After the Saint Departed (+ The Truth)
One week had passed since the Demon King's death.
In every nation, in every village, festivals were underway. People sang the praises of the Hero and his party members. Bards composed ballads of their great deeds and spread them far and wide, while painters rendered those same legendary feats onto canvas — feats they had never even witnessed.
Park Geonwoo, the Hero of Chaos.
Kang Seonghyeon, the Combat Saint.
Selene, the Great Mage.
Belka, the Fist King.
Everyone cried out their names, thronging before the imperial palace just for a glimpse of their faces. And their instincts weren't entirely wrong. Talk of a marriage between the Hero and the Imperial Princess had been circulating, so he was most certainly inside the palace.
But the other two — everyone except Seonghyeon, who had already gone to the Reverse World — were nowhere near the palace at all.
The Great Mage and the Fist King. The two women sat in a quiet café, far from the crowds, chatting at their leisure.
Selene stirred her coffee aimlessly with a teaspoon and asked Belka,
"Seonghyeon-nim... she made it back safely, right?"
"She did. The Goddess herself came to take her."
Unlike Selene, Belka downed her fruit smoothie in a single gulp and answered as if it were nothing.
"I just hope so... After everything we put ourselves through, pretending to like that Hero..."
In the dark surface of her endlessly swirling coffee, Selene could see Seonghyeon's face. It had been four days, twelve hours, twenty-three minutes, thirty-two seconds — plus roughly five hundred eighty thousandths of a second — since she had last seen her. It had been a long time since she'd gone this long without a glimpse, and her hands trembled as if she were in withdrawal.
If she hadn't known that the Goddess managed the world, she would have forced a mana overload, collapsed reality itself, and slipped through the resulting crack just to go find Seonghyeon.
The reason they had saved a world on the brink of annihilation by the Demon King was not, in truth, to save a dying world. It was to pry Seonghyeon away from that damn loser of a Hero.
"Haa..."
Selene sighed as if the earth itself might cave in beneath her. Belka gave her a light pat on the back.
"Don't worry so much. Even if the Goddess accidentally dropped Seonghyeon into some weird world, she'd be fine. She's Seonghyeon."
"Of course she would! Do you even know who Seonghyeon-nim is? She's my first love and my last love!"
"Okay, but that has nothing to do with whether she's safe—"
"Haa? You think my first and last love is something light? That alone makes Seonghyeon-nim extraordinary! The one who gazed upon the white night! The witch who reads the stars! The Great Mage! Standing at the pinnacle of all magic — and she is my first and final love, you understand?"
Selene flailed her short arms and legs in a fit of passion. After pouring out her tirade at length, she tilted her head slightly to the side, every trace of humor wiped clean from her face, and looked at Belka as if regarding a traitor.
"What about you? Are you any different?"
"No... I feel the same. Seonghyeon was my first love too. There's no way our first love could be anything less than incredible."
"But not your last love, I take it? Faithless. I suppose a brain made entirely of muscle forgets love just as quickly."
"I left it out! Who spells the whole thing out with that much emphasis the way you do?!"
"Oh, so the real-time compressed, brainless muscle-head just forgot the concept of loyalty entirel—!"
Grab!
Belka had heard enough. She pinched Selene's mouth between her fingers and pulled. Selene slapped frantically at Belka's arm in surrender, the pain so sharp it felt like her lips might tear clean off. But Belka, a vein bulging on her forehead, was in no mood to accept surrender so easily.
"Uugh..."
Only when tears finally welled in Selene's eyes did Belka release her.
"You brutish wom—"
Swish...
Before Selene could finish the insult, Belka raised her finger-pincers once more. Selene clamped her mouth shut and went back to furiously stirring her innocent coffee.
Belka laughed once at the sight, then glanced to the side.
"Long live the Hero!"
"Long live Hero Park Geonwoo!"
"O Sword of the Goddess!!!"
Even here, in the most secluded corner of the village, the cheers for the Hero still reached them. Belka had been deliberately ignoring the noise while they talked, but the moment it registered, her expression crumpled.
"That damn Hero... Who do they think actually saved the world..."
"Exactly. Gathering the party — everyone except the Hero — and killing the Demon King... Seonghyeon-nim did all of it. And they have no idea. This is why I can't stand ignorant people."
Occasionally, someone would praise Seonghyeon as well. They called her the Combat Saint and celebrated the tales of her martial prowess, said to rival even the Demon King. But that only soured Selene and Belka's moods further.
"The Combat Saint? She is the Saint of Compassion!"
Selene still couldn't forget it. The moment Seonghyeon had saved her.
