The Saved Saintess
The wars the Caelon Empire waged against other nations had left countless dead and wounded in their wake.
Plimia knew it well enough. If she kept marching onto the battlefield like this, she too might die one day. Luck had kept her alive so far—but luck, she understood, always ran out in the end.
Even so, she stepped onto the field without fear.
For the people she could still heal, she dragged her exhausted body into the fray. She offered prayers to the goddess at regular intervals and fretted constantly over how she might better serve others.
But her heart never reached them.
The knights and mercenaries on the battlefield grimaced at the mere sight of Plimia's face. Some even muttered that they had drawn a dud, but all she could do was pretend not to hear.
If only I had been a little better…
She had cried often. Dozens of times she had wiped her tears in some secluded corner, away from anyone's eyes. She had resented herself just as often. Why am I a defective product? Why does no one need me? Why is there no one who sees my sincerity?
Even though she could work miracles, she was despised by the people she tried to save.
As long as the Saintess Allocation System remained in place, her suffering would never end. She had even considered slipping away from the battlefield in secret, wondering whether her absence might actually help them. But she knew the truth: the Church would simply send another so-called defective saintess with similar abilities to take her place.
Whether she liked it or not, she had learned how the Church operated. They only dispatched the superior saintesses to battlefields where high-ranking officers were present. On fields like this one—where ordinary knights and mercenaries were treated as expendable—they shipped in nothing but defectives.
Nothing will change.
Even if she deserted without permission, even if she died a wretched death mid-battle, some other defective product would simply fill the hole she left behind. If both surrender and resistance led nowhere, then she would give everything she had. Even if it meant breaking her own body to pieces, she would work this miracle for them.
The dull-hearted girl grew harder with every passing day.
The battlefields she had joined so far had claimed many victims, but every engagement had still ended in victory.
Tragically, this battlefield would be different. The knights and mercenaries of the Caelon Empire suffered a horrific defeat. Unaware that the enemy lay in ambush, they pushed into the trap—and in an instant, most of their force was wiped out.
"Kill every last invader!"
Enemy knights flooded in, butchering Caelon knights and mercenaries without discrimination. There were no wounded left behind. The enemy pursued the injured until every last one of them was dead.
From the rear, Plimia ran onto the field.
"If anyone is hurt… if anyone is hurt, please come to me! I'll use my holy power on you!"
A saintess's calling was to save others. That was why she believed the goddess had chosen her. And so she bolted from the safety of the rear toward the front line, ready to work a miracle. But then—
"Huh…?"
One of the knights seized Plimia by the collar and dragged her forward. She recognized his face. He was the man who had despaired only days earlier at drawing a defective saintess. His name was Gallard.
Knight Gallard hauled Plimia all the way to the front line and shouted at the enemy force.
"What I've got in my hand is a saintess of the Caelon Empire. Promise you'll stop chasing us, and I'll hand her over."
The enemy commander naturally refused.
"Hmm… interesting, but why should we listen to you? We can just kill all of you and take the saintess ourselves."
In that instant, Gallard severed one of the saintess's arms. The enemy commander's face—Tekeloman's face—twisted sharply.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"If you keep coming after us, I'll kill the saintess."
"That means nothing. Kill a saintess on the battlefield? As if you would."
Gallard then cut off the saintess's foot. She writhed in agony, but the man did not so much as flinch.
"I'm not bluffing. A saintess is a sacred being. Capturing a living saintess is clearly worth more to you than killing a few hundred of us. Let's make a deal. Spare us, and you can have the saintess."
Tekeloman's expression went ice-cold.
"You disgusting animals. Looking at you, I finally understand why the Caelon Empire is so thick with filthy rumors. Treating a saintess chosen by Goddess Ruasta like that… divine punishment will find you."
"You have to be alive to receive divine punishment. This is my final offer."
Gallard gouged out one of the saintess's eyes.
She moaned in pain, but he only dragged her farther forward. The knights behind him held their breath as one.
Plimia cried out toward the rear.
"H-help me… it hurts so much… my whole body feels like it's being torn apart… please save me… please…"
The girl begged, but the men averted their eyes. A saintess could not use holy power on herself, so healing her own wounds was impossible. Blood drained from her body. The pain was unbearable—but more devastating still were the expressions on the faces of the knights behind her.
Ah…
The very people she had poured every ounce of herself into saving now intended to trade her for their own lives. They counted themselves fortunate to have a bargaining chip at all, and under the pretext that she was defective, they committed sacrilege without hesitation.
"Release the saintess and get out of here. You filthy bastards."
At Tekeloman's order, the knights around him immediately protested.
"Commander Tekeloman! You can't! After coming this far, we can't just let them walk away!"
"Quiet. I'll take full responsibility for this decision."
Gallard slowly backed away. Then, together with the other knights, he began to flee.
Only after watching every last one of them disappear did Commander Tekeloman approach Plimia.
"Saintess."
"Please kill me."
