Before She Was the Saintess
Deep in the mountains, this place of hastily erected wooden buildings was the notorious bandit stronghold of Black Noise.
"Mmph! Mmmph!!"
The muffled groans snapped Tupper, one of Black Noise’s officers, out of the half-doze he had drifted into while watching the woman. In this region, Black Noise was the sort of nuisance even the lord himself could do little to root out.
"Mmph! Mmmph-mmph!"
Tupper rose from his chair, stretched lazily, then stepped up to the woman and pulled the gag from her mouth. Since childhood, he had never been good with women, and tormenting the ones he liked had become something of a hobby. The silver hair catching the sunlight from the window, the large green eyes that looked almost gentle, the tiny mouth—everything about her struck exactly the right note in his taste.
The woman, her hands and feet bound with ropes, stared at him with wide, sharp eyes. When she said nothing and only glared, Tupper’s oily smile twisted as he reached out and stroked her hair.
"Awake at last? You really are unlucky. Of all people, one of our men had to nab you off the street. Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you have a good time and then send you somewhere nice."
The woman leaned back to avoid his touch. Then her glaring expression melted away in an instant, replaced by a look of serene kindness.
"...The gods will forgive your sins. If you release me now, there may still be time."
"Kuhahaha! If I believed in gods, do you think I’d be living as a thief? You’ve got the figure, but your head’s full of stones, woman!"
"I am Saint Irene Sermilt of the Central Temple in Senium. Please. Stop your crimes at once."
"Oh, how frightening~. Hah, think that’ll scare me into letting you go? Do you even know how far this place is from Senium?"
Tupper’s greasy gaze dropped to the shabby skirt she wore. Even by horse, it would take a week to reach Senium from here. By distance alone, there was no way a saintess could have come here on her own.
He had heard rumors that the saintess was someone even nobles dared not meet eyes with. She certainly looked the part, but there was no way someone like that would be wandering the streets alone.
Having finished his thoughts, the man’s hand closed around her skirt. The woman, meanwhile, only glanced up at the sun hanging high in the window for a moment.
"About this time... you should be here."
Tupper assumed she was deluding herself, imagining that someone had come to rescue her. But that was impossible. Thanks to the concealment barrier artifact they had lucked into, this place would be hard to find even for a fourth-rank mage.
He lifted her skirt little by little, savoring the situation. At the thought of the undergarments soon to be revealed between those pale thighs, he could barely contain his excitement. A wet, breathy chuckle slipped from him as saliva pooled in his mouth.
Then it happened.
CRACK! BOOM! BOOM! Aaaagh!
Tupper jumped at the thunderous crash from outside. It sounded as though a mage battalion had unleashed concentrated fire on the place. The sound kept rolling in, one deafening blast after another. In a hurry to check what was happening, he hauled the woman up and dragged her outside with him.
The wooden door creaked open. Perhaps because everything had gone so quiet all at once, the sound seemed louder than usual.
At the sight before him, Tupper’s jaw dropped and his eyes went wide. Most of Black Noise was already down, sprawled on the ground and dying, with not a single person left standing unscathed. Stupefied, he looked over the fallen bodies of his comrades, and then he saw the one thing that did not belong.
She was a woman about Tupper’s height, around one hundred seventy centimeters. Brilliant golden hair that shone with the sunlight, pale blue eyes shaped like a cat’s, a sleek but feminine nose, and a small face so beautiful it was unlike anything he had ever seen in his life.
She had a sword planted in the ground, leaning against it, and even through the paladin armor, the curves of her chest, waist, and hips were enough to make his eyes keep drifting back to her.
The girl in paladin’s garb swept the hair fallen forward over her shoulder back with one hand. She looked tired, dark circles shadowing the skin beneath her eyes, yet even that lent her an air of decadent allure.
Then she turned her head and looked straight at Tupper. For a single instant, he froze like a mouse before a cat. The girl exhaled when she saw the silver-haired woman tied beside him.
"You there. Bring that person here, now."
The moment the girl called out, Tupper flinched. Her voice was beautiful too. He could hardly believe that such a slender girl had wiped out the Black Noise he belonged to. Trying to act unfazed, he forced himself to sound calm.
"Hey, girl. That’s some rude language. You alone?"
"And if I am?"
Tupper was already searching for a way to get out of this. He had a card to play. The boss of Black Noise was a big shot who wielded aura, someone most knights couldn’t hope to match. If he could just buy time, the boss would appear and deal with this woman, then make her suffer for the rest of her life as a cripple who couldn’t even die properly.
"You’re an idiot! Coming here all by yourself without a single ally? The boss will be here soon, and he’ll cut the tendons in your wrists and ankles and keep you alive as his plaything!"
"The boss? You mean this bastard?"
The girl, who had been listening with a bored expression, casually kicked a round object toward Tupper. It rolled across the ground and stopped at his feet. When he looked down and their eyes met, his face drained of color.
"Hiiiiiik!"
The boss, who always stood at the front line and tore enemies apart in battle, had his head cleanly severed. Only now did Tupper understand the situation. This girl was a monster among monsters. Tupper wanted to live. He knew he was a bad man, but his own life mattered most. And he knew exactly what he needed to do in order to survive.
"You bitch! Take one more step and this woman dies! I’m going down, and she’s going down with me...!"
