I Got Reincarnated as a Villainous Noble, and When I Tried to Create an All-Male Academy to Avoid a Bad Ending, for Some Reason the Gender Ratio Reversed?

Chapter 53: The Saintess’s Job Trouble

—She’s on the verge of getting fired as a saintess.

I decided to hear the details from Alenaria again.

“So basically… I got yelled at for abusing the saintess’s power.”

Alenaria clasped her hands in front of her chest, looking all droopy and staring at the floor while she talked.

Her explanation had way too much of her own spin on it, so it was kinda hard to follow at first, but once I broke it down properly, I finally got the picture.

“I see.”

Looks like the whole Marilyn thing was still dragging on.

Because of that statement about the crown prince, the church took at least some damage.

Apparently the royal side made some kind of request to limit their missionary work or something.

Of course the church pushed back hard, and in the end they got it withdrawn, but there was definitely a crack between them and the royals now.

And the direct cause of that crack? Alenaria’s suggestion.

The higher-ups in the church decided it was her fault, so they were pinning the whole blame on her alone.

The more I heard, the more it felt like she was getting scapegoated for everything, but there was no way Alenaria could argue back properly…

“Hic, if this keeps up I’m gonna end up with zero money…”

She was seriously about to get canned.

While rubbing at the corners of her eyes, she snuck a quick glance my way and went,

“If things stay like this I won’t even be able to eat rusks anymore. Ol-san, you gotta take responsibility, okay?”

Her eyes were straight-up pleading.

—Rusk’s got nothing to do with this, right?

It crossed my mind for a second, but I didn’t say it out loud.

Since I couldn’t completely say this mess had zero connection to me, I couldn’t just brush her off either.

Well, okay, the rusk part was unrelated, but still.

“Anyway, don’t worry about the rusks.”

“Really??”

“The marquis house’ll make sure they’re supplied properly.”

“Yayyy!”

The second I said that, her face bloomed into this huge, flower-like smile.

“Ol-san! I’m following you forever!”

She said it and dove right at me with full force.

Her big chest jiggled, and this overwhelming mass came flying my way, but if I caught her here Fran and Marilyn would label it cheating and I’d be done for.

“Whoa!?”

I dodged with some quick footwork, and she stumbled forward from the momentum.

But she didn’t seem to care at all and just stood there giggling,

“Rusk♪ Rusk♪ ehehe”

with this blissed-out grin like a total addict.

While I watched her out of the corner of my eye, I started thinking about what came next.

The original doom flags really had been avoided.

But none of the problems were actually over.

The witch. What the protagonist crew was up to. And Alenaria.

Why did I keep getting dragged into so much crap?

Honestly, I just wanted to bury my face in my hands.

“Ah, I wanna eat at least three rusks a day. But but, my real dream is six. Yeah I’ll gain weight, I’ll definitely gain weight, but I’ll work it off with exercise so it’s fine!”

Still, watching Alenaria beam while throwing out these random demands… I just couldn’t leave her hanging.

※

After that I did a little digging into the church stuff.

Not that I had any real info-gathering skills, so I just called out to one of the cult followers who happened to be praying in the corner of my vision.

“Mind if I ask you something?”

“Ahh, my god! Anything you command! Aaaahhh!”

She was this pink-haired classmate of mine.

Since she was basically the cult’s organizer, she probably knew plenty about church matters too.

“You know anything about Saintess Alenaria maybe getting fired as a saintess?”

“Ahh, of course I do!”

She answered with this ecstatic look on her face.

“Can you tell me the details?”

“Aaaaahhh, talking directly with god is the ultimate bliss…”

“…………”

I wasn’t sure if this counted as talking, but she went ahead and explained everything anyway.

It mostly lined up with what Alenaria said, but there was one small difference.

“The church fears our god who leads the marquis house. They used to have a cooperative relationship with the saintess included, but lately your influence has grown so much they’re worried the church itself might get taken over.”

“I see.”

“In fact, our followers are expanding. Just in the capital alone we’ve easily passed a thousand.”

“A thousand!?”

I seriously thought this was just some silly in-school cult thing.

But turns out behind my back the believers had ballooned that much.

Total shock.

I mean, yeah, Olufusen dolls were spreading around town and stuff.

But still, I never imagined it’d blow up to that level. No way anyone would think that.

“So the church is wary of me, and that’s why they wanna kick out Alenaria since she’s close to me.”

“That seems highly likely. From my perspective, it’s only a matter of time before the saintess gets purged. Resisting would be pointless.”

“Got it. Anyway, you sure gathered a ton of church info.”

“My brother works inside the church.”