For Sale: Male Lead, Obsession Included - Chapter 103
The novel I transmigrated into was filled with fantasy-typical settings. Things like divine power emanating from trees, or using that power to heal wounds and perform magic.
Seonui Lake was the same. It was said to endlessly produce sacred water that allowed divine power to well up from the Sacred Tree. That’s why it was also called the Lifewater of the Sacred Tree.
And in the story, Seonui Lake becomes polluted.
It’s described that once polluted, Seonui Lake gradually begins to dry up, and eventually, even the color of the water turns dark.
‘Just like now.’
Before long, the lake would turn pitch-black, as if black ink had been poured into it, and the villagers would be consumed by fear.
When the only drinking water source in the village became contaminated and people felt their lives were threatened, they desperately searched for something to save them and clung to it. That ‘something’ was the Pope’s pilgrimage procession.
At the peak of people’s fear, the Pope would appear. The villagers were to be sacrificed in a holy temple’s scheme.
「 Priest, could you please take a look? I heard the village chief sent someone to the Holy Kingdom because something was wrong with the lake, but there’s been no news at all. 」
Ariel, who had been mesmerized by the beautiful sight of Seonui Lake, startled and his expression instantly hardened as I translated for him.
“The water is drying up…?”
A reduction in divine power meant the water was drying up. If the water dried up, then it was only a matter of time before the Sacred Tree dried up too.
Ariel’s faith was not in the Sacred Tree itself, but in the angel Natasia who resided within it. But if the tree housing the angel withered and died, it would mean the disappearance of the angel’s incarnation itself—a disaster for priests, as if their god’s physical form had vanished.
Because he was a priest, Ariel was the only one among us allowed to approach the lake. He slowly walked to the lakeside, removed his shoes neatly at the edge, and after a brief silent prayer, stepped slowly into the water.
He waded in up to his ankles, then knelt and closed his eyes. Soon, Ariel’s fine silver hair rose strand by strand, and his divine power flowed out like a shimmering haze.
That divine power flew like butterflies, touching the surface of the lake and creating circular ripples.
Looking like an immortal guarding the lake, Ariel’s mysterious appearance utterly entranced me.
If Ariel had been a woman, I might have felt like the woodcutter who’d found a fairy.
“……”
Everyone held their breath, waiting for Ariel’s prayer. How long did we wait like that? Finally, Ariel opened his eyes.
「 Priest, what’s the situation…? 」
“…I do feel something, but perhaps because I am lacking, I can’t quite tell what it is.”
Seeing Ariel shake his head, Okhee and Nari looked close to tears.
「 Oh dear, there really must be something wrong with the lake. What are we going to do? 」
Normally, when something dries up a sacred lake like this, you’d suspect an unclean presence or the influence of dark magic, so it was only natural to try to sense something like that. So it made sense that Ariel didn’t know the true cause of the lake’s sickness.
But, astonishingly, the one who was drying up the lake was just a single human. Sleeping at the very bottom of the lake.
“Let’s not just stand here. Let’s go down and pray.”
“Pray?”
“Soon, there’ll be a rite led by Priest Taolti. Whether it’s anger or sorrow, the priest said we need to soothe the lake.”
…Huh?
Taolti, that guy…
Are you a fraud?
***
After coming back down the hill behind Okhee’s house, we returned to the market street, which was now much quieter.
Everyone seemed to have gone to participate in the rite Okhee mentioned.
We hurried along and arrived at a riverbank where the altar was set up.
The altar itself looked both peculiar and wondrous.
“Heh heh…”
Strips of colorful cloth stretched between trees, and fruits and foods were neatly stacked high on ritual tables. That wasn’t all. There were large spears as if for beheading a monster, and candles burning all around the altar.
Anyone raised in Korea would instantly recognize this as a kut (Korean shamanic ritual).
Dongguk, in the original setting, was a country inspired by Korea, so the existence of a kut wasn’t so strange… But the reason I found this kut peculiar was none other than Taolti standing in the center.
Where there should have been a shaman in heavy makeup and a brightly colored hanbok, there was Taolti in a neat gray priest’s robe… kneeling in prayer.
‘Author, what kind of fusion fantasy is this?’
So this is how you blend East and West…? For me, as a former reader now thrown into the author’s imagination, the result was honestly bewildering.
Just then—
Taolti snapped open a brilliant, patterned fan with a flourish.
“Let us pray!”
Oh wow. Taolti, aren’t you going to get up on the ritual blade too?
Stunned, I watched Taolti’s bizarre performance, my jaw hanging open. My dazed expression was no different from Ariel’s.
Seeing someone worshipping the same god and wearing the same priest’s robe leading some unheard-of ritual and stirring up the crowd… It was only natural to be dumbfounded.
