The Girl Yearns for Salvation
I killed the man, then dragged his corpse straight into Plimia's shabby little house.
Choi Yebin looked a little startled at the sight, but she quickly composed herself and asked,
"Should I prepare for combat?"
"No. Nobody saw him die, so we should be fine. From what I can tell, the ones guarding this place are pretty low-grade. Even if we do get found out, we'd have more than enough time to run before the main force arrives. So no need to gear up for a fight just yet. Once they figure out he's dead, that might change — but that won't be for a few hours at least."
Choi Yebin nodded and returned to her corner. When I tossed the body against the wall, Plimia, who had been sitting, shot to her feet with a cry.
"W-wait... Administrator... did you... did you kill him...? You...?"
Her whole body was trembling. Afraid she might blame me, I got ahead of it with an excuse.
"Elcardo tried to kill me first. I didn't have a choice."
That wasn't true. Elcardo had never tried to kill me. My reason for killing him was simple: the way he treated Plimia like an object, without a shred of guilt, had disgusted me. But I decided against honesty. If she found out a man had died because he'd insulted her, Plimia would only torment herself over it.
I approached her as she continued to shake. I wanted to reassure her — she seemed terrified of me. But to my surprise, she came right up and took my hand in her one good one. She waved the stump of her missing arm, but it couldn't reach me as she murmured,
"My prayer... my prayer was answered..."
Only then did I look properly at her face.
The emotion in her eyes as she gazed at the fallen man's corpse was not fear, despair, or dread.
What shimmered there was, unmistakably, hope.
I found myself wanting to know even more about her.
"Plimia. I don't want to lie to you, so I'll ask you straight. I heard from Elcardo that this place is a market for selling Saintesses. I'd like you to tell me why Saintesses chosen by a goddess are being treated like this."
Plimia dragged herself across the floor on her one remaining foot, bowing her head as she answered in a soft murmur.
"If you promise you won't abandon me after you hear the story... then I'll tell you."
Beside me, Choi Yebin began studying my eyes with close attention. She was probably curious how I'd answer.
I didn't care either way. I answered without a moment's hesitation.
"Whatever your story is, I'll help you. That was the promise from the start."
It was nothing more than words — no contract, no seal. But Plimia answered as if she were a believer who had just witnessed a miracle with her own eyes, cradling my hand as she spoke.
"It's a rather ordinary story. And a boring one."
And so Plimia began to tell me, calmly and without embellishment, what had happened to her.
Plimia.
She had always loved reading. What she loved most of all were the stories of Saintesses in fantasy novels — those hopelessly familiar tales of a Saintess who prayed fervently to her god, yearned with all her heart, and used her holy power to save people's lives.
The idea that sincere faith could save another person's life. She could think of nothing more romantic than that.
The girl had revered them. The righteous who gave everything to save others. Those who helped people in distress as if their own lives meant nothing, who never bowed to any hardship.
And so, when she transmigrated into a novel and learned she had been chosen by the Goddess Ruasta, she was deliriously happy. The world of that novel was one of crushing inequality, where the lower classes rarely received proper medical care or education. People died meaninglessly by the thousands in wars fought over the pettiest of interests.
I can help them. That was what the girl believed.
Reality, however, was nothing like what she had imagined.
"Tsk. Only this much holy power? Another defective product."
Some of the priests branded Plimia a defective product. Innate holy power varied from person to person, and Plimia's fell below the acceptable threshold.
To the Temple of the Ruasta Church, Plimia was a considerable headache. As a Saintess chosen by the Goddess Ruasta, she was entitled to a certain standard of treatment — but properly raising and training a Saintess required vast numbers of grimoires and elixirs, and the cost was astronomical.
So the priests devised a clever solution. Wear the Saintess down until she left the Ruasta Church of her own accord. Or, even if she never left — if she simply died, they could process it as a death in the line of duty. That wouldn't be so bad either.
That was when it began. That was when Plimia started being sent to the battlefield.
"Please hold on a little longer, Sir Knight. The Goddess Ruasta will save you."
The girl was thrown into war. Deploying a Saintess into those brutal fields — where knights and mercenaries were constantly wounded, torn, broken, and maimed — was unusual, but the people worshipped her all the same.
"Ah... great Saintess... how can you bestow such grace upon us..."
"To lowborns like us — how can you extend those noble hands..."
