she loved everyone and the world.

She didn’t truly love it, and didn’t even really care about the world.

She merely thought that this was how Elrise thought and acted as such.

Ah, I’m so jealous. It’s hateful. If only Elrise didn’t exist, then I would be Elrise instead.

If only she didn’t exist, then I would be the one who receives all the glory and fame.

Elizabet hated Elrise because of this absurd line of thought, which already destroyed the very premise of her delusions.

Needless to say, if Elrise really didn’t exist, she wouldn’t receive any glory or fame.

It was because they were different people from the very beginning. She was Elizabet Iblis, not Elrise.

Corrupted thoughts that were no longer capable of separating delusion from reality.

There was also her reputation with the people around her.

And regardless of what happened, she would disappear from the academy anyway.

These factors caught Octo’s eye.

It had to be her. If it was her, no one would be surprised if she took over the role of the Witch.

She was a little weak, but all Octo really needed was for her to do the role properly.

The important requirement was that no one loved her. She was hated by everyone.

Even better was the fact she had talked badly about the Saint on a daily basis.

The moment she repeatedly spoke disrespectfully toward the Saint, everyone already saw her as an existence that should disappear.

Then everyone would also think, “If only she was the Witch’s follower, then I could cut her down on the spot.”

That kind of thinking would soon change from “If only she was the Witch or her follower” into “You probably are the Witch or her follower.”

Surprisingly, if people’s expectations seemed likely to be met, then they became less suspicious.

Even if anyone realized that she was merely crazy, they wouldn’t try hard to disprove their expectations because they wished her to fulfill them.

Then the students, nay, everyone would think,

“Ah, as expected.”

Octo planned to manipulate everyone’s thoughts in such a direction.

Humans were strange. Even if they doubted or had suspicions about something, if the majority opposed them then they were easily and thought“It really might be  the case.”

Elrise herself might be more intelligent.

She might have thought that there was no way this kind of small fry could be a Witch.

But what would happen if the majority of voices overrode her opinion?

If everyone but Elrise said “She is the Witch” then Elrise couldn’t ignore it.

And with that, it might be possible to change how Elrise thought using the majority.

100 fools would lead the sage into doubt.

That was why Octo planned to make it into a big spectacle, as if the Witch had really appeared in front of masses.

It manipulated Elizabet to go up to the rooftop and declare that she was the Witch. Using Octo’s tentacles to make it look like she had the power of darkness, she would then expose the poor, captured students.

It might be better to kill one or two of them.

That would make all the witnesses feel aggression and hatred towards her, then Octo would escape before Elrise arrived.

If that happened, the majority would then say “Defeat Witch Elizabet” which would force Elrise to move.

For that first step, it moved toward the rooftop, then unleashed its mana

First, there had to be a flashy rampage that could be witnessed by a great number of students. 

Carrying out this first step, Octo began shooting magic toward the students who were currently practicing at the athletic field.

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