You Died
Chapter 042………………………………………
It had been a tragedy caused by Melissa and me, but wanting reassurance, I asked him without realizing it.
Raymond looked at me with his eyes widened, his face clearly flustered.
As he awkwardly lifted one corner of his mouth and tilted his head toward Cardin, I slowly closed and opened my eyes, conveying my affirmation.
Whether he could promise what he had said.
No—asking him to promise it.
Perhaps I wasn’t asking a question at all, but making a request.
Did Raymond think it was an utterly absurd question?
It might have been a ridiculous promise that wouldn’t be kept, but I waited, wanting to hear his answer.
After a brief pause, he nodded.
“Yes, I promise.”
It might have been nothing more than words meant to ease my tension, but only after hearing his reply was I able to take my eyes off Cardin.
I looked again at the scenery that contrasted with where I stood.
The cries of monsters and the sound of blades cutting through flesh continued until the sun began to sink.
The monsters that came toward us were dealt with by Raymond and Alec, while all I did was occasionally reinforce the barrier on our side.
“Aaagh!”
Suddenly, a scream—not from a monster, but from a person—rang out.
I quickly scanned my surroundings, searching for the source of the cry.
In my field of vision, a young-looking knight was rolling on the ground, letting out another short scream.
To me, who remembered the faces and names of all the Grand Duke’s knights, he was unfamiliar.
No matter how young his face looked, I would have recognized him. But he wasn’t in my memory.
“Since I joined the knight order, no one has ever left it. That alone shows how much they respected their lord.”
The words I had once heard from Knox flashed through my mind.
There was only one reason that young knight didn’t exist in my memories.
Kiiiiiek—!
A monster lunged toward the young knight who had collapsed on the ground.
“No!”
Seeing the monster closing in on him, I cried out without thinking.
Kugugung.
Thunder cracked across a clear sky.
Soon after, with a deafening boom, the monster’s shriek echoed.
A white light formed the shape of lightning and pierced straight through the monster. When the light faded, the monster was gone—completely erased without a trace.
Everyone’s gaze turned to me.
“Saintess.”
Alec called out to me.
But perhaps he was too shocked, because he couldn’t continue speaking.
Judging by his expression, what I was thinking must have been right.
What had just happened wasn’t a mere bolt of lightning from a clear sky. The white light had been holy power—undeniably my power.
I wasn’t the only one flustered by the situation. Alec wasn’t either.
Everyone had seen it with their own eyes: the monster vanished without leaving a single trace.
Raymond looked at me and asked,
“How did you do that?”
I don’t know.
What did I do this time?
Had the god who never answered finally granted my wish?
Was there some connection between the moment my tightly sealed holy power had opened and the power I had just used?
Honestly, I didn’t know that either.
Even now, when facing monsters, I didn’t understand how my holy power actually worked.
For someone like me, experiencing this for the first time, everything was full of questions.
Even so, I had saved a life. I had saved one of Cardin’s people.
I knew that even when he didn’t show it, Cardin’s shoulders always drooped whenever he visited the memorial behind the Grand Duke’s estate, where the dead were honored.
I knew the expression he wore when he lost one of his subordinates.
And because of that, a belated surge of emotion welled up inside me.
The young knight stared at me blankly, only turning his head in my direction.
The wound on his back looked severe at a glance. Clear marks showed where a monster’s claws had raked him.
Blood kept gushing out, soaking his clothes red, but as if he had forgotten the pain, the knight kept his gaze fixed on me.
We were quite far apart.
When I tried to step forward, Alec moved first and said,
“I’ll take care of the wounded.”
Worried that going there myself might get in the knights’ way, I nodded.
“Ah… yes. Please.”
Alec passed in front of my field of vision and walked toward the knight.
“Can’t you heal him from that distance?” Raymond asked, crossing his arms.
In a small voice, I replied,
“I’m not sure.”
I had never tried it before, so I didn’t know anything.
Still, it felt like it might work. After all, I had just struck a monster accurately from this distance.
With the power I had now, maybe it was possible.
So I closed my eyes and sent healing power toward the distant knight.
“As expected, it works,” Raymond said.
I opened my eyes. My holy power had wrapped itself precisely around the young knight.
By the time the light faded, his wounds were completely healed.
“…I guess so.”
Raymond nodded, as though he had anticipated it.
As if this was something that didn’t even require much effort.
When I closed my eyes, I could picture the place where the knight was. Against a dark background, my holy power seemed to stretch out toward him like thin threads.
As the thought occurred to me that I might be more helpful to them than I’d expected, my heart fluttered with excitement.
Stroking his chin, Raymond stared at the spot where the monster had been and said,
“To think a monster could disappear in an instant.”
I shifted my gaze to another monster in front of me, dying as it spewed dark red blood.
“What normally happens to these corpses?”
“Once we extract the magic stone from a monster’s heart, it disappears on its own after a day. Even if we don’t extract it, it’s the same.”
The reason the boundary existed.
Land where mana existed. Though mages had long since vanished, magic stones still uniquely existed here.
The monster I had erased hadn’t produced a magic stone. It had been a perfect annihilation.
“Could you use your holy power once more?”
I could feel that the way he looked at me had changed—clearly different from when he had been sitting on that tree, looking down at me.
“But if we fail to obtain magic stones—”
“That’s already more than enough. And in the first place, those monsters don’t have magic stones.”
When I tried to ask why, he walked over to the monster corpse lying in front of us.
Raymond drove his sharp blade deep into the dead monster’s heart.
When he pulled the sword out, blood burst forth. There was no magic stone.
“Only the monsters that appear on the first day have magic stones. The rest are just useless lowlifes that grew by feeding on leftover mana.”
“Then that means…”
“Yes. It’s nothing but a waste of time and stamina.”
I looked at the knights who were still struggling against the stubborn monsters.
In that situation, it meant the knights could be injured—or even killed.
“Could you use your holy power?”
I didn’t know exactly how to do it, but I nodded.
“Yes, I’ll try.”
Now that I had a use, there was no reason to refuse.
Even if it worked, there was no guarantee how many of these countless monsters it would affect.
I stared straight ahead and felt the presence of the monsters.
It was different from the aura Cardin and Raymond used.
The presence of every monster here felt keenly distinct to me, one by one.
If my power was truly holy power, then the monsters’ power—opposed to mine—was impure.
Grant me the power to erase this impure energy.
“Deliver judgment upon the impure.”
Kugugung.
Kugugung.
Kugugung.
Soon, white light poured down from the sky like rain.
Once again, my divine punishment struck only the monsters with perfect accuracy.
A piercing, chilling wail echoed—so sharp it made my ears ring and sent shivers down my spine, drowning out even the sound of thunder.
The light grew so intense it felt as though the entire world was trapped inside white clouds.
When the white light that had confined the monsters’ bodies faded, the monsters crumbled like grains of sand scattered by the wind—and then vanished completely.
