What the Hell Is Going On?
What the Hell Is Going On?
It seemed I hadn't been unconscious for long.
When I came back to my senses, a cluster of young girls had gathered in front of me.
"It's the Saint."
"Really, the Saint."
About five young girls with hideously disfigured faces looked up at me with bright, sparkling eyes.
I blinked and stared back at them, only for my sense of reality to snap back when I spotted the bandit's corpse collapsed in the corner.
I didn't vomit.
But a mad rush of cold sweat poured out of me.
While I stood there, body frozen stiff and unable to move, the young girls cautiously approached me and took hold of my hands.
Their warmth brought my mind back, if only a little.
"That man......what does he do?"
"He gets us matches and gives them to us."
"Then we sell those and earn money."
"That man takes the money we earn and gives us a place to sleep and something to eat."
"He gives you a place to sleep and something to eat?"
"Yes. Saint."
I looked down at the children.
They were seven or eight at most.
There was another girl who looked like she couldn't be older than four.
Every one of these children had faces melted by burns, and they were wrapped in rags so tattered that even if you went and pulled clothes straight out of a Korean trash can right now, they would look better.
They had no shoes on their feet, and the hands of the girls holding mine were so rough they would put a grizzled construction foreman to shame.
My brow furrowed.
Kids who supposedly had food and a place to sleep looked like this?
"Would you mind taking me to see where you sleep?"
"Okay."
The children led me away.
Fuck.
I needed to get the hell out of here.
I needed to run before the Lilia Order people showed up........
But the condition of these young children was so devastatingly wretched that I simply could not just leave.
After winding through a few more twisting alleyways.
I arrived at the place where the children said they slept.
"We lean against this and sleep."
I was speechless.
A long.
Filthy, stinking, rotten single rope had been strung horizontally along the wall.
Huddled together, leaning against that rope, young girls who couldn't have been older than ten were sleeping.
They were at the entrance of a vile, nameless sewer that reeked of mold and rot, a place where it seemed no one ever came.
"Food......what do you eat."
The young girls pointed to rotten vegetables and moldy bread scattered near the sewer.
"If the kickback is big enough, sometimes he gives us bread that doesn't have mold on it."
The scene was so shockingly cruel that I lost my words.
All fifteen young girls had hideous burn scars on their faces, bodies, or hands, and they swung limply against the rope, their expressions devoid of any hope or future.
The guilt of having killed a man subsided.
What kind......
What kind of goddamn garbage piece of shit did this?
"Your faces. What happened to your faces? Why are your faces like that?"
At my question, the girls began to whimper.
"Our mom and dad died early."
"A factory man took us and made us work in a match factory."
"We were supposed to be careful, but we couldn't, and there was a fire."
"Our faces hurt, so they just threw us away. We were hungry and had nowhere to sleep...... That man took us in, put us to work, and gave us a place to sleep and food."
Among the shoeless young girls, some had toes that had fallen off from frostbite.
Some were missing fingers, and because of their disfigured faces, you could see inside another child's throat.
Honestly, it was more surprising that the children were even alive in that condition.
My fist clenched tight.
I had to run.
The people of the Lilia Order were coming.
They'd said they were arriving early.
Which meant they could be searching for me right about now.
I shouldn't have been doing this.
I had to run.
My brain was screaming at me that I had to run away right now.
But........
But.
How the fuck could you just run away after seeing this?
I'd used Time Stop and vanished suddenly, so were there any witnesses or footprints?
Wouldn't it have taken them forever to track me down?
So, maybe I had just enough time to heal these kids.
That was the thought that crossed my mind.
"Mister......are you really a saint?"
At the young girl's question, I knelt down quietly and met her eyes.
"No."
I wasn't a saint.
I was just a pathetic idiot born with eroge skills.
I was a coward who froze the moment anything remotely big happened and tore up the second someone so much as scared me.
My hobbies were watching anime, and in my previous life, I was just a nobody provincial college student who didn't do anything particularly special before suddenly getting reincarnated.
Still, I was someone who had the ability to treat the children in front of me.
"I'm just someone who heals people when they're hurt."
I reached out my hand to the child right in front of me.
"Come here. I'll fix you up."
So what if the skills were from an eroge, and so what if I was a pathetic loser.
I could just be grateful that an opportunity like this had arisen.
I placed my hand on the child's head.
[Activating Skill: Body Modification!]
I began to work on the child's body.
I healed the face melted by burns and treated the various diseases racking her body.
I fixed the severed fingers and the toes that had frozen and dropped off from frostbite.
My concentration was pushed past its limits as I forced my mind to focus and modify the children, the fatigue from having used Time Stop still not fully recovered, so a nosebleed began to drip, but I still didn't stop.
No.
I couldn't stop.
"Ahh........"
The child wept as she looked at her body, which had healed in an instant.
I spoke to the healed child.
"Go and bring your friends here. I'll fix them all."
The child went to get the others, bringing them to me.
A limping child.
A child with a white, blinded eye.
A child whose nose had melted off completely, who made a strange snuffling sound every time she spoke.
I placed my hand on the children's heads and continued modifying them, one by one, calmly and carefully.
And at last.
Even the last child was restored to a cute and pretty appearance.
"S-Saint!"
"The Saint healed us!!"
"It doesn't hurt!! I can see!!"
Hearing the young children's delighted laughter, tears came to my eyes for some reason.
I hugged the children tightly, one by one.
"You won't hurt anymore."
"Thank you!"
"Thank you! Saint!"
"Now I can sell matches even harder!!"
At those words, I had to furrow my brow.
"You're going to sell matches?"
"Yes."
"Where......will you sleep?"
"Here."
"......"
"Why?"
After all that effort healing them, this meant they were still destined to get sick, hurt, and die off again before long.
