70
Chapter 70
The video that Black Fang had spread throughout the Empire.
Having seen it and developed doubts, Lucy immediately headed toward the Great Temple.
However, Lucy didn't end up dramatically throwing open the Great Temple's doors and declaring she would investigate what was truly happening inside.
"What on earth should I do about this..."
She just paced around near the Great Temple, letting out deep sighs from frustration.
In a way, it was an obvious outcome.
The Great Temple wasn't a place anyone could enter to begin with, and now the Empire was in an uproar over matters related to Black Fang.
In this situation, they would never let an Apprentice Knight of the Empire with absolutely zero power enter the Great Temple.
That said, Lucy wasn't strong enough to barge in there while ignoring all that tight security either.
No matter how much she thought about it, she couldn't find an answer.
She wondered if she should just go back, but...
'I can't back down here.'
She had to confirm it.
Whether those children were truly doing well.
Including the thirty children Lucy had handed over to the Holy See, and even the children other Knights would have rescued as part of their duties.
The doubts that arose after seeing the Black Fang Leader's video.
She absolutely couldn't return until she resolved this ominous premonition that the Holy See might use those children for something bad.
It was at that moment, while Lucy was busy pacing frantically.
"...Huh?"
Lucy's face flushed with bewilderment.
The siblings she had previously handed over to the Holy See.
She had just caught a glimpse of the sister passing by.
In this situation.
There was no need to hesitate.
Lucy quickly ran in the direction the child had disappeared.
The scenery before her eyes rapidly changed.
The child seemed almost within reach but kept shaking off Lucy's pursuit, running somewhere.
And at the end of that sudden chase, the place Lucy reached was... a dead-end wall.
'Where on earth did she go?'
Lucy frantically looked around, but the girl was nowhere to be seen.
There's a limit to how strange things can be.
There was clearly no way to escape further from here.
Yet the girl had vanished like a ghost.
No, come to think of it, the strangeness didn't end there.
Lucy was a Knight with enough potential to be considered a promising talent. Naturally, she could handle Mana at the very least.
Just now, she had naturally gathered Mana in her legs, trying to catch up to the girl at her maximum speed.
But she couldn't reach her.
That was something utterly incomprehensible by common sense.
Such a young child running faster than Lucy was simply absurd.
'Did I see an illusion?'
That thought crossed her mind, but this was also a bit strange.
No matter how much stress she'd been under lately, she wasn't at the point of seeing hallucinations.
In the end, no matter how much she thought about it, no answer came.
Exhausted, Lucy naturally leaned against the wall... and felt a strange sensation.
It was supposed to be an ordinary wall.
Strangely, however, something was sticking out of it.
Almost like a doorknob.
Lucy felt the old brick wall once again.
She was certain.
This was an illusion created by Illusion Magic.
Someone had painstakingly set up a Spell Formula here to hide a passageway.
But for what purpose?
And where on earth did this passage lead?
Did that child lead her all the way here?
No, what exactly was that child to begin with?
Lucy's mind raced with a jumble of thoughts.
Her brain simply couldn't keep up with the situation.
However...
What she needed to do right now was crystal clear.
Lucy swallowed hard, pushed the door open, and stepped into the unknown space.
*****
She descended the stairs leading underground for quite some time, then continued down a damp, foul-smelling corridor.
The further she went, the more her face filled with bewilderment.
Come to think of it, the secret passage from earlier had been oddly close to the Great Temple. She hadn't realized it at the time.
If she hadn't gotten her directions mixed up... this place had to be right beneath the Great Temple.
"This place..."
She had finally reached her destination.
What greeted Lucy was a completely alien space.
The fact that she couldn't fathom its intended purpose only made it feel more so.
For a place where people supposedly lived, not a single ray of sunlight entered, nor was there any lighting. It was by no means a space designed for human habitation.
Yet, scattered across the floor were Gospels and Prayers.
And there were far more of them than she expected.
It looked as though quite a large number of people had been living here.
If that was the case, then where on earth did they all go? Lucy looked around, searching the area as doubts gnawed at her.
The more she looked, the more her questions multiplied.
'Why on earth is something like this here?'
Forcing open a closed door, she discovered a room filled with bizarre Magic Engineering Machines.
Tools that looked like they were meant to sever something.
Even a Magic Engineering Machine that appeared to compress things into a liquid.
'A slaughterhouse?'
That assumption naturally came to mind.
As she observed the objects more closely, she noticed what looked like blood and chunks of flesh caught in the machines.
