The Saintess Must Live
Impossible.
It couldn't be.
It was?
It had survived?
They'd kept experimenting even after that?
I forced my ragged breathing back under control and looked at Belita. She was shaking with terror, but even through the fear, shock had flooded her face as she stared back at me.
"A Spirit Core? Lois, what is that supposed to mean?"
"A spirit's body is nature itself. So long as it has mana, it recovers on its own."
"But you were never on that level."
"No. I have a core in my body as well, but nothing like this."
A broken arm took me about a day to heal. I was nowhere near Belita's level, where wounds closed the instant they opened. At the root of it, I was still human.
"Which means the thing inside Belita is a far more powerful Spirit Core than the one in me."
And that wasn't all. If the research from those experiments had survived somewhere, they would have refined the process even further since they'd used me as a subject. Of course Belita's procedure would be more complete than mine. Experiments like that were a procession of failures, each one teaching them how to succeed. The failures they'd made with me would have led to fewer defects when they got to her. Looking at her condition now, though, it was hard to call it a complete success.
"W-wait. Hold on."
Belita was trembling as she looked at me.
"There's a Spirit Core in you too, Lois?"
"Yes, there is. Chronologically, I was probably the earlier subject. I thought every record they compiled from me and the countless other victims had burned that day… but I suppose something survived. And they used it to experiment on you."
"That's impossible… They did this to someone besides me?"
From the way she said it, she'd believed she was the first.
I sat down in a chair, and Olivia sat as well, sensing the conversation was going to run long. Belita perched on the edge of the bed, muttering something under her breath. She didn't seem entirely present. We held our silence, giving her a moment.
"You really have a core in your body too, Lois?"
At the end of that silence, Belita spoke first.
Here, at least, I'll give her nothing but the truth.
"I carry the cores of a high-ranking fire spirit and a high-ranking water spirit. Everyone who was a test subject alongside me is dead."
"Nngh—"
"Hey. Don't scratch."
"Ah—yes!"
Belita had gone for her wrist again, and Olivia snapped at her, irritation plain in her voice. Belita stopped at once and folded her arms, pinning her own hands in place. Apparently that was the only way she could keep from clawing at her wrists.
For healing magic to leave skin looking like that, it wasn't enough to do it often—you had to do it in a very short span of time. Meaning she'd scratched herself raw that frequently.
How long had she been like this? Had she been doing it even back when we traveled together?
I didn't know. I hadn't watched her that closely, and it had never occurred to me that she might be regenerating.
"That body of yours isn't normal. Healing magic and a spirit's regeneration are fundamentally different concepts, but your healing magic is functioning the same way a spirit's regeneration would. The Spirit Core inside you is probably wrapped around you in a constantly active state, twenty-four hours a day."
Belita said nothing.
"I don't know the precise mechanism, but your flesh has been reconstructed to heal naturally with a spirit's mana. Right now, Belita, even if your arm were cut off, it would grow back immediately. To kill you, someone would have to take your head, or otherwise end you instantly."
"Hhk! Th-that's right… During the experiments, they cut off my arms and legs, and they… they grew back right away."
"Olivia."
"I know."
Olivia's face twisted for an instant, but I stopped her at once. I understood the urge to grimace, though.
Disgusting.
They'd done it again?
And the intensity had gone even further than what they'd done to me.
Calm down.
I was not the kind of person who suddenly grew stronger or awakened just because my emotions ran high. I had to keep my reason intact, always. I had to live by constantly tempering that reason.
I let out a long breath inwardly and looked at Belita.
She's opened up a little, at least.
Learning I was a victim of the same experiments seemed to have cracked her defenses, if only slightly. I'd only meant to extract information on Alex and create an opportunity for her to apologize to Olivia. Once again, things were sliding in a direction I hadn't anticipated.
"What kind of Spirit Core is in your body?"
"The Great Lake Spirit's."
"A named spirit, then."
So she had a Greater Spirit's core inside her. It wouldn't be as powerful as the Spirit of the World Tree, but in terms of fame, the Great Lake Spirit was considerably better known—unlike the Spirit of the World Tree, whom few people even knew existed. Of course, so few people ever encountered it that no one would have noticed if it had simply vanished.
They'd put the Great Lake Spirit's core into Belita's body. The strain would have been even worse than what I'd endured. She'd likely had a talent for healing magic to begin with, and they'd amplified it with a Spirit Core—with the raw force of nature a spirit possessed. Not addition. Multiplication. The explosive rise in her healing power had given her magic that could stand alongside a true Saintess without shame. The trade-off was that it became impossible to control, so her own wounds healed automatically.