I had been about to just say, 'Well, I healed you, so I'm going now. Bye-bye,' but.......
My feet refused to leave.
"Do you know where the Sun Order is?"
"Yes! We do!"
"Go there and tell them the Saint sent you. They'll look after you."
The Sun Order probably didn't have overflowing cash either.
So I said it thinking that I could just forward the money for these children every month in the form of an anonymous donation.
"No! We don't want to leave the Saint!"
"Me neither!"
This was the best I could do for them.
Anything more was hard for me, too.
The Lilia Order might still have been searching for me right then, damn it!!
If I got caught, it was the stake, kids!!
"So if you'll just let me go for a bit......."
The moment I planned to carefully push the children away and try to run again.
"He is here!!"
"It is the Saint!!!!"
The clanking sound of plate armor echoed.
And before I could do anything, the holy knights of the Sun Order flooded into the alley where I was standing.
"Saint! It's the Saint!!"
The moment I saw the holy knights, my face went pale.
I was done for.
Even now! I had to run quickly!
What a damn mess.
I was too mentally exhausted.
My mental state was so bad I questioned whether I could even escape this alleyway even if I activated Time Stop.
In the end, unable to even run, I was forced to just stand there awkwardly, surrounded by children.
"Saint, surely you didn't......heal the children?"
I forced a smile, sweating profusely.
Still, thankfully, it wasn't the Lilia Order.
I still had a chance to escape.
"I merely did what I had to. Please look after these children. I have somewhere to be......."
Just as I finished my line and was about to bolt.
A group of people followed the Sun Order's holy knights into the alleyway.
The half-crazed bandit, drooling and giggling to himself, was being dragged in by the police, his hands cuffed.
That bandit.
Wasn't he dead?
He was alive?
That was karma for you, you bastard.
That bastard deserved to rot in jail for the rest of his life.
Up to this point, it was fine.
The problem was the group of clerics in pure white robes who followed in behind him.
A droplet shape inside a circle.
The emblem depicting a weeping eye.
Ah.........
What were you guys doing here?
"Not long after the Saint vanished, word spread, and members of the Lilia Order came directly to our order. Hence, I used the Tracking Miracle and personally guided them here."
The Tracking Miracle.
There was something like that?
Why was there something like that?
Why the hell was that a thing?!
"I see."
I was still smiling.
My face had just frozen in that state.
It was over.
I was headed for the Burn at the Stake ending.
I was truly a pathetic idiot.
I should've just run, kids or no kids.
I should've patched them up fast and just used Time Stop and bolted right away.
Why did I have to go sticking my nose in and cause this mess!
No!
Why was this my fault!
You Sun Order bastards were worse because they had the Tracking Miracle and hid it from me!!!
Right before they burned me at the stake, if I screamed out, 'I still healed a lot of people, you know! Even if I was a heretic, please cut me some slack!!' and tried to do a little emotional appeal, wouldn't there be a chance I could survive?
As I was thinking that to myself.
The clerics of the Lilia Order cautiously stepped forward toward me.
Frozen stiff, I just stared at them as they approached.
The bald old man at the head of the Lilia clerics was looking at me with a complex expression that was hard to describe.
"O Goddess. Are you truly......truly the Saint? The one sent down by the Goddess?"
I didn't know how to answer.
Anything I said would just be used against me.
I was frozen solid and trembling.
When I didn't react, the bald old man reached out a liver-spotted hand toward me.
"Stigmata. If you are truly the apostle sent by the Goddess.......if you are Her Saint, then show us the Stigmata."
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Right.
Of course that was how it would play out.
It was obvious they'd try to test me with all sorts of esoteric verification methods that only the Lilia faithful would know.
Stigmata?
As if I'd have that?
I was screwed.
I'd probably end up living the rest of my life branded as a heretic who falsely claimed to be a Saint of God.
As I remained freezing and making no move, the bald old man, tired of waiting, took the initiative.
"Forgive the discourtesy. I shall confirm it."
The bald old man gestured urgently.
The holy knights of the Lilia Order approached me.
Carefully and calmly, they stripped off my clothes.
The clothes, caked with all manner of filth from rolling around among the poor and treating a witch, were peeled off and dropped one by one.
I stood there, staring blankly up at the sky with a dazed expression.
......Life was a bitch.
Was this how it ended so pointlessly?
So blankly.......
Whether I was zoned out or not, the holy knights began meticulously examining my naked body in every nook and cranny.
I still just let them, arms spread, letting them appreciate my nude form.
I'd simply given up hope.
My brain was frozen from sheer terror, and I couldn't think of a single thing.
The only thought left in my head was: right before they burned me, I'd cry as sorrowfully as I could and try my best to exploit their sympathy.
"The Stigmata......there are no Stigmata."
"There is no Stigmata of any kind!"
The holy knights of Lilia cried out.
Right.
I didn't have them.
Since I had no Holy Power anyway, having Stigmata would've been even more suspicious, so I deliberately didn't make any.
Should I start crying then?
Should I just really sadly drop to my knees, cry, and beg them to spare me from the stake on charges of heresy?
"......He came in the purest body! Ahhh!! The words of the scripture have been fulfilled!!"
"You are correct!!! High Priest! He is the Saint sent by the Goddess!!"
......Huh?
"O Lilia!! Ahh!! Praise the Goddess of Grace!!!"
The holy knights all knelt toward me in unison.
The clerics of the Lilia Order, including the bald old man, knelt as well.
The people of the Sun Order were making the sign of the cross, their eyes brimming with tears, and the police were staring at me with faces full of awe and reverence.
"Saint of the Goddess!! Lead your lowly servants!!!!"
Watching the bald old man shouting in deep emotion, I just stood there, blinking my eyes slowly.
What the hell was going on right then.