Tupper pressed a dagger to the throat of the bound woman beside him. Terror made his legs shake, but to survive, he began backing away little by little.
The paladin girl let out a long sigh and lowered her head.
"If you’d just let that person go now, I’d let you leave. This time, even the gods will especially forgive your sins."
Tupper didn’t believe her. The woman standing before him had cut down even a boss as monstrous as his with a single stroke. Once he got far enough away, he planned to stab the hostage in the stomach and run without looking back. If the hostage was badly wounded, they wouldn’t waste time chasing a single bandit.
"I gave you time to repent...? You’re a heretic, aren’t you?"
The girl lowered her head, her expression hidden beneath her hair. Even under the blazing sun, the atmosphere suddenly went cold, and Tupper tightened his grip on the dagger. Since he was an officer himself, he knew that once he was done for, harming the hostage would take only an instant.
He was inching away slowly. Or so he thought.
"A...ah? Aaagh!! Shiiit! It hurts!!!"
In the blink of an eye, Tupper collapsed onto the ground. When he tried to push himself up with his arms, one arm was gone. So were both legs. Tupper could not understand what had happened. He had been watching the paladin carefully as he retreated, and she had clearly been standing there motionless without the slightest hint of preparation. With all the blood pouring out of him, his mind was growing hazy.
"I said I’d forgive you... man, what a pain..."
As if Tupper were beneath even a glance, the paladin calmly cut the ropes binding the hostage girl. Then, frowning at the shabby clothes she wore, she looked displeased. Those didn’t even seem like new clothes. Where had she bought something like this?
"Hilde~. I’ve been waiting~."
The silver-haired girl flexed her wrists and ankles, sore from being tied up, and stretched.
"You’re a little late today! Why were you so slow?"
For an instant, Hilde—the paladin who had come to rescue her—felt a vein nearly pop in her forehead. She wanted to slap the smug look right off the person standing there stretching, but doing so would only make things even noisier later. Hilde forced herself to steady her temper.
"I’m sorry, Saintess. But you shouldn’t have sneaked out in the first place. Do you know how worried everyone was?"
Everyone up high in the church.
The saintess puffed out her cheeks in obvious displeasure.
"I told you to call me by my name, not Saintess!"
Ah. So that was what she was upset about. Hilde draped a cloak over the saintess’s shabby clothes.
"Understood, Irene. Let’s head back at once."
Even after arriving, she would still have to write up a full report. Thinking of that, Hilde felt even more exhausted.
- - -
Irene Sermilt.
The High Priest of the Central First Temple in Senium. In another role, the Saintess.
The last bastion of humanity, the one who had renewed the divine power record after three hundred years. Her authority was absolute to the point that even an emperor would have to wait for the chance to meet her and receive her blessing.
Of course, in the end, she was just dead weight who couldn’t do anything on her own, exactly like her role in the game.
Tap, tap, tap.
Hilde and Irene were resting by the campfire after night had deepened and Hilde had raised a divine barrier. The saintess was the finest buffer there was, with her blessings and barriers.
"How did you even manage to go so far out on your own?"
Hilde thought back to how she had ended up here. She had woken early, as usual, intending to say her morning prayers, only to be thrown into confusion by an urgent summons directly from the Pope. With the saintess missing, there was no one else who could take her place on short notice. Using the sacred relic the Pope had entrusted her with to track Irene’s location, Hilde had ridden for three days and nights straight. When her horse finally collapsed from exhaustion, she had run on foot, barely managing to smash through the bandits’ barrier and cut down the ones pouring out like a swarm of bees.
"Well... I snuck out on the day prayer week began."
Whether Irene knew she was in the wrong or not, she stole cautious glances at Hilde. Hilde was speechless. Prayer week was the sacred seven-day period when the saintess devoted body and soul to prayer before the gods without interruption. If she had left on the very day it began, that meant she had actually slipped out at least a week earlier—and no one had noticed a thing.
So that was why the Pope’s face had gone pale and why he had been drenched in cold sweat. He probably hadn’t realized the saintess was absent from the church for the entire week. If anything happened to her, the church would be finished. Even now, they were still at the front lines, holding back the monsters. If something went wrong with the saintess, humanity’s strength would plummet. Hilde offered a silent prayer for the Pope, whose heart must have taken a terrible beating at the revelation.
"And I always thought Hilde would come save me anyway, so it was fine!"
Hilde pulled dried meat from her subspace and chewed on it. She couldn’t exactly chew on the saintess instead.
"Please don’t cause trouble like this again. I’m exhausted too."
"Yep! Even if I wanted to now, I couldn’t, could I?"
Hm? Hilde tilted her head, not understanding. Irene, seeing her confusion, smiled mischievously.
"You really don’t know? Nobody told you? Those priests really are all scatterbrained, aren’t they?"
"...Just tell me already."
A bad feeling crept up Hilde’s spine. The saintess’s little escapades were practically an annual event. This was the first time she had ever gone so far, but if she said she couldn’t do it anymore, that meant something huge had changed.
Irene cleared her throat and looked at Hilde with a serious expression.
"A high-ranking demon has appeared at the front, and humanity’s territory has shrunk. I received a revelation to gather the hero’s companions and head to the front lines."
As the saintess’s escort and divine knight, Hilde would have to be dragged along like a string of dried fish. Her already tired mind went dizzy with even greater fatigue.