Pushed to the Limit
“Aaaah!”
Watching that, I was just as horrified—close to fainting myself. I mean, I’m human too! Who wouldn’t be terrified when some thick, black, sticky liquid like crude oil suddenly gushes out like that? The difference between me and everyone else who just screamed and curled up was simple: I actually had the power to stop it, and I used it. Well, for now, at least.
“How the hell do we deal with that…?”
“Don’t give up! Pull yourselves together! The Saintess is holding it back, so get up!”
Ever since I gained the ability to use divine power, I had never felt this exhausted. I had practiced the protection miracle a few times, and even used it in a rush when that crudely rendered black sphere first appeared, but never had the strain been this overwhelming. Right in front of me, pouring out from not one but three places, the black sludge carried an intensity that made the difference obvious.
“Urgh, grrrgh, kghhh…”
It felt like my brain was being squeezed dry. No, it was being squeezed. I tried to speak, but nothing came out. Only after realizing my knees had buckled without my noticing did I understand that my legs no longer had the strength to stand. I had experienced something similar before. When I once caught a brutal flu, I woke up in bed only to find my limbs completely powerless, unable to get up. It was exactly like that now.
“A-are you okay, Lucia?”
“Grrgh, ughhh…”
I wanted to say I was fine, but nothing coherent would leave my mouth. My brain, my thoughts, had surrendered all control to the single imperative of maintaining the divine power. If it wavered even slightly, we were all dead. This was the worst.
The bigger problem was that it was true. If I lost focus here, even a little, I would collapse—and so would everyone else. I didn’t know why the black mass had appeared or what it was, but if the protection miracle failed now, it was over.
It felt as if divine power had become my sixth sense. I could feel every bit of that horrific substance sliding across the surface of the barrier. I had to hold on. I reached into my robes with my left hand and grasped the small golden cross I had brought from the room where I first woke up in this world.
“Hero!”
“Not yet! I need more time! Lucia, you can’t afford to share your power with me right now! Drawing out my own strength takes time!”
The Hero’s Sword was no doubt gathering that golden light along its blade. That alone had been enough to defeat most formidable foes until now. But this enemy far exceeded even those. For a sixteen-year-old hero with barely a year of real combat experience—intermittent at that—he needed time to gather his strength. So the conclusion remained the same. I had to endure. But for how long?
“Kghhh… hack!”
For a moment, my focus slipped. The barrier wavered. I felt it clearly through my sixth sense. No. I had to hold on. If there truly is a god out there, please—since you shoved me into this world in place of a lesser deity—give me something. Anything.
Warm hands wrapped around my right hand.
“I-I don’t really understand what’s happening, but Lucia, I’ll pray for you. I will pray. N-not for everyone else, but for you. Only for you. You are the one my prayers are directed to.”
Warmth spread from my right hand through my arm, gently soaking into my entire body and mind. The sensation of my brain being wrung out vanished like a lie. Well, not completely, but it eased into a faint tingling. My legs still had no strength, but kneeling actually felt more stable now. Better than collapsing and disrupting the miracle.
“Yulia. Thank you.”
Ah, my tongue finally worked again. The fact that thoughts turned into words so easily felt miraculous in itself. I didn’t know the details of what had happened, but one thing was certain: the burden on me had lessened significantly. This much, I could manage.
“Lucia? Are you all right now?”
“Go! Sieg! Go, quickly!”
With the extra breathing room, I funneled every bit of it toward Sieg. The faint golden haze rising from the Hero’s Sword flared into a brilliant, sun-like radiance. The black liquid that had been spreading like a swamp began to evaporate under that pressure. No—not evaporate. It was disappearing. I wouldn’t have understood just by watching, but with divine power as my sixth sense, I knew: that substance did not belong here, and divine power, which restores, reclaims, and protects, was steadily erasing it.
“Forward! We need to break through! Clear a path so the Hero can cut them all down!”
Prince Peter had somehow acquired a second sword in his left hand and took the lead, shouting. His escort knight, who looked ready to stop him, instead chose to surge ahead of the prince.
“Let’s go!”
