novelraw Chapter 211: Abyssal Holy War - Salvation
Chapter 211: Abyssal Holy War - Salvation
Chapter 211. Abyssal Holy War - Salvation
The ram of the ship-of-the-line that had charged at full speed.
The violence of an overwhelming mass, difficult to withstand even if I had been prepared for it, slammed into my body—and I was sent flying with Barbatos’s body as it sprayed blood like a fountain.
The sensation of my body floating.
And the rapidly approaching surface of the water.
‘Christine.’
The moment my ruined body plunged into the water, my consciousness cut out.
*
“Kill the blue blood!”
A shout filled with hostility and killing intent.A glistening malice.
Ah, again.
Even after more than ten years, even after facing a completely different future.
A nightmare that I can never forget, that never leaves me.
A place thick with the smell of blood that filled the square where I met my end in my previous life.
My failure, my end.
“Kill the filthy witch!”
A witch?
Only then did I realize that the sight I was seeing now was not my own memory, not that of Pierre de Lafayette.
It wasn't the square I saw as I faced death, nor was it a scene from a day I never witnessed.
The memory of another person who walked the same path and met her death.
Eris.
The moment I realized.
The feelings she felt, the thoughts she had, began to flow into me.
Her life of endless escape, never able to rest because of her status as a princess in the chaotic era of civil war and revolution.
And yet, all the actions she took to help them, either to thank and repay the people as her mother had taught, or simply out of her innate goodness.
But the result of all that was.
“Ha, a Saintess? More like a wicked witch!”
“That cursed royal deceived us all with a smiling face!”
The mouths of those who had willfully called her a Saintess and clung to her, begging for salvation, now spewed accusations.
“Erisliste Lilianne De Francia, third princess of the corrupt and fallen Royal Family and the witch who deceived the populace of Francia. This court, in the name of Freedom, Equality, and Fraternity, sentences the defendant to death.”
They delivered death in the name of their own brand of justice.
The vortex of emotions: the surging unfairness of her unrewarded good will, and yet, the struggle not to resent them.
The tragic feeling of thinking she could not resent them because she could not see, her eyes half-burnt by the sunlight and unable to see properly.
The mental image that equated their transformation with that of her mother, who had changed at the end of her life of flight and had come to resent Eris.
And the process of her, at the end of that vortex of emotion, instead of spewing resentment and curses, simply shedding tears in resignation as she headed for the guillotine.
It all pierced my heart, as vivid as if I had experienced it myself.
After touching the cold wood, amidst a smell of blood that seemed to stain my very soul.
A black, viscous resentment wells up.
Endless regret.
The thought that if she had instead lived freely and died doing her best, she could have pleaded before God for mercy for her mother.
That emotion brings me to tears as well.
And the moment Eris finally closed her eyes in resignation.
The hallucination she saw appeared to me as well.
Just like… today.
An army of humans fighting against demons.
And at their forefront, leading the people, a golden-eyed, blonde-haired Saintess.
…Gremory?
The moment I realized it, my eyes met Gremory's.
In the very next moment, Eris opened her eyes—
Slowly, darkness descends.
Within my gradually dimming field of vision.
Eris's final mental image seeped in.
Eris's first and last prayer to God as a Saintess, before her regression.
Even at the end of such an unjust death, she believed she was simply being punished.
A prayer asking not for her own salvation, nor for the sake of someone precious to her.
A prayer begging for an opportunity to be granted to some unknown person who would try to change this ending.
An altruism so pure it lacked even a single sliver of selfishness.
For that reason, it was all the more desperate, and for that reason, it bordered on a miracle.
The final moments of the Saintess, who met her end with a smile even amidst the ghastly sound of a falling blade.
*
Within the darkness that had fallen completely like a curtain.
A throbbing pain seeped through my entire body, as if stabbing me.
And in that hazy sensation as the pain spread, a realization I only now came to.
So that's how it was.
The source of the second chance I should have never been given.
A miracle brought about by the prayer of a Saintess I had never even met in my previous life, who had simply been executed in the same place the day before I died.
To receive such a miracle.
To have saved Christine and come this far.
I can't collapse like this before I’ve even driven out the demons who are the instigators of it all.
I looked down and saw Barbatos's sword, still embedded in my stomach.
The blood that flowed out ceaselessly.
The chill spreading from the gunshot wounds on my shoulder and leg.
Against my will, I am forced to realize that it wouldn't be strange if I died right now.
And at that moment, a light appeared in the darkness.
I turned my gaze blankly—
And looked at the golden demon, shining all the more brilliantly because she was in a pitch-black space without a single point of light.
A succubus dressed in a black nun's habit.
“…Gremory.”
“It's been a while, Marquis Lafayette. Asking if you've been well… seems a bit inappropriate for the current situation, doesn't it?”
I unconsciously raised my left hand to cover my eyes, but seeing the hand with its index and middle fingers blown off, I let out an empty laugh.
“Did you see it?”
Gremory slowly floated through the darkness toward me and replied softly.
“Yes, I saw everything. I'm sorry. …But it all makes sense now. Your jumbled memories, and how such Divine Power came to remain in your body.”
The demon who was the first to notice the interference of Divine Power that even I, and Eris herself, did not know about.
-I am still a little more skilled than your young Saintess, Marquis.
“Are you… the Saintess from 400 years ago?”
Gremory merely smiled quietly, not answering.
“How, no, why?”
The tragic Saintess who led Francia and humanity against the Demon King's Army, fighting until the end, only to be captured by demons in the final battle.
That Saintess is now a succubus?
No, is it even possible for a human to become a demon? They're different races, aren't they?
“Don't misunderstand. I was a half-baked demon from the very beginning. …Even in those days when you all called me a Saintess.”
