I'll Be Paying You a Visit Soon
Saintesses were rare, but there was never only one.
The first time I was formally acknowledged as a Saintess was five years into my life in Lily's body. I awakened the divinity sleeping inside me, and the Holy Imperial See recognized me as a Saintess for it.
But an "acknowledgment" from a particular organization is not a privilege exclusive to me — anyone else could earn it too. Even after I became a Saintess, there was already the First Saintess, a name that had shaken the world long before me, and around my time two or three more rose as well.
The reason five Saintesses could exist at once had nothing to do with their greatness, nor with any of them being saviors sent down to deliver a wretched humanity. The whole thing began with an experiment by a mutated Celestial.
Revelatio, one of the high-ranking Celestials. Known also as the Angel of Revelation, this being would appear in the dreams of humans who caught her fancy and bestow her authority upon them as if she were a god.
Celestials treat humans like pebbles on the roadside — nothing more, nothing less, a species they could flick away without a second thought if it so much as annoyed them. But Revelatio was a little different.
First, she had seen something — through her "Revelation," an authority tied to time itself. Second, unlike any proper Celestial, she took an interest in the demons' cross-species experiments.
For those two reasons, Revelatio gave birth to the very concept of the "Saintess."
Not a Corrupted One, twisted by demonic energy a demon carelessly spilled in passing, but a Saintess — reborn after receiving divinity directly from a Celestial.
However.
I never became a Saintess through Revelatio's recognition.
I was the Celestials' shame. A bloodline of heaven-defying lineage that should never have been born — should never have existed at all.
A half-blood of Celestial and human.
Recognition or not, I had carried divinity from the start, and everything about me — the abilities I could wield, the body I wielded them with — was fundamentally different from the other Saintesses.
Where the Saintesses granted the authority of "Revelation" kept to the rear as befit their gift, relying on holy magic and long-range attacks,
I just smashed things with a hammer.
Perhaps because of that, the other Saintesses never thought kindly of me. After I gave up the title entirely, they went so far as to brand me a witch.
"A Saintess... you say."
Light flooded down over the snowy mountain — a radiance so immense it was blinding at a glance. As the bespectacled Saintess's hand, brimming with pure white light, swept through the air, the glow swam like living things and came pouring down on me.
I tossed the mage aside and gave my hand a lazy flick. The massive hammer settled snugly into my grip.
What does it take to block a formless attack with a weapon? Some would say you counter it with an attack of the same kind. Others insist you need some spell or technique to break through.
Both are wrong.
Crack... shatter.
"...!"
What strength cannot solve is solved by a lack of strength. It's a saying I've never much liked, but great power requires no great technique.
The hammer scattered the light like shards of shattered glass. I snatched a few of the fragments mid-air and hurled them straight back.
Snick. Blood ran down the bespectacled Saintess's cheek — and healed over almost instantly.
So her regeneration is at this level...
In that case.
Kiiing...
"Huh...?"
I put the hammer away and drew out the spear this time. As the shaft spun, dozens of Spear's Roars tore through the empty air and went racing across the snowy mountain.
An attack aimed at no one in particular. As the roaring shockwaves shredded every direction at once and swallowed the whole area, the two eyes behind the bespectacled Saintess's glasses went perfectly round.
And then she murmured, barely audible.
'G-God above...'
Light descended upon the earth — a pillar of pure white enveloping the bespectacled Saintess. The roar tore savagely at the pillar of light but failed to punch through, and in the end both the Spear's Roar and the descent faded away together.
As if blocking it had restored some of her confidence, she resumed her gloomy smile. Meanwhile, I twirled the spear a few times and let out a small sigh.
"Are you actually a Saintess?"
"Huh...? Wh-what kind of question is that?"
"That's not the authority of Revelatio, and honestly, it barely qualifies as divinity in the first place."
Divinity is a wretched, worthless power — and yet in raw might alone, nothing else in this world can hope to follow it. A power that saves all things, and at the same time kills all things. But the light this bespectacled Saintess wielded felt nothing like true divinity.
"And yet there is something there, faint as it is. If it's neither a bestowed authority nor a bloodline... are you working with the leftover 'dregs'?"
"D-Dregs?"
"Yes. Dregs."
In an instant, the bespectacled Saintess — who had been all bumbling emptiness and gloomy little smiles — had her expression crumple beyond recognition. Wild killing intent burst from her body. It was the natural result of blaspheming the god she'd been prattling about a moment ago, but then, she was a dreg, too.
Celestials rarely do this, but when demons scatter their power across the world, they almost never bother to reclaim it. They simply leave it where it fell. Power left behind like that kills most living things that touch it — but an exceedingly rare few survive the exposure.
If this so-called Saintess of hers had also been manufactured by the Empire from some remnant of a Celestial...
More than plausible.
"Hahaha... dregs, she says..."
Shaking her head slowly, the bespectacled Saintess let her expression smooth over again. The fragments scattered across the snow gathered themselves back together and seeped into her staff. Gripping the white staff, she drove it straight down into the ground.
The snowy mountain shook.
