Before She Was a Saint

Hilde and Irene burst out of the cave at a run. Once they’d passed the waterfall, the situation became clear enough at a glance.

Miasma was surging all around them.

Miasma was the foul energy that high-ranking demons and monsters gave off instinctively. It steadily gnawed away at stats and HP at a fixed rate, hanging in the air like smoke. The intensity varied wildly depending on how powerful the creature was.

This much miasma... no ordinary monster is going to be there.

The amount of stat drain was no joke. Hilde could already feel her strength ebbing away by the second. The villagers, too, were collapsing one after another, clutching themselves and crying out in pain as the monster’s presence spread.

Yet there was something a little strange about it. They hadn’t been affected by the miasma at all while they were still inside the cave. Perhaps that was due to the nature of the place where the holy sword was kept. It was said that the holy sword contained an enormous amount of divine energy.

Irene frowned at the sight of people falling and immediately used a skill.

A pale, warm light settled over the village and then beyond it, spilling out across an enormous radius. Semi-transparent feathers drifted lazily down from the sky, vanishing the moment they touched the ground.

It restored the stat and HP loss caused by the miasma and eased the pain. Sanctuary Declaration showed just how important the saint’s role was within a hero party. Its effect usually scaled with divine power, and Irene’s own stats were considered quite high.

The divine power that had been draining inside Hilde recovered somewhat. The sensation of power that had fallen to about a quarter of what it had been came surging back. The saint might act playful most of the time, but her divine power was certainly usable. Of course, while she kept the skill active, Irene’s own divine power was continuously being consumed, so this was no time to stand around. Hilde and Irene headed toward the source of the miasma.

"If you can’t move well, take shelter in the building behind the waterfall. The miasma hasn’t reached there!"

At Hilde’s shout, the village chief began directing the people. Aside from those needed to carry the unconscious to the waterfall, the two hundred or so villagers who could still fight followed after the saint.

About a hundred meters from the village, they heard the earth being torn up. Even in the dead of night after sunset, smoke made of dirt and dust could be seen rising beyond the horizon. Sensing the ominous pressure, most of the villagers steeled themselves, dropped into battle stances, and gripped their spears and polearms tightly.

After a few minutes, the monster finally came into view. The moment the villagers recognized what it was, darkness settled over their faces.

It was shaped like a huge snake. Though it crawled along the ground, its head alone was well over three meters wide. Hard scales covered its entire body, and a massive horn jutted from its forehead. Its great eyes, with pupils slit sharply vertical, fixed on the people standing in its way.

The village chief approached the saint with a grave expression. His clenched fist trembled as though he could barely contain his frustration.

"Saint. We’ll hold it here. Please preserve your body and think of the future."

The hero party was their last line of defense. If the saint died here, it wouldn’t just be this village that suffered—several nations might be doomed as well. The chief weighed the lives of the people he loved against the peace of humanity, and made his choice.

The saint looked at Hilde, as if asking for agreement. Hilde drew her sword, the blade ringing cleanly as it left its scabbard.

"There is a chance," she said. "We can’t run before we’ve even met the Demon King."

"It could become the seed of humanity’s destruction. Please, leave the village and go."

"I’ve had enough of that kind of experience once already."

Hilde remembered. Five years ago, the village where she was born and raised had been attacked by bandits, and many people had been on the verge of dying. It had been better for her alone to bear it than watch so many people die. Was that how this man felt, too?

The village chief had to choose between the village where he was born and raised and the peace of humanity.

"If your life is in danger, leave the rest to us and run with the saint. Please."

The holy knight said nothing. Perhaps sensing the resolve in the girl before him, the chief made no further attempt to persuade them. He lowered his head in prayer, then turned aside.

The sound of the approaching earth-shaking beast only grew louder. Nervous, the villagers swallowed without realizing it.

Hilde gritted her teeth when she saw what the monster was. It was a basilisk—a high-ranking monster that dwelled in the Demon Realm, the game’s late-stage region. Adapted to places where miasma always hung thick and vile, it was the sort of foe that a four-person hero party could defeat without too much trouble if they fought properly.

But the problem was...

We only have the strength of a hero party for two people right now. The rest won’t be able to contribute much at all.

The authority to stop time was poison if used the wrong way. If she stopped time, swung her sword, and failed to leave so much as a scratch, the backlash of that power would be hard to endure. And while time was frozen, her body grew heavy under the strain of gravity, making it difficult to jump high ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠enough to strike a vital point.