"I can't believe someone else has a body like this… I thought everyone else was dead… No—more than that, they were still running experiments somewhere else."
"The way you phrase that, it sounds like you weren't the only one they experimented on."
"Th-that's right… But they said we were all just test subjects to complete me in the end. Most of them died, and the ones who survived… they weren't in their right minds anymore."
"The person running the experiments said a Spirit C-Core seems to have a harmful effect on the human mind… I don't really know, though…"
"Who was it? The one who ran the experiments… Who put the core in you and did this to you?"
"Huh? Um…"
Belita hesitated, then spoke carefully.
"It was my father."
"What."
"Hhk."
"M-my father said I was our hope. That only I could restore House Bright. So I have to be the Saintess. I have to fulfill the Saintess's role. I can't be stripped of this position… I… I am the Saintess…"
Olivia moved. Her foot cracked across Belita's face.
"Ah—oww! That hurts…!! Wh-why did you hit me…?"
"I have the right to hit you whenever I damn well please."
"Th-that may be true, but…"
"I hit you because you were pissing me off."
Belita cried, but Olivia's irritation probably had nothing to do with her.
I have to be the Saintess. If I'm not the Saintess, I have no value. That desperate clinging to the title—it was as if—
"…What is this supposed to be? Are you trying to hold a mirror up to the person I used to be?"
"L-Lady Olivia?"
"It's nothing."
Olivia sat back down.
"So when did they do this to you?"
"I was four… no, five? I don't remember exactly. I just know it was around then."
"Hah."
Olivia let out a breath of sheer disbelief, and Belita, taking it for anger, started trembling. Had the fact that I was a fellow victim meant that much to her? She was talking far more readily than before. Her wariness hadn't vanished completely, though, and that look as if she might die at any moment was still there.
"What kind of experiments did they put you through? Similar to mine, from the sound of it, but more intense."
"They said I had to become the Saintess, so they used methods to raise my healing magic… It's probably a different approach from what they did to you, Lois."
"It would be… In my case, they put the core in and the only requirement was that I stay alive."
But Belita was House Bright's only daughter, and a Saintess candidate besides. They couldn't afford to let her die, so anything with uncertain survival odds would have been tested on other people. They would have reserved for her only the experiments she could survive, even with side effects. Even those might have killed her if something had gone wrong.
"At f-first they cut off my fingers and toes… Then more important parts, like my eyes… They broke my bones, too… and watched to see if they would heal. At first it didn't work well, so I walked around in bandages all the time."
"I see. So that's why the young Belita Bright was never seen in public."
There had been rumors that little Belita was in poor health, or that she was a withdrawn child who didn't like leaving the house. The truth was far more brutal than I'd imagined.
Olivia's expression had been murderous for a while now. She looked ready to fire beams from her eyes. In a face drowned in shadow, only those red irises gleamed—terror given human form.
"Heh, heheh… But around the time I turned twelve, I finally accepted the core, and my healing magic became incredible. I didn't fully get used to it until we were traveling as the Hero's party, though. Anyway, I thought that was it—we'd slay the Demon King, restore House Bright, and it would all be over…"
Belita looked at Olivia.
"And it turned out like this. Heheh… A Saintess trying to assassinate someone. Is there anything funnier than that? …I-it's finally here. My turn… Heheh, heheheh."
Death might have been a mercy to her.
Rayna had wanted to live. Belita was the opposite. Everything that had looked whole had been a lie, and once you peeled back the shell, what remained was a broken child with a death wish. Only her body had grown. Her time had stopped at around five years old, when the experiments began.
"So… you did this because you didn't want anyone finding out the Saintess's seat was a fake?"
"That's right… I couldn't die, and I had to restore the house… Ah, Father told me. He said that's what I had to do, and he showed me the path. I didn't know anything, and I hated all of it so much that even thinking hurt… If I just listened to what he said, it didn't hurt, heheh."
"I can't die, I know that, so why? Now that I think I'm about to die… that doesn't seem so bad either."
Those were not words you said with a smile.
"While I'm dying anyway, I should tell you—Lord Alex is connected to the monsters. I-I'm certain of it… Depending on the circumstances, he might even have ties to the Death God Cult."
"…How do you know that?"
