Chapter 3
Translator: True Detective
[Let's Educate the Saintess - 02]
On the battlefield, there are sometimes people with empty eyes.
I could occasionally see people who had lost hope and even forgotten how to harbor despair.
When listening to the stories of such people, most of them had lost someone precious, or even if it wasn't someone that precious, they were people who had lost a lot due to continuous loss.
In the special environment of the battlefield, it was not that easy to protect everyone's sanity individually.
Once it begins to collapse, only a truly small number of people manage to recover it.
Most either fight while broken or return while broken.
After everything ends and they leave the battlefield, I had no way of knowing whether they would stand back up due to some event or continue to live their lives broken.
Speaking from the perspective of someone who frequently saw the eyes of such broken people and cared for them in various ways, I could say that the Saintess's current eyes did not fall into either category.
'She didn't become like this because something shocking happened.'
It seemed like she was just born that way.
It wasn't a mental trauma caused by her parents dying, being betrayed by someone, or experiencing various shocking events right in front of her eyes; she was just completely empty.
Those eyes hadn't desired a single thing from the very beginning.
The human world, whether one likes it or not, is made up of 'me' and 'you.'
Even if one doesn't want to admit it, humans are ultimately social animals, and it is difficult to live without connections to others in some form.
At the very least, I had never seen anyone until now who could truly live in complete solitude.
Most simply had no choice but to live that way, and they were people who chose that path because they hated getting hurt.
However.
This young girl did not seem to be like that.
"Who are you?"
If an average person only heard that clear voice, which sounded like rolling jade beads, a voice that echoed with purity, their mind would likely go completely blank due to the sense of disconnect with the current situation.
In stark contrast to her exceptionally pure, childlike voice and her correspondingly dignified, saint-like appearance, her eyes were completely empty, and the corpse of the bird in her hands created a scene that induced a severe sense of cognitive dissonance.
I see.
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Saintess Anastasia Lacroix."
She probably had no particular thoughts about my greeting.
That’s because there must have been countless people who came to educate the Saintess or open her heart up until now, but none of them would have succeeded.
If they had succeeded, the Saintess wouldn't be doing this here.
Honestly, there is no guarantee that I will succeed either.
It was highly likely that I would also become just another one of the countless people who passed by the Saintess.
That was why I couldn't give the Pope any assurances and simply answered that I would do my best.
From now on, I had to observe her slowly and think about how to treat her and how to guide her.
I will say it once more: I had no certainty.
I suppose I'll know once I give it a try.
"My name is Adrian Valtus. Starting today, I will be in charge of your education, Saintess."
"Ah, another one……. Okay."
She didn't seem interested.
She had no particular reaction to the surname Valtus either.
Despite it being quite famous as the Bloodstained Valtus, her lack of reaction could mean she had lived so secluded that she truly didn't know such information, or even if she did know, she accepted it as completely unremarkable information.
Either way, it wasn't normal.
I briefly exchanged glances with the Pope, who was at the door, and slowly walked into the room.
The distinctive smell of an animal carcass pierced the tip of my nose, and the Saintess was fiddling with the inside of the animal corpse, completely indifferent to whether I was there or not.
"What are you doing?"
For a moment, I considered asking, 'May I ask what you are doing?' but I changed my wording.
It was because there was a significant chance that a person like her would say 'No' if I spoke that way.
There was no guarantee that this Saintess wouldn't have the characteristic thorns of someone trying to block a conversation in advance, so it was important to keep the conversation going as much as possible.
"I am looking at the inside of an animal."
She wasn't rejecting the conversation.
Good.
"Why is that?"
"Because I want to see the inside?"
The concept of good and evil.
To be precise, she lacked the social concept of good and evil.
"Are you enjoying it?"
"Not really."
She derived no pleasure from destructive behavior.
Is that a relief, at least?
If she had possessed a sense of pleasure for destructive behavior, she might have been beyond saving.
She would have been in a realm where socialization itself was impossible.
However, it seemed she simply felt nothing, regardless of good or evil.
She didn't care how she appeared to others.
That might sound cool, as if she had convictions and pride, but not caring at all about the gaze of others meant she didn't know how to wear a social mask, and if that were the case, things would become incredibly troublesome.