Plimia knew she had been exiled here because they called her defective. Even so, she did not despair. The people on the battlefield needed her, and she truly was able to save countless lives.
But endless war inevitably produced endless casualties.
Tragically, Plimia could not work miracles for everyone. The holy power of someone labeled defective was limited, and that meager total could never cover every wounded soldier.
"Saintess, my husband is dying. Please... please, just once, use your holy power. Please don't let my husband die, I beg you..."
People came without end, and Plimia's holy power ran completely dry. And still, a man who had just been brought in — a deep stab wound in his abdomen — lay collapsed on the ground. His wife dropped to her knees and pleaded for her husband's life.
Plimia twisted her whole body, trying to wring out more holy power. But not a single drop remained. After healing dozens, then hundreds of people, nothing more would rise within her. She drove her nails into her own thigh hard enough to draw blood, then began tearing at her hair. Nothing changed.
In the end, the man's breathing stopped. From the moment he entered the door to the moment he breathed his last, a full hour had passed.
The woman stroked her husband's cooling body, confirmed he was dead, and turned on Plimia with a scream.
"You could have saved him! You had the power to save him!"
There was no excuse to offer. The woman wasn't wrong. If Plimia had been a better Saintess — if she had possessed just a little more holy power — the man would have lived.
Is it because I'm defective?
Plimia blamed herself, but the woman's fury did not abate.
It was an enemy knight who had killed her husband, and yet somehow all of the woman's rage fell on Plimia, the one who had failed to save him.
The true misery of war, which so many people never understand, is this: the victims begin to turn on each other. The reason is simple. Without that, the unbearable pain becomes impossible to endure. Choosing blame over self-reproach — pouring out anger to empty yourself of feeling — was the only way to keep from taking your own life in a world like that.
Plimia had to listen to the middle-aged woman's vicious curses for over an hour. On the ground, the man's corpse. Before her, the woman's face twisted with rage.
It's all my fault. If I hadn't been defective...
That was when it began. That was when Plimia became obsessed with faith.
If she truly believed in the Goddess Ruasta, her holy power would grow. She was certain of it. Like the beautiful Saintesses in the books, she would be able to bring miracles to countless people.
But no matter how much she prayed and yearned every single day, Plimia's holy power remained exactly as it was.
After that, she continued to be dispatched to the battlefield at regular intervals. Unlike those early days, however, few people welcomed her with any real enthusiasm. Word had spread that after roughly a few hundred uses of her holy power, Plimia would completely collapse and become useless.
Being able to heal hundreds of times was precious. But on battlefields where hundreds of thousands of troops came and went, the wounded alone numbered in the thousands or tens of thousands. Against that, Plimia's holy power was a drop in the ocean — and her presence on the battlefield began to feel more like a thorn in everyone's side.
The cause was the Saintess allotment system.
Only one Saintess was assigned to any given battlefield. Officially, this was to distribute the Saintesses' power evenly among as many people as possible. In truth, it was the Church's way of ensuring they wouldn't lose their useful Saintesses en masse on the front lines.
The battlefields were mostly left to defectives like Plimia anyway. So even if Plimia hadn't been sent, the number and strength of the healings the knights received would have been exactly the same. But to knights fighting with their lives on the line, none of that mattered. Their thinking was simple.
If a different, better Saintess had come instead of Plimia, so many people wouldn't have died.
They began to openly hostile toward her.
"If a proper Saintess had come instead of you, these men here wouldn't be dead."
After casting hundreds of healing spells and collapsing from exhaustion, Plimia had to endure the knights' cruel words. And still, what she resented most was herself — forced to sit and watch the wounded die around her.
"Can't you replace this defective with a real Saintess? I heard the Church has outstanding Saintesses who can treat thousands of people a day."
Plimia would have loved nothing more than to make that happen. But she had no authority to do so. When she spoke to the Church, the only answer that came back was a single order: hold your current battlefield.
Even when people scorned and insulted her, Plimia quietly used her holy power to heal them. Even if it was only a few hundred people a day — if she could save them, she told herself, that was enough to make her glad. If she kept trying, people would eventually come to understand her. She held on to that hope.
But the Goddess Ruasta never granted her that empty hope.
It was on a day like any other, when the knights of the Caelon Empire marched out to wage war.
That was the day everything went wrong.