She was a complete layman when it came to Magic Engineering Machines. Still, she was fairly certain they were used for that exact purpose.
Perhaps this was a space used to butcher meat...
'...Isn't that a bit strange?'
Lucy's face clouded over with doubt as the thought crossed her mind. In a way, it was only obvious.
Why on earth would there be a slaughterhouse in a place like this? There was a limit to how illogical things could be.
But if that wasn't the case, why were those machines here? Given the blood and flesh, they were definitely used to grind and cut 'meat'.
"......."
Cold sweat ran down Lucy's back. Her face was deathly pale, as if she might collapse at any second.
The reason was very simple.
A sinister thought had crossed her mind. A truly sinister one.
But...
'T-that couldn't possibly be true, right?'
It must be a misunderstanding.
She had let her imagination run wild.
After all, that was far too extreme a leap to make.
Throughout her time as a Knight, she had encountered and punished countless criminals, but none had ever done something so horrific.
There is a line, even for evil.
To think the Holy See, which served God, would do such a thing. Not even the most hardcore conspiracy theorists would believe such a far-fetched story.
Lucy spent a long time trying to calm her racing heart, but the unsettling feeling refused to vanish.
Anxious, she paced around, biting her nails.
And then...
"......!"
The girl's face appeared before her once again.
The same girl who had led her this far.
For some reason, the girl was standing right in front of Lucy.
"W-wait! Hold on!"
Lucy shouted quickly, but just like before, the girl ignored her and dashed away.
She was incredibly fast, once again.
Lucy pushed herself to chase after her... but she failed.
As always, the girl vanished as if she had evaporated into thin air.
Panting heavily, Lucy found nothing waiting for her but a black door.
[Contaminant Storage]
A room with such a bizarre name.
A dark premonition washed over her.
Yet, she couldn't turn back now. Lucy took a deep breath and opened the door.
*****
As soon as the door opened, she felt a wave of nausea.
Her head spun.
A sharp, intense pain shot through her eyes.
She felt a chilling presence.
A sinister black liquid was stored here.
However, it wasn't the black liquid that tormented Lucy.
She saw something horrific.
Something she was never meant to see.
It looked like hundreds...
No, thousands of human souls were fused together into one before her eyes.
And they were radiating a terrible Curse.
This was dangerous.
This was undeniably dangerous.
She couldn't control her ability to see souls at will.
She had no way of knowing when its influence would warp her mind and body.
Just as Lucy fought to hold onto her fading consciousness and try to escape...
"Unnie."
A voice reached her.
It was the voice of the girl who had led Lucy here.
Only then did Lucy finally realize the girl's true identity.
How she could move faster than her. How she could appear so elusively.
There was only one reason.
That child was not a living human being.
The girl's soul silently reached out its hand to Lucy.
Looking at her with eyes filled with a mix of countless emotions.
Why was it?
Running away was definitely the right thing to do here.
Everything in this place was suspicious and dangerous. It was full of things threatening her life.
Therefore, fleeing was the right choice.
Even knowing that.
She felt that she shouldn't ignore it. That she couldn't just turn a blind eye.
Lucy... grabbed the girl's hand.
The things the girl had experienced flowed into her mind.
Wandering the Slums, meeting Lucy, and growing close through various conversations.
Being led by Lucy's hand and handed over to the Holy See.
And.......
Everything that happened after.
After learning everything, Lucy looked at the girl once again.
As she looked at her... she couldn't say a single word.
Because Lucy had seen it.
The sight of the girl having her limbs severed alive simply for failing to sing a hymn properly.
The sight of the girl being forced to cut open and dissect her own sibling as punishment for not truly revering God.
She couldn't just say she was sorry after seeing all that.
It would be outrageously shameless to beg for forgiveness after committing such atrocities.
Toward someone like her, the girl spoke.
That she was resentful.
That she resented those who committed such acts and yet still shamelessly praised God.
With those words, the girl became a part of that intertwined mass of souls.
No, the girl must have been a part of that soul from the very beginning.
The things the Holy See called contaminants.
The souls of children, imbued with a Curse, left behind after all their Divine Power had been extracted.
Those very things called out to Lucy.
To make the sinner pay for her sins.
Her head grew dizzy.
Her thoughts refused to process properly.
Lucy's legs moved independently of her will.
Lucy stared at the black liquid with unfocused eyes.
She could hear the children's voices.
They were calling out to Lucy.
They were begging her for help.
And so, Lucy... did what she had to do.
The blue-haired girl sank into the ominous black liquid, just like that.