Not from the Saintess's power.
Kroooooar!
'Sgaredo.'
"U-Uuuugh..."
Up on the mountain, Sgaredo was awakening.
"L-Let's make this a bit more fun, shall we...?"
KWAAAAAANG!!!
Sgaredo's breath swept across the snowy mountain, engulfing both the bespectacled Saintess and everything around her.
Blocking it wasn't difficult. The problem was the hatchling Sgaredo.
Not now.
The soul transference was in full swing. If the hatchling were exposed to the breath in the middle of that process, things could get seriously messy.
"Uuu?"
"In you go, for now."
I hurled the mage bodily — instant teleportation, physical edition — out beyond the mountain, then tucked Sgaredo away inside a subspace. A bit of a boring space, granted, but better than both of them landing in danger.
KWAAAAAAA!!!
A blinding explosion of snow erupted. Sharp demonic power punched straight through the shield of divinity. I warped the flow of that power with my spear and vaulted far clear of the blast radius, keeping a wary eye on the bespectacled Saintess.
She was wrapped in a resplendent shield woven of five-colored light. On top of that, layers upon layers of buffs and defensive techniques clung to her — but what caught my eye was the very first shield she had cast.
'...Leo?'
Was she using Leo's power? Or something she'd received from Leo?
Leo was aligned with the Empire, so there'd be nothing strange about their Saintess possessing that ability. And yet — to hold her ground against that breath at point-blank range meant this bespectacled Saintess was no ordinary talent either.
Krooooo...
Seeing both of her targets still standing after her breath, Sgaredo's fury boiled even hotter.
Crackle...
The already-frigid temperature plunged further still. A killing cold that froze all things turned the snowy mountain to glacial waste, and a raging blizzard heaped the peak ever higher.
And in the midst of it, a power beyond all comparison to anything before welled up from the bespectacled Saintess's side...
"...?"
Then it sank away again just as quickly.
Grrk.
Wearing an expression of pure frustration, she was fading by the moment, as if she might vanish at any instant.
"What a shame... I really must make you pay for daring to blaspheme the divine."
So it had to end like this.
KRRRK-CHUNK!
Behind her, a cylinder spun smoothly into place. A magical formula unfolded, and through the gap of a hairline crack, something immense reached out its hand.
Something that made even me, right now, flinch. And that fact settled everything beyond doubt.
Clank.
"I'll be paying you a visit soon."
"Huh...?"
FWOOSH!
A snow-white spear slammed dead into the empty robe.
But it struck only the robe — literally empty. All that remained was a white robe scattered into rags and one utterly furious Sgaredo.
The bespectacled Saintess had long since been carried off by that massive presence she'd briefly revealed.
"...So it wasn't just dregs, after all."
I had to go to the Empire. Without fail.
Flash.
Kroooooar!!
'I should look into this one too...'
Somewhere deep beneath the Golden Empire, Imperium.
At the heart of a temple overflowing with priceless treasures, jewels, and gold no matter where you looked, a golden divinity flooded the central chamber — and from within it, a single life descended.
A bare form, wearing not a single stitch. In her nakedness, the bespectacled Saintess — Nea — changed clothes with the practiced hands of maids who had been waiting in attendance, as familiar with the ritual as breathing. Last of all, a pair of round glasses was placed in her hands.
She hesitated over them for a moment — before a large hand snatched them away.
"......Ha."
"Was your outing enjoyable, Saintess?"
"Your Grace."
One of the Eight Swords of the mighty Golden Empire. Son of god, Grand Duke of Yellow Embers — Roverian Chen Imperium. The only one among the Eight Swords to carry the blood royal, he smiled and settled the glasses back where they belonged.
"Why... why. Did you have to interrupt..."
Nea had been on the verge of seeing it through. True, the Duke had ordered her to observe and nothing more — but Nea was herself one of the Eight Swords.
Among the Eight Swords, each one strong enough to topple a nation single-handedly, distinctions of rank meant nothing. Nea in particular, as the Empire's sole Saintess, wielded authority rivaling the imperial family itself.
Return at once.
Had it not been for that one command, she would have burned the whole place to ash, wicked "heretic" and all.
Roverian smiled faintly.
"My apologies. Lily Elbrit must have meant something rather special to you."
"...That assessment means nothing now. Li-Lily is a heretic..."
"No. She shattered your attack, Saintess. That is meaning enough."
Lily Elbrit. An outsider like Leo and the Sword God, and a strong one who had surfaced out of nowhere — while also, it seemed, connected to the "Saintesses."
Word had reached them, and Nea — conveniently already on friendly terms with those outsiders — had been dispatched to investigate. And then...
'To steal the Gate of Genesis in that one tiny window of opportunity.'
Dangerous. Precisely speaking, dangerous as an enemy of the Empire — but
'If she were an ally, that would be a different story entirely.'
For now, however, she was a sworn enemy. Worse, one with a clear grudge and a clear objective of her own.
Roverian finished his brief deliberation and turned on the spot without hesitation.
First — it was time to set a single piece in motion.