Parting Does Not Mean Farewell (3)
He hadn't been mistaken after all.
Lee Han could tell that something was changing in the elderly woman on his back. And no one ought to misunderstand him—he did not mean a change for the worse.
"I'm not too heavy, am I?"
"If anything, you ought to put on a little more."
"Ho ho. Even as old as I am, that still lifts my spirits. I suppose a woman is a woman, however old she gets."
"You're still in your prime, if you ask me."
"You do have a gift for shameless flattery. Ah—would you turn left here?"
"This way, you mean?"
She was growing younger.
Not merely healthier. The vitality he sensed in her had changed.
Lee Han had always been able to judge a person's age by smell and touch alone. By that measure, the elderly woman on his back was no longer a woman in her seventies.
Early fifties, at the oldest.
And even that was still in progress.
She just keeps getting younger?
The life wreathing her body only grew fuller, and a hollow laugh escaped him.
Could this be the Rejuvenation Holy Art he had only ever heard about?
A holy art bestowed by the Light of Radiance upon priests who sacrificed their youth. Usable from the fifties.
The age cannot be chosen. The body is fixed, without fail, at ten years old—a little child.
Most of the Holy Power cultivated over a lifetime is lost.
But the Rejuvenation Holy Art he knew was nothing like what was happening now. In truth, it could only be called the Light of Radiance's mercy: You have suffered long enough, so set aside a priest's work and live a new life. For the priests themselves, it was a hollow gift beyond bearing. The truly devout, he had heard, treasured the art and treasured it, using it only at the very last breath of their lifespan—or else to begin that new life.
Which made this...
The old maid's holy power hasn't dropped at all, has it?
Perhaps it was because he had met so many priests whether he wanted to or not, but Lee Han could gauge the sum of a person's holy power—and hers was not merely intact. It was growing stronger. Even so, as if she were rejuvenating, the white of her hair was darkening to black, and flesh was returning to arms and legs that had been like dead wood.
Was this even rejuvenation?
It was more like—
Like time is being rewound.
As if the time of her body itself were winding backward.
And this, regardless of its owner's will.
"Oh my. Why is my hair doing this?"
"...Ha."
The old maid only blinked at the sight of her own body growing young. It was a sight to draw a gasp of wonder, and faced with a scene that deserved to be called a miracle, all that escaped Lee Han was a hollow laugh.
At the miracle unfolding on his back.
Whoosh!
Lee Han cut through the empty air, quite literally, like a bird swimming the sky.
Air Walk. But his Air Walk, already braided with Divine Bow, Elastic Shadow and several other arts, was no different from flight. Because of that, however far the distance, he crossed it in a breath. Reaching a point some fifty kilometers from the encampment took him no more than fifteen minutes.
He could have been faster. It was fifteen minutes only because he had governed his speed, lest the old woman's body take the strain.
"Aigoo, thank you. Truly. We only got here so quickly because of you."
"......"
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Nothing. It's just—you're an incredible beauty, ma'am."
"Oh my, ohoho! A young man shouldn't tease an old woman. Save a line like that for a young lady."
"...That's what I'm saying."
The young lady is you.
Lee Han swallowed the rest of it, and his mouth fell slightly open.
At some point the thick white hair had vanished. Black hair streamed in its place, and the old maid—no, the nun, now so young that "ma'am" was embarrassing—had become a woman carrying the fresh bloom of her early twenties. Only her manner of speech was unchanged. Change that, and anyone would have believed she was a student.
Just as Lee Han found himself utterly unable to grasp what miracle had befallen the nun—
"Fortunately, we've come to the right place."
He didn't follow.
"This place, you see, is where that ominous being was sealed."
"......"
At the nun's sudden words, Lee Han's eyes widened a fraction. He understood. The ominous being—the place where Inanna had been sealed.
The surprise lasted only a moment.
"That so?"
He let it pass. He had no hobby of lingering over a bastard he had already finished.
"Heh heh."
The nun laughed, bright and clear, at his reaction. The look was nothing other than tender, the way one looks at a grandson—but turned on him from a face grown this young, it was only awkward.
While Lee Han sat in that discomfort—
"Then let us begin."
Fwaaah!
In an instant, brilliant light began to spread from her body like a dense fog.
Without a word of warning, an ocean of holy power pours from a single body.
Lee Han was startled in two senses at once. First, because the nun had suddenly released that vast holy power with no explanation. Second, because the power she was pouring out felt as if it might blow his body backward.
What...
Can a human body even hold power like this?
If a person was a porcelain jar, what she was giving off now was the sea. An ocean, contained in porcelain—a sight to make him doubt his eyes. It was only natural he could not hide his shock.
In the midst of it, the nun's voice reached him.
"That ominous thing, I'm told, left a door to hell where it was sealed. A so-called Hellgate Seal."
