The Saintess Who Doesn't Act Like One

Hina's arm—once mottled and grotesque, as if someone had embedded a stranger's eyeballs beneath the skin—was now so clean that not a trace of the blotches remained. She stretched the arm out and moved it, then continued speaking in a somewhat excited tone.

"This body couldn't be healed even with the holy relic the Lux bestowed upon me. But she simply looked at me with her eyes, diagnosed my condition, and merely laid a hand on me, and…."

"Knight Hina."

Asselin cut off her rapid-fire words with a curt command.

"Return to the central Order at once and undergo a thorough examination to confirm whether your condition has truly improved. Your formal disciplinary proceedings will follow afterward."

Hina held her silence for a moment, lips pressed tight, then bowed her head and turned to leave. But just before stepping out of the barracks, she looked back at Asselin once more.

"It isn't improvement. It's a complete cure."

Conviction shone on Hina's face. She was cured, she insisted. What the Lux's holy relic could not accomplish, the Saintess had achieved with nothing more than a touch.

After Hina left—or rather, throughout the entire time Asselin had waited for Libitina to wake, and even now, up to this very moment—he had turned the same thought over and over in his mind.

A Saintess….

The Saintess of the records was God's representative on earth, bringing the hammer down upon wicked creatures that defied Him and raising the frail back onto their feet. A sacred being granted power by God's leave. The subject of every miracle that defied common sense, revered and worshipped by the Order.

God made manifest.

Asselin turned his head toward the barracks where Libitina lay.

"I'm a Saintess."

That woman?

"Assign someone to attend me at night."

That… woman?

Plain suspicion surfaced in Asselin's eyes. To be fair, he admitted that everything he had seen and experienced since first meeting Libitina had been far from ordinary.

But somehow, accepting it was difficult. Not simply because he distrusted the notion of God's impossible miracles. If anything, it would have been more believable if the woman at least carried herself with some pretense of dignity.

With her wavy hair hanging long and loose, and skin paler than fresh white marble, she was a striking beauty when her mouth stayed shut—so much so that Asselin, who had never once spared a woman's appearance a second glance, had taken one look at her and declared her a demon on sight. Even meeting those transparent violet eyes left him speechless, squeezed by some tightness in his chest.

And the power she wielded—while he hadn't subjected it to any formal verification—was unquestionably beyond anything his common sense could explain.

Hina's chronic affliction was one thing, but more than that, there was that unidentifiable light that had detonated the Ant-on in a single strike. Around the shattered remains of the creature, there had been no trace of anything else. The knights had been standing shield-to-shield within arm's reach of the Ant-on to begin with, so the idea that she had landed a blow powerful enough to kill it without any of them seeing was absurd on its face.

A woman wielding mysterious power, emerging after collapsing the entrance of the Saintess's tomb. The claim that the Saintess of five hundred years ago had returned to life didn't feel entirely like wild fantasy.

But then what was he supposed to do with that? Any woman who looked like she ought to be enshrined and worshipped as something holy couldn't open her mouth without spewing the most outrageous filth imaginable.

"Any man would waver, hips like that."

Even thinking back on it, it was a truly vulgar remark. Just recalling it turned his stomach, and Asselin irritably picked up a water flask.

Was that the kind of thing that came out of the mouth of someone claiming to be a Saintess? You'd have to wander the back alleys of Catwen at midnight to hear talk like that. If that woman really was Saintess Livia of five hundred years ago, he couldn't even begin to fathom what a disaster the Order must have been back then.

And come to think of it, that was a problem in itself. A person from five hundred years ago still alive in the present—wasn't that utterly beyond the pale?

A headache unlike anything he'd known in his life welled up, and Asselin pressed hard at his temples before taking a deep breath. First things first, they needed to reach Elham as quickly as possible.

Once they joined the priest dispatched from the central Order, everything would come to a conclusion, one way or another.

Libitina was from Catwen.

To anyone living in Radilion, that single name told them everything they needed to know. In the holy nation of Radilion, Catwen was a festering pool where every filthy, lowborn soul beyond salvation gathered and stagnated.

