The Saintess Who Won't Step Down
Lethe had revealed her identity as a Saintess, of her own accord.
Some people dropped their weapons on the spot and prostrated themselves before her in worship, while others exchanged nervous glances and shrank back warily. This was only possible because the Central Efnel's influence barely reached this region at all.
"W-We can't just back down like this... sir!"
A man from Eskyle Village raised his voice, then sneaked a glance at Lethe. "If not for ourselves, then at least for the people those Kula trash wounded—!"
"We have far more victims than they do," the Lord of Kula ground his teeth and stepped forward. "Forgive my boldness, Saintess, but our feelings are exactly the same! Now that blood has been spilled, we absolutely cannot withdraw from here—!"
[Aaaargh, why is everyone's speech so damn long?!]
A vulgar word burst out of the Saintess's voice as it rang out, saturated with divine power. When Lethe waved the arm she'd thrust toward the sky, the stars high above rippled and swayed. Everyone who saw the sky flinched and lowered their stances.
'Ugh, shit. If it were truly up to me, I'd sweep both sides away in one go.'
This was a political problem within the region. And above all, she had a feeling that if Lethe—a Saintess who was still barely a novice, hardly a true divine being—stirred up trouble here, a whole cascade of headaches would come exploding out of Efnel as well.
-Remember this, Lethe. Having gone so far as to use the power of a Saintess, you must fulfill what everyone expects a Saintess to do.
Her mentor Israfil's voice echoed in her memory. Lethe heaved an exasperated sigh, lowered her skyward arm, and cast a white magic spell.
⟨ Meta Great Healing ⟩
Fwaaaahhh!
A blinding burst of light exploded outward from where Lethe stood. The wounds of those lying collapsed and bleeding on the ground began healing at an incredible pace. Those seriously injured by blades were no different—flesh filled in the punctured areas, and mangled organs and bones realigned themselves.
With every sweep of her arm, the wounded of both villages, who had been sprawled across the ground, stirred one by one and rose to their feet.
[Are we done now?] Lethe shouted, planting both hands on her hips. [No one got hurt by Kula! No one drew blood!]
"..."
The Lord and the Eskyle youths wore dumbfounded expressions. Lethe spun on her heel.
[Follow me. Let's all head inside the village first and talk this out.]
"B-But the Kula bastards tore open the village barrier, so the extreme cold—"
Snap!
The crisp sound of Lethe's fingers ringing out rang through the air. The place where the barrier had been torn was enveloped in divine power, and a new membrane formed over it.
[Are we done NOW!]
"...Ah."
Lethe set off toward the village, her white hair streaming behind her. While she wasn't looking, a few people quietly moved their hands toward their weapons.
[I've done everything a Saintess is supposed to do now.]
Their movements froze.
[From this point on, whichever side picks a fight first—I swear on the Goddess's name, they'll be annihilated.]
At her savage declaration, both the Lord of Kula and the Eskyle side panicked and ordered their people to lower their weapons.
The next morning, at the crack of dawn.
By Saintess Lethe's command, the people of Eskyle Village had to prepare meals. But when word came that they were also to prepare portions for the Kula folk, a few of them pushed back in protest.
Lethe had intended to put on the Saintess's Smile she'd been diligently practicing lately, and gently, soothingly lecture them along the lines of, 'I'll explain everything soon, but this terrible cold is partly your responsibility too. And surely hosting guests who've come to your village is a basic duty, wouldn't you say?'
What actually came out of her mouth, however, was:
[If you're told to do it, do it. Dammit!]
Even the people who'd been throwing a fit at Lethe's outburst scurried back to their posts, huffing and puffing.
In effect, Lethe hadn't reconciled the two sides at all—she had simply seized control of the village and clamped down on both factions by brute force.
"Here you go."
"Th-Thank you."
Somehow, the murderous atmosphere of the night before—when it had been kill or be killed—loosened a little in the course of everyone sharing a meal. Wherever people live, they'll do whatever it takes to keep on living, won't they?
Even Lethe, who had been keeping watch in case another fight broke out, finally withdrew the power of the Saintess and turned her head.
"Petria."