Humans are social animals.
And they are animals meant for communication and connecting with one another.
A person who lacks 'you' in the world of 'me' and 'you'.
I was able to figure out that this was exactly who the Saintess, Anastasia Lacroix, was.
To a person like this, you have to show them something more interesting than what they are currently doing. Stimulating her sense of 'wanting to know' seemed to be the best approach.
However, I didn't know much about the Saintess in detail yet, and there didn't seem to be many materials to make inferences from right now.
"Then."
Thwack!
A light flashed instantaneously and grazed past my cheek.
The attack, which felt like it would pierce my ear, lodged into the wall, and a little bit of blood trickled down my cheek.
"You're noisy, shut up. I'm focusing right now."
"……."
She didn't derive pleasure from violence or destructive behavior, but since they resolved things easily, she seemed to have a habit of using them to fix her problems.
That aside, she truly is overwhelming.
To produce such a sharp light magic without even casting was something that could literally be called a miracle from the Goddess.
Normally, if someone can use a magic capable of piercing a rock in any form, they are evaluated as being capable of pulling their own weight.
That could be considered the social assessment.
This young girl had mastered it at this young age without doing any training whatsoever.
How terrifying.
'She doesn't possess any pleasure for violence, but instead, she's quite accustomed to using it as a means to an end, so changing this might be quite difficult. I might have to use slightly forceful measures.'
When I looked at the Pope, she was showing a troubled expression while looking at the wound on my cheek, but I raised my hand as if to say I was fine and looked back at the Saintess.
Because she lacked a concept of good and evil, she had no hesitation about violence, and since everyone around her would have been unilaterally beaten when she wielded that power, her hesitation towards violence had disappeared even more.
It was like a car driving without brakes.
Well, cars don't actually exist in this world.
Though there are similar things.
Even if someone wanted to stop her, it would have been impossible to moderately subdue her due to her position as the Saintess and her absurd power.
In the end, did they have no choice but to leave her alone until she grew up half a tyrant like this?
'Phew, I had heard that the Pope was a soft person, but it's beyond my imagination. Still, there's no doubt that's why she is so respected.'
The good deeds performed by the Pope, Serapion Lumentio, were tremendous, and the number of people saved by her was even greater.
However, I had heard she had a somewhat soft side for a person in power.
And it actually seemed to be true.
Or perhaps she felt some special emotion toward this Saintess. Like maternal love, or something similar.
Well, that wasn't something for me to get involved in.
Since I had been ordered to do so, carrying out that task was my duty.
'A person like this wouldn't listen no matter how much I chattered on. In other words, no matter how much I try to persuade, nag, or discipline her with "words," she won't listen.'
Instead, she might treat it as noise and suddenly display her violent tendencies like she just did.
The most terrifying thing about this Saintess is that there are no warning signs before her violence.
It's not that there are 'barely any'—there are just none at all.
If it were an ordinary person, whether it be hostility, murderous intent, anger, or whatever else, something would always flicker before they hit or attacked someone.
But this Saintess had absolutely none of that, meaning she could launch an attack meant to kill without feeling any emotion at all.
At least she didn't aim directly for my head yet, and seeing as she targeted my cheek as a warning first, it seemed she hadn't yet crossed the final line that shouldn't be crossed.
However, if things stayed like this, it probably wouldn't take that long for her to cross that final line.
She seemed confident in her own violence, and she also seemed to have the arrogance to believe she could do whatever she wanted with it.
"Saintess."
"……."
Her eyes seemed to be saying, 'Why are you still here?'
"Would you like to play a game with me?"
"A game?"
This seemed to pique her interest a little.
"I am the person who will be educating you until you come of age, Saintess. But surely, you don't want to receive my education, nor do you see any reason to receive it."
"……."
The way she gave a small nod meant she was probably intrigued because it was the first time someone had approached her like this.
"So, would you like to play a game? If I win the game, you will quietly listen to my education until you come of age."
"……Hmm."
"However, if you win, I will become a scarecrow of an educator until you come of age. I will not bother you anymore."
She is still young.
Her eyes were reacting honestly.
"Are you interested?"