20 – The Girl Seeks Salvation
After killing the man, I immediately dragged his corpse into Phlemea’s shabby house.
Choi Ye-bin seemed slightly surprised at the sight, but soon calmly asked me a question.
“Should I prepare for battle?”
“No. No one has seen this guy die, so it’ll be fine. Besides, the guys guarding this place aren’t very capable, so even if we get exposed, we’ll have enough time to escape before the main force arrives. So you don’t need to prepare for battle yet. We might not know for sure until we find out later that this guy died, but we’ll have a few hours at least.”
Choi Ye-bin nodded and returned to her corner. As I threw the corpse to the side, Phlemea, who had been sitting there, suddenly stood up and shouted.
“W-Wait… Administrator… Did you… kill him? The Administrator…?”
Phlemea trembled. I decided to preemptively defend myself against what he might say.
Elcardo tried to kill me first, so I had no choice.”
The truth is, Elcardo has never tried to kill me. The reason I killed him was simple. I found his deplorable behavior of treating Phlemea like an object without any sense of guilt repulsive. But I decided not to honestly reveal that. If Phlemea were to find out that a person had died because of the humiliation he endured, he would suffer greatly.
I approached the trembling Fleemia, still shaking uncontrollably. I wanted to reassure her, to ease the fear she seemed to feel. But unexpectedly, she came closer and took my hand with one hand. Despite her severed arm, she clung to it and murmured, unable to touch my hand.
“My prayers… my prayers reached you…”
Finally, I looked into her expression.
The emotion I felt from her eyes, as she looked at the fallen man’s corpse, was not fear, despair, or any kind of dread.
It was unmistakably hope.
I became even more curious about her.
“Fleemia, I don’t want to lie, so I’ll ask you honestly. Elcardo told me this is the market of the Holy Maidens. Please tell me why the chosen Holy Maidens are being treated like this.”
Fleemia crawled on one foot, bowing her head to the ground, and murmured to me.
“If you promise not to abandon me after hearing the story, I’ll tell you.”
In an instant, Choi Ye-bin, who was beside me, started to watch me intently. She must have been curious about the answer.
Regardless of whether I should or shouldn’t, I answered without hesitation.
“Even if there’s a story behind it, I’ll help you. That was the promise from the start.”
It was a simple statement, without any contracts or restrictions, but Fleemia answered as if she had witnessed a miracle, gently touching my hand.
“It’s a somewhat obvious and boring story.”
Fleemia began to speak about what had happened to her in a dull manner.
—
Fleemia.
She loved reading books, especially the stories of Holy Maidens in fantasy novels. The stories of Holy Maidens who fervently prayed to the gods and, with their divine power, saved people’s lives. She thought there was nothing more romantic than the belief that sincere faith could save the lives of others.
She admired those who dedicated everything to save others. Those who, without fear for their own lives, helped those in need and never surrendered to any hardships.
So, when she heard the story that she had been possessed in a novel and chosen by the goddess Luastra, she was ecstatic. In the novel she had been possessed in, there was a severe wealth disparity, and most of the lower-class people did not even receive proper treatment and education. There were countless people who died meaninglessly in wars fought for just a little bit of privilege.
She thought she could help those people. That’s what the girl thought.
But the reality was different from her thoughts.
“Tsk, just this much divine power? Another defective product.”
Some priests called her a defective product. Natural divine power varies from person to person, and it was because Flimia had a value below the standard.
In the Luastra Temple, Flimia was quite a headache. As a saint chosen by the goddess Luastra, she had to be treated properly, but raising and nurturing just one saint required countless magical books and elixirs, which cost astronomical amounts.
That’s why the priests came up with a plan. Make the saint exhausted and leave the Luastra religion. No, even if she didn’t leave, if she died, they could give her a martyrdom treatment, so it wasn’t a bad thing either.
That’s when it started. Flimia began to wander onto the battlefield.
“Sir, please hold on a little longer. The goddess Luastra will save you.”
The girl was thrown into the battlefield. It was unusual for a saint to be thrown into such a cruel battlefield where countless knights and mercenaries were constantly injured, torn apart, broken, and cut, but people admired the saint.
“Oh… Great Saint… How can you bestow such grace upon us?”
“To people like us, how can you extend such a noble hand?”
