86. Maria (9)
The lips are not easily separated.
What is all this now?
People fleeing the monastery shoved my shoulders, and I collapsed on the spot, staring blankly at the burning sky.
If it’s a nightmare, I can only hope to wake up soon, but the vivid heat through my skin reminds me that everything I hear and feel is a cruel reality.
I wanted to get out of this place right away, but my two stiff legs couldn’t move.
The chaos unfolding in front is also a problem, but the biggest problem was that the children were not visible.
Coming to my senses, I looked around and called out the children’s names.
“Olivia? Stellar?”
Maybe that’s not going to happen, but is it even in there? Kids wouldn’t die if they were crushed by a building like that, but the concern was real.
I raised my voice again as I approached the collapsing building.
“Noah! Elia!”
I called out the children’s names anxiously, but there was no answer.
The one who summoned me and set me up was a different person than I expected.
“Ain?”
I turned my head to the place where I heard the voice, and Maria was standing there.
With ashes on her face, her hair and clothes disheveled, Maria glared at me with empty eyes.
The empty eyes instantly harbored hostility. The hostility was so intense that it reminded me of a fire burning behind me.
Maria strode towards me, grabbed me by the collar, and screamed.
“Ain! What the hell have you done!?”
I don’t understand Maria’s current behavior more than the burning of the building. I looked at her with her puzzled eyes and said in her trembling voice.
“Calm down.”
“Does it look real now!?”
I dealt with Maria more calmly than I thought, probably because I had a similar experience in the great forest.
Above all, it was the first time that Maria had shown herself like this to others.
“Everyone, those elves you brought… They started slaughtering people in the monastery!”
However, it was not easy to accept Maria’s words. It felt like my heart was sinking. Maybe my ears are wrong? I thought about that for a while.
As much as that, Maria’s words didn’t reach me. She even had a hazy feeling, as if she were dreaming, with no sense of reality.
I kept a little silence, and a word came out of my mouth without knowing it.
“… What?”
Children killing people? Aren’t there some misunderstandings? Although it has a creepy side at times, it has never touched a normal person until now.
But why is this sudden carnage? It didn’t make sense. No, I wanted to believe that.
Although they are kind to me, their essence is after all evil gods. There was nothing strange about him suddenly regaining his memories and killing people like ants.
Maria murmured as she fell to her knees, clutching her hair like someone out of her mind.
“What the hell are those guys… ! Does it make sense that only four elves couldn’t stop it even with all the capital’s guards?!”
I grabbed Maria by the shoulder and asked in her firm tone.
“Where are you now?”
Maria, almost distraught, didn’t seem to hear what I was saying.
Is there no choice but to walk through this vast monastery? When I thought so, the children came to me without me having to go find them.
As I was about to step into the collapsed monastery, someone next to me spoke up.
This familiar voice was Stella.
But it was different from usual.
Stella, who existed where I turned my head, was dragging a human hair in each of her hands.
The human captured by Stella had a disfigured face. Blood pooled in his cracked mouth, and he couldn’t even make a proper sound, and only a painful moan flowed from his lips.
“Dad, are you awake? Did you wake up earlier than expected? Are you okay?”
Stella asked me in a very worried voice, in contrast to the way the people next to her made a half-voice.
“Stella… How did this happen?”
Stella looked at the humans in her hands casually, then raised the corner of her mouth slightly.
“This is the punishment that humans deserve.”
“The punishment that should be paid… What did they do wrong?”
“I did a lot if it was wrong.”
This time the voice came from behind.
“Olivia?”
As Olivia wiped her blood off her face, she came towards me. Looking at her appearance, she is Olivia, and she, like Stella, treats humans….
She felt offended just by imagining it.
As I frowned, Olivia tilted her head in disapproval.
“We did this for Dad, why are you making that face? And don’t worry, it’s not touched by normal people.”
This was not a problem for the general public.
