Someone More Saintly Than Me. (1)
[Do you perhaps have a plan?]
Olivia answered Krauchel's question without looking back. Her tone suggested she didn't even need to think about it.
"I'll persuade them. One by one."
[Is that all? I thought you might have some clever scheme.]
I wished I had some clever scheme, but unfortunately, the only idea that came to mind was a frontal approach.
Acquiring stakes in Esti's Binding in exchange for releasing the wraiths to the afterlife.
'...Too little time.'
She hadn't properly started yet, but she already felt pressed for time.
'Eighty—no, is it seventy-nine hours and forty minutes left now?'
Olivia spoke.
"Krauchel, how large is your stake?"
Instead of replying, Krauchel extended a hand. A fragment slightly smaller than the king's materialized.
[The stake of 'Death Knight Krauchel' is 0.3%.]
That was a lot.
Lower than the king's, but the fact that the knight commander—essentially a stranger—held this much suggested quite a great deal.
Probably the affection he had harbored for Esti in life had been considerable.
"Your words and actions don't match."
[...Think what you will.]
Olivia shifted her gaze to Rebekah. Her somber expression suggested that Krauchel's earlier words still weighed on her mind.
Olivia smiled inwardly.
'Keep worrying.'
Olivia fully intended to use this Clue to win Rebekah over completely. But she had no intention of doing it half-heartedly like she had with Kiel.
She meant to make Rebekah someone who would remain on her side no matter the situation, just like Melina.
'Because the other regressors will start moving in earnest now.'
She had to handle this just right if she wanted to avoid execution.
Just pulling Rebekah over to her side would make things several times easier.
Seven out of ten people on the continent believed in the Goddess of Light, after all.
That way, she could seize the moral high ground in terms of religious justification.
That meant one of Aria's cards would disappear.
"Shall we begin, then?"
[I guarantee you, if you try to persuade them one by one, a hundred years won't be enough, let alone four days.]
Krauchel certainly had a point.
Judging by the wraiths flying aimlessly through the air, simply holding a conversation looked difficult, let alone releasing them. How many of them could even be sane to begin with?
Actually, losing reason like that was normal for wraiths.
Krauchel and the royalty were the unusual cases.
"No, it's possible."
Instead of explaining further, Olivia placed a hand on Rebekah's shoulder. Rebekah, who had been watching Olivia with unreadable eyes, flinched and looked up in surprise.
"...Big Sis?"
"Would you spread some Divine Power around?"
"...How much?"
Rebekah didn't ask for a reason.
She had the air of someone prepared to follow whatever Olivia instructed.
"As widely as possible."
"They'll be startled."
No matter that they had once been human in life, wraiths were undeniably Inhuman beings.
And to the Inhuman, Divine Power was anathema.
Suddenly scattering that anathema energy would make anyone rush to attack.
That was what Rebekah was worried about.
"Trust me."
Rebekah's eyes wavered. She gazed at Olivia with a complicated expression, then nodded as if she had made up her mind.
"...I'll try."
The divine energy emanating from Rebekah began to spread slowly outward.
Fwoosh!
The black mist burned away in the sacred flames. As Rebekah's prayer rose toward its climax, the radiance of the Divine Power grew brighter.
[Hmm...]
Krauchel groaned. Probably because he felt unsettled by his own instinctive aversion to the Divine Power.
He must have been reminded once again that he was no longer human.
Krauchel wasn't the only one groaning.
The wraiths touched by the Divine Power recoiled in shock and pulled back. Their spirit forms even seemed to be singed, if only slightly.
But even as they writhed in pain, they could not lunge at Rebekah.
Because the former Sword Saint was guarding her.
"Krauchel."
[I know without being told.]
Krauchel's sharp glare swept over the wraiths. Occasionally, a few wraiths ignorant of their place charged forward, but a couple of sword strokes dissolved their forms and melted them into the earth.
A startled Rebekah asked,
"D-did you kill them?"
[Wraiths don't die from something like that.]
No matter how much reason they had lost, they had once been residents of Aquar.
Krauchel, who knew chivalry, could not possibly have truly cut them down.
Krauchel stepped back from Rebekah, who was kneeling. His blue-green glare fixed fiercely on Olivia. A moment later, Krauchel's voice rang inside Olivia's head. It was Telepathy.
- What in the world are you thinking? At this rate, their wariness will only deepen. I thought you said you were going to persuade them.
- You've become quite talkative. Are you worried I might fail?
- You...
He apparently hadn't expected her to answer via Telepathy as well.
Olivia continued without a pause.
- I will meet them individually and persuade them one by one, as I said. But there's no need to do that with Rebekah.
- ...What exactly does that mean?
- Exactly what it sounds like. I will persuade only the high-ranking officials who know the inside story. I calculated it, and even their shares alone add up to twenty percent of the whole.
- And the remaining thirty percent?
- I'll receive Rebekah's help for that.
Krauchel looked as if he didn't understand. That was only natural, perhaps. A Saintess had not existed in the era when he lived.
He did not know what it meant to be chosen by a god.