Flimia knew that she had been exiled here because she was considered a defective product, but she didn’t despair. Everyone in the battlefield wanted her, and she was able to save countless lives.
But the endless war inevitably produced countless casualties.
Unfortunately, Flimia couldn’t perform miracles for everyone. Her divine power, considered defective, was limited, and her meager divine power naturally couldn’t cover all the wounded.
“My husband, the Saint, is dying. Please… Please use your divine power just once, please… so that my husband won’t die…”
Because of the people who kept flocking to her, Flimia’s divine power was completely drained. Yet, the man who had just come in was lying on the ground, with a knife deeply pierced into his abdomen. His wife knelt down and begged Flimia to save her husband.
Flimia twisted her body to squeeze out her divine power. But no more divine power came out. After performing divine power for dozens, hundreds of people, she no longer had any energy left. Flimia dug her fingernails into her thigh. She started tearing at her own head. But still, nothing changed.
In the end, the man’s breath ceased. An hour passed from the moment he entered the room to the moment the man’s breath completely ceased.
Unfortunately, the woman, after confirming her husband’s death, turned to Flimia and screamed.
“You could have saved them. You have the ability to save them!”
There was no excuse. The woman’s words were not wrong. If Flimia had been a better saint, if she had possessed more divine power, the men would have lived.
“Am I defective?”
Flimia blamed herself, but the woman’s anger did not subside.
The knight of the enemy killed her husband, yet somehow the woman’s anger was directed at Flimia, who couldn’t save him.
The true tragedy of war, unknown to many, is that the victims start blaming each other. The reason was simple. If they didn’t do so, they couldn’t bear this terrible pain. In a world where they had to pour out anger rather than self-blame, where they had to empty their emotions, they could avoid suicide.
Flimia had to endure the terrible resentment of the middle-aged woman for over an hour. On the ground lay the corpse of the man, and in front of her was the expression mixed with the middle-aged woman’s anger.
“It’s all my fault. If I wasn’t defective…”
That’s when Flimia began to cling to her belief.
She believed in the goddess Lua Star with all her heart, thinking that her own divine power would increase. Like the beautiful saints in the books, she believed that she too could perform miracles for countless people.
But no matter how much she prayed and longed for it, Flimia’s divine power remained the same.
After that, Flimia was regularly dispatched to the battlefield. However, unlike in the early days, there were no enthusiastic supporters. Rumors spread that if Flimia used her divine power a few hundred times, she would be completely exhausted and unable to do anything.
Being able to recover hundreds of times was precious, but even if only a few hundred or a few thousand soldiers were injured in the constantly changing battlefield, it was still more than Flimia’s divine power could handle. Rather, her presence became a thorn in the side of the battlefield.
The cause was the assignment of saints.
Only one saint was dispatched to each battlefield. It was said that this was done to evenly distribute the power of the saints to many people, but in reality, it was a joke by the church that didn’t want to lose a lot of capable saints on the battlefield.
After all, it was mainly the defective ones like Flimia who were assigned to the battlefield. Therefore, even if Flimia was not deployed to the battlefield, the number of times knights could receive healing or the intensity of it would have been the same. But for the knights who fought for their lives, such things were not important. They simply thought.
If it had been someone other than Flimia, someone outstanding, countless people wouldn’t have died.
They started openly antagonizing Flimia.
“If it had been another proper saint instead of you, these bastards wouldn’t have died.”
The knights spat out harsh words to Flimia, who had used her healing magic hundreds of times and was exhausted. Even so, Flimia resented herself for being unable to do anything but watch the injured die.
“Instead of someone like you, a defective product, can’t you replace me with a proper saint? I heard that exceptional saints in the church can heal thousands of people in a day.”
Flemea wanted to do just that, but she didn’t have the authority. Even if she spoke to the church, the response would be to protect the current battlefield. That was the only answer.
Even though she received contempt and humiliation from people, Flemea quietly used her divine power to perform healing magic for them. Even if it was just a few hundred people a day, she was grateful if she could save them. She hoped that if she continued to make efforts like this, people would eventually recognize her.
But the goddess Luastra did not give her false hope.
It was the day when the knights of the Kareldeon Empire, as usual, went to the battlefield to wage war.
That was the day the incident broke out.