Flashpoint
The Lantern Bearer's mission was to protect the lantern.
Through bone-grinding effort they tempered their bodies and honed their martial arts, all to shield the final holy relic the Goddess had left behind from the powers and thieves of the secular world.
So that on the day She once again smiled upon humanity, they might return the object She had set aside and be acknowledged for having done their utmost.
Every child taken in by Archbishop Jude was raised for that purpose alone.
And Rebecca had been chosen.
She had outstripped dozens of rivals who had grown up in the same conditions and taken the Lantern Bearer's duty upon her shoulders.
Naturally, her martial strength stood on an entirely different plane from that of ordinary knights.
Innate talent, the relentless labor piled up since earliest childhood, the battlefield instincts sharpened by thrashing violent criminals in the slums of ruined Paris, and the Divine Power borrowed from the holy relic itself—all of it combined.
Rebecca was unmistakably a being who exceeded the ordinary scale of the battlefield. Unfortunately, the foolish demons had no idea.
No—they knew she was strong. They simply had no grasp of just how strong.
The demon commander she had reduced to pulp had been the finest specimen among the demons present, nothing more. He had not been an overwhelming powerhouse capable of dominating every last one of the rest.
Moreover, the great majority of the demons gathered here were kin of Gluttony, creatures who spent their entire lives ruled by appetite.
Ravenous hungry ghosts that existed solely for the single character "eat" could never have exercised patience with the supreme delicacy of a Saintess standing right before their eyes. From the very beginning, it had been all but impossible.
"Kyaaaaah! One family, one meal—!"
"W-we won! We actually won!"
"The Goddess is with us!"
And so they paid the price of their desire.
The twelve hundred kin of Gluttony who had surrounded Portugrua Fortress could not withstand Rebecca's overwhelming force and were annihilated as if the whole thing had been a lie.
In that moment the Kingdom of Venice incurred a debt to the Vesta Order that could never be repaid.
Of the four regions of the Europa Continent held by humanity, the Italian Peninsula was ruled by seven separate powers.
In the north, the Kingdom of Venice served as the shield that held back the demon invasion.
Sharing a border with France and growing fat on intermediary trade was the Piedmont Merchant Republic.
Playing the role of northern also-ran was the Duchy of Tuscany.
The central power of the peninsula, sitting at its very heart, was the Kingdom of Lazio.
A belligerent basket-case of a state where military coups were practically an annual festival: the Duchy of Campania.
Caught between two thugs and suffering for it: the Republic of Basilicata.
And finally the Duchy of Sicily, forever looking for an opening to push north.
These seven nations sometimes quarreled and sometimes cooperated, maintaining a delicate balance—though periods of cooperation far outlasted periods of conflict.
The reason was simple.
Of the seven states that dominated the Italian Peninsula, not a single one desired Italian unification—the Risorgimento.
To be more precise, the very concept of a unified Italy did not exist.
The age was still far too early for nationalism to bloom, and in the twisted history of the Europa Continent—distorted by other races and the existence of miracles—the glory of Rome had never been.
The people of the boot-shaped peninsula were merely neighbors who spoke similar tongues and shared similar faces. Not once had they ever regarded one another as family.
"All of you, assemble in the north. Each of you is to bring at least a thousand men."
Yet Queen Regina of Venice issued the summons to her neighbors with little difficulty.
At present, the loudest voice on the Italian Peninsula belonged to none other than the Kingdom of Venice.
National power born of sheer size, a capable queen, and the solid diplomatic footing built as a frontline state standing against the demons—on top of all that came the massive event of the Vesta Order's return. Queen Regina's authority had been temporarily elevated to a level capable of commanding the entire boot peninsula into obedience.
"Saintess! My father is terribly ill!"
"My son has a chronic condition…"
"I left a wound on my elbow untreated and the whole arm has rotted away—what should I do?"
"How the hell is that bastard still alive?"
Of course, the greatest reason the other six nations so readily offered up their troops was Asty's Divine Power.
The authority Vesta bestowed upon her clergy lived up to its epithet, the Flame of Benevolence: a miracle of pure mercy capable of both purification and healing.
