Chapter 217
Palermo, a city located in Sicily.
-Victimae paschali laudes.
-(Praise the sacrifices of the Paschals.)
The interior of Palermo Cathedral was echoing with the voices of the choir singing the chant.
Light streamed in from the ceiling, and the marble statues bathed in warmth.
Surrounded by them, the man sitting alone in the cathedral, praying, hears the echo of footsteps behind him and slowly rises to his feet.
"Amen."
He finishes his prayer, slowly raises his head, and quietly asks.
"What's going on? I thought I told you not to disturb Mass."
"Sorry, Don. The matter is urgent."
"Urgent matters? Okay, let's hear it, why did you interrupt Mass?"
He hesitated to speak for a moment, then slowly brought his head to the man's ear and said.
"It is Corleone. Corleone Jr. came to see me about some money."
"what?"
The man chuckles, as if he wasn't expecting this.
"Corleone Jr. came all the way to Italy?"
"That's right. Not only does he have things that symbolize his affiliation with Corleone, but he also looks like the dragon slayer my old boss told me about."
"Enough-."
The man raised his hand gently, cutting him off.
"That's enough bring in Corleone Jr."
"Yes, Don Medici."
The man with Medici's orders walked away, and Medici stared at the cross in front of him as the choir sang.
-Agnus redemit oves.
-(The Lamb has saved the great flock)
At the same time, the sound of footsteps was heard from behind.
-Agnus
-Agnus
-too
-To
Someone in a black suit casually sits down next to Medici and puts his hands together in prayer.
In response, the man slowly turns his head to look at the person sitting next to him.
"Amen."
After a brief prayer, the man lifts his face and slowly turns his head to look into Medici's eyes.
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Don Medici."
The man speaks first, his expression a mixture of relaxed, nervous, and intrigued, and Medici slides his sunglasses down slightly, intrigued.
"Corleone Jr. I never thought I'd meet you here."
"I didn't expect to meet you so soon either. I'm sure the last time we saw each other wasthe other day in Walpurgis, albeit from a distance."
Eugene stretches his back fully as he says this, and Medici raises a brow in amusement.
"Yes, I'm sure I saw you then, but what brings you here, interrupting someone else's mass?"
At that, Eugene glanced at the crucifix.
"Nothing much."
He looked back at the Medici in front of him.
"I just wanted to make a suggestion."
"A suggestion?"
-tu nobis, victor Rex, miserere.
-(Have pity on us, victorious king, pity us)
" The debt the Maestro owes you. I propose to pay it all."
-Amen. Alleluia.
-(Amen. Praise the Lord.)
* * *
The choir finishes singing and the cathedral falls silent.
He stares silently into my eyes behind his sunglasses.
However, he can't do anything to me right now.
Were in a "cathedral, a place of sacred promise where force is taboo.
"Ha!"
The first sound to break the silence was a loud laugh.
"Haha! Hahahahaha! Hahahahaha! So that's why you came to me, hahahahaha! Hahahahaha!"
He laughs as the priest walks away, then slips a hand under his sunglasses to wipe away a tear.
I never imagined that the old man would bring Corleone. Okay. Did he say he would help you if you wiped out his debt?
Actually, because Corleone owed himIn the first place, as far as I know, is there anyone in Sicily who did not owe Maestro Ludvio?
I was sure there wasn't.
He was a man who had been generous with his fortune for the good of Sicily and its people since time immemorial.
"I'm sure he's only gotten a few crumbs of bread for his efforts."
"So that's what the Medici family thinks, unlike Corleone."
"Corleone must be a fool. Medici sees the present not the future or the past."
I can't help but snort at the Medici family epithet that leaps out of his mouth.
If he was going to say this, it meant he had no intention of backing down from this.
"Well, then, I suppose I have no choice but to approach it a little differently, since begging for mercy has proven difficult for Don Medici."
"Approach it differentlywhat, are you going to start a war here?"
Medici looked around as he said that and shrugged his shoulders.
The cathedral was a sacred space where even the Mafia was not allowed to commit any violence, which is why most of them did their business and negotiations there.
"War, I don't think I could have come here with such a radical idea. We, Corleone, are not the kind of people who would wage war on a whim."
"You."
Even behind his sunglasses, his stare is sharp enough to pierce through a man.
But I return the stare with a calm smile.
"What I have to offer Don Medici is business."
"Business? I'm afraid, Corleone Junior, no matter how much you"
"Volcano Etna."
