Too Late for Regrets
Even though it was far too late to realize it now, Teresa still dropped to her knees, rubbing her hands together desperately as she kept pouring out apologies. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.”
Apologizing to a hologram of the past was pointless. Yet she couldn’t stop. Werther’s torment was being transmitted to her in real time, and it felt like her heart was being ripped apart.
‘It must be a week by now… Why aren’t they here?’
“Aaaaaah!!! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!!”
Werther’s eyes were slowly dying. A full week without a single second of sleep, toyed with by Bael… any normal person would have gone mad long ago. His body might regenerate, but his mind was being steadily devoured.
The Prometheus who betrayed the gods and gave fire to humans had incurred Zeus’s wrath. Every morning an eagle tore out his liver and ate it all day long. At night it regenerated, so the agony never ended. That was the punishment devised by the gods—the worst torment ever conceived by the greatest of them.
A body that could not die and simply recovered was not hope. It was despair.
‘Well, finding this place can’t be easy. They must be lost… Heh. Stupid idiots. Probably stumbling around like fools.’
“I’m sorry, Werther! I’m sorry! Please forgive me—aaaaah!!!”
Even with his spine shattered so badly he couldn’t stand, Werther had still believed in his comrades. Watching that miserable sight made her want to vomit. His body was bent at a perfect right angle like a draftsman’s tool. How much pain must he have been in?
But contrary to his hopes, the hero party back then was…
“We’re sorry, Werther!! We didn’t know you were alive! We didn’t know you were waiting!! We… we were just!!! Trying to lift our spirits!!!”
…drinking in a bustling city far from Bael’s chamber.
“Come on, come on. Forget the depressing stuff! Let’s drink and enjoy ourselves!!!”
It had been Leonhart’s idea, of course, but the party members who hadn’t actively refused were equally guilty.
“Today is a farewell party for Werther, who’s gone to the next world! The guy was always gloomy and depressing anyway, so let’s send him off with something fun and flashy! Drink up, everyone! Drink! Today’s on me! Kahaha!!”
At the time, we genuinely believed Werther was dead. After all, he had faced one of the Four Heavenly Kings alone. There was simply no way—no way at all—that a mere porter could still be alive. No way.
Wait. Was that really what we thought?
“But what if Werther’s still alive?” Cynthia had said, not even touching her beer.
The atmosphere in the tavern instantly grew heavy. The hero, with bar girls hanging off both arms, clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Hey, what the hell are you talking about? Say something that makes sense.”
“But Werther… his recovery ability is incredible. Maybe he’s still alive, waiting for us to come save him.”
“Bullshit. And even if he is, you’re saying we should storm Bael’s hideout?”
That was when Teresa flinched. Bael. The moment that monster had appeared in the sky, she had resigned herself to death.
…No. She hadn’t simply prepared for death. She had given up on living entirely.
‘We can’t win. Absolutely not.’
The pathetic demons that roamed near Lydorphia and one of the Four Heavenly Kings leading the Demon King’s army were on completely different levels. The instant she saw him, she understood that victory was impossible—there wouldn’t even be a proper fight. Escaping had felt like an unreachable dream.
Until Werther charged forward alone, shouting, “Run away!! I’ll hold him off!” her legs had been shaking so violently she couldn’t move.
‘Storm Bael’s lair? We barely survived, and now we have to face that monster again?’
Teresa had been born the youngest daughter of a merchant who made a fortune trading spices. All her siblings were much older brothers, and she had grown up showered with love and happiness. These days, people said it was better to be born into a wealthy bourgeois family than a noble one. You could enjoy every luxury without being bound by pointless etiquette.
Having grown up surrounded only by beautiful and lovely things, Teresa had joined the Avalon Church. Humans tormented by demons sought God, and that led to a surge of new churches. Avalon was the headquarters of every church, the holy land where the Pope resided. Entering its ranks was the dream of every theology student.
Teresa had been exempted from the entrance exam thanks to her father’s enormous donation and had obtained that privilege with ease. New nuns were supposed to endure brutal training to become proper saints, but her father could not bear to see his precious daughter suffer. He bribed and lobbied until she was excused from the harsh training and passed every test automatically. Thus, Teresa became an official saint with top scores without lifting a finger.
Even after becoming a saint through her father’s influence, she continued to rise smoothly. She held high positions that required little actual work until she met the hero and joined his party. Even after joining, she left the fighting to others, pushed all the chores onto Werther, and simply prayed. She had never faced any real hardship.
In short, Teresa had never once experienced suffering in her entire life. A life-or-death battle against a terrifying demon like Bael was an event that simply could not exist in her world.
“Isn’t it too cruel to just assume Werther is dead when there’s a chance he might still be alive? What do you all think?” Cynthia had taken charge of the conversation.
Even Leonhart couldn’t offer a logical rebuttal. The mood was clearly shifting in Cynthia’s favor. At that exact moment, Teresa raised a trembling hand and spoke.
“Werther is dead. I’m certain of it.”
“…What? Teresa, you…”
“Sir Hero is right. That porter gave his life to save the hero party and has gone to God’s side. It must have been a death without regrets for him. For the sake of turning his sacrifice into something even more meaningful, we must keep moving forward.”
In the end, it was a declaration that they should ignore even the slightest possibility that Werther might still be alive. When the saint—the spiritual pillar of the party—sided with the hero, the faint guilt that had weighed on the others vanished completely.
“Yeah, yeah. Teresa’s right.”
“It’d be even worse if we died trying to rescue him.”
“Besides, Werther’s definitely dead anyway, right?”
