"Prayer?"

Igor appeared rather interested in Joshua's exclamation, and stayed to press him. "You heard prayers from the Great Shrine? Or hymns of the Sacred Mountain? If that's true, your hearing is astonishing."

"What I heard wasn't those," Joshua muttered doubtfully to himself for a while, deciding that he had nothing to hide from the old pontiff, and thus recounted what he did to a certain balrog in the Sixth Abyss.

"That's about it. I used Steel Strength to alter its entire body to become stronger, purging most of the toxic and radioactive substance in its body and basically cleansing it utterly, making it as harmless as a slime. It was also precisely the reason that its body still keeps part of my Steel Strength, and it appeared to be praying to me just now."

At that, the warrior laughed rather feebly. "Perhaps it had actually consecrated me after encountering those things? I had merely spared its life because it was rather obedient, or could it be another omen of divinity awa