Shota's Isekai NTR Adventure-Chapter 984: Saint once more (2)

The priests on the side looked angry hearing these words and were about to stand up to say something, but the pope raised his hand to stop them.

For the first time, the smile had disappeared from his face.

Instead, it seemed like he was gritting his teeth and thinking about something.

The priests fell silent seeing this and waited for the pope to speak.

I narrowed my eyes to look at him for a bit, but then I suddenly stood up and said, "If there is nothing else, I think we can end this matter here. I still have some other things to attend to."

I didn't actually have anything else to do, but I knew that there was nothing good about giving the pope time to think. Just giving him this meeting was already enough to repay my favour to the priest from my town, so there was no need to give them more.

After I stood up, the prime minister and the regent stood up as well.

I could see the way that they were looking at me, but they didn't say anything as we turned to leave.

But before we could leave, the pope suddenly said, "Your majesty, please wait."

I didn't plan on stopping, but he suddenly stood up and grabbed my hand.

I narrowed my eyes and turned back to look at the pope who was holding me.

It didn't seem like he was planning to let go, so I prepared to say something.

But before I could, he said, "Your majesty, I think that there's no need for us to beat around the bush. Let us both lay our cards on the table."

I narrowed my eyes even more when I heard this.

Still, I said, "What do you have to offer then?"

While I wasn't planning on actually accepting anything that they had to offer, I knew that it was impossible for the pope to leave matters here that easily.

So the only thing that I could do was listen to what he had to say and then reject him.

The pope didn't answer right away as he looked at me with a strange look.

But eventually, he said with a bitter smile, "I apologize for what I have done. I hope that we can move past this and work with each other in the future."

Even though he waited for me to say something, I didn't say anything in response to this. I just calmly looked at the pope and waited to see what else he had to say.

The pope slightly knitted his brows seeing this, but he still continued by saying, "Your majesty, I feel that we still have some value to you. After all, the title of saint is not an empty one and there are benefits that come from it."

"Even if there are benefits that come from it, I don't want to be backstabbed the ones that I'm working with." I bluntly said to him without any hesitation.

The priests didn't seem like they felt any guilt about this, rather they seemed like they were a bit annoyed with the way that I was speaking. However, since the pope didn't do anything, there wasn't anything that they could do.

The pope gave a nod to acknowledge this before saying, "But we can give you knowledge and resources that you lack. As long as you're willing to cooperate with us, we'll give them to your kingdom and never ask for them back."

"Ha, like it would be that easy."

"We'll give you a sacred relic." The pope suddenly said.

The two priests looked at the pope in shock when they heard this.

That actually made me a bit interested since the last one that I received was the staff from the dwarves. After using it, I knew just how powerful these relics were and how valuable they could be.

So there was a part of me that was moved by the mention of a relic.

Only I was moved for a second before shaking my head and saying, "That just puts a bigger target on my back. Will your nation really hand over a relic without a single sound? There's no doubt that it would draw even more attention to me so that we have no choice but to rely on you further. It seems like you're really looking down on us."

After shaking my head, I turned around and said, "It really seems like there's nothing else to discuss. I had hoped for more, but I can only say that I'm disappointed."

Especially since they were from the same religion as the priest from my town.

I thought that they would at least have some kind of integrity, but it didn't seem like this was the case.

Since the pope wouldn't let go, I pulled my hand away.

However, I found that he was quite strong even with his old age and it was hard for me to pull away at first. It was only after pulling several times that I was able to pull my hand out of his grip.

The pope gritted his teeth once more and said, "We'll give you our Holy Empire's support. No one will dare provoke you as long as you have our Holy Empire's support."

"All that will do is make us fall under the Holy Empire if we accept. When the time comes, you will be able to do whatever you want behind the scenes to slowly weaken my country and take over. If you do that, there's nothing that I can do to stop you if you want to do anything to me." I said without even bothering to turn back.

It seemed that old ginger really was the spiciest. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓

This pope was a sly old man who kept coming up with tricks on the fly to try and get me to fall under them.

It was just too bad that I wasn't that easy to fool.

No matter what tricks he used, I wouldn't fall for them.