Others, as if possessed, followed their example—knights, nobles, even the mages who had been sitting earlier now stood on trembling legs and gathered their mana. Those without martial or magical skills gathered around me, following my first apostle’s lead and offering prayers.
Wait, what did I just think? My first apostle? Why?
“Hah!”
No time for that now. I focused my power—my divine power—on Sieg, who had just cleaved through one sphere. The remaining black liquid surged toward him, some coalescing into monster shapes to block his path. Whoever or whatever was directing them had made a grave mistake. The enormous burden on me suddenly eased.
“You think I’m an easy target?!”
Not exactly saintly language for a church saintess, but who cared? A person’s worth was proven by actions, not words. Still on my knees with my right hand held by Yulia, I thrust my left hand—clutching the golden cross—forward. The protection miracle that had been maintained at full strength vanished in an instant. I would have had to drop it anyway for the fighters charging toward the surviving spheres, and normally I wouldn’t have risked the non-combatants around me. But now that the black entities were targeting the Hero and the fighters, the situation had changed. Nothing left to protect here.
“One more!”
Shrrring! Another sphere shattered against Sieg’s sword. The boost from my divine power had rapidly amplified his mana. My power alone couldn’t guarantee such swift, complete destruction, but why not try? I didn’t need to give Sieg my full strength. Maybe half would do.
“Uh, anyway—Beam!”
The first name that popped into my head was that of a certain blonde elementary-school-aged character from some island nation, and I nearly said it. I had given in to the urge to mimic Sieg’s dramatic shouts. The result?
“The Saintess has opened the way! Forward!”
As expected, the beam had little effect on the sphere itself. But the people bathed in its light moved noticeably faster and smoother. Of course, the sphere’s destruction wasn’t thanks to the beam—Sieg’s sword had already been right there. What mattered was what came after. The black liquid that had already spilled out didn’t disappear just because the sphere was gone. Neither did the monsters it had formed. I briefly regretted not spreading the beam instead of firing it straight, but the empowered fighters were already cleaning up the monsters at incredible speed, so it hadn’t been necessary.
“Lucia! Watch out!”
While nearly everyone’s attention was focused elsewhere, a lone surviving goblin—far too well-armed with a sharp dagger for something so small—came charging. A sudden gap had opened between fighters and non-combatants. The nearby mages hesitated to cast, afraid of hitting me or the mostly female non-combatants around me. There were no mages skilled enough to guarantee a hit in this chaos.
“Everyone, behind me!”
So I stepped forward. I had received combat training and practical experience, plus hand-to-hand techniques from the escort priests. More than anything, I trusted my divine power. As long as it wasn’t instant death, I could heal anything. That extremist bishop who defected to the empire had given me quite the education. Still, I’d rather not get stabbed if I could help it.
“Kieeeek!”
Smack! Thud!
At the last second, I released a burst of golden light to blind the goblin. Disoriented by the sudden flash, it raised its arm to shield its eyes, completely ruining its posture. Even if it was a monster and I had no talent for close combat, I wasn’t incompetent enough to fail against a single goblin half my height that had thrown itself off-balance mid-leap.
“H-huh?”
The only complication was Yulia still clutching my right hand, but that actually helped—my side was now facing the goblin, making it easy to create space with a single step back. I grabbed its right wrist, yanked it forward, slammed it to the ground, and stomped hard on the back of its neck. It was clumsy, but effective.
“I-it worked.”
I must have been caught up in the atmosphere too. The goblin was alone and had short arms; I could have just picked up a fallen sword and swung it around. But before I could, Peter’s blade drove into the back of its head. When had he gotten here so fast?
“Are you all right, Lucia?”
“Thanks to you. So stepping on the neck doesn’t kill or knock them out? Thank you.”
Sieg, who had rushed over next, checked me over with his eyes. The dagger hadn’t even touched me.
“For now, we should get outside and return to the academy to assess the situation.”
“Ah, right. Assessing the situation comes first. We also need to figure out why this happened.”
The immediate crisis was over, but that only made understanding what came next even more critical. Above all, we needed to identify the cause. We had been lucky—this had happened in a place with both the Hero and the Saintess present. What if it had occurred somewhere without proper responders?