Even in a country where the teachings of God were absolute, not everyone could comprehend their meaning. And Catwen was the gathering place for the fools who could not understand God's blessing.

Libitina was from Catwen. That was not a simple statement of her birthplace. It was a description that contained everything that made Libitina who she was—her identity, her values, her sense of purpose in life, everything that could be said to explain her.

There was little point in dredging up her sordid past. What mattered was that despite having served at the Saintess's side, Libitina was not particularly darkened by life at the bottom. Her origins in Catwen had shaped nearly every corner of her daily existence.

For instance: the fact that right now, she could strip bare without the slightest embarrassment beside a wide-open stream was no big deal to her. Back in her Catwen days, there had been no water to wash with at all—on rainy days, she'd torn off her clothes and scrubbed herself down in a hurry beneath the downpour.

Measured against that, being able to bathe in this clear forest water felt like an enormous blessing. This pristine stretch of nature was, quite literally, a gift handed down from God.

The temperature that made her teeth chatter, the underbrush where anything might come springing out at any moment—none of it particularly bothered her. Well, that is… the presence of that large man standing with his back to her was a little harder to ignore completely.

Splashing the cold water over her bare skin as she waded deeper in, Libitina glanced back over her shoulder. She could see Asselin standing as upright and unmoving as a solitary tree, staring off into the distance. By the original plan they should have reached Elham ages ago, but unfortunately, the company was still on the roadside.

The reason their progress kept slowing was simple.

Demonic beasts kept swarming them.

With one encounter after another, they couldn't even make it to the villages they'd planned to pass through—for fear that they might drag the beasts along with them. Concerned that more demonic beasts might be lurking near any settlement, Asselin had gone so far as to change their route entirely, checking each area one by one. And as if to prove his judgment right, the knight order faced new demonic beasts every single day.

From the way the knights grew bewildered, this clearly wasn't a common occurrence. The relentless string of battles seemed to be wearing them down, and by the time they'd crossed paths with a different species of beast four days running, a few of the knights had begun stealing glances at Libitina. In their eyes flickered a faint, unmistakable hope—that they might get to witness that devastating power she had shown them before, once again.

But Libitina, having received a firm warning from Asselin, had done nothing but watch the situation unfold. If she used her holy power carelessly and collapsed with a fever again, there was no guarantee her body would hold up this time.

The heat still smoldered inside her. Each night that her sweat soaked through blanket and clothes only deepened her misery.

She was rationing the spare clothes Hina had left behind before departing, but the fundamental problem remained: she couldn't wash. Living on the roadside, unable to change out of her sweat-damp clothes or cleanse herself, a stale, sour smell had begun to rise from her skin.

Libitina was accustomed to life at the bottom. But being accustomed to it didn't mean she enjoyed it. Especially not looking like a beggar.

"Libi, sorry, but could you eat outside? The sewer stink coming off you is keeping everyone else from their meals."

It had made her skin crawl. Everything that reminded her even slightly of Catwen did.

And so Libitina had repeatedly pressed her case for a bath, and Asselin had said he would permit it under his watch. He had apparently assumed she would never bring herself to wash in front of him. Judging by the way he'd turned his back the instant she undid a single button despite all his talk of surveillance, that much was certain.

"This hardly needs saying."

From her perspective, ever since the moment she'd brazenly demanded a night attendant, there was nothing left between them worth blushing over. It had taken that much resolve to say those words in the first place.

Libitina clicked her tongue and looked at Asselin.

"If you stand that far away, how exactly are you supposed to keep watch on me?"

At her blunt, half-mocking question, Asselin—who hadn't moved an inch—answered in a flat voice.

"You wouldn't be reckless enough to flee while wearing not so much as a thread."

"But I am a mad grave robber, aren't I?"

At that, the stoic back wavered slightly. After a moment's apparent deliberation, Asselin reluctantly spoke.

"If my phrasing offended you, I'll apologize."

"I won't accept the apology. But you do realize that's not something you say to a person's face, right?"

"And yet you yourself just admitted you'd been spouting mad talk."