A method of treatment utterly different in kind from the quackery of physicians whose mortality rates rivaled the Black Death had returned after forty years. It was only natural that the backlog of patients would practically offer up their livers and gallbladders while begging for mercy.
"Saintess. My eldest son is quite the handsome, well-built young man. Would you care to meet him sometime?"
"Uh… so you're saying you want to take an eleven-year-old cleric as your daughter-in-law?"
"Pardon? Ah, yes. I myself met my wife around that age, but…"
Ah, this damn Middle Ages.
Had she revealed her Divine Power with no foundation whatsoever, she would have been reduced to a figurehead by the schemes of nobles coveting the title and authority of Saintess. But that no longer applied to the girl who now enjoyed the full cooperation of the Kingdom of Venice.
"Enough! What insolence is this toward the Saintess! Does a Venetian noble know no shame?"
"Y-Your Majesty, if Her Holiness were to settle here the kingdom would grow even stronger—why would you—"
"I will not hear it! Leave at once while I am still speaking kindly!"
The Venetian royal family defended Asty with the ferocity of people whose very skulls had been cracked open.
It was not solely because of the life-debt owed by Princess Roberta.
The moment she and Rebecca had saved Portugrua Fortress, Queen Regina and her entire house had incurred an enormous political debt to her.
The powerful legitimacy of having been the first chosen by the Saintess who had returned after forty years.
Unless they intended to cast that legitimacy away with their own hands, the Venetian royal family had no choice but to support the Saintess with every material and spiritual resource at their disposal.
Even if the Saintess's demand was intervention in a neighboring kingdom's civil war.
"So… can my arm be fixed?"
"…We're just going to cut it off. How are you even still alive in this condition in the first place?"
And Asty's strongest card remained medical service performed with Divine Power.
Thanks to the Venetian royal family's full support and Rebecca serving as her Divine Power shuttle, Asty somehow managed to process the nobles of the boot peninsula who flocked to her like office workers finally showing up for long-overdue health checkups.
"Saintess. I understand this is strategically necessary, but… is there truly any need to bestow grace even upon the likes of these? That is to say, they hardly look like patients who require treatment…"
"Yes. The real patients who actually need Divine Power are a tiny minority. Most of them are just fat pigs rolling in lard. If I spent the time I'm wasting on their checkups out on the streets instead, I could save far more people."
"Then perhaps a short walk? You've been cooped up indoors—some fresh air might—"
"But I won't. Right now securing the cooperation of the local nobles is more than enough to keep me busy, and if a hope is only going to bloom for a moment and then vanish, it's better never to offer it in the first place."
"…My thinking was shortsighted. Forgive me."
"It's fine. The reason we're even doing this here is ultimately to obtain a foundation for systematic, sustainable relief work."
Even though they were only borrowing an army, the fact that they could not even dream of relief work and were stuck catering exclusively to nobles left Rebecca thoroughly sour. She had suggested an outing for a change of mood, but Asty calmly let the proposal slide past her.
The girl had seen with her own eyes exactly what kind of tragedy short-term, shortsighted aid produced.
As long as the memory of racing across battlefields with the senior she both loved and resented—cleaning up the catastrophe born of irresponsible goodwill—remained rooted deep in her mind, the mistake of misjudging priorities could not be tolerated.
"Um… little Saintess? If it's all right, could you take me along too? I may not look it, but I'm pretty good with a blade."
"Have you received permission from Queen Regina?"
"Mother told me to do as I please."
And so Asty diligently devoted herself only to building connections and organizing the expeditionary force.
She extracted soldiers from the nobles as payment for consultations laced with Divine Power, sorted the extracted troops by nationality, negotiated with local power brokers to determine the army's line of march, used the blueprints for spinning machines and looms as bait to wring out huge sums of money, and then procured the supplies they would need.
She cultivated friendships with Venice's upper ranks once more, was introduced to priests of the old order and exchanged pleasantries, obtained and studied books detailing the characteristics of demons, and accepted Princess Roberta of Venice as a companion…
Thus the frantically busy year of 1298 passed, and in the still-chill spring of 1299, Asty turned twelve.
Count Montpellier declared war upon Claude V.
And on the boot peninsula, ten thousand Elite Soldiers began their northward march to support Count Montpellier's rebellion.