Editing Skill Tree Goddess:Volume1 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 1===

Gilbezos had no more reason to stay in Temple City Aeropremise, but the Sky Territory was in fact up in the sky. Leaving and then returning sounded like a huge pain. He wanted to do everything he could here while he was here.

So he used the Time Measurement skill used by chefs to nap for exactly 180 minutes until it was night.

“Hee hee hee. Oh, Gilbezos. You really shouldn’t rush head first into that mass of wriggling tentacles. See? Now it’s swallowed you whole. But it is so cute how your feet kick around like that★ Mutter, mutter.”

“What in the world is happening in her dream? …Hey, wake up, Lady Seliphenia. We need to get started.”

That goddess could give someone an internal clock skill, but she couldn’t wake up on her own? Yet she hadn’t had any trouble accompanying him when he walked up a vertical castle wall.

He left the inn with the 18-looking goddess. He snuck into the temple that’s usual security was down thanks to all the confusion of the priest’s fall, the loss of their goddess, the destruction of the barrier, and the damage to the temple.

Magic wasn’t the only kind of skill. Skills included things like a thief’s lock picking as well.

“Oh, so you’re opening all the chests in the completed dungeon before you leave the area? That is indeed the standard for adventurers.”

“No, stop trying to tempt me onto a wicked path.”

…Not that what he was doing was all that righteous.

Gilbezos wasn’t trying to steal anything as concrete as money. He wanted information.

“Come to think of it, I’ve never seen you afraid of the dark. The sleepiness doesn’t seem to be getting to you either.”

“Because I’m not a kid.”

“Oh, no! Your goddess is just sooooo scared of the dark★”

“Get off! That wasn’t remotely convincing, so stop grabbing at me!”

While moving through the dark, he pushed a statue, stepped on a floor switch, slid a monument to the side…and there it was. The small room he found contained exactly what he expected.

“I knew he’d have a place like this if he was doing all that scheming in such a large temple.”

“Bookcases full of parchment on every wall? That’s way too much for a secret account book.”

“They’re confession records. Those confessions are supposed to be held in the utmost confidence, but here we have records for them all.”

The short boy sighed.

Confession was the act of secretly telling the clergy about your sins or problems so the believer may be freed from their suffering and their sins erased. And yet the priest at this temple was secretly writing it all down without permission. He had even been underlining different confessions in red or blue to classify them by importance.

“That means he could easily gather blackmail material on everyone in the city. He was collecting scandals like this so he could bend people to his will. He has the city’s VIPs do his bidding like this and, if any lone wolf citizen resists him, he can reveal some choice information to ruin them.”

However, there was little point in making another attack on the priest after he was nearly turned into a star by the mama dragon’s scattershot breath. Gilbezos had said he wanted information. And by relying on this immoral little room, he was in no position to badmouth others.

“Who do you want dirt on, Gilbezos? I recommend a restaurant owner’s daughter. Fidget, fidget.”

“I want info on Brave Liar.”

“…Do you have any evidence he was ever in this city?”

“Nope,” readily admitted Gilbezos. “But as large as the kingdom is, everyone has heard of this religious city, right? During a time of great calamity, the priest will have been sent out to a battlefield or disaster site as a military chaplain. So that would have given him a lot more chance to contact the famous heroes and warriors fighting on the front line than if he stayed at home.”

However, the records were extensive. And there might not be any on Brave Liar. After locating the bookshelf with confessions taken on the battlefield, Gilbezos checked through them to find a lot by other people.

These were the confessions of veteran heroes and warriors. The records appeared to be from the time of the National Survival War in which one of the Demon Lord’s right-hand men, known as the Three Aides, was slain. They were all about things the temple would consider sins and must not ever be made public. A surprising number of them were confessions of fear concerning upcoming battles. Maybe that just showed those famous people were still human. Or so Gilbezos thought, but the actual confessions were a little different.

''“These monsters can speak, which makes it so hard to fight them. Is there no magic to deafen my ears?”

''“I saw a cyclops try and fail to call out to one of his own kind. I wonder if he had a crush? I pains me to think we have to attack them soon.”

''“Is it really right for us humans to enter a cerberus’s den and slay her when she is only trying to protect her children?”

Apparently the boy wasn’t the only one who questioned these things.

“The National Survival War, hm? I don’t know what it was like then since I wasn’t in the capital at the time, but I’ve heard the monsters made it pretty close to the city.”

“That was a rather unusual war because the humans overcame their disadvantage by calling in a bunch of summoners and tamers so they too could send monsters out to fight. The presence of ''monsters on their side'' may have led to a lot of the humans on the front line beginning to empathize with them.”

Gilbezos recalled Knight Saezuri saying her targets were all human. That had simply terrified him at the time, but looking back on it now, maybe that was easier on her conscience.

Because she was fighting humans for the misdeeds they had committed instead of attacking monsters just for being monsters.

''“He has done nothing wrong. In fact, I asked him to do it. Because I have trouble feeling needed if I’m not being harmed.”

“…”

“Boy, this really isn’t the kind of material you should be poring through like this. It’s depressing.”

“I know that.”

Since he had snuck in, his time was limited. It was time to leave. There had been some valuable information in there, but he hadn’t found anything on Brave Liar himself.

“Any luck?”

“Yes. Just knowing that Brave Liar fought in the National Survival War is enough.”

He had seen a lot. He couldn’t be certain, but he was pretty sure he was right.

Gilbezos slipped out of the temple.

“Come to think of it, this temple might capture a new Saint. What are you going to do about that?”

“The door to that room of secret blackmail material is never closing again. Because I broke the mechanism when we left.”

“…”

“There’s no hiding it from the city’s people anymore. Oh, no. How is the temple going to get rebuilt now?”

Back in his room in the Queen Size inn, he gathered his things and napped until morning.

“I can hear the temple crumbling already. Anyway, it’s about time I searched out Brave Liar.”

“That means heading down to the surface, right? What about the exorbitant cost?”

…Oh, right? What about that? His guild reward was meant to come from the corrupt priest, so that wasn’t happening anymore. He still needed to pay for the ad crane that was so expensive it was known as entertainment for aristocrats.

Gilbezos heard a flapping sound from overhead.

It came from Yuileen, the SS-class Uroboros-form dragon. She had a small figure on her back. It looked like they weren’t interested in staying in Sunset Autumn Skyland. They apparently intended to move elsewhere to get a fresh start.

“There’s an idea. We can’t pay the absurd price for an ad crane, but we can hitch a ride on the back of our mama dragon friend, can’t we? And I’ll be nice enough to ignore what a certain silly goddess said.”

“Hee hee hee. My, how fun. That’s the perfect idea, boy. If you ignore the fact that an SS-rank dragon has no seats, railings, lifelines, or safety belts★”

“…”