Chapter 62
From the moment Prea laid eyes on Yubel, horribly mangled, the situation began spiraling toward an irredeemable catastrophe.
‘Is this…… a dream? A-Am I dreaming right now?’
Denial.
Prea couldn’t bring herself to accept the horrific sight before her. The moment she acknowledged reality, she felt she would let go of the last thread holding her life together, so she desperately tried to deny it.
There was no way that unrecognizable corpse could be Lady Yubel. There was no way the arms and legs rolling across the floor could be Lady Yubel’s body. This couldn’t be real. It had to be a terrible nightmare. It had to be. Otherwise……
“……Ugh!”
But the heavy scent of blood and the chill seeping into her bones cruelly reminded her that all of this was real.
A splitting headache forced her to realize that the figure before her was her—the companion she had missed so dearly, the friend she had ultimately dragged into the swamp of death with her own hands.
“Haa, sob…… Gasp! Haa…… No, no……! Ugh……! Ugh……!”
How much pain had Yubel felt each time her flesh tore in that freezing cage? How loudly had she screamed when her arm was severed? And what kind of despair had swept over her when her perfectly healthy legs were suddenly taken from her?
As she imagined it, a guilt even more crushing than before crawled up her spine.
All of the pain, misery, despair, and sorrow her friend had felt had come from her. Prea struggled to breathe and began to convulse.
It was all because of me.
I ruined everything.
I killed my companion, my friend.
With my own hands.
“I—!!!”
Just then.
“You came…….”
“!!!”
A voice came from the corpse.
A voice so hoarse it was difficult to make out.
Even so, it told Prea that Yubel was still alive.
‘She’s still al-alive. I, I have to save her……! I have to heal her right now, with my divine power. I have to use my divine power to save her……!’
Prea’s thoughts were in a jumble.
On top of that, her legs were shaking so badly she couldn’t move forward.
She wanted to go to Yubel, but her body wouldn’t obey.
I’m pathetic.
Yes, that word she’d always heard at the orphanage had been made for someone like her. She was sure of it.
Why was she so useless?
“I’m sorry…… I can’t hear right now. It’s okay, I’ll definitely get better……. Yeah, so don’t worry, okay?”
The voice came again.
A voice telling her that she had gone deaf.
And yet, those words were filled with a noble resolve, a firm belief that she would get better. They were meant to reassure her companion, too.
When her perfectly good hearing vanished and silence descended, how had Yubel endured it alone? That fear, that terror.
Perhaps she could say those words because she trusted her companions and firmly believed that she, the Saint, would heal her.
‘Ah, how, how much pain you must have suffered……. I, I was wrong about everything. I’ll accept any punishment, so please let me save Lady Yubel.’
She prayed like that.
I have to save her.
I, the one who sinned, have to restore her to how she was.
I have to. I can’t fail.
Instead of using her unmoving legs, Prea dragged herself toward Yubel with her arms. That was how desperate she was.
But.
“What do you think? I wanted to show you this.”
The witch’s voice from behind—the voice that made Prea want to die right there—echoed in her ears.
A sneering laugh.
A tongue chattering as if proudly showing off its handiwork.
“Ah, ahaha…….”
Those words were enough to shatter the last fragments of Prea’s reason.
‘Kill her. I’ll kill her. I have to save Lady Yubel. I’ll kill that disgusting bitch and make sure Lady Yubel lives. Kill her. Kill her right now. Come to think of it, that witch is the one who did this to Lady Yubel.’
Kill her.
Even if I have to wring out everything I have.
That witch, at least.
“I’ll kill you right here!!!”
Fwoooosh……!
Six wings unfurled from Prea’s back. ‘Angelification’ had activated.
A miraculous power that only the Saint could use, and only once.
She appeared amid a brilliant, rising dawn.
Rumble……!
At the same time, radiance filled the room in an instant, and the ‘Sanctuary,’ the very flower of Angelification, began to take shape.
Sanctuary
An inviolable domain summoned by the Saint, using her divine power and soul as its medium, to destroy evil.
Within this holy domain, everything was decided not by the laws of the mortal world, but solely by the Saint’s will. As if she were a goddess herself.