The clearest indicator of a Saintess's ability was her level.
That was the sole reason Rebekah, a teenage girl, had reached Level 93.
- How?
- You'll see.
Krauchel stared at Olivia with complicated eyes. He seemed to be questioning whether he could trust her, and perhaps suppressing a sense of anticipation at the same time.
He must have realized it from her words just then.
The fact that he himself was included among the high-ranking officials Olivia intended to persuade.
"Should I do more?"
"Yes. Just a little more effort, please."
Olivia stroked Rebekah's hair, then looked around with a confident expression.
The wraiths, sensing the uncomfortable energy, hovered just outside the range of the Divine Power. Their numbers easily reached into the thousands.
Tssssst!
The wraiths broke inward in a single moment. They flew at Rebekah as one, like a surging wave. Even as they writhed in the pain of their spirit forms burning, they pressed in, driven by a single-minded urge to eliminate Rebekah.
"Don't draw your sword."
[What?!]
Krauchel, who had been about to unleash a sword strike at any moment, froze with an expression of disbelief.
[...You'll die if you don't.]
"I won't die."
Olivia walked slowly forward until she stood protectively in front of Rebekah.
Rebekah slowly opened her eyes.
She saw Olivia's back. There was no protective shield around her. She meant to face the wave of wraiths with her bare body.
But Rebekah could not shout for her to run away.
The atmosphere simply wouldn't allow it.
She had felt this emotion the very first time she met Olivia. Someone who devoted an entire day entirely for the sake of another. How ashamed she had been when she realized that it wasn't pretense.
- Why do you work so hard?
To her childish, naive question, Olivia had answered,
- Because if I don't, it won't be done.
She would probably give the same answer now.
A person who acted as though all the misfortune in this world was her own fault.
There stood someone more saintly than the Saintess.
And right now, Rebekah was forced to acknowledge a fact she had absolutely never wanted to admit.
'I...can't understand her.'
The fact that while she might be able to understand Esti, she would never be able to understand Olivia.
The fact that she could only powerlessly watch her sacrifice.
Olivia.
Her only family.
Rebekah clenched her teeth. Why was God so harsh to the virtuous?
'If only I instead...'
Beyond her blurred vision, the fearsome wave was gradually weakening. The wraiths, which had been slowing down more and more, stopped in their tracks at some point.
[What in the...!]
[I-I'm in my right mind?]
The darkness that had been gnawing at their sanity peeled back one layer, and their submerged consciousness rose to the surface again.
They were wraiths, but in this moment, they were humans possessing the memories of their lives just as they had been. At least, that was how they appeared to Krauchel. His blue-green glare shook violently.
[You...]
"I told you it would be alright, didn't I?"
Krauchel couldn't answer. Olivia smiled once at the dazed Krauchel, then turned her head toward the wraiths.
"I am Olivia, Archmage of the Empire."
Olivia's voice rang out through the air.
"Would you hear what I have to say?"
The gazes of the wraiths, confused by their suddenly returned reason, instantly fixed upon Olivia.
"I cannot bring you back to life. I do not understand your suffering, nor can I. But I can promise you one thing."
Olivia did not pause for effect.
This was not a speech.
It was an appeal, and a Requiem.
"I will end your suffering today. I will help you finish your lives as humans, not as wraiths."
The tens of thousands of gazes held their own individual emotions. But there was one emotion they all shared.
[In the end, aren't you just saying you'll kill us once more?]
A single wraith asked.
"You're right. I'm going to kill you."
Olivia did not deny it. Release to the Afterlife was, after all, merely a gentle way of phrasing the extinguishing of a soul.
At Olivia's words, the eyes of countless wraiths wavered. Krauchel's did, and so did Rebekah's.
[...Are you deceiving us?]
"Yes."
[How dare...!]
Just as the enraged wraith was about to shout, Olivia spoke.
"Hate me, for I have killed you. Rage at me, for I have deceived you. In exchange, however."
Rebekah had a faint idea of what the next words would be.
"Please forgive your princess."
Krauchel felt as though the breath had been knocked out of him. He briefly forgot that he was already dead.
Olivia's will was that overwhelming.
To say she would shoulder it instead.
If even the former Sword Saint felt this way, he didn't need to look to know what the other wraiths were feeling.
The murderous air had, before anyone noticed, settled into a heavy stillness.
[...Why go so far? You...have no connection to the princess at all, do you?]
"Simply because I have no connection doesn't mean I cannot help someone who has been wronged."
Olivia smiled.
"I wish to help you, and to help your princess as well. That is all."
How could killing people possibly balance against laying wraiths to rest.
But the mage before their eyes genuinely believed it.
To rage at her instead.
To hate her instead.
And in exchange, to forgive Esti.
No one followed her in smiling. But neither was there anyone who raged.
And a moment later.
['Fisher Rain' has forgiven Esti.]
['Fisher Yuraks' has forgiven Esti.]
['Gatekeeper Kban' has forgiven Esti.]
.
.
.
['Knight Rodman' has forgiven Esti.]
[Your current stake is 7.43%.]