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137
It felt as if lightning had struck inside her head. Her mind, which had been hazy as if submerged in water, was suddenly pulled above the surface in the blink of an eye. As a bonus, memories from before she lost consciousness flooded back in an instant.
‘You… who are you?’
Leriana remembered the last face she had seen. It looked like Casia, but it wasn’t Casia. It was a mistake to let her guard down, fooled by the familiar face. By the time she tried to pull back, it was already too late.
Clutching her throbbing head, Leriana anxiously surveyed her surroundings. She couldn’t shake off the creeping anxiety.
‘Casia…’
What happened to Casia?
Casia was already wounded in the final stages of the battle. Would she be safe, left alone after the smoke bomb went off? Her thoughts kept drifting towards negative possibilities. The imposter with Casia’s face had firmly occupied a corner of her mind.
Quietly gritting her teeth, she tried to twist her body, but despite her clearer consciousness, her body remained frustratingly sluggish. Even her attempt to recover using her holy power failed, causing Leriana’s eyes to shake violently.
Then, when her gaze fell on her wrist.
“…Damn it.”
A curse she had never properly uttered before escaped her lips. It wasn’t difficult to guess the cause of this utterly unpleasant situation. It must be due to the unknown liquid still being injected into her wrist in small amounts. She tried to feign calmness, but couldn’t prevent the sudden surge of fear.
Blessed by God and revered as a saint, Leriana had always lived with people’s admiration at her back, but she was still a woman in her early twenties.
Despite confronting and eliminating specters and cutting down believers of the Salvation Church, she had never been trapped in an underground prison, unable to move her body. It was a situation that couldn’t help but be frightening.
Just as she was barely managing to compose her fading consciousness and quickening breath…
“Are you awake?”
A voice echoed in the space she thought was empty.
Leriana, who had reflexively flinched, painfully turned her head. Beyond the iron bars, someone wearing a black hood was looking at her. She bit her lip at the hatefully familiar figure. Blood trickled from her lip, which had already been wounded.
“Why… did you bring me here?”
The person she had clashed swords with just before losing consciousness was there. The red eyes barely visible beneath the tightly drawn hood emitted a gloomy light.
The man didn’t answer. He just quietly observed Leriana’s condition, then silently moved away. The thought that she might miss her chance to get any answers filled her mind.
She had to catch him before the figure turned away got too far. Leriana hastily began her next words.
“What about Casia!”
The man, who hadn’t reacted at all when asked why he had brought her, stopped abruptly when she inquired about Casia’s wellbeing. The eyes that glanced back were chilling. Despite suffering from a strange ambivalence of wanting to hear the answer yet not wanting to, Leriana didn’t avoid his gaze.
“You mean the woman who was with you.”
“…Yes. Just tell me this, and I won’t ask anything else. What… happened to Casia?”
Her desperate words spilled out incoherently. Although the anxiety in them was palpable, her gaze remained unwavering as she stared ahead. Perhaps that’s what irked him.
The man, Oscar, lifted one corner of his mouth crookedly. It was unmistakably a sneer. Leriana stiffened as she read clear hostility in that action.
“Well. Unlike you, that woman was useless.”
His answering voice was monotone. It was clearly intended to grate on her nerves. Even so, despite knowing this… the slightest possibility that something might have happened to Casia held her back.
It felt as if everything supporting her inside was crumbling at once. If she let her guard down even a little, it seemed tears would roll down from her eyes.
My friend, my teacher, and… my family. That’s who Casia was to Leriana. She had been by her side ever since Leriana received God’s blessing and was taken into the temple.
So she couldn’t have come to harm. Leriana needed to escape this place by any means necessary and check on her wellbeing.
She moved her body with all her might. Her wrist, barely responding to her will, collided loudly with the handcuffs. Despite her desperate struggle, the solid metal didn’t budge an inch.
Oscar, who seemed about to leave the prison, returned sooner than expected. A middle-aged woman wearing a voluminous robe followed behind him.
“Fi-Finally!”
Confirming that Leriana was awake, she flashed a chilling smile. A breath full of ecstasy escaped from her excessively curved lips.
“How is it? Can you see well? Can you hear? Can you speak? Can you move your body? Oh, what am I thinking. You shouldn’t be able to move your body.”
A barrage of incomprehensible questions poured out. The only thing Leriana could be certain of was that this woman viewed her as an experimental subject.
