Chapter 14
- Clatter, clatter.
The day Goldie dragged him to a boutique to calm her down.
Akion was, after all, a noble young master, so he was forced to buy and wear an outfit for official business.
“See, Young Master? Goldie was right, wasn’t she?”
“She really was….”
It was all thanks to his aide and golden-retriever maid, Goldie.
He had wondered when he would ever use the uniform-like outfit he had bought that day….
“The outfit suits you well, Young Master Akion.”
“Haha. Thank you.”
He had never expected to use it when going to meet the Saintess.
The two of them rode in the pure-white carriage sent by the Saintess and looked at the enormous white knight across from them.
“I’m so large that it’s difficult to find clothes that fit me. Even the tailor at the boutique refused to make my clothes.”
Even while seated, he was a full head taller than either of them—a paladin as massive as a mountain.
“But isn’t it precisely because you have such a physique that you can protect anyone?”
“Hahahaha!!”
On top of that, he had an incredible voice.
The booming sound was loud enough to make Goldie, sitting beside Akion, press down the ears atop her head.
A paladin who seemed to have been born and raised strong like this was, in fact,
“That’s right! When I was an apprentice, I wasn’t even half this size! But I took the Heavenly Lord’s grace as my path and filled my body with strength through faith!”
“Ha, haha.”
When he had been standing earlier, he had looked about two meters tall, which meant that as a child, he had been a little runt less than a meter tall.
Akion wanted to take it up with the Heavenly Lord.
What on earth had this paladin done wrong for Him to raise that innocent boy into this massive (but kind) monster?
“You truly live up to someone who has received the Heavenly Lord’s teachings. If I get the chance, I would like to help as many people as you do, Sir Knight.”
“Young Master Akion, you have already accomplished that! With an incandescent bulb comparable to a holy relic!!!”
And this man, who had surely torn apart hundreds or thousands of demon followers and monsters,
Why was he praising Akion’s incandescent bulb? And comparing it to a holy relic, at that.
“What happened that made the incandescent bulb such a great help to the clergy…?”
“You should hear that story directly from the Saintess. It will be a much more enjoyable tale that way.”
The Saintess herself is living proof, after all.
Since he had dodged the question like that, Akion felt as though his curiosity would drive him mad.
* * *
There were large and small dioceses throughout the Khalid Empire, but there were always places that served as regional centers.
They were usually located in the domain of the region’s most powerful noble, and Enersis was the only such family in this area.
“May the Heavenly Lord’s grace be with you.”
That was why there was the Ridasid Diocese on the outskirts of Ridasid.
Deep within its monastery,
“It is an honor to meet the genius alchemist of Enersis.”
“Ah, yes. It is an honor to meet you as well, Saintess….”
A silver-haired Saintess, with hair much like Akion’s, appeared.
“Ah… please, do not concern yourself. This wound is an honorable scar I earned while vanquishing a vile vampire.”
“If you say so, Saintess.”
She was wrapped in bloodstained bandages in several places.
At this point, Akion realized that the Saintess’s thanks had something to do with saving a life.
Akion sensed that the story was going to take a while.
“Goldie. It looks like I’ll have to stay for a day or so. Could you go home and let them know?”
“Yes, Young Master.”
After sending Goldie ahead, Akion spoke first once he was alone with the Saintess.
“Then, Saintess.”
“Yes, Saint Akion.”
“I heard that my incandescent bulb… was a great help to you, Saintess.”
“Yes. It was.”
At the mention of the incandescent bulb, she took out something she had been hiding inside her robes.
It was an incandescent bulb whose filament had burned out completely.
“This incandescent bulb… saved our lives.”
The reason they had needed to use an incandescent bulb that had never broken in any test until its filament burned out completely.
“Two months ago, I received word of a village overrun by vampires, so I set out with the knights under my command.”
Recalling how confident she had been when she set out, the Saintess began to recount what happened that day.
* * *
- Crack!
- Boom!!
“Do not retreat! The Heavenly Lord is with us!!”
“For humanity─!!!”
The northwestern outskirts of the Empire.
An urgent report had arrived that vampires were beginning to run rampant in this place, far from Enersis as well.
The Papal See went into a state of emergency.
“Are they trying to bring Vlad back to the continent…?!”
“We must send our elite forces immediately!”
Though the First Hero and the Primordial Dragon had driven the demons from the continent of Ilias, their remnants were still active.
Monsters were running rampant throughout the Empire and all across Ilias because of those remnants, but if the clergy had to name the worst of them, vampires would be their first choice without question.