Plimia no longer moaned in pain. Without wiping the blood and tears streaming down her face, she smiled as she spoke.
"Please… let me die with my purity intact."
What happened to women taken prisoner on the battlefield was obvious. Plimia simply smiled brightly. That smile held nothing but a hollow emptiness—not a trace of joy.
"Tch."
Tekeloman left the fallen saintess where she lay and shouted to the knights behind him.
"We're withdrawing."
"Commander Tekeloman! The saintess… you have to take the saintess with us. She'll count as a military achievement."
"The ambush was already a complete success, and we killed a great many Caelon knights. Cutting off the ears of the dead and bringing them back will be more than enough to silence any criticism."
"Even so…"
A saintess exchanged for hundreds of enemy soldiers. Abandoning her was unthinkable. But Tekeloman only spoke with unyielding firmness.
"She's defective. Even if we took her, we couldn't put her to proper use. With an arm, a leg, and an eye gone, she can't appear at any public ceremony. No one would ever authorize an Elixir for a saintess this worthless."
"Th-then why did you let the enemy go in exchange for her life? Why…?"
"Because I refuse to become the same kind of monster."
Tekeloman's face turned terrifying as he drove the point home.
"I am a knight."
When he spoke through clenched teeth, the other knights fell silent.
"Let's go."
He looked at the saintess for a moment longer.
"I've seen you a few times on previous battlefields. You worked your holy power for others until you collapsed from exhaustion. The reason I chose to spare your life today instead of killing a few hundred more of the enemy is simple—I judged that your life holds greater value than theirs."
He tossed one of the potions he carried onto the ground as if discarding it.
"Pour it on the wounds and the bleeding should stop. If you're lucky, you'll live. If not, you'll die."
With that, Commander Tekeloman turned his back and left the saintess alone on the battlefield. That was the greatest kindness the man could offer a discarded saintess of an enemy nation.
The saintess's devout efforts had worked no miracles for her allies—but they had worked one for herself.
Thanks to the enemy commander's mercy, she kept her life and obtained a potion that could staunch her bleeding. That was a miracle. At the same time, she had suffered wounds that would never fully heal.
One arm, severed and motionless.
She would never again be able to press her two hands together in prayer.
One leg that would not move.
She would never again walk the battlefield to tend the wounded. She would never again run across the wide world.
One eye that could not see.
From now on, her vision would hold only half of everything.
By sheer fortune, the girl managed to crawl her way from the battlefield back to base. The Empire never even asked how their saintess had been injured. Once they confirmed her condition, they wordlessly dumped her in a shabby house.
Only later did she learn that the place was where defective saintesses were sold. Only later still did she overhear the knights shouting that any saintess who failed to sell should be peddled off as a prostitute to some wealthy patron.
It was after that day that Plimia stopped believing in Goddess Ruasta.
Instead, she began praying for salvation on the community forum.
She needed a savior who would pull her out of this hell.
Because with what remained of her arm and leg, she would never escape this place on her own.
After hearing all of Plimia's story, Choi Yebin clenched her fist tight.
"Not a single lie. Every word of it is true."
Choi Yebin confirmed the truth of everything Plimia had said. It wasn't really necessary. One look at the desperate way Plimia stared at me was enough to know her words were real.
This was a first. I had never felt so thoroughly sickened.
And this, too, was a first.
For the first time, I was glad that mass-slaughter magic existed in my hands—glad that this was a world where endless war piled corpses and blood so high that such power had a place.
Whether the salvation she sought was escape or vengeance, I could work a miracle for her. This was a place where such things were possible.
I drew an Elixir from my robes and held it out to the girl.
"Even if I drink a potion, it won't heal me. You don't have to waste it on me."
She refused, but I slowly tilted the bottle and began pouring the Elixir into her mouth.
"Ah… wha…?"
The potion that worked miracles. That was another name for the Elixir.
Her severed arm and leg began to regrow in an instant, and the empty socket of her eye restored itself as well. Every wound and self-inflicted scar covering her body vanished just as quickly.
The half-world she had been forced to see returned to whole. Hands that could not meet found each other again. The balance she had lost settled back into place as her missing foot returned.
The girl wept like a child. Then she dropped to her knees, pressed both hands together at last, and prayed with everything she had.
Giving thanks for the miracle the Administrator had performed—for her salvation.
"Thank you… truly… truly, thank you… I'll follow you for the rest of my life, Administrator. If you ever tell me to die, I'll do it gladly. If there's anything you want from me, anything at all, I'll…"
McDeras cut her short.
"If you're truly grateful, then live freely from now on. I'll help you make that possible."
As McDeras spoke, light began to spill into the air around them.
You have gained the complete trust of a transmigrator within a novel.
Limited to the novel you are currently possessing, the 24-hour penalty has been immediately lifted.
You may warp back into your original novel at once.
A system message rang through my mind, but I ignored it.
There was still work left to do here.
For the saintess who had remained devoted to the very end—a miracle.
And for those who had abandoned their honor—it was time to deliver despair.