“What does that even…”
A succubus was hailed as a Saintess, leading humans to fight against the demon race?
As I was lost in confusion over a story I couldn't possibly understand, Gremory reached out and took my left hand.
An intense light immediately engulfed the space of pure darkness—
And I shuddered at the unfamiliar sensation of something that had vanished in pain growing back.
Gremory let go of my hand, and as I raised my left hand, I saw that it was perfectly fine, as if half of it had never been blown away.
Amidst a vortex of countless emotions and confusion, what I managed to utter was a question.
“Why?”
Gremory’s golden eyes crinkled as she smiled, then she tilted her head slightly and murmured softly.
“Well now, I wonder why…”
It didn't seem like a ploy to seduce me at all.
No, in the first place.
My body was on the verge of death if she had just left it alone.
What in the world does this succubus want?
Gremory chuckled and reached out again, mending my bullet-wounded shoulder and leg as she added.
“I don't really know either.”
“I—we—started this war to annihilate you. Surely you know that.”
“I know, Marquis Lafayette.”
“It’s meaningless if you're trying to switch sides. As long as it's an alliance of all humanity, saving me alone won't-”
My words were cut off as Gremory covered my mouth with her left hand—and with her right, she pulled out the sword embedded in my stomach.
“…!”
As a scream, torn from me by the horrific agony, was muffled by the succubus's hand, light burst forth again, and the pain began to subside.
“Gasp, gasp…”
When Gremory finally removed her hand from my mouth, I was panting with heavy breaths. She flapped her wings lightly, drifting away into the empty air.
“…I can't understand what on earth you're thinking. I… should be grateful, but honestly, I'm suspicious of your intentions.”
Gremory had done nothing particularly wrong to me.
I thought she had treated me well, the only problem being that she was a demon; in fact, she was closer to a benefactor.
However.
-The upper echelons of each nation bought off by Abyss Corporation have more than enough influence to render the baseless cries of a distant infidel peninsula and a volatile revolutionary nation hollow.
In the end, Gremory, as a member of Abyss Corporation, had played a part in this entire tragedy.
In the first place, hadn't she said so herself?
“You said with your own mouth that you are a moderate who wants coexistence, but what Abyss Corporation is doing now looks for all the world like a war of annihilation with the continent-”
“Marquis.”
Gremory, cutting me off, smiled faintly.
“I know, too. I thought that I would never be understood in the end, and that from my stance, it couldn't be helped. Because, as a result, I have committed quite a few acts that are unforgivable to you.”
If that's the case, then all the more.
If you're aware of even that, then why?
“It's just that…”
Gremory let out a self-mocking smile and opened her mouth.
“I’m just a half-baked thing that couldn't become either a demon or a human. For that reason alone, I gave up on everything and just let my body go with the flow, and I saw what happened as a result. …I can't help but compare myself to that young Saintess.”
The succubus smiled faintly and added.
“Please just think of it as a false saintess, who was nothing but deception from the start, now reminiscing about the past for her own comfort.”
Just after Gremory finished speaking, the world of darkness trembled.
-erre!
As a resounding voice could be heard.
“…I have no intention of trying to annihilate all of you, not even those who won't fight. Take those you're responsible for and leave the island.”
Hearing my words, Gremory paused, then smiled.
With a face that seemed somewhat tragic, not at all befitting a demon.
The golden demon bid me farewell.
“Then be on your way, Sir Knight. …It was nice to be able to remember someone I'd long since forgotten, thanks to you.”
With that, the world of darkness collapsed.
*
“Pierre!”
Hearing the scream-like shout that pulled me from the dream world.
“Keogh!”
I spewed water from my mouth and returned to reality.
My whole body was cold and soaking wet.
Ah, honestly.
My beloved lady's face is a mess of tears.
I slowly raised my hand, and, grateful that it was intact, I caressed Christine's cheek.
My fiancée, who would have died before we could have properly known each other.
A miracle protected by the prayer of a Saintess who pleaded for a chance to be given to someone she didn't even know.
“…I seem to have made you worry.”
Christine couldn't even reply and just shed more tears, burying her face in my chest.
“Every time, every single time. If it’s going to be like this, then I’d rather, I’d rather be the one…!”
To her wailing voice, I replied softly.
“Because I feel the same way you do.”
Christine was in immediate danger, and there was no way to win by conventional means, so I was ready to throw my life away to protect her.
But if I thought about Christine throwing her life away for me.
I would be just as tormented.
“I am sorry.”
Hearing my apology, Christine couldn't say anything and just sobbed.
All I could do was gently pat her back.
As I did so, through my still-blurry vision, I saw a butterfly with unique gold and black wings, out of place by the sea, fluttering its wings as it flew away.
…A false saintess, was it, Gremory?
When even Eris, a true Saintess, was branded a witch and killed, what meaning could there be in a Saintess being a succubus?
At the very least, all those who remain in history praised and followed her as a Saintess.
I don't know why Gremory, a succubus, fought as the Saintess of humans, but at the very least, to them, she must have been a true Saintess.
It would be right for me, who was saved, to be grateful as well.
I slowly turned my gaze to Ludovic Dureng, the captain of the Libre, who stood with a sheepish look on his face in his ruined clothes, trying to look elsewhere, and to Kroxx, his giant body completely covered in blood.
“We won, brother.”
Kroxx gave me the answer I wanted before I even asked, and feeling a deep sense of relief, I muttered softly.
“Thanks be to God.”
I let out a wry smile, baffled at my own unintentional words, and added awkwardly.
“…First, let's return to the port.”
When we get back.
To Eris.
And to God.
Let's offer our thanks for this miracle.