I Became the Leader of the Monster Circus Troupe - Chapter 542
EP. 541 20. Wandering Saint (8)
“I’ve been targeted again.”
When giving advice, the Dean always started his stories by throwing out a name as an example. Judging from the fact that he had brought up the story of Hugo Maroine, it seemed that pressure was coming in from somewhere to expel him again.
“Assemblyman Radetzky, is it?”
“You know him well.”
Huntke smiled wryly. Radetzky was a prominent member of the Social Democratic Party, which currently held the majority in the Pravin City Council. He had been on bad terms with Huntke since last year.
It had all started when a satirical play criticizing his proposed redevelopment policy was performed by one of Professor Huntke’s students. Radetzky, who was offended by this, had pressured Pravin University to fire Professor Huntke after winning a landslide victory in this year’s election.
Thanks to the Dean’s defense, Huntke had managed to avoid being dismissed. If he had kept a low profile after that, the Dean would have petitioned the board of directors to reinstate him after about six months.
However, Huntke did not remain docile. He had entered the open-air theater auditions, which he had previously refused to participate in as a judge despite requests from the city authorities, and had won in a landslide. Not only did he win, but he also beat both the Golden Carnival and the Circus of Wheels, the two favorites to win, causing a huge stir.
After years of silence, he had finally made a name for himself in the world again. Naturally, rumors about the fact that he had recently been suspended from the university and the reason for it spread like wildfire.
According to the Dean, Assemblyman Radetzky had been heavily criticized by his political opponents because of this. He was accused of destroying not only the region’s old buildings but also its human resources. Thanks to this, his ambitious plan to redevelop the slums had been put on hold.
“The construction companies that had paid bribes to Assemblyman Radetzky must be in an uproar.”
“That’s why the atmosphere is a bit strange. A friend of mine in the Social Democratic Party told me that Assemblyman Radetzky has invited the ‘Wandering Saint’ to Pravin.”
Huntke’s expression darkened at the Dean’s words.
Claude Frollo.
He had a good reputation among the public because of his title as the Wandering Saint and his peacekeeping activities. However, he was not so well-regarded among intellectuals. They knew how much he benefited personally from his saintly act.
“Isn’t Assemblyman Radetzky’s brother-in-law the cousin of the Archbishop of Pravin?”
“It seems like they have some kind of deal. Are they coming to ‘cleanse’ the slums?”
“Probably. What I’m trying to say is that you should be careful. You’re not under the university’s protection right now, and you’re on bad terms with the city government. On top of that, the Archbishop and other bigwigs like the Saint are involved in this. So don’t do anything rash, like trying to strike back at Assemblyman Radetzky. Like planning a provocative performance with the Monster Circus Troupe.”
“Oh, as expected of my teacher. You’re giving your student new ideas. I just had a flash of inspiration. What if Director Wonder Stein played the role of the Wandering Saint, and the monster members played his followers in a satirical play….”
“Behave yourself.”
When the Dean asked him seriously, Huntke stopped joking and nodded.
“I understand. I should also warn the director, just in case. The lodgings we found are right in front of the redevelopment area.”
***
Sven and Clara, who had visited the Circus of Wheels, were also talking about the Wandering Saint.
Esmeralda did not like the idea of encountering Frollo’s group. She had been keeping an eye on his movements for a long time, so she had been able to get the news that he was coming to Pravin in advance.
“Why are you so wary of him?”
“I had a bad experience with him.”
“Why?”
“……Because of my father.”
The exact cause of Saint Victor’s death had been revealed 25 years ago. When the Orthodox Church, which opposed the conversion of Saint Victor’s Cathedral into a circus school, renovated the ruins where Victor and the Plague Lord had fought in the past and turned them into a museum, the site was examined and verified.
Sven knew what she was talking about. In front of the place where he had been exhibited, there was a very detailed description of what had happened to him.
Victor was stabbed in the back by a gypsy he had saved. And people knew Sven as the culprit.
“Scholars were smart. They analyzed the remains of my father’s clothing, traced the origins of the dagger, and compared it to past records to figure out what tribe my father was from. They also found out that I was his daughter. Oh, don’t worry. My father didn’t think about such things.”
It was merely a study conducted in an academic field. To begin with, it was ridiculous to come charging in now because of something that happened 100 years ago and try to judge bloodlines. The Papacy was not such a narrow-minded place, and it was not an era where such logic was accepted.
However, Esmeralda herself felt like she had already been punished. She found out that her father was actually a shameless wretch who did not know the kindness of the villains, and she shivered with a sense of betrayal.
She was able to accept the fact that her father was executed for attempted robbery. Her father was a chieftain, and she told herself that he made a mistake because he was pressured by financial problems due to his sense of responsibility.
But this time it was different. He was just a hopeless hypocrite and a coward. The fact that the dagger he used to stab Victor was his close friend’s dagger tormented Esmeralda even more.
Stealing was not a mistake after all. He was originally that kind of person. After confirming the dagger, Esmeralda had no choice but to accept that her father had secretly embezzled the tribe’s public funds, killed his friend, and claimed that he had stolen the money and ran away.
It was from then on that she began to obsess over the tribe’s morality in an abnormal way. She cut the Achilles tendon of her granddaughter who committed theft and cut off the hands of her grandson who sold drugs.
“What does that have to do with the Wandering Saint?”