Petria, the only person in the village she'd grown close to all this time, came shuffling over, trembling. "I-I'm sorry, Rea... no! Saintess Lethe! I didn't even recognize that you were the Saintess—!"
Lethe waved her hand dismissively. "I was hiding my identity too, so no need for that. More importantly, go gather the Eskyle people. I'll talk to Kula myself, 'kay?"
And so Lethe summoned the people of both villages to the village meeting hall. It was the very same spacious room where she'd first met Nenia Mizzenaci.
As Lethe, who had arrived first, looked around—
"Heh heh heh!"
She startled.
Nenia Mizzenaci, the elder Simon had faced off against, was standing there staring blankly around the room. No—on second look, it wasn't Nenia.
"You're the grandmother who did our fortune reading in Kula, right?"
The old woman nodded and bowed politely. "Gratula mi Kibilis. I greet the closest daughter of the Goddess."
"...You startled me. How did you make it up these snowy mountains in that body?"
"I was carried up. The Lord said he needed someone who knew the path to the village."
Lethe went slightly red in the face and cleared her throat with an awkward cough. "That future you saw in your divination... it wasn't about raising the undead, was it? It was just about raising people up—saving them?"
The old woman simply smiled. "This humble one only reads the fortunes. Accepting them is each person's own task."
With only those words, the old woman wandered off to look around again. Perhaps because she had returned to her hometown, an expression of longing was written across her face.
Watching the old woman's back, Lethe thought to herself:
'So when does that flying through the sky thing happen, then?'
Before long, the people of both Eskyle and Kula had gathered in the meeting hall, and Lethe stepped forward. She no longer had any need to hide her identity, so she had changed back into her Efnel uniform.
"A conflict and a feud spanning no less than several decades," Lethe said as she walked slowly across the stage. "I'm an outsider, and I won't stand here now telling you all to 'shut up and get along.' But at the very least, if there are misunderstandings between you, they should be cleared up."
She stopped walking and looked the villagers squarely in the eye.
"Let me tell you the truth. The identity of the extreme cold was never the wrath of the Snow Woman—it was a Dungeon Anomaly."
Immediately, the people of both villages began to murmur. The Eskyle side in particular reacted furiously.
"That's impossible! We saw the Snow Woman with our own eyes!"
"Oh? And have any of you ever been to the dungeon?" Lethe shot back sharply. "Me and Mr. Sh... ahem, Mr. Sean, went to the cave at the summit of the mountain range ourselves and confirmed what the dungeon actually was. We confirmed it was the cause of the cold, too. And when we came out, the Mizzenaci people surrounded us and tried to kill us."
"...!"
Lethe smiled sweetly. "Think about it. Your village was in danger—so where were the Mizzenaci?"
"N-Now that you mention it...!"
"Yes, exactly. They'd gone to silence us. After all, they couldn't afford to let it be known that the wrath of the Snow Woman was really a Dungeon Anomaly—could they? Not when that mattered more to them than their own people being wiped out."
The Eskyle villagers fell silent, and Lethe turned to speak to the Kula side.
"They fabricated the Snow Woman legend as a smokescreen and concealed the dungeon's true nature. There was exactly one reason they insisted on guarding the dungeon and maintaining the anomaly: revenge on the people of Kula, who had driven them out long ago."
Several Kula residents could be seen bowing their heads.
It was a situation where mutual rage had nearly dragged both sides into mutual destruction. If not for the intrusion of two outsiders named Lethe and Simon, it very well might have ended exactly that way.
"S-Still, I can't believe it!"
"Isn't that just the Saintess's one-sided claim? Without clear evidence—!"
Tap. Tap.
Just then, an old woman leaning on a cane came climbing up onto the stage.
"Everything the Saintess says is the truth."
It was the fortune-telling grandmother from Kula. Her appearance threw both sides into a disordered hush.
"I am Anzia Misenaishi, the younger sister of Nenia Misenaashi."
Thud! She slammed a staff identical to her sister's against the floor, then swept her gaze across the crowd. "Roughly fifty years ago, my sister and the elders of our clan told me they would take revenge on Kula using the Dungeon Anomaly. I opposed this—and I was driven out of the village for it."
"Th-Then it's really...!"