"I am a cleric, even if I don't look it… I-I have a good eye. An eye for distinguishing things like that. He might try something at the Human Alliance Conference being held here in Erkia, the City of Water. I don't know what, and if you ask me for proof, I don't have any."
"Let me ask you one thing. You understood that much about the situation—so why didn't Alex put any restrictions on you? Rayna had a Geas on her neck. She couldn't say a word."
"I see… A Geas on Lady Rayna's neck… I didn't know that… And after doing that, Lord Alex was even thinking a political marriage with her wouldn't be so bad."
He'd been thinking that too? He'd always seemed like someone missing a human heart, but the condition had clearly gotten worse.
"Ah, Lord Alex thinks of me as a weak-willed idiot… Nobody ever imagines I'm seeing more than they think. You and Lady Olivia are the same, aren't you?"
Neither of us had an answer for that.
I see. Alex had always hated admitting he was wrong. He'd judged Belita not even worth a Geas. She had no useful information anyway, and he'd applied more than enough psychological pressure, so he'd figured there was no problem. Besides, putting a Geas on someone in the Saintess's position was far too risky. The worst case: he puts the Geas on her, and her power is enough to break it. If that happened, there would be no taking it back, so he'd decided that moderate brainwashing and psychological pressure was the correct approach.
And above all, even I had written her off as a girl with no spine of her own. I hadn't known she was this unmoored, that her childhood had been this horrific—or that after enduring all of it, she still had the mental fortitude to keep wearing the Saintess's mask.
"I can't die… the house needs me… I have to restore the house…"
Belita staggered toward Olivia. It was impossible to think of her as a living person. The way she reached out toward Olivia was like a sinner who had come face to face with a god. She stretched out her hands as if begging for salvation, as if in prayer.
She'd been struck. She'd come face to face with Olivia—who was as good as her sin made flesh—and then the experiments had come up. The mask named Saintess that she'd been barely holding together had finally cracked.
"I can die… at last… Oli…via…"
"Belita."
"Yes…"
"Get some sleep."
"What?"
In an instant, Olivia vanished from in front of Belita's eyes. She circled behind her and struck the back of her neck, hard. A dull thud rang out, and Belita's consciousness snuffed out as she pitched forward. Olivia caught her and tossed her onto the bed.
"Hah."
Belita twitched on the mattress, out cold.
"Lois."
"Yes."
"Is this someone I'm allowed to kill? At this point, killing her would be a mercy… What a life."
"You weren't so different."
"Yeah. Hah… She's too unstable, so I knocked her out for now… When she wakes up, I'm getting the names of every last person involved in those damn experiments."
"It would've been easier on the heart if she were just a straightforward villain."
"Straightforward villains are surprisingly hard to come by."
"Yeah… The old me didn't bother with any of that. I looked at the crime and I cut them down. That was justice according to the law, and it wasn't wrong."
Olivia let out a small sigh.
"It's not that I forgive them, but I killed them without ever asking why. …Which way was the right one?"
"Which do you think it was, Olivia? Other people's opinions aren't that important, are they?"
"True. …This is harder. It's easier not knowing anything, just cutting them down because they sinned."
"Is that so?"
Olivia looked at Belita.
"But."
"I think what I'm doing now is more worthy of a Hero."
She sat down slowly beside the girl lying on the bed.
"Belita. When this is all over, you have to be punished. No matter how wretched and painful and pitiable your past was, it doesn't erase the crime… But you're too young. I want you to receive a proper punishment when everything is finished."
"And if, after serving that sentence, you're lucky enough to walk out still alive…"
Olivia withdrew the hand she'd been reaching toward Belita. As if it wasn't time for that yet.
"Olivia…"
"The same way I have to spend the rest of my life repenting the arrogant things I did."
Olivia smiled.
"The you that exists after all that time… you'll never be a good person, not to me. But I hope you'll save enough people to become a good person to everyone else."
Olivia let out another deep breath and stood. She staggered toward me, slowly, and collapsed against my chest.
"Are you tired?"
"A little."
"Maybe I'm not cut out to be a Hero after all. There's this impulse in my chest, tempting me to just smash it all, to cut them down and not care about the reasons."
"No."
I smiled and stroked Olivia's hair.
"That's perfectly ordinary."
An Olivia who could make this choice even with that impulse clawing at her was someone I could only be proud of.
And that was why she was the Hero the Goddess was so proud of.