"A Hellgate Seal?"
"One of the five gates that lead to the Underworld, they say, and a door into the Hell where demons live. It doesn't matter now. But let a mere ten years pass, and this gate will open. The demons of Hell will be loosed all at once, and they will make this world into a hell."
Lee Han's face went stiff.
"Truly, even its heart was vile. To make a thing like this, and then simply leave..."
For once, the nun wore no smile of understanding. Expressionless, she looked into a space filled with nothing but darkness.
"...Ah."
Following her gaze, Lee Han understood at last that this place which held nothing truly did not hold nothing.
Darkness...
There was an unpleasant darkness. A darkness that was also mean, and without any presence—because it had refused, absolutely, to reveal itself, and had hidden its body to the very end. If not for the nun, that darkness would have stayed hidden from everyone, and in the end it would have carried out its role exactly as she had said.
It would have opened an entrance to Hell.
Fwaaah!
And as if she had read his heart, the ocean of holy power pouring from the nun's body scattered across this place—no, across the whole of a space measured in hundreds of kilometers. As if she meant to erase, down to the last careful trace, every ominous remnant that existed here.
"...I see. So this is...!"
Her murmur followed. Lee Han, floundering in the tide of holy power, forced his eyes open anyway—and he saw.
"Ah, ma'am..."
...the nun's body growing faint.
Everyone saw it.
A sea of holy power, raging, vast enough to call a great ocean to mind. The sight of it surging like a tide.
Even the sovereigns who had been deep in talk at the encampment could not hide their shock as they watched those waves. And when the raging holy power at last became a single fountain of light and shot up from the earth, even the people who lived in Wales witnessed it.
A shaft of light, brilliant beyond words. A shaft of light as if announcing a god's descent. As it subsided, the particles of light it left behind slowly seeped into the ground.
Drop. Drop! Drooop!
Where the particles sank, sprouts—dainty to a fault—pushed through the clods of soil and gradually showed themselves.
The land's vigor will deepen.
For several hundred years, no demon may show itself upon this ground.
No wicked thing will dare trespass on earth in which the light—the Saint's life—has taken root.
And this—
"...Why did you do it?"
"Whatever do you mean?"
"All of it."
"Heh heh."
"Don't just laugh. I'm angry right now, ma'am."
"I'm sorry. For making you angry."
"...If you say it like that, I just sound like some rotten bastard."
"Never. Never that. You are a truly good person..."
—was a blessing made of sacrifice. People had to know.
They had to. Without fail.
"......"
Lee Han could not hide the bleakness on his face as he lowered the nun into his arms, as if to shield her. She still looked young and full of life, but he felt it.
She had already sacrificed everything.
"The holy art. Self-Sacrifice."
"How widely you've learned."
"I just... happened to find out."
Few can use it. Fewer still ever do.
Use it, and a miracle is certain.
The one who uses it is certain to die.
That was why no one used this art. However things stood, no one wanted to die.
So why?
"Why do you keep sacrificing yourself? Like a fool..."
Why had the nun chosen this? Lee Han couldn't understand it at all. Hadn't she already wasted fifty years of her life?
"You finally got young. You should have lived a new life. Why go and do a thing like this...? You should have just left it to somebody else!"
His voice rose before he knew it. Yes, he understood that this Hellgate Seal, or whatever it was, would be a danger in the years to come. But that didn't mean the nun had to sacrifice herself. It was something they could have found a way to stop, later...
"—No. If it weren't for me, no one could have stopped it. In the future, this gate opened in the end."
"......"
"I'm not lying. I can see. So very many things."
"......"
"For example, that you are someone who once made a noble sacrifice. That even after that sacrifice, you lived through harsh trials. And even that you don't resent the world—that you go on living with your head held high."
"......"
"It's remarkable. And it's pitiable. You could have lived being loved a little more. Why did you live so hard..."
"It wasn't a life that was only bad. What does the past matter? I'm busy enough living the present, and the days ahead."
"...Heh heh. You really are a strong person. A truly strong person."
The Light Source gathered in the Saint's eyes shone more fiercely than ever. Her voice, frail to the point of breaking, was recovering its strength, and Lee Han knew this was no good sign.
The last returning light.
He knew the stage for what it was: a person on the verge of death, briefly recovering her vigor. And the nun, strength returned for the last time, looked up at him.
"Did you know? If it hadn't been for you, what would have become of Louise, that poor child?"
"...What would have happened?"
Honestly, Lee Han could already guess. He'd already been fed a spoiler that wasn't quite a spoiler, courtesy of some gray-haired brat.
But what he heard from the nun...
"...That child, Louise, did the same thing I did."
"......"
"Self-Sacrifice. Through it, she stopped the evil spirit and saved the world."
With no one ever knowing.
"......"
She was speaking an ending far more wretched than any spoiler.