The Saintess Falls Silent
Thwack! Crunch! Splat!
The demon hand that emerged from the magic circle crushed Flema and ground her down. Nephthys kneaded her fist with an expressionless face, then slowly opened her palm.
The demon hand opened its hand in kind. What had once been Flema hit the floor with a wet, pulpy slap.
"Enough with the theatrics. Get up."
Nephthys said coldly.
Fwoosh!
Pure white flames rose from the mangled flesh. The horrifically pulverized mass of meat rapidly rebuilt itself into Flema's original form.
It wasn't regeneration — it was a miracle bordering on outright *resurrection*. Face drained of color, clutching her chest, she gasped for air.
[...Grrraaagh!]
The true power of the Pure White Flame lay in its self-restoration. No matter what attack struck her, she regenerated infinitely alongside the white fire. Even if her brain and body were crushed beyond the capacity for independent thought, the flames would reconstruct her back into her original shape.
[I'll kill—]
CLANG!
A black line shot in from behind and took her head off. Then Nephthys flicked her fingertips like a conductor's baton, and black lines poured in from every direction, slicing her body into dozens of pieces as if quartering a pie.
"It hurts, doesn't it?"
Nephthys said. The voice was that of a clear, sweet young girl — the content was anything but.
"I imagine Professor Lang felt the same."
Splat. Thud.
Chunks of flesh rained down to the floor, white flames flared, and once again the meat rebuilt itself into Flema's shape.
[You damned—!]
The instant she regenerated, Flema frantically launched herself skyward, unleashing torrents of white flame. Nephthys raised one arm over her head, and the black lines from before formed a shield that swallowed the fire whole.
[Hahahaha! Just you wait, Nephthys! Next time, I swear—]
KA-CHUNK!
Her back slammed into something enormous mid-flight. A gigantic coffin had spread itself open above her at some point.
At Nephthys's gesture, the coffin shrank with a grinding screech, clamping down until it hugged Flema's body like a second skin.
Then stakes materialized on all sides and pierced through the coffin, one after another after another. Blood gushed from the holes in dark streams.
FWOOOOSH!
[GRAAAAGH!]
Burning her way out of the coffin with white flames, Flema emerged once more, her face twisted with exquisite agony.
[NEPHTHYSYYYYY!]
But the offensive had hardly begun. Nephthys toyed with Flema using overwhelming, transcendent firepower.
She was fried by cascading rivers of brimstone; her cells rotted one by one under layer upon layer of curses; she was shredded to ribbons by currents of blood magic sharp as blades.
The saintess's white flames, whether she willed it or not, kept resurrecting her against her own desires. Unable to endure the mounting damage any longer, Flema finally activated the magic circle etched into her skin.
Once a divine barrier was raised, even she herself couldn't leave it — which was exactly why she had kept a spatial-displacement white spell on standby, her escape hatch in case of emergency.
Vmmm!
Her body warped, and she slipped through the vacuum-sealed hole punched into the empty air.
* * *
FLASH!
Brilliant light burst around her as she opened her eyes.
This was the 'Sky Island' — the headquarters of Ephnel.
People dressed in white were murmuring in confusion at Flema's sudden appearance.
Drenched in sweat and filth, she lifted her head with labored breaths. White marble Ephnel buildings rose all around her.
'I made it back...!'
Only then was she finally able to breathe.
She had survived.
It was over. It was finally, truly over.
Strength draining from her entire body, she crumpled to the ground.
"Lady Flema!"
At that moment, an elderly priest came sprinting over, completely winded.
"L-Lady Flema, is that you? Without any word, to come to Ephnel like this — what brings you...?"
[Get me in contact with His Holiness the Pope. NOW!]
she barked.
[The Witch of Death is coming! Quickly!]
"Y-yes? Yes?"
Then a female priest stepped up beside the old man. Her finger pointed at Flema.
"Lady Flema... but that thing around your neck...?"
[What?]
Her gaze dropped to her own throat.
A golden collar sat there, fastened without her ever noticing.
[...Ah. Ahhhhh...!]
Terror flooded her eyes.
Tick! Tick! Tick! Tick! Tick!
The sound of clock hands whirled maddeningly in her ears, and the people around her froze in place.
The dimensional hole she had escaped through just moments ago tore open once more. From that jet-black abyss, two chilling blue eyes gleamed.