With the basilisk now right in front of her, Hilde steadied her blade. By any rational judgment, retreating from the village with the saint was the sensible choice. The chance that just the two of them could bring down the basilisk was, generously speaking, less than thirty percent.

But if they did that, many people living by the Waterfall Gorge would lose their lives, and the place they called home would be reduced to ruin. She couldn’t simply turn a blind eye. If they were going to fight, then they had to win.

Hilde activated Earth’s Protection, a skill that nullified knockback effects and reduced the impact of incoming shocks by a certain amount. Seeing Hilde prepare to fight from the front, Irene used a buff skill.

More divine power than usual flooded Hilde’s body. The villagers could already see a future where Hilde was crushed beneath the basilisk’s massive body. To them, the basilisk was a calamity—an unstoppable evil god.

The basilisk began to crawl toward Hilde at frightening speed.

With a thunderous crash, Hilde and the basilisk collided. The villagers squeezed their eyes shut. It was only a matter of time before that became their own fate.

Chiiiiiiik!

But to everyone’s astonishment, Hilde stopped the basilisk dead in its tracks. Her sword and the basilisk’s head slammed together, throwing off sparks. Hilde’s arms trembled violently as she held it back alone.

Damn it. It’s heavier than it looks. I can hold it off, but can I actually beat this thing?

While gripping her sword, Hilde felt a sharp pain in her broken right wrist. To withstand the basilisk’s accelerated charge and respond in full, she had used a great deal of divine power in an instant and apparently suffered internal damage. Fortunately, Irene hurriedly cast a healing spell, and the broken wrist was restored to some extent.

Not long after the standoff began, the basilisk withdrew. Raising its long body, it aimed for the person behind Hilde. Its target was the saint.

Hilde drove power into her legs and leapt high, striking the basilisk hard across the neck. The massive, heavy body lurched sideways and then toppled with a thunderous crash. The villagers’ eyes lit with hope at the sight of the tremendous battle.

But when she saw the monster rise again, Hilde’s heart sank. Its body was unmarked, untouched by even a scratch. Hilde was burning through a great deal of divine power just to produce that kind of force. Irene would probably not be able to keep Sanctuary Declaration and Blessing of Struggle active for very long, either.

If the battle continued like this, defeat was inevitable.

Then, all at once, Hilde thought of the one way to break the stalemate. No matter how tough a living creature was, its eyes were different. But on her own, it would be impossible to target the eyes of a giant beast gone mad.

Then she remembered one skill Irene had. If it worked, they might just win.

"Saint! Withdraw all the blessings and prepare Temenus!"

"You can’t hold out without the buffs! If anything, I should just..."

Run. Irene couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. The holy knight’s back was the back of a warrior who would never retreat until victory had been won.

"It’ll take about five minutes! You have to survive, Hilde!"

The bright, shimmering aura vanished in an instant. Hilde’s overflowing divine power began to drop in chunks. With Blessing of Struggle and Sanctuary Declaration gone, the miasma’s effects immediately returned.

Looking at the basilisk, now even more ferocious, Hilde lifted one corner of her mouth. The monster still showed no sign of injury, but she could feel its fury. As if daring a mere human to stand in its path, the basilisk let out a loud roar.

With the miasma surging over the field, they would be fine for now. The weaker villagers had already fled behind the waterfall, and the people still here could endure for a short while.

From here on, it was a one-on-one battle with life and death on the line. They only had to hold out for about four minutes and thirty seconds now.

Keueeeeeek!

The basilisk, having risen again, charged the most irritating human in front of it. It opened its jaws wide, trying to swallow Hilde whole.

Hilde charged as well. She leapt quickly toward the gaping maw and swung the horn on its forehead horizontally with all the divine power she could muster.

The basilisk’s huge body staggered violently. The beast that had been sent sprawling in a single blow when it fought under full buffs immediately lunged at Hilde again this time.

Shit. So it’s not going to be that easy, huh?

Feeling the divine power inside her dwindle to less than half, Hilde clenched her teeth.

How much time had passed? Those watching the bloody battle felt a miserable, sinking despair. Hilde’s sword had broken and was now stuck in the ground. She had been forced to fight with an armored hand after the blade snapped just two minutes in. The petrifying influence clinging to the basilisk’s scales was turning her hand to stone little by little each time they clashed.

