Before Becoming a Saintess
Ethan rubbed at his eyes in disbelief. Somewhere in the darkness so thick that he couldn’t see an inch ahead, he heard the sound of something cutting through the wind. A heartbeat later, a dreadful crackling slash rang out.
Metal clashed in the dark, the sounds echoing from the front, back, left, right, and above all at once. Ethan had no idea what was happening around him. The barrier had already vanished; he was as good as dead.
After a moment, the miasma that had been devouring the surroundings began to recede. In its place, golden light and white feathers started to ripple and spread.
“Oh? How did a human manage to take my attack in the middle of all that miasma? You couldn’t have seen a thing.”
The holy knight of the hero’s party was blocking the assassin’s dagger, the blade wreathed in black, seething aura. Ethan’s eyes widened at the sight.
Even without the miasma, it had been an attack impossible to follow with the naked eye. All he could do was throw up shields around himself.
He had heard that a highly trained holy knight could close their eyes and still deflect every attack by instinct alone, but even across generations, there had supposedly only ever been one or two such people.
And this was while the demon’s aura had torn through even the barrier he’d deployed at full strength. Yet she had stopped it with nothing more than a single sword.
The saintess glanced at Hilde, who was locked in a standoff with the suspiciously powerful demon, and said, “The moment she cast her holy domain, Hilde rushed into the building. Irene then began blessing her companions.
“Mage-nim? Funny seeing you again. We did part on good terms yesterday, didn’t we?”
Irene cast Blessing of Strife upon Ethan. His body, which had been stiff and barely able to move, finally felt some relief as he drew a proper breath.
“Yaaah!”
Lee Yu-seong swung his sword at the side of the Reaper of Stillness. Noticing him, the assassin dissolved into smoke and put distance between himself and Hilde.
Ethan forced his voice out. He still couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The miasma he had experienced firsthand was a terror no strong person could easily resist. Every spell he knew had been useless before that assassin.
“Why did you come to help me? I insulted you terribly.”
“Hmm. I just wanted to see a pathetic human helplessly flailing around?”
At the saintess’s sharp ridicule, Ethan clamped his mouth shut. She added, “That’s a joke. You’re the mage of our party, aren’t you? No matter how much of a pain you are, we can’t just leave you to die alone.”
Ethan looked at the saintess’s smiling face. Yesterday, these people had come all the way to find him, and he’d made them sit in his reception room for hours before going out and hurling insults they’d never forget. And yet, the moment he’d been in danger, they had rushed to his side without hesitation.
“I’m... not the mage of the hero’s party.”
Just then, the shadowy assassin turned to smoke. He reappeared behind Ethan.
“Having a little chat while ignoring me. How insolent.”
In the blink of an eye, the assassin moved in and swung his dagger. Hilde, moving with incredible speed, barely managed to block the blade aimed at Ethan’s throat.
The Reaper of Stillness clicked his tongue and put distance between them again. He frowned, twirling the dagger in his hand. In all his long years, there had only ever been a handful of people who could consistently block his attacks.
The holy knight in front of him was particularly annoying. Had she been even a second slower, the mage’s head would already have been separated from his neck. It irritated him that she kept stopping his attacks by such a narrow margin.
The assassin lunged at Hilde with explosive speed. Closing to melee range, he swung his dagger at a speed beyond reason. Yet Hilde blocked every single attack by the slimmest of margins.
Having his consecutive attacks thwarted by the holy knight, the assassin grew impatient.
“You little brat who struggled even against a basilisk!”
Hilde was a poor match for a basilisk. Her strengths—sharp eyesight and quick reflexes—had been tested when she had to stop a creature that simply barreled toward the village with brute force. A demon who moved swiftly and struck in an instant was, in fact, easier for her to handle.
Whenever the holy knight blocked an attack, Lee Yu-seong would generate aura and thrust in from a blind angle. Clicking his tongue, the Reaper of Stillness flipped backward into the air and retreated. Outside the building, the noise had grown chaotic.
With the saintess’s proclamation of a holy domain thinning the miasma, the mages stationed at the tower were rushing in fast.
The Reaper of Stillness leveled his dagger at Hilde, the prime culprit behind the mission’s failure.
“Little holy knight, just like that brat from the Empire. I’ll make you pay for interfering. Someday, you’ll lose a comrade by my hand.”
With a voice full of bitterness, the Reaper of Stillness turned to smoke and vanished into the air. Once Hilde confirmed that the enemy’s presence had completely disappeared, she slumped down where she stood. Beneath her apparently unhurt exterior, she had reached her limit. Blocking attacks infused with aura had burned through an enormous amount of divine power. If the mages hadn’t been on their way, it would have been an exhausting fight indeed.
Moments later, a flash of light burst inside the building. Among Scotty’s mages, the high-ranking ones had arrived first.
“Ethan-nim! Are you all right? Where is the demon?”
Seeing the mages arrive only after everything was over, Ethan spoke with clear displeasure.
“The demon fled. What were you people doing until now?”
At Ethan’s words, the mages hesitated.
“The priests’ holy power couldn’t dispel the miasma. We’re sorry we couldn’t come help sooner.”
Ethan looked around. The mages from the tower he belonged to, the hero’s party, and himself.
“Truly... pathetic.”
Ethan bowed his head. If the hero’s party had been even one second later, he would not have been standing here unharmed. Because they had run to him faster than anyone else, he was still able to breathe.