The party that had briefly stopped resumed with renewed energy. Teresa avoided Cynthia’s piercing gaze and drank heavily, even though she normally disliked alcohol. She drank until she blacked out completely. Only after that did her mind feel slightly lighter.
“Continuing from what we talked about yesterday, even if Werther somehow survived, we must not go to Bael’s location.” Having washed her guilt down with liquor, Teresa herself proposed it the very next day.
“If he’s alive, it means he sold our information to Bael. He never liked us much anyway, so it’s entirely possible he chose to save himself. From now on, let’s change our travel route and get as far away from here as possible.”
After badmouthing Werther, she felt much better.
“Oh! Exactly! This girl Teresa actually talks sense?!”
The hero praised her, and no one called her a bad person. I’m not bad. I’m not bad. I’m a saint. I simply made the best choice for the party.
——The hero party, who had assumed Werther must have gotten lost, had already unanimously decided to abandon him completely by that point.
“Kukuk. Hey, it’s been a whole month and there’s still no sign of the hero party? I went outside and checked the surroundings. Not a single person heading this way. What’s going on? You still going to keep believing in your comrades and wait?”
“………….”
This time Werther didn’t answer. Even when Bael openly sneered that every group had at least one outcast, that they had only seen him as a disposable tool, or that they had never planned to rescue him in the first place, Werther offered no rebuttal.
A single hot tear simply rolled down his cheek.
“Hey… Even now, tell me the routes the hero party usually takes. Why do you still believe in them? I’m telling you, you were abandoned.”
“………….”
“Ah, this bastard’s really getting on my nerves with that stubbornness. Let’s see how much longer you last. I’ll increase the torture intensity from now on, yeah?”
Increase it even more? Teresa couldn’t bear the sight and squeezed her eyes shut. Even without looking, Werther’s suffering reached her through pure pain.
His skin sliced by blades. Flayed alive. Internal organs burned with torches. Endless agony without the mercy of death.
“I-it hurts this much? This… this is way beyond what any person can endure! Please stop! I’ll do anything you want!!! Uwaaaaah!! I surrender!! Please stop!!! Uwaaaaah!!!”
If she could just escape this pain, if someone would just end this hell… she could offer anything.
She would kill her own father if ordered. She would shatter the cross without hesitation if told to betray God. If told to sell out her comrades, she would hand every last one of them over. If told to betray humanity and join the Demon King’s army, she would do it without the slightest delay.
But Teresa was given no choices, and the torture continued. She could no longer tell whether it was an eternity or a single moment… whether it was reality or illusion. Waves of sadness, loneliness, hatred, fear, longing, and anguish washed over her and receded.
Within that emotional tide, Teresa recalled a conversation she had shared with Werther shortly after Bael’s death. Back then Werther had clearly been suffering from PTSD—spacing out for long periods, waking up screaming from nightmares. To the hero party celebrating the achievement of killing one of the Four Heavenly Kings, he had become a nuisance.
One day she had approached Werther as he wandered alone through the bushes like a madman and offered what she thought was a sharp remark.
“Look. It’s not just you who’s suffering. We’re all having a hard time. If you have complaints, why don’t you just say them clearly?”
“………….”
Werther had said nothing. She had thought he stayed silent because her words were correct and he had no rebuttal.
But now she understood. He had simply been so dumbfounded that words failed him.
“There’s no such thing as who suffered more in the same party. We’re all struggling equally. So stop acting so pitiful by yourself.”
“Hahahahaha!! Ha!! Hahahahaha!!!!”
Only now did she understand why Werther had burst into laughter. It had been because it was so absurd he could only laugh.
After that, Werther had recovered as if by magic and stopped showing any signs of hardship. She had simply been glad, thinking he had finally come to his senses.
In truth, he had completely closed the door to his heart.
“Graaaah~ This bastard’s really tough. Damn, hitting him is getting more tiring than I expected.”
“…Fuck you. The one getting hit is more tired.”
“No, I’m seriously exhausted. I’ll go drink some water. I’ll recover my stamina and resume the torture right away, so don’t let your guard down.”
“…You son of a bitch.”
Bael wiped the sweat from his brow and stepped outside. Taking that chance, Teresa crawled desperately toward Werther. She knelt before the man who had lost all hope and been betrayed by everything, bowing her head and speaking even though she knew he couldn’t hear.
“Werther… Werther… Can you hear me? Werther… Hic… I didn’t know… I didn’t know it hurt this much. I really didn’t know.”
“…I believed in you.”
It was a monologue. The moment Bael left, the hero party that had abandoned him flickered before his eyes, and the words he unconsciously spat out crossed time and space to reach Teresa.
“…Ugh!”
Teresa clutched her chest and collapsed forward. The sorrow and betrayal that tore through Werther’s heart pierced her just as deeply.
I want to kill them.
‘I want to kill the hero party that betrayed me. How could you do this? I became bait to save all of you, yet you never came to rescue me. Are you even human? What was I to you? What the hell was I? Were we even comrades? Or did you just see me as a convenient errand-running robot? You bastards.’
“So… so this is how you felt. That’s why even after you returned, you kept that sullen expression and wouldn’t mingle with us. And I never even noticed… Kugh… We-Werther. I… I…”
“Ah~ Stamina’s fully recovered. You gave me some cheeky words earlier, right? Let’s start by cutting out that tongue with scissors.”
“Uwaaaaaah!!!”
Bael, who had just returned, ripped out Werther’s tongue. Teresa’s own tongue was severed inside her mouth, making it impossible for her to speak any longer. She embraced Werther’s cold body and made a vow in her heart.
‘If… if I ever get out of here, I will truly apologize to you. I was wrong…’