Her eyes, brimming with madness, flashed in a way that made it hard to believe she was looking at another human being. Leriana quickly furrowed her brow and spat out words as if chewing them.
“Get lost.”
“Ahaha!”
Despite facing a gaze full of killing intent and a curse, the woman’s attitude remained unchanged. Rather, she burst into mad laughter, which only served to drag Leriana’s mood further through the mud.
The woman took a step closer to Leriana and continued in a cheerful tone.
“Young lady, aren’t you curious why your body won’t move?”
“……”
“It’s the result of my research over the past three years! Since holy power and magical power flow through the bodies of priests, injecting concentrated spectral power didn’t yield significant results. Do you know how many times I failed experiments because of that… I had to dispose of so many precious test subjects I had obtained.”
But recently, I really, truly succeeded in the experiment!
For a moment, Leriana’s expression turned aghast. Despite not being asked, the woman boasted about her research as if proud of it.
How dare she, experimenting on human bodies. The bouncy voice, not even trying to hide its joy, made Leriana feel like vomiting.
“Did you know? A specific amount of holy power or magical power flows through the bodies of priests? If you inject a similar amount of opposing power from outside, it cancels out, preventing them from freely moving either power. That’s why you can’t use your power! Isn’t it amazing? Isn’t it wonderful?”
Of course, because your holy power was so abundant, I had to use up all my precious children…
A regretful mutter followed. Her eyes, fixed on the needle inserted into Leriana’s wrist, or more precisely, on the red liquid flowing through it, were filled with disappointment.
The woman continued chattering afterwards. As an added bonus, she grumbled about how it would have been pretty if it had come out blue, but unfortunately, only red came out.
“Hey.”
“Oh! I’m sorry, I got carried away because it’s been so long since someone could listen to the results of my research!”
The one-sided conversation that had been flowing at a dizzying pace came to an end due to Oscar’s urging from the side.
Throughout the entire story, Leriana had been clenching her fists tightly. Despite her body not responding as she wished, she had applied so much force that her nails dug into her palms, creating wounds. Even so, she didn’t loosen her grip.
If she didn’t, she felt like she might start screaming hysterically, pouring out the anger that had risen to the top of her head.
‘Calm down. Don’t react.’
She kept repeating this to herself internally.
Now, she needed to think about how to escape this place. She couldn’t afford to unnecessarily heighten their guard. As quietly and docilely as possible… she had to blend in among them as if dead, she repeatedly reassured herself.
However, Leriana’s plan fell apart not long after. What the woman brought back from the opposite side of the prison was too familiar. Without realizing it, her lips parted, and a shrill voice escaped.
“What are you… doing. Why is that…!”
A large greatsword emitting a faint white light. The holy sword that she had never once removed from her body since formally contracting with it was there.
She realized she hadn’t been able to secure the sword before losing consciousness after being stabbed. Leriana clenched her teeth fiercely. A savage grinding sound echoed through the prison, but the woman who directly faced this killing intent paid no heed. Her gaze, almost ecstatic, carefully examined every inch of the holy sword.
“Actually, I wanted to experiment first… but strangely, the sword didn’t respond. I thought it might just be a pretty piece of scrap metal, but it seems the problem was that you weren’t conscious!”
Ah, what should I do? I’m so excited.
As she muttered, memories of the past overlaid her voice. What occupied Leriana’s mind was Arpel. The reason why he, who had been a demon sword, took on human form, and the experiments he endured long ago in the imperial palace. His emotionless voice, talking about it as if it were someone else’s story, echoed in her ears again.
When she had shut herself in the temple, realizing her lack of skill, Leriana had spoken with the Celestial God just once. When she opened her eyes, feeling as if the ground had suddenly given way beneath her feet, what she saw was… a being as beautiful as an angel from a fairy tale.
At that time, Leriana brought up the story of Arpel. She felt that he might be able to answer the question she had never been able to ask anyone before.
‘My sword, could it possibly… like Arpel…’
To this, the Celestial God smiled and shook his head.
‘No. I assure you. Such a miracle will not happen again.’
What did he add after that?
Ah. She remembered.
‘If another sword were to suffer the same fate… it would no longer be a holy sword or a demon sword. It would become a sword that curses its master and ultimately drags them to hell.’
But don’t worry. Your companion won’t fall into such danger.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