Because she carried demon blood, she had been abandoned in an alleyway, beaten every single day. There wasn't a single uninjured place left on her body. Fresh bruises bloomed daily. An adult had kicked her in the jaw hard enough to dislocate it. Someone had pressed a lit cigarette into her eye for fun, and she had gone blind on one side.
There was no adult to protect her. The mother who had been violated by a demon and given birth to her had dumped her in that alley the moment Selene was old enough to think for herself. Her demon father, of course, never came looking.
The only reason she had managed to cling to life in that alley at all was that, despite being a half-demon, she had been born human rather than demon. But was that truly a blessing?
Day after day she became a dumping ground for the rage of humans who had suffered at demon hands — beaten, abused — and because of the stubborn vitality inherited from her demon blood, she couldn't even die. Every day was hell. She resented the Goddess who had allowed her to be born into such a world. She wished the Demon King would just destroy everything.
...Or so she had thought.
That day had been no different. In a dim alley where light barely reached, she was being beaten again, surviving on the food scraps they tossed her. Prostrate among the snickering humans, not even allowed the use of her hands, she was licking garbage with her mouth alone — when a voice cut through.
"Hey. What the hell are you doing?"
Seonghyeon appeared, her nun's habit worn at a crooked, irreverent angle.
"Who...?"
"Ask Stella who I am. I'll send you to her myself."
Young Seonghyeon was utterly unrestrained. She swung fists wreathed in white divine power without hesitation, beating every last sneering adult into the ground. Then she walked slowly toward Selene.
Selene was terrified, but the thought of running never even crossed her mind. She wasn't allowed to resist. She wasn't allowed to have a will of her own. You're a filthy girl with filthy blood. She had heard it so many times that even as Seonghyeon approached after flooring every adult present, she simply stayed on the ground, trembling.
"Get up, kid."
"I-I'm sorry..."
"Sorry for what? Just get up, will you? Seriously..."
Seonghyeon let out a long sigh.
Whoosh!
"Eh?"
When Selene still didn't move, Seonghyeon simply scooped her up with raw strength. Without a hint of hesitation — without any sign she found her dirty — she slid her arms under Selene's back and legs, filthy with spit and food scraps, and lifted her clean off the ground.
Warm...
It was the first warmth from another person she had ever felt. Tears spilled from the one eye she still had left.
"You..."
Seonghyeon flinched the moment she saw Selene's face. Her gaze landed squarely on the empty socket.
"Ugh..."
Selene flushed with shame and covered her eye. When others had mocked her as a one-eyed freak, it had never bothered her. But seeing Seonghyeon look startled made her feel, for the first time, almost human — and it was mortifying.
"Aigoo! Th-there you are!"
The village chief's voice drew closer. He looked terrified, as though he had been caught doing something he desperately needed to hide. He came running and threw himself flat on the ground.
I've never seen the chief like this before.
Selene was stunned. To put it mildly, the village chief was the king of this place. It was an independent village, and he freely exercised even the lord's right of the first night — the people's resentment ran deep — but the central government still recognized his authority, so no one dared challenge him.
And yet that same chief was prostrating himself before a girl who looked no older than Selene herself.
Who on earth is she...?
Selene wondered about the identity of the girl holding her so tightly.
Seonghyeon spoke.
"Chief. Did you not see the official decree I issued?"
"Th-the decree, you say..."
"I clearly sent a notice stating that all discrimination against mixed-bloods is hereby forbidden. Did you not receive it?"
"I-I didn't see it, Saintess... It must have been misplaced somehow..."
"Then it's this nation's fault? I distinctly told the king not to leave out a single village when delivering it..."
"N-no, that's not—"
The chief had no excuse that would hold. If he reversed his story, his entire family would face capital punishment for mocking the Saint. If he insisted it was true, then the king of this nation would stand accused of ignoring the Saint's word.
A mere king ignoring the Goddess's proxy? That would lead to a Holy War of Judgment — a catastrophe that could erase an entire country from the map.
Seonghyeon looked down coldly at the speechless chief.
So cool...
So this was what real power looked like. Nothing like that poorly aging old man who stole other men's wedding nights. This was true authority.
"Enough. We'll leave it here."
"..."
"As the proxy of Stella, Goddess of Stars, I hereby permanently excommunicate the Kingdom of Luminar."
"E-e-ex... ex..."
"This decree of excommunication cannot be overturned by the Pope, nor can the next generation's Saint revoke it. It can only be lifted by the Goddess's own judgment."
With that, Seonghyeon walked past the prostrate chief.
"Please forgive me! Excommunication — anything but that...!"
"..."
"Please! Please forgive me! I saw it! I saw the decree Your Holiness issued, but I thought nothing of it and let it pass, and that's how this happened! Punish only me! Please! Please!"