Hilde gave her sword a small swing. The blade crumbled into powder and vanished. It had not been able to withstand the intense aura and sustained divine power, and so it had oxidized away.
If the mages hadn’t been effectively out of the fight, they might all have been wiped out if this had dragged on much longer. All they had managed to do was keep pace with the demon. The flaming aura alone had been so powerful it could slice through even a basilisk’s scales with ease.
“Whew. That was really dangerous. That was some absolutely monstrous killing intent. So this is what we’ll be fighting from now on? You’ve had it rough, Hilde.”
“If the hero-nim hadn’t helped at the right moments, I wouldn’t have been able to hold out.”
“I couldn’t even see the attacks, so the fact that Hilde-nim handled it is even more incredible. Haha.”
Lee Yu-seong hadn’t been able to follow the demon’s attacks at all. That only made Hilde seem even more extraordinary. She was the only one who could have held out, even by a little, against that monster on her own. If she hadn’t been here, he probably would have handed back the hero title and run away. This was far too difficult compared to the game he’d enjoyed. The difficulty was completely different.
“Saintess-nim. I’d like to formally invite you again.”
Now feeling much lighter, Ethan bowed to the saintess. She nodded.
“I hope you’re not late this time.”
A little embarrassed, Ethan’s ears turned red. Still, these people were his saviors.
The following afternoon, the hero’s party, invited to the reception room, did not suffer the same calamity as before. Arriving ten minutes early, they found Ethan—who showed up right on time—strangely irritating.
With practiced ease, Ethan lifted the teapot on the table and poured tea into four cups. The cups rose buoyantly into the air, then settled down in front of each person.
Ethan lifted his own cup and took a sip.
“Thank you for saving me yesterday.”
He began with his thanks.
“However, I won’t be joining the hero’s party. I have work to do here.”
“What is it now that you’re still being so stubborn?”
Lee Yu-seong said, his tone a little sharp. Even after being saved from the brink of death, his attitude hadn’t changed a bit. But Hilde could hear the emotion buried in Ethan’s voice. Whatever it was, it wasn’t merely stubbornness—it was obsession.
Ethan answered Lee Yu-seong’s irritated words.
“My goal is the complete annihilation of all monsters. If I join the hero’s party and fight them, peace may come for the moment, but it won’t solve the root problem. A gate leading to the demon realm—I intend to complete it and put an end to this long war. I deeply apologize for the terrible things I said to you all before.”
Ethan bowed his head. For some reason, anger seemed to bleed through his voice. Hilde, who had been quietly listening, let out a small snort.
“Mage-nim, are you perhaps an idiot?”
At the direct insult, Ethan frowned. This was an enormous fate tied to his life. If it hadn’t been Hilde, the one who had directly saved him, he would have been furious.
Hilde looked at Ethan’s twisted expression.
“Do you think the monsters pouring out in the west just sprang up from the ground?”
Ethan didn’t understand what Hilde meant. Then, gradually, it dawned on him. He shot to his feet.
“You mean the monsters from the demon realm are coming through a gate opened in the western region?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
Ethan stared into Hilde’s eyes. She didn’t seem to be lying. If what she said was true, then staying in the tower alone really would make him a fool. The spatial magic he had studied all this time had no further room to grow. He had only been obsessing over it, clinging to it like a lifeline.
“Then how do you know that, Hilde? Even the mage-nim is that surprised.”
Hilde searched her memory carefully. If you kept cutting down the high-ranking demons that appeared one after another, you’d eventually learn that a mage could study the gates opening in the west and quickly read the demon realm’s coordinates. Her source was the game.
“...I read it in a book.”
Seeing Hilde avoid his gaze, Ethan grew a little suspicious. If that wasn’t true, would he be disappointed? Still, it no longer really mattered. If there was a western region swarming with monsters, then surely there would be some clue to find there.
“Then you’ll join us now, right? Mage-nim? You’re not still attached to the idea, are you?”
The saintess’s tone still had thorns in it. Well, she had every right to remember that his first impression had been utter trash.
Ethan suddenly remembered it. When the saintess had flown into a rage over his rudeness, her eyes had remained cool and steady as she looked at him. When people get angry, their eyes usually change first from sheer emotion. Their expression hardens, their pupils widen—something, anything. But the saintess had been looking straight through him. She had been taking everything in, trying to figure out how to drag him into the party by any means necessary.
Ethan realized that if he truly wanted to achieve his goal, he needed to look farther ahead. Until now, he had been blinded too much by revenge. For some reason, he felt that if he went with these people, he would reach his objective.
“I’ll give you everything I have. Please, will you let me join the hero’s party?”
“Think about it a little more. Yes, all right.”
At last, all four party members were gathered. Hilde felt deeply moved. Maybe now she’d have to suffer a little less? In truth, Hilde had wanted to step back ever since five years ago and live a comfortable life from afar, listening to the exploits of the hero’s party. Now it was far too late to back out.
Then a thought suddenly came to the saintess.
“By the way, didn’t that demon say something to Hilde right before it ran away yesterday?”
“Ah! It said Hilde-nim looked like the Empire’s little brat,” Lee Yu-seong answered.
“Hilde, you weren’t from Marinella like me? Were you in the Empire when you were little?”
“I was born and raised in a mountain village in Marinella. I’ve never even been to the Empire.”
“Hmm... why would it have said that? What a strange demon.”