[No...! AAAAAH! Stop! Please stop it now! This is enough, enough, you demon bastardAAAAARGH!]
That the great saintess would abandon all dignity and beg for mercy from the devil incarnate — that was how thoroughly her mind had been ground into powder.
At some point, a golden chain had been threaded through the collar, and it stretched all the way into the abyss. A small, white hand emerged from the darkness and took hold of it.
"Come here."
FWOOSH!
Nephthys yanked the chain. Flema was dragged straight through, hurtled across space, and dumped onto the cold floor of Kizen's Command and Control Room.
THUD!
Nephthys stomped on the head of the prone Flema.
"You had a move like that up your sleeve? What a waste of time — again."
Nephthys smiled a smile steeped in thick, potent malice.
Flema had been ensnared in a time trap without ever realizing it: the future in which she cast had been rewritten into one where she never did.
"Now then — you still have more coming, don't you?"
Black lines coiled around Flema's throat.
[MERCYYYYYYY!]
Her body was wrung out like a wet towel.
She died.
She died over and over and over.
Countless times, in countless inventive ways.
Eventually, even when the white flames revived her, her mind could no longer bear to be conscious.
'I have to get out of here somehow!'
Crunch, crunch!
She kept watching for her chance. And when her body was being devoured, alive and screaming, by one of the summoned beasts, she finally abandoned her flesh and took flight as a pure spirit.
'There!'
She could see the summoned beast chewing on her discarded body. Nephthys was still watching Francesca's side, waiting for her to resurrect with the white flames.
The second ability of the Saintess of Purification.
Moving as a spirit form that transcended the physical body.
Her transparent figure shot out of the Command and Control Room cavern and soared into the high, open sky.
'Don't think this is the end, Nephthys!'
She would never, ever forget this humiliation.
She would find a new vessel, and next time she would bring Kizen crashing down for certain. Next time, without fail—!
'!'
Her movement stopped. Without realizing it, Flema found herself trapped inside a transparent cage.
'Wh-what is this?'
She shook the bars of the cage like a madwoman, but there was no way out. This had never been mentioned — she was a spirit form beyond the physical body, so how could her movement be restricted?
"Did you know?"
Flema whipped her head around in shock. Nephthys had appeared beside the cage without a sound.
"Your priests call this form the 'divine body' — what you are right now. In truth, its principle is almost identical to Kizen's Spirit Transformation."
[Wh-what did you say?]
"Of course, we can't do what you did — nesting inside another person's body. But moving as a spirit like this? That's hardly difficult. And of course... we also have ways of neutralizing and destroying the technique."
Nephthys stepped back from the cage and waved her hand.
"I was waiting for you to fly up in your spirit form. And now, at long last... I can kill you in the truest sense of the word."
The thing that appeared in the sky was a grim reaper bearing a black scythe.
It raised the blade.
[S-stop!]
Sensing the end, Flema trembled violently, terror brimming in her eyes.
[MERCYYYYYYY!]
SKEEEEENCH!
A bone-chilling sound ripped across the sky.
The saintess fell silent forever.
* * *
How much time had passed since that day?
Simon, who had lost consciousness at some point, opened his eyes.
"...?"
An unfamiliar room. An unfamiliar smell.
He was dressed in a patient's gown, with IV lines connected to his body in several places. Simon rubbed his eyes.
"Morning."
A girl's voice came from beside him. He turned his head to find a black-haired girl sitting in the chair next to the bed, peeling fruit.
"Lorraine!"
When Simon shot upright, she raised a calming palm.
"Take it easy. You need absolute bed rest, seriously."
"...Right."
"They had visitation banned, so I only got in by throwing my mom's authority around."
Sitting up, Simon stared blankly out the window.
This was the Kizen medical wing.
"Is everyone safe?"
"Mm. Don't worry. All of your team members are fine too."
Lorraine delivered the aftermath in a soft voice.
The Saintess of Purification had been utterly annihilated by Nephthys.
The divine barrier that had shrouded the Kizen campus was lifted, and with Nephthys's recovery of the Prima Materia, the white monsters vanished as well.
Because the students had responded so brilliantly in the earliest moments of the attack, the injured numbered just over sixty — and miraculously, there were no deaths.
Simon had woken up two days after the incident. Classes at Kizen were currently running on a shortened schedule.
