Chapter 103

I caught a glimpse of a silhouette for just a moment.

There were so many things I wanted to say when I really saw it.

Why did they send me to that world? What did they want me to do by sending me there? Why was it specifically me?

Ironically, I had an inkling about all this as I prayed.

If only I had been there at that moment—I could have saved those people.

If I were a saintess from a novel, I wouldn’t have been able to do such a thing.

People’s thoughts are all similar yet different. Even if there are people with similar tendencies, the slightest difference in thought can lead to vastly different outcomes.

If I had acted just one day later… If I had delayed my ‘prophecy’ by a few more days.

It would already have been too late.

—No.

But my thoughts were soon dismissed.

—No matter how much others consider you a divine being, they can’t foresee that level of the future.

Then why was it so?

If there had been someone of similar disposition, wouldn’t there have been someone more virtuous than me? Someone more dedicated and self-sacrificing?

—That’s why it was you.

The voice said.

—You were the kind of person who, while doubting something and feeling you can’t trust others, would choose to behave solely based on your own thoughts.

“…I guess you were looking at me quite nicely.”

I muttered softly.

“I just did it to counter what was being judged.”

My parents in my childhood were deeply immersed in some religion. I thought it was normal when I was young.

As I grew older, I just realized that I lived differently from my friends.

There was a place I had to go regularly. I had to go there to pray and study.

There were many things I wasn’t allowed to do. Because they were violent, or because they were indecent.

I hated all that.

No matter how much my family told me not to, and tried to take it all away, I ended up listening to my friends at school.

How fun nighttime dramas were. How fun games were.

Well, not that every religious household lived like this. It was just how my house was.

Strangely enough, being born in such a family, I was pretty much a materialist, wanting to do all the things the other kids talked about. I wanted to read violent comics, and watch those comics turned into animations. I wanted to play shooting games, and watch movies with anti-religious content.

After rebelling many times, my parents tried to turn me back into a good child.

In the end, it all went awry.

“So it was rebellion.”

The path I took was my own proof.

Even after doing all that, enjoying what I enjoyed, I wanted to show that I could adapt well to society, much more flexibly than you all, and that what you said was wrong.

……

The voice paused for a moment.

—If it was just rebellion, it could have been much more destructive.

And then it denied my words.

—If it was just that, in the end…

My last moment.

Was there really a reason to deny everything I had said?

But I couldn’t hear the end of that sentence.

My hand hurt a little.

Suddenly, air filled my lungs, and I felt all the strength leaving my body.

The bright light that filled my vision extinguished instantly. It felt like my whole body had been hit. No, perhaps it should be called muscle pain.

My legs were numb… Honestly, comparing sensations, just a little while ago felt much more comfortable.

But… if I had simply stayed there like that, I wouldn’t have seen Ria, who looked like she would burst into tears any moment now.

“…Ria.”

I called out to her.

Ria silently hugged me and got up from her seat.

“…Did the fight end well?”

“…It ended well.”

Ria replied, crying.

She didn’t want to cry.

I felt something flowing from my palm. I wasn’t quite sure what it was.

Oh, my eyelids are heavy.

I wanted to understand the situation a bit more, but I felt like that wouldn’t come easily. Well, I usually ended up sleeping like a log after expending that much energy.

With every step Ria took, the people around her hurriedly got out of the way. Just like how people in the old scripture described the Red Sea parting, they stepped aside left and right to make way.

Ria walked through that path without saying a word.

“I’m glad.”

That’s all I said.

And in the end, I lost the battle against the demon lord.

*

I didn’t feel like I had slept for long.

After a very intense workout—so for instance, when an aging boss on his first day of work says, ‘Let’s all go hiking today,’ and I couldn’t refuse and ended up hiking Seoraksan for two days without rest before finally returning home to lie in bed.

I just closed my eyes and opened them, and found that multiple hours had passed, just like that.

A sleep so deep that it wouldn’t be strange to call it ‘fainting,’ not even having a single dream.

To be honest, I didn’t feel refreshed at all. It felt like I just closed my eyes and opened them. I wish I had at least had a short dream.

“Ugh.”

Moreover, my body hurt. I wasn’t quite sure where it hurt, but it hurt all over.

Aah, I guess I just hurt all over, which is why I couldn’t express exactly where it hurts.

Knowing the reason for this didn’t make me happy either.

Even so, I was trying to muster my strength to get up—

Thud.

Someone pressed down on my shoulder with their hand.

Being in so much pain, I couldn’t resist that force, and I just fell back onto the bed.

“Ria?”

The only person who could be beside me was Ria.

Uh, no, that’s not really a romantic story. Ria was initially my knight, and she had been right by my side since we roamed outside the Convent. We even shared a room in the Dwarf Kingdom, so it was only natural.

“……”

But Ria didn’t respond to my words at all.

Feeling a bit scared, I turned my gaze—

Ria was looking down at me with an expressionless face, without saying a word.

“…Ri, Ria.”

I replied while feeling a little scared.

Right before Ria turned away from me, I felt an inexplicable chill run down my back.

It felt like someone extremely angry was looking at me, that kind of feeling.

“Hey.”

Ria called out to me. It wasn’t the usual way she called my name; it sounded more like a bully addressing a nerd.

By looks, I’d think I was more of the bully. But, right now, that doesn’t really matter.

“Did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That the Saint Power could harm you?”

“……”

Harm? The Saint Power?

I had never heard of that before. It wasn’t mentioned in the novel either.

Oh, sure, there are legends that the Saint sacrificed herself to protect the world. It really happened, but there’s no exact record of that moment. Even if there was a camera recording, the Saint Power itself wouldn’t show up on video.

So nobody knows if the Saint fought off all the demons and perished without a trace, or truly ‘turned into light,’ as some of the believers say. Honestly, I find the latter a bit strange too. The Church thinks the same and is still searching for her remains.

As I made a confused expression, Ria grabbed my hand a bit roughly.

Without giving me a chance to feel embarrassed, Ria brought my hand right in front of my face.

“Gah!? W-Wait a second!?”

And naturally, being in pain all over, that hit me pretty hard. This hurts. Like, really much.

But Ria seemed to take it as some kind of urgent matter that needed to be addressed.

“What on earth—”

But, I had no choice but to stop my conversation.

There was a bandage wrapped around my hand.

And through that bandage, a faint red light was subtly shining. Since I didn’t feel anything serious, it seemed like the bleeding had stopped, but the traces of the time when it bled were still unmistakably there.

“……”

“Looks like you didn’t know.”

“What is this?”

I said that, and as I tried to unwrap the bandage with my other hand—I soon realized that my other hand was also wrapped in bandages.

With a stiff expression, Ria started to unwrap the bandage from my hand.

At first glance, my palm seemed to be no different from usual. But at the center of that white palm, there was a very small, slightly indented scar, like it had been pricked by a needle.

If someone saw that and called it a ‘stigmata,’ everyone would definitely laugh at how small it was.

But—

“A lot of blood flowed out of that tiny wound. Enough to be beyond common sense.”

Ria said that with a composed expression.

“……”

I couldn’t find any words to respond to that.