It was me who wanted to react the same way she did now. Being in the midst of these women acting incomprehensibly as if it were normal made me feel like I was going crazy.
“For me… !”
My voice choked with anger.
Olivia stared at my angry face, then pointed her finger at one side of her and opened her mouth again.
“Ah, by the way, Elia is the most excited about this situation. Are we at least fine?”
The place where Olivia’s finger was pointing was a place where people’s screams could be heard especially loudly.
Anxiety has already begun to burn deep in my heart. Her anxiety, which had once flared up, grew out of control, and it felt as if it had drained out and become a reality.
There was no sense of reality.
People dressed in religious garb began to rise into the air, and they gathered together and began to become more and more compressed. People started screaming in agony as their bodies were twisted.
“That, stop!”
“Save me!”
Ellia beckoned with her leisurely smile in a place where there was no hope at all.
“No. You guys never quit when Daddy begged, didn’t you?”
As Elia made a motion to clench her fists, dozens or even hundreds of people slowly began to compress her body.
The unknown red balls that were around from a while ago were all made up of people like that….
I had nausea.
After regurgitating everything inside, I asked in a trembling voice.
“For me. What the hell is that?”
“You don’t have to know my dad yet.”
Noah appeared, dragging someone’s hair.
The man who appeared like a pig being led to a slaughterhouse was looking at the situation with his eyes rolling, as if he had no strength to resist.
“… I brought you.”
A man who has gained quite a bit of weight wearing high-class clothes that is different from other people’s appearance.
I knew this man.
A man who served as the archbishop of Artaria Abbey, but also claimed to be the director of the orphanage where I grew up.
I didn’t have very good memories, but I didn’t want to reunite like this.
The Archbishop put on a vain expression in front of his own collapsed authority and degenerated into a mere human begging for his life.
“Do you have anything to say to my dad?”
“A father….”
Only then did the Archbishop raise his head and look at me, then start to walk backwards with an expression as if he had seen a ghost.
“You, you! How do you Boo, apparently dead… !”
“Dying? I?”
What happened to your head with fear? The archbishop kept uttering incomprehensible words.
“Sorry! Hey, I couldn’t help it then. You know that? No, you all agreed! Why are you doing this now!”
Stella stepped on his head, looked at me and asked.
“Dad, just talk.”
My head was dizzy.
Something seemed to come to mind at the words of the archbishop. Something very important… Something missing in me.
Memories that don’t come to mind as if thick fog were slowly eating away at my mind.
The Archbishop, trampled on by Stella, managed to get his troubled voice out of his mouth.
“Is it money? If it’s money, I’ll give you whatever you want… Please get rid of these guys!”
“I don’t think that’s the answer you want? I give up my last chance like this.”
When Stella gave her strength, the archbishop’s head was crushed like a ripe watermelon.
My vision is stained red. Even the thought of Olivia wiping the blood or brain fluid off my face with a worried face didn’t feel realistic.
After dealing with the Archbishop, Stella approached Maria, and the moment she saw it, her body moved first.
As I blocked Stella’s way to Maria, Stella smiled as usual, as if telling her not to worry.
“Dad, it’s okay. There are still many things I want to ask of this woman, so she won’t kill me right away.”
That wasn’t the problem.
“Are you doing this because of my past? For revenge? Aren’t the sacrifices too great for that price?”
“Revenge? There’s that too, but I thought I’d take it slow. And you made it clear This is a punishment for humans. The sins they have committed against my loved ones are so great that we do the cleansing ourselves. Isn’t it a pretty great honor for these people to be able to die with their own hands for the goddess they believed in so much?”
Elia, who had already dealt with the humans, smiled bashfully next to me.
Her blood-soaked smile was more eerie than ever.
“Dad, Dad is watching. We’re protecting Dad in our own way.”
I don’t know anymore.
Is taking responsibility for God a burden that no mere human can bear?
My mind wanders.
I passed out, regretting the choice I had made for the first time.