"It's a little embarrassing."
She said, offering him the plate of peeled fruit. Simon picked up a fork and speared a yellow fruit he'd never seen before.
It was soft and faintly sweet, melting away on his tongue. Fruit perfectly suited for patients, he thought.
"What's embarrassing?"
"An Ephnel saintess attacked Kizen — an incident without precedent — and I couldn't do a single thing. I went to the Mausoleum because Mom insisted, and look what happened. I really shouldn't have gone along."
Simon gave a wry laugh.
"Being absent wasn't your fault."
"Doesn't make it any less frustrating, though."
The two of them chuckled and traded banter for a while.
"What do you think will happen?"
Simon asked.
"About what?"
"The state of the continent. Is war coming?"
"Well... for now, things are certainly tense between Kizen headquarters and the Council of Elders."
Lorraine continued as she took a new fruit from the basket.
"Miraculously, no students died — but Professor Lang was killed, and all of Kizen was deceived and caught off guard. Some of the elders are ready to go to war over it. Anything more detailed than that..."
Her gaze drifted toward the door of the hospital room.
"Why not ask for yourself?"
Click.
The door swung open, and a small silver-haired girl appeared, waving.
"Heyyy! Heyyy! You doing okay, Simon?"
"Nephthys, ma'am!"
The moment Nephthys entered the room, she scrambled over and hopped up onto Simon's bed. Her target: the plate of fruit Lorraine had peeled.
"Me! Can I eat this?"
"Of course. Go ahead."
"...Mom. That's the fruit I peeled for Simon."
Blithely ignoring the look in Lorraine's eyes, Nephthys speared a piece of fruit on the fork and started munching away.
"Nephthys, ma'am. There's something I want to ask you."
"Mm! Ask me anything!"
"What happens to the continent now?"
She smiled sweetly.
"Hehe... everyone might need to buckle up a little."
What did that mean?
Was war coming? Or did it mean that with the atmosphere so turbulent, some kind of cold war would begin, and everyone would have to stay on edge?
"I don't know whether there'll be a war or not. But what I do know is this: Ephnel will pay the price."
Saying that, Nephthys speared a piece of fruit with her fork and pushed it toward Simon. Her arms were so short that he had to crane his neck down hard to reach it.
Accepting the fruit, Simon changed the subject.
"So the terror attack really was Ephnel's declaration of war?"
"Ephnel cut its losses, for one."
Lorraine picked up where she'd left off.
"Officially, their position is that it was the unilateral rampage of the Saintess of Purification, not an order from Ephnel."
"Hehe, they're wailing and gnashing their teeth over losing their messenger of the gods, but eh — a new Saintess of Purification will pop up soon enough anyway."
Simon tilted his head.
"Why is that?"
"Because when you kill a saintess, something called the 'Essence of Saintess' spills out and floats around in the air! Before long, someone in the Holy Federation with a high compatibility will absorb it, and a new saintess will be born. No matter how many you kill, saintesses just keep being born to trip us up. Oh — but this isn't really the important part."
She straightened up and gently smoothed Simon's hair back from his forehead.
"Nothing so radical is going to happen that your everyday life gets torn apart — at least not right away. So don't worry."
Nephthys seemed to have read Simon's fears precisely.
"But gradual change is inevitable, right? A little early, but... there's going to be a break."
Simon's eyes went wide. Lorraine, it seemed, already knew.
"A break?"
"Yep! We moved it up! The buildings are in ruins, a lot of students got hurt, and with the political situation so unstable, we're taking the break early and starting a longer second semester."
Seeing the blank look on Simon's face, the corners of Nephthys's mouth curled up.
"You can look forward to it! The second semester for first-years is going to be way more brutal than usual!"
"...Aha, hahaha."
What on earth would happen if it got worse than this? Simon was already starting to worry.
Then Lorraine spoke up.
"By the way, Mom. Didn't you say you were going out today?"
"Oh shoot. I suppose I should get going."
Having finished the fruit, she hopped down to the floor.
"Where are you going, ma'am?"
At Simon's question, she flung open the door of the medical wing and flashed a meaningful smile.
"The Holy Federation."
"...I'm sorry?"
"I told you, didn't I? War or no war — Ephnel is going to pay the price."
And with those words alone, she walked out.