“The person who took in the granddaughter who was exiled for stealing was Frollo. She even had his child. Of course, she died shortly after giving birth.”
“Ah.”
“As soon as Frollo took the place of the Wandering Saint, he tried to cleanse our tribe. Someone from the tribe got caught while selling wormwood. That was Clara’s father. Frollo was persistent. If we made a mistake, the entire tribe could be implicated. So I had no choice but to make a decision.”
Esmeralda finished speaking and looked at Clara.
“I’m sorry. My narrow-mindedness caused you and your father to suffer.”
Clara slowly shook her head at her apology, which was filled with sincerity. This was not the kind of family history she wanted to hear. However, in order to hear the story she wanted, she decided to go along with it for now.
“No. It’s true that my father sinned. Even if that hadn’t happened, he would have been expelled from the tribe according to the rules anyway. You don’t have to apologize.”
There was not a shadow of a doubt in her laughter. Phoebus closed his eyes tightly as if he had been saved by her words.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Anyway, it’s thanks to those things that I am who I am today.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
Esmeralda wiped away her tears. Sven, who was looking at her with pity, hesitated to say something comforting and decided to change the subject. There was one question that had just crossed his mind.
“But why did Frollo come to cleanse the tribe? Could it have been revenge for his dead wife?”
“I don’t think so. However, it’s clear that he heard something from that child. He offered to withdraw the purification if I handed over the tribe’s sacred relic.”
“Sacred relic? Oh, that stone.”
Sven recalled a memory from long ago.
The ‘wheel’ pattern that the Circus of Wheels currently uses as its symbol originally meant ‘eye’. The round circle that looks like the rim of a wheel actually refers to an eyeball, the red dot in the center that is considered the axis of the wheel is the pupil, and the spokes of the wheel that connect the two are actually the iris.
The reason Sven adopted the eye as the symbol of the tribe was because their tribe’s name was ‘The Eye of Circus’.
The tribe was given that name not only because they were performers, but also because of the sacred relic that was passed down to the chieftain. It was a red jewel the size of a human eyeball, and according to legend, it symbolized the eye with which Circus looked out upon the world.
“It’s true that the tribe was named that way because they were a group of performers, but above all else, it was because of the sacred treasure passed down to the tribal chief. It was a red jewel the size of a human eyeball, and according to legend, it symbolized the eye with which Kirukus gazed upon the world.”
“Ah, I see. If I had paid attention to that part, it would have been easier for me to find you….”
“You too, Dad. Of course you should have tracked where the tribe’s sacred treasure went, right?”
Sven let out an awkward laugh at her question.
“Actually, I didn’t think much of that stone.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because it was just a trinket I picked up at the market….”
Esmeralda’s eyes widened at Sven’s words.
“You told me it was a heirloom passed down through the generations!”
“Hahaha, you still believed that? The truth is, when I was a kid and I was performing on the street at the market, a girl gave it to me as a replacement for money because she thought it was funny. That nonsense about it being the Eye of Kirukus was something she told me. When I checked it out, I could tell it wasn’t a real jewel. I figured it was probably a magician’s prop or something a sorcerer would use, since it would occasionally glow. She was the first person to watch my performance from beginning to end, so I carried it around as a kind of symbol of my confidence. I’d tell people the story about the Eye of Kirukus that the girl had told me. None of the tribe believed me, but I never thought you would.”
Sven’s words made Esmeralda laugh because they were so absurd. To think that he had lived his life thinking that the thing he had treasured so much was nothing but a fake!
“So when Prollo asked for it, you gave it to him?”
“No. My granddaughter had already stolen it and sold it to someone. They said they offered her a huge sum of money. Prollo came looking for me because he was hoping that we hadn’t gotten rid of it. Of course, we wanted to get it back, but we had no idea who it had ended up in the hands of, so we gave up a long time ago. It’s clear that someone had put my granddaughter up to it….”
Clara sat quietly in the corner, listening to the two of them talk. She was able to figure out how things had gone down based on the information and abilities she had acquired from her sisters in the dollhouse.
Based on the circumstances, it was clear that the person who had put Esmeralda’s granddaughter up to it was Igor.
“But then Thrill appeared again at the 2nd Circus Grand Prix. I wondered if maybe they had given back the thing they had stolen from our tribe. But it wasn’t. The size and shape were completely different. I heard that someone else had borrowed from Kirukus and received a new jewel.”
After the first tournament, Igor had Esmeralda’s granddaughter steal Thrill. That’s why Wonderstain had no choice but to manufacture a new Thrill for the second tournament. If they didn’t perform the ceremony, Kirukus would open his eyes and go berserk.
And 18 years ago, during the second tournament, when the power of the eyes was at its peak, Igor took out the eye he had been hiding and clashed the power of the two eyes.
Autostereogram.
A form of sorcery commonly known as ‘Magic Eye’.
In everyday life, it was known as a way to make a two-dimensional image appear three-dimensional by deliberately misaligning the focus of the two eyes.
Hidden in that explanation was a description that accurately captured the sorcerous principle of the Magic Eye. Namely, that by aligning the focus of two eyes that shared a fundamental connection, it was possible to summon a being from another dimension into this one.
It was clear what Igor had been trying to summon with the autostereogram using the two Thrills.
It was the master of the eyes, the drunken Kirukus.