- Boom!!
“Do not fear, descendants of the Hero!”
They could increase their numbers by drinking blood, and were immortal unless exposed to holy power or sunlight.
On top of that, their physical strength was enough to make even ogres retreat.
Therefore, the Pope hurriedly assembled an expeditionary force and placed the Saintess in command.
Leading the knights under her command, she reached the northwestern outskirts of the Empire in just one month.
When they arrived at the village, it was already teeming with vampires.
- Screeech!!
“The Heavenly Lord is with us!!”
But with the Saintess’s overwhelming holy power, which allowed her to converse with God, there was nothing to fear.
Her power wrapped around the holy knights, filling them with vitality and courage.
“Deus vult!!”
The faster the halo above the Saintess’s head spun, the fiercer their momentum became.
“We drove them all back!”
“Hooray─!!!”
The extermination that began then and lasted several hours ended far sooner than expected.
The newly arrived recruits sang hymns or danced for joy at having torn vampires apart, but
“There are no commander-class individuals.”
The seasoned veteran paladins were serious, along with the Saintess.
“There should have been at least one Sword Expert-tier vampire….”
“We found no corpses of such vampires. They must be commanding these vermin from somewhere.”
Most of the vampires wore shabby clothes—the typical attire of a family of slash-and-burn farmers.
In other words, they were low-grade vampires, unlike true vampires, who took pride in dressing neatly.
At this point, the veterans and the Saintess began to tremble with unease.
Where was the commander-class individual? Where was the powerful vampire? They had to catch them to fulfill the expedition’s objective of eradicating the vampires.
Above all, maintaining low-grade vampires required an enormous amount of blood. Yet the vampires looked as though they had been driven mad because they could not drink any blood.
“For now… thank you all for your hard work. I’ll stand guard tonight, so everyone get some proper sleep.”
It was as though they had been deliberately starved because they lacked blood.
But there was no point in speculating further. They would have to investigate the rest.
“Heh heh, we shall accept the Saintess’s kindness.”
They needed rest more than anything.
Even though they were low-grade vampires, there had been far too many of them, and the barely hundred paladins had fought a battle that bordered on abuse.
The Saintess volunteered to stay up all night to fulfill her responsibility as commander, but
“Still, we need troops to protect the Saintess, so we shall take turns, one at a time.”
“There is no need. I know how arduous your efforts have been─.”
“Now, now! If you cut back on your sleep just because you’re young, you’ll fall ill!”
“…I am the Saintess, you know.”
She surrendered to the worried nagging of the old paladins.
She was an adult now, too, and was a little annoyed that they still saw her as a child.
Of course, she was grateful to the Heavenly Lord and to these people for loving her so much and saving her when she had been an orphan.
And so night fell.
- Crackle, crackle….
The torches at the temporary encampment burned, while the surroundings were silent as the grave.
“Saintess, do you know what this is?”
The two-meter-tall paladin who had come as her aide was holding something strange in his hands.
“It is a work of art I have never seen before. May I ask what it is, Brother?”
“Of course! This is the famous incandescent bulb!”
Come to think of it, this paladin was from the Ridasid Diocese.
The ruler of Ridasid was Count Enersis… and the youngest son beneath him was supposedly a genius alchemist.
“I’ve heard about it too. They say it’s five times brighter than a mana lamp?”
The Saintess and the other clergy also found it difficult to operate after night fell,
And they had once seriously discussed obtaining incandescent bulbs at a Papal See budget meeting.
Of course, the proposal had been rejected because someone had asked, ‘Aren’t torches sufficient even now?’
“To think there is an object that shines so brightly. It reminds me once again that the Heavenly Lord has many hidden trump cards with which He regulates the world.”
“Yes! So I obtained a mana stone and did this… Ta-da!”
- Click, creak-creak, whirrr….
The incandescent bulb was quickly assembled in the paladin’s hands into something else: a mana lamp that shone intensely in one direction.
“What is this…?”
“Isn’t it truly fascinating? I made it because I thought focusing the light in one direction like this would be a great help when searching at night! I copied a blueprint that young master from Enersis showed us before. He called it a flashlight!”
The moment she saw it, the Saintess’s mind began racing.
This would definitely help.
Unlike a torch, this flashlight could illuminate far into the distance. It would be an innovation in nighttime searches.
The Saintess even felt a little envious upon learning that the streets of Enersis were lined with things like this, called streetlights.