"On the name of the Mizzenaci clan, I guarantee that the Saintess's words are true."
A heavy silence settled over the room. Lethe crossed her arms with a satisfied smile.
Thud!
This time, the door at the back of the hall swung open, and Simon appeared, his hair dusted white with snow. "Sorry I'm late."
"Mr. Sh-Sean!"
"Priest!"
Lethe's face lit up instantly. 'Why are you THIS late, you idiot?!'
Simon gave Lethe a small wave of greeting, then spoke. "The Mizzenaci mages have all been restrained and tied up near the dungeon. We can all go check on them together in a little while. But more importantly—"
Simon looked around at the assembled people.
"This situation is not over yet."
"What do you mean, not over?"
"Saintess Lethe and I entered the dungeon ourselves, but the most important thing of all—the Dungeon Lord—was nowhere to be found," Simon continued gravely. "Unless the Dungeon Lord is destroyed, neither the dungeon nor the extreme cold will disappear."
"...Ah!"
"And the Dungeon Lord is in this very room, right now."
Murmur murmur murmur!
The people leapt up from their seats in alarm.
"Wh-Who in the world is it, Mr. Sean?!"
"Tell us!"
Simon slowly closed his eyes. "As the people of Eskyle Village will know, the Mizzenaci went through with the ritual of offering sacrifices to the Snow Woman. But since a human sacrifice of their young could provoke fierce backlash from the villagers, the Mizzenaci set an example by offering up their own heirs as sacrifices—and only those who returned alive from it were permitted to bear the Mizzenaci name."
Everyone swallowed hard as they listened.
"A Mizzenaci girl once offered up as a sacrifice—the only Mizzenaci present in this village today. And someone whose remains were supposedly discovered in the dungeon—someone who, by rights, should no longer exist."
Simon's eyes swung around.
"That's you, isn't it? Petria."
Every shocked gaze in the room turned toward Petria.Visibly flustered, she frantically waved her hands. "Wh-Whaaat? Wh-What are you suddenly...!"
"Nenia Mizzenaci confessed everything," Simon said coldly.
Over the course of that hours-long battle, Simon had used the power of Chaos to subdue every one of the Mizzenaci mages.
And Chaos had its special effect: a solid hit would shake the victim's reason, inducing hallucinations and mental confusion.
-Tell me where the Dungeon Lord is.
Simon had asked. But even while under the influence of Chaos, not one of them had answered. Clicking his tongue at the sheer tenacity of the Mizzenaci, Simon was just about to rise from his seat when—
-Run! You have to run!
Nenia Mizzenaci reacted.
-Petria! No—Lady Petria! You must run!
Petria was her granddaughter. There was no reason, Simon had thought, to address her with such reverence. Above all, there was the monster of the dragonkin that had disguised itself as the dead teacher left behind in the ancient dungeon. If that were the case, then—
"I'm a human! There's no way I'm some kind of monster!" Petria burst out shouting. "Besides, sure, I'm a Mizzenaci, but I can't even use ice magic—I was a talentless nobody nobody ever called on! None of this makes any sense...!"
"Petria?"
Lethe crouched down on the stage and smiled sweetly. Petria, seeing her face, cried out desperately. "Re-Rea! No! Saintess Lethe! You believe me, don't you, Saintess?"
"Mm-hm," Lethe smiled brightly. "Right after you prove it by dying."
Tseeeeeaaaaaaak!
Barely had the words left her mouth when a divine arrow came streaking in from the side, trailing brilliance.
"Lethe!"
This time, even Simon couldn't help but recoil in horror. The arrow of divinity snatched Petria's body up and carried her clean through the wall of the hall.
"That's going too far!"
At Simon's protest, Lethe rose from her seat with an indifferent expression. "How about you take a good look at her first?"
"What?"
Simon's head turned.
Petria stood firm, her face icy calm, gripping the divine arrow in her right hand. And along her right arm, something like ice scales was visibly coating her skin, clump by clump.
"Funny, that. You said you can't use magic?"
Lethe stepped down from the stage as she continued. "Oh! And by the way, that arrow—it's really just a fast holy magic spell with a healing function attached, 'kay?"
"..."
Petria bit her lip hard.