The chief cast aside every shred of dignity and crawled before Seonghyeon like a child, wailing and begging. At the time, Selene hadn't understood why he groveled so desperately. Now she did.
Excommunication. And a Saint's excommunication, no less, was no different from telling the condemned to take their own lives. Once excommunicated, every blessing ever bestowed vanished at once — whether granted by the Goddess herself or by the fairies, every last one was erased. That alone was catastrophic. But there was worse.
An excommunicated human could no longer have their wounds healed by divine power. Worse — if divine power so much as touched them, they would take damage the same way demons did. A human, equated with the demons who were the world's sinners. That was a Saint's excommunication.
"Ch-Chief?"
They had come out of the alley, so the entire village witnessed the chief's disgrace. Seonghyeon dragged him along, still holding Selene, and walked the length of the village.
"Your Holiness must not walk alone."
"Indeed. We shall protect you."
Holy knights arrived and formed a protective ring around her.
"But what about the filthy child?"
"Filthy child?"
One of the knights chose that moment to say something that crossed Seonghyeon's line — and she did not let it slide.
Crack!
"Urgh!"
"You're fired, you bastard. Are you even a holy knight? What kind of piece of trash are you?"
"I-I'm sorry."
"Get lost."
After dismissing one of her own knights on the spot, Seonghyeon didn't stop until she had walked every street in the village.
"Huff... huff..."
The old chief barely managed to keep up with Seonghyeon's brisk pace, gasping as though he might collapse. When she finally completed the circuit and arrived at the village square, she simply sat down on the ground.
Thud.
When a Saint sits on the ground, no one dares remain standing. Every person gathered there flattened themselves against the earth. Seonghyeon waited until the murmuring fully died away. Only when every mouth was shut did she speak.
"Alright, everyone. You have no idea what's going on, do you? You're probably thinking something like this: some little girl shows up claiming to be a Saint, we were going to smile and nod and send her on her way, but now she's doing something weird. Right?"
"..."
The villagers kept their mouths tightly shut.
"Oh, for— Answer me!!"
"N-no, not at all!"
"Absolutely not!"
Only when Seonghyeon barked at them did they finally reply, trembling.
"Not at all? Good. I was starting to think I was the one in the wrong here."
"..."
"This is exhausting for all of us, so let me tell you why I'm doing this."
Squeeze!
Seonghyeon held Selene tightly and said,
"Apologize to this child. You sons of bitches."
That day, Selene received a lifetime's worth of apologies.
"Hnn...♡"
Reliving the memory, Selene clutched her lower abdomen and collapsed forward, limp. Instinctively, she rubbed her thighs together. Her earlobes flushed red, her breathing grew ragged — and Belka looked at her as though she were an insect.
"Ugh... Go home."
"As if you're any different from me..."
"I don't go into heat in the middle of a café."
"How rude... So you mean to say you don't get aroused remembering the person who saved you when you were hanging from the ceiling like a punching bag, getting the life beaten out of you..."
"Who's being rude here?"
Belka shook her head and started drinking the coffee Selene had only been stirring, never touching. At this rate, she wasn't going to drink it today anyway. For someone who supposedly stood at the pinnacle of wisdom, she always turned into this whenever Seonghyeon was involved.
Not that I'm any better...
She never did it in public, but the moment she stepped into her private room, she always ended up thinking of Seonghyeon and... doing that. She had no right to criticize Selene.
"Punching bag? Puuunching bag? From now on, you're the punching bag, you bastard."
Seonghyeon's voice brushed past Belka's ear like a hallucination.
Clack.
Belka set down the coffee she'd been drinking.
"Something urgent came up. I'm heading out first."
"Hah... I won't bother asking what. Take care."
"..."
Belka rose from her seat, face flushed red. As she turned to head back to the lodging, Selene asked one last question.
"She'll be happy, right? Seonghyeon-nim?"
"Ah... She will. She has to be. She's forgotten us — forgotten even 'those girls' — so she'll find new bonds soon enough and be happy."
"Yeah... I hope so... Even if she never remembers us again, I just don't want Seonghyeon-nim to ever make that face again. Please... let her be happy in a world without the Hero..."
They both wished for it. That in a dimension beyond the Hero's reach, Seonghyeon would find happiness. Sincerely, that single wish was all either of them wanted.
But their sacrifice, and their one and only prayer, was about to crumble beneath one man's madness.
"The Reverse World, huh... So Seonghyeon went somewhere like that?"
"Apparently so."
"Ah... I can't be late... Just asking out of an old man's concern, but Seonghyeon hasn't been taken yet, right? She's still a virgin, yeah?"
"You insane bastard."