“I will make another proposal at the Papal See’s budget meeting.”
“Haha! Thank you, Saintess!”
The knight from Ridasid happily shone the flashlight this way and that.
“That distant place is so clear! I feel like one of those vampire bastards myself!”
Everywhere he shone was as bright as day.
Even figures standing over there were visible, and afterimages lingered in places the light merely swept past.
“Wait, shine it over there again.”
“Pardon? Yes.”
The Saintess asked about the figure she had glimpsed, and the large paladin shone the light in that direction again,
“Guh?!”
There stood a human.
“…A vampire?!”
But there was pale skin and a pair of fangs.
Unlike the low-grade vampires, this one wore finely tailored clothing.
And above all…
“It’s a vampire!!!”
Black sclera and red irises.
- Ding, ding, ding!!!
“Damn, they discovered us this quickly?! Everyone, charge!!”
Dozens of high-ranking vampires—the commander-class individuals they had been searching for—descended upon the temporary encampment.
*
- Clash! Clang!
- Bang!
“Saintess! This way!”
Fortunately, the knight from Ridasid let out a booming shout,
And everyone, who had been deep asleep, leaped up and joined the battle.
“Hand over the Saintess─!”
“Like hell!!”
- Slash!
Vampire blood sprayed through the air, while the paladins’ blood began soaking the ground as well.
“Where did all these pure-blood vampires come from…!”
They had expected the battle to end with only one or two high-ranking vampires.
“Kekeke!! This was supposed to be a trap to slaughter you!”
“And yet the Saintess has come to us herself! Lord Vlad’s grace has finally reached us!”
“Shut up, you savage bloodsuckers!!”
But dozens of pure-blooded vampires?
Every one of them was powerful enough to command the low-grade vampires they had killed during the day.
And those vampires had ambushed the paladin order in the middle of the night, when they had let their guard down, no matter how quickly they had awakened.
“Our Lord who art in Heaven!!”
“This humble man will ascend today! Please grant me courage─!!”
The paladin order prepared themselves for death.
They had to get the Saintess out alive.
“Where do you think you’re running!”
“Eek!”
“Saintess!!”
But the vampires were desperate as well.
They were the minions of a fallen demon, so they had to find some way to turn the situation around, and the Saintess before them was one possible means.
They would turn her into a vampire, or, if that failed, kill her─.
“We’ll make you a sacrifice to Lord Vlad!!”
“It’s dangerous, Saintess!!”
That would deal a major blow to the children of the Heavenly Lord.
Ignoring the paladins stabbing and burning them, they all desperately rushed the Saintess to kill her.
“S-Saintess. Hurry….”
“Ah, ah…!”
The attacks came without giving her a chance to cast holy magic.
The paladins fell one by one, splattering blood across her body.
“T-take this to Jane, that girl at the monastery….”
The paladin who had supposedly come from Ridasid also fell before her.
He pressed the flashlight he had assembled into the Saintess’s hand.
“Please….”
“No. No!!”
This was the first time the Saintess had suffered such a desperate defeat.
For someone who had only ever won because the Heavenly Lord’s infinite glory followed her, this situation was horrifying.
I should have ordered a retreat.
I should have ordered them not to protect me.
Watching the paladins fall one by one to the vampires, she sensed that her turn would come soon.
If that was the case,
“Filthy minions of Vlad…!”
“No, Saintess!!”
“Run away! Quickly─!!”
She would resist with everything she had.
- Screeech!!
A halo bloomed above her head once more, and holy power raged like a storm.
“That pitiful holy burn! We’ll simply regenerate!”
A dozen or so vampires leaped toward her, and she gritted her teeth as she drew up her holy power.
- Crack!
“Ah.”
Then, suddenly, the Saintess felt something in the flashlight drawing in her holy power.
- Crackle, crackle!
The incandescent bulb, which should have been powered by mana, was sucking up her holy power and flickering with sacred light.
“Heavenly Lord! Grant me strength─!!!”
She realized what she had to do.
She pointed the flashlight toward the vampires charging at her, and
“Hahaha! How could emitting that light possibly help!”
“We fear neither light containing no holy power nor sunlight! Kha-ha-ha!”
She poured all her holy power into the flashlight.
“Holy Light─!!!!”
And then,
- Sparkle!!!
Let there be light.
Day descended upon the forest for an instant,
- Fwoosh!!
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah─!!!!!!”
“Gueeeeeek!!!!”
Every vampire in front of the flashlight began to burn.