Put simply, she could wield omnipotent power, as long as plausibility allowed it.
For example,
Whoosh!
Riella once again fired a fire arrow at the witch.
A strike that quietly burned with fury.
But this time, too, Glayias didn’t dodge.
Instead, she watched it expressionlessly, as if bored.
She firmly trusted in her ‘Absolute Domain,’ which froze everything that approached.
From Glayias’s perspective, an arrow like that was supposed to be easy to stop, even with her eyes closed.
However, what mattered was that Prea didn’t think so.
‘There’s no way Lady Riella’s arrows would miss their target.’
KLANG!
As expected, the arrow froze.
But the arrow, now imbued with the property of never missing, melted the ice in an instant and flew toward Glayias.
“What is this!?”
Pshk!
The arrow sank into her shoulder.
An unforeseen flaw in the Absolute Domain.
Thanks to it, Glayias’s shoulder was spattered with bright red blood.
“Urgh……”
Glayias was taken aback, but she immediately decided to use the ice palace to blow the traitors before her to pieces.
Her palace, made of ice.
Everything within it was like an extension of her own body. She could unleash overwhelming physical force with the slightest twitch of a finger.
But from Prea’s perspective……
“Wh-Why isn’t it moving?”
There was no way an idle ice castle would move.
Glayias was visibly shaken.
That created an opening.
Prea didn’t let it pass. She stretched an arm into the air and caught the cluster of lights circling around her.
Tzzzzzzzt!!
The light gathered and took shape. A ‘Holy Lance’ that could destroy evil was born in Prea’s hand.
And Prea firmly believed:
‘There’s no way she’ll survive being hit by this.’
The witch would die here, without fail.
KABOOOOOM—!!!
***
Meanwhile, Se-on felt as if his heart were being torn apart.
It was almost too painful to breathe.
The reason was the words that had just come from Yubel’s mouth.
Yubel had said that her hearing—and her entire body—would soon get better.
Those words brought hot tears to Se-on’s eyes.
Because Yubel couldn’t get better.
Her body rejected divine power because of the demon.
Yubel seemed unaware of that fact. Her words were just like those of an orphan who firmly believed the parents who had abandoned them would come back.
KWAANG!!!
Behind them, Prea, who had activated ‘Angelification,’ pierced the witch with her Holy Lance and was now flying swiftly toward Yubel.
She was probably thinking of healing Yubel.
Sure enough, as soon as Prea arrived, she gathered her divine power and reached toward Yubel.
Smack!
“!!!”
Se-on swiftly grabbed her hand.
“W-What are you doing……! Even you, Lord Se-on, please don’t stop me now!”
“Calm down, Prea. And listen carefully to what I have to say.”
Prea saw the tears streaming down Se-on’s face and hurriedly fell silent.
Even so, she still didn’t understand why he was stopping her from saving Yubel, and she anxiously shifted from foot to foot.
After catching his breath, Se-on wiped away his tears and slowly explained why.
He quietly explained that Yubel was under a ‘curse’ that made her unable to accept divine power, and that trying to heal her would kill her instantly.
He had thought up the excuse after much deliberation, since he couldn’t reveal the demon’s existence.
“……What?”
Prea’s face went rigid, as if she’d been deeply shocked.
Rejected by divine power?
People commonly called children like that ‘Those Abandoned by the Goddess.’
People who were born with divine power as a poison to them.
They were exceedingly rare—about one in a million—but they certainly existed somewhere in the world, living their lives.
As a result, ordinary people’s views of them were sharply divided.
First, there was the faction that thought ‘Those Abandoned by the Goddess’ were vermin in this world.
They believed the Goddess had seen through everything before they were even born and identified them as evil in advance, though they had no proof.
Then there was the faction that believed, on the contrary, that they were the most pitiful people in the world.
Though they hadn’t wanted it, they had been born to a fate where even the Goddess didn’t love them.
As a result, simply being alive made them targets of terrible insults, mockery, and contempt.
“……Ah.”
And Prea……
Drip. Drip.
“Wh-Why……? Sob, why is the world so cruel……? What on earth……? Wh-Why……?”
No matter what anyone said, she belonged to the latter group.