The Evil-Slaying Holy Knight, Derck (1)
I had become a saintess inside a game.
Three years had to pass before I could accept that fact with anything resembling composure. I'd been full of complaints at first, but these days being called a saintess didn't faze me in the slightest. That much time had gone by, after all.
The sense of injustice, though — that was still there.
Clitia Eluke.
My name, now.
Even after watching the ending of Apolis Tales more times than I could count, it had felt completely foreign at first. Which made sense. She was a figure from the past who only ever appeared in the lore — a world set before the main story even began. Every scrap of game knowledge I had was completely useless. I couldn't orchestrate every situation and event the way the protagonists of web novels did.
It still pissed me off. But I'd carried out the duty I'd been given faithfully enough.
As the saintess of the Hero's party, I'd busted my ass alongside my companions to hunt down the Demon King and beat him into the dirt. Fortunately, everything had gone smoothly up until then. Even the Four Heavenly Kings of the Demon King's army hadn't been a match for us. The only enemy left was the Demon King himself. I was tense, but I figured we could handle him the same way we always had.
That was a delusion. Arrogance.
"Already over? This Hero's party was rather dull."
I looked around, enduring pain so intense it felt like my entire body was being torn apart.
Everyone was dead.
The great warrior who had always charged at the front. The guardian who had moved as one with the spirits. The sage who had turned the tide of battle with brilliant strategy and peerless magic. Every last companion I'd been laughing and talking with just yesterday had fallen to the Demon King's hand.
"Guh..."
Even the Hero, our last hope, had finally dropped to his knees, powerless.
"Now only you remain."
The Demon King tossed the limp Hero aside like garbage and walked toward me. I couldn't breathe. The air around me darkened, staining blacker by the second.
"I won't keep you alive just to mock or violate you. Farewell, saintess of admirable fighting spirit."
The Demon King's hand plunged deep into my chest. Agony so fierce it felt like my mind was melting washed over me.
"Your adventure ends here."
Blood surged from my mouth.
Total defeat.
A defeat so wretched there was nothing left to say. There was no one left to save me. The only thing waiting ahead was a cold death.
"......"
Resignation, crushed under the weight of despair, spilled from my eyes. The final moment was drawing near, slowly.
And yet.
And yet, why—
"...Why is a woman about to die smiling?"
Why did it feel this electrifying?
The wretchedness that had burrowed deep into my heart. And the ecstasy that had sprouted from that wretchedness, feeding on it like fertilizer. It was a rapture I had never felt before in my life. And then there was the pain radiating outward from my pierced chest. A pleasure like arriving in paradise surged through me, and I couldn't hold it back.
It felt good.
My consciousness slowly faded into a bliss so extreme that a word like "good" didn't even begin to cover it.
"O Sun, exalted above all others... here lies a glory most worthy of praise..."
From that day on, sunlight no longer lit the path before me.
A tavern noisy with laughter and chatter. I sat in a corner seat and gulped down a mug of beer.
"Ahhh. That's the stuff."
The cool slide down my throat felt like it was carving the fatigue right out of me. Heaven really wasn't that far away after all.
"Drink it slower."
"Giph, you know the best part about getting excommunicated? I don't have to stay off the booze."
"You drank plenty even when you were still an active priestess."
"The mindset is different."
I used to feel guilty about it. Now I was just free. Call it the difference between legal and illegal.
"Unbelievable."
Giph muttered under his breath as he sipped his drink.
"Still, I'm relieved you don't seem any different from before."
"You thought I'd changed?"
"I thought you'd fallen completely. You lost every last companion, and even the Goddess turned her back on you."
He wasn't wrong. There had been a stretch where I'd been half out of my mind.
"Do you have any idea how shocked I was when you showed up out of nowhere and asked me to fight?"
"I remember that look on your face. It was hilarious. Wait — is that just how you always look?"
"...I'm fairly certain I said I wanted a serious conversation."
Giph picked up a piece of the chicken he'd ordered as a side and crunched through it, bone and all. The look in his eyes said he might take a bite out of me next, orc that he was, so I quickly dropped my gaze.
"A shame your personality hasn't changed one bit, either."
"I was born this way. You can't change someone's nature that easily."
There were parts of a person that didn't shake or break no matter how brutal or hard the things they went through. If that part happened to be an unshakable conviction, you'd get a hero. In most cases, it was just a rotten personality or a filthy habit.
"I still wonder why someone as delinquent as you was chosen as a saintess."
I had questions of my own.
Why a saintess, of all things?
Becoming a woman hadn't been enough. I'd become a noble, sacred woman, and the inconveniences had doubled. And I hadn't even been a hardcore veteran of Apolis Tales — just a reasonably skilled player. There were people who'd poured their entire lives into that game. I had no idea why I was the one this happened to.
In short, it pissed me off something fierce.
It suddenly got hot. I started to pull off the hood of the robe I'd been wearing pulled down, and Giph grabbed my wrist.
"Are you trying to cause a scene?"
I quietly lowered my hand again.
"Forgot."