"Hff—ptoo."

Hilde spat out the blood rising in her throat.

Trying to endure as long as possible, she had wrapped so much divine power around her arm that the ribs left unprotected had cracked. In fact, it felt like several of them had broken. A broken bone had probably punctured her lung, because breathing was getting difficult. Her vision blurred.

Kyahooooo!

Seeing Hilde about to collapse, the basilisk let out a shriek. Was it over? The beast bared its jaws and charged at breakneck speed to deliver the final blow.

When less than a meter remained between Hilde and the basilisk, chains descended from the sky with a metallic clatter, shining with holy light as they bound the giant monster’s body. Golden pillars slammed down from above with a series of heavy crashes, pinning the chains in place.

The saint, Irene, was drenched in sweat and fading at the edges of consciousness. She had activated the highest-ranking technique recorded in history, one with a minimum casting time of five minutes, in just four minutes and thirty seconds.

Among all the saints in history, hers was the greatest talent.

The basilisk, fixed in place by the enormous chains, roared and thrashed wildly, but the pillars did not budge. Even so, they couldn’t afford to relax yet—not for a single moment.

To use Temenus, the saint reapplied the buffs she had withdrawn, and at the same time cast Cure to heal Hilde’s petrified hand. With that, she had spent almost all of her divine power.

"Hilde! Are you okay? I’m so late... I’m sorry."

Water pooled at the corners of Irene’s eyes. Her voice was thick with sorrow. With a brief moment of breathing room, Hilde saw the saint’s tearful expression and blinked in surprise.

"It’s been a while since I’ve seen you cry."

At Hilde’s teasing, Irene managed a smile through her tears. Hilde picked up her broken sword and strode over to the basilisk, which was pinned to the ground, climbing up onto its face. The monster couldn’t move at all under Temenus’s crushing power.

She gathered every last shred of divine power she had left, all the way to the threshold of death. Then she unleashed Holy Aura, a skill she had trained as a precaution. If a swordsman’s route was all about dumping everything into attack power through aura, a holy knight strengthened the sword’s durability itself with divine power and blocked every blow from the front. But there was also a way to compensate for the lack of firepower: a route skill used by inquisitors that converted divine power into aura.

It wasn’t as efficient as a swordsman’s, but in this situation, it could not have been more perfect. Now it was time to finish this. Yellow aura burst from the broken sword, shooting up two meters in a flash. Feeling her divine power draining away in clumps, Hilde reversed her grip and drove the blade straight down into the basilisk’s eye. Sensing danger, the monster shut its eyelids tight to protect itself.

Die already!

But the eyelid was too thin; with a sickening thrust, the aura stabbed deep inside. The basilisk let out a short shriek, then soon stopped moving altogether.

The young holy knight immediately released the aura. Her body no longer had the strength to control itself. Somehow, she had done it. The tension left her body, pain rushing in all at once, yet her mood felt as warm and soft as drifting through clouds. Exhaustion took over completely, and she fell from three meters above the monster’s head.

Thud.

Irene rushed over and caught Hilde as she fell. Since Hilde was still wearing her armor, she was pretty heavy, and Irene couldn’t support her weight, ending up sitting down hard on the ground. Seeing the basilisk finally fall, the villagers’ legs lost all strength. They had witnessed, right before their eyes, the feat of the two of them bringing down that enormous, terrifying horror. For a moment, a shiver ran through ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠everyone’s entire body.

"Hilde, sniff... I really thought you were going to die."

The saint had no divine power left, and that made her chest ache because she couldn’t heal Hilde right away. In her whole life, she had never once ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠looked this helpless.

She squeezed out what little divine power remained in her body, but there was almost nothing left.

Hilde let out a faint laugh at Irene’s concern. She, too, had had moments of utter despair in the middle of the fight. Enduring without buffs had been far harder than she’d expected. When she blocked those attacks and swallowed the blood rising in her throat, she had wanted to give everything up.

But she’d managed to endure because she trusted a single companion.

Then she laughed, almost in disbelief. It still didn’t feel real. Hilde turned her head with effort and looked at Irene, who was crying tears down her face, and spoke.

"You’re alive, saint, so why would I die? You look really ugly when you cry. Smile like you usually do."

She hated seeing Irene cry.

And even in pain, Hilde fell asleep in Irene’s comforting arms.