He stops talking at my words.
"You're in quite the predicament because of the Volcano Etna, aren't you?"
I smile and make it sound like it's no big deal, and he slowly removes his sunglasses with trembling hands and places them on the table in his chair.
His eyes are deep with age and his hands are rough.
He dry-washed his face and gently opened his mouth, looking at me with a gaze that felt heavy just a moment ago.
"Who did you hear it from? Is it Corleone?"
His demeanor was completely different from before.
His voice, which had been playful, was as cold as ice, and the corners of his mouth, where a smile usually lingered, were drawn into a line.
" Corleone."
"I've been hiding it from you for years, and the fact that you know about it means that the Corleone intelligence office has already figured it out."
Medici was an ordinary man, not an Awakened.
He was a non-Awakened man who rose to the top through his own resourcefulness.
Maybe that's why.
"Don't say Corleone doesn't know. If you do, I will have to kill you with my own hands."
I felt a tremendous amount of pressure coming from him now.
This is the man they call the Godfather of Sicily, Shylock Medici.
But
Do you think itll be easy?
I put on my best relaxed smile and looked toward the crucifix in Shylock church.
"Here."
He seemed to get it and his eyes flickered shallowly.
"So this was your plan all along. The whole reason you came to the cathedral in the first place was intentional."
"Of course it was. I'm here to see Don Medici, of all people, and I don't think I'd come without thinking about it. Andto answer the question you asked me a moment ago, I don't think anyone in Corleone still knows about the Volcano' Etna except me."
"What?"
"You know what that means."
"Hmm."
He leans forward and rests his head on the backrest as if he's heard my answer.
"Yes, but why tell me about it? I'm sure I've told you before, if you only knew, you'd die."
This man was sincere now.
He would kill me, the heir to Corleone, and cover it up to hide the information about the Etna volcano.
He was a man of the present, not the future.
"Even on the Night of Walpurgis, did you see me as someone who would die easily?"
I kept my smile on my face the whole time, and then I pulled out a piece of paper I'd been folding in my pocket and waved it at him.
Medici's expression instantly changed.
"that."
"Don Medici would know what this is."
[Free one-time pass to Midsummer!]
A tactical weapon of sorts, capable of summoning dozens of mad fairies just by tearing it open.
"Do it. I can tear this thing apart right now and make the Medici stay in the past."
I said it with a tone of sincerity.
If I summoned the fairies here and now, I was confident they would do devastating damage to Shylock Medici and the Medici family.
"You're going to use that in the cathedral?"
"You threatened to kill me in the cathedral in the first place, so what's the problem, and violence is something fairies do, not me, and fairiesknow that, right?"
They only follow their king, the Fairy King, and they don't care about Catholics.
"These things are so scary these days."
"You shouldn't be this scared."
I hadn't even begun to tell the real story yet.
"I know what Don Medici wants to get from the Etna volcano. I also know why he's been playing tricks with the contract and getting Maestro Ludvio into debt."
"And you are aware of that?"
"Isn't it because of the Ignis Giant?"
A fire giant lurking in a dungeon deep within the Etna volcano.
The Medici family have been preparing for years to destroy it.
"You knowso you know why I'm trying to hunt the Fire Giant."
"The byproducts of hunting the Fire Giant, the intention to use them to shake up the economy of Europebut that's just to make it sound plausible. The real reason is the Ignis essence, isn't it?"
And for the first time, his expression wavered.
"That, how could you?"
And at the same time.
[The other person is starting to feel afraid of you.]
[The "offer you can't refuse" is activated.]
Everything started to fall into place.
I lightly tapped my finger on my temple and said to him.
"The important thing right now is not how I know that, Don Medici, but why I'm telling you this information so bluntly."
In an instant, the mood turned sour, and his once confident expression crumbled.
He's probably right, too, because I've just told him a secret that he's kept to himself and a few henchmen his entire life.
So I threw out a little hope.
"I, I can help you."
"what?"
"I'm saying I'll help you with the attack on the fire giant in the Etna volcano. As Don Medici knows, I'm quite an expert in this sort of thing, such as Fafnir on the island of Jeju."
Because humans find hope in fear.
"I can help you on the cheap. For a little bit of goodwill on your part for hiring me, and the very simple task of wiping out Maestro Ludvio's debt, you can have the essence of a fire giant. How does that sound?"
I couldn't help but give him a glimmer of hope.
"Don Medici."
After all, men fear the future more than the present.
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