Apparently my features were well-known even among ordinary citizens now. I'd become a symbol of terror. Pink hair and pink eyes. Skin so clean and white it stayed that way without any upkeep. It was a look that turned heads wherever I went. Casual wandering was off the table now.
"Did something happen? It wasn't this bad just a few months ago."
"...A certain someone assaulted the imperial capital."
"Ah. That's why?"
I'd just wanted to challenge a knight commander famous for his overwhelming martial prowess. It had ended with me smashing a perfectly innocent castle wall, though.
"The entire empire was in an uproar. You didn't know?"
"Knights kept chasing me, so I was busy dealing with all of them."
"......"
That hadn't been the answer he wanted. The look he gave me grew a little heavier.
"How about you tell me what you've been up to all this time. Before you get any drunker."
The mug I'd been lifting to my mouth was blocked by a massive hand, so I had no choice but to set it back on the table.
"Nothing much, honestly. You know why I got excommunicated, right?"
"I heard it was because you earned the Goddess's hatred and lost the ability to wield Holy Power."
"That's more or less it, but not quite."
I gave him a brief summary of what had happened in the final battle against the Demon King.
"Hmm..."
A strange reaction. A chill settled into the eyes looking at me.
"So the reason you've been wandering around attacking strong people and killing them... is just so you can lose a fight?"
"'Just'? That's a bit harsh."
Those days I'd spent moving on nothing but the desire to recreate the rapture I'd felt when I lost to the Demon King. To me, it had been a journey holier than any pilgrimage.
"If you want to lose in the first place, couldn't you just not fight at full strength?"
I shook my head firmly. He didn't get it at all.
"That's a fake defeat. A real defeat needs the helplessness of knowing you can't win no matter what you do."
A goal you couldn't reach by pretending to be weak on purpose. Which was why a genuine, all-out clash was essential. For the same reason, I had no interest in fights where the winner was decided by a script, like pro wrestling. It was hard to go all-out if it wasn't a real fight.
"You get what I'm saying?"
"I understand that you look fine on the outside, but you've actually gone completely insane."
Talking about refined subjects with an orc really wasn't the move.
"Forget it. Let's just drink."
"No. I don't think I can just let this slide."
At some point, Giph had taken hold of the axe hanging at his waist.
"Did you think I'd just sit here and leave a slaughter-drunk madwoman alone?"
His tone had gone ice-cold. It was so frigid that the buzz I'd been building froze solid in an instant.
"Sorry, but you'd better brace yourself."
"You know you can't stop me."
"If I focus purely on attacking, I can land a fatal wound. That'll be enough."
"......"
A heavy silence. Stillness settled between us. Even the noisy drunks' voices couldn't break through. They circled around us and drifted past.
"Giph. Do you know what the Goddess said to me the day I was chosen as saintess?"
I spoke while calmly weathering a presence every bit as fierce as his face.
At the time, I'd just let it wash over me without thinking much of it. It was ordinary common sense, nothing particularly profound, and my faith hadn't grown at all back then. But now, sunk in the shadows, I finally understood the deep meaning hidden in those words she'd tossed out so suddenly.
"She left me, but she's still watching. Not for a single moment does she look away. So I don't create innocent deaths. You know our church's doctrine, right?"
Bright light to the frail.
A scorching flame to the wicked.
It was a phrase used even as a greeting among the faithful.
"...That unfittingly devout side of you is still intact, I see."
Giph took his hand off the axe handle and muttered, looking exasperated.
"But then shouldn't you not be drinking, either?"
"Even so, I can't give up drinking."
I dumped the rest of the beer in my mug down my throat in one go. It felt like the dust clinging to my heart had been washed away. Refreshing.
"She'll let this much slide, don't you think?"
"I'll pray she does."
The atmosphere had softened considerably compared to a moment ago. He probably didn't fully understand how I felt, but this was enough for now.
"What are you waiting for? Let's drink ourselves stupid. Should I order more food?"
"I'm the one paying. Why do you talk like you're treating me?"
"Because you are treating me."
"Mind if I punch you?"
Even after that brief clash ended, the drinking went on. If it were up to me, I'd have kept going until noon the next day. But Giph's wallet couldn't handle that, so we decided to call it a night.
We stepped out of the tavern, and a night sky with a full round moon spread over our heads. I staggered down the street, drunk, and the glittering stars danced in a dizzy whirl.
"Disgustingly beautiful."
"This city isn't called the Home of the Night for nothing."
Serda, a city that was dark and dazzling at once. It was where Giph currently lived.
"Honestly, I've wanted to come here for a while."
"...I think I can guess why."
Serda was a city adjacent to the northern front, where battles against the Demon King's army were being fought. As a result, all kinds of powerful people naturally gathered there to keep the peace. The person I had my eye on was the one most highly regarded among them.
"Don't tell me it's because of that guy?"
"That's right."
A shield that protected the weak. A holy knight whose very existence was said to make evil flinch was here.
A defeat at the end of a clash with a holy knight who commanded the infinite respect of all who served the sun. Just imagining it made my heart pound.