Blind Faith
Dragons.
The progenitors of magic, absolute rulers of the world who commanded the Draconic Tongue.
A terrifying, lethal poison capable of stopping even a dragon's heart if inhaled for a mere five seconds.
Why, then, had the Pope not used this poison sooner to rid himself of eyesores like Seraphina?
The reason was simple: its cost-effectiveness was abysmal.
Not only were there precious few master artisans capable of brewing it, but obtaining the raw ingredients was as difficult as plucking stars from the sky, requiring an astronomical fortune. Even for the Pope, who practically slept on piles of national treasures, the price tag was eye-watering.
Yet, despite the exorbitant cost, it wasn't particularly useful. The poison literally required five full seconds of continuous inhalation to take effect.
Now, close your eyes and count to five.
5.
4.
3.
2.
1.
You probably realized that five seconds is longer than you think. In a battle of superhumans where life and death are decided in tenths of a second, five seconds was an eternity—and incredibly easy to counter.
Simply cloaking a sword in aura to blow the poison away or casting a basic wind spell would render it utterly useless in an instant.
In short, it was nothing but a flashy, useless gimmick.
Using it on weaker opponents who couldn't counter it felt like a massive waste...
For the cost of brewing this single poison, one could easily hire an entire army of assassins to clean up any minor nuisances.
Thus, the Pope, who had eagerly commissioned the poison, had been forced to leave it gathering dust in his vault, weeping over his wasted investment.
But a young girl rumored to have only recently awakened her divine power was a completely different story. As long as Seraphina wasn't around, she was the perfect target to fall victim to this poison.
The Pope's plan was brilliant. In theory, at least. But as everyone knows, "brilliant in theory" is just a polite way of saying it will fail spectacularly in practice. Naturally, it was doomed from the start.
Sua, disguised to absolute perfection, searched the church top to bottom until she finally found a small gap to peer through.
Ugh, they could have at least given me a decent map.
For someone who hoarded all kinds of treasures in his room, the map he had given her was incredibly shabby. Then again, maybe one had to be that stingy to amass such a fortune...?
Recalling the piles of wealth in the Pope's chambers, Sua reached the gap. Her very first task was to identify the target of the assassination, as she had to account for the possibility that the room might be empty.
But that was her fatal mistake. The moment Sua laid eyes on Ruby through the gap, she lost her mind within a single second.
"...Goddess?"
Sua was not a citizen of the Empire; she belonged to a tribe from the freezing, remote northern borders. Her tribe did not worship the Empire's god, but rather the Goddess of Radiant Light. In the barren, harsh north, light was synonymous with life itself. Light allowed them to farm, to hunt, and wrapped them in a warm embrace so they wouldn't starve to death. To them, she was an absolute, supreme existence.
Yet now, through the tiny crack she was peeping through, the very Goddess of Radiant Light her tribe had worshipped for generations had descended in the flesh. The Goddess's beauty had already transcended humanity, reaching the realm of the supreme, and a brilliant halo of light radiated from behind her back.
Throb—
As Sua's heart began to waver, the brainwashing engraved deep within her mind began to violently thrash.
"His Holiness the Pope is the messenger of God..."
"His Holiness the Pope... is the messenger of God..."
However, the brainwashing backfired spectacularly. The Pope had kidnapped Sua at a young age, drilling the greatness of God into her mind more than anyone else, and brainwashing her to absolutely obey him as "God's messenger."
Because of this, God always held the absolute top priority in Sua's mind. The Pope, who was "merely" a messenger of God, couldn't possibly compete.
Besides, the Pope's hideous, aging appearance was repulsive even to the brainwashed Sua.
In the end, the brainwashing wasn't broken, but that very fact turned out to be a poison for the Pope.
Sua closed her eyes and knelt toward Ruby through the gap.
"O great Goddess of Light... Your humble servant was blind and dared to try and harm You. Please, forgive my foolishness."
After whispering a prayer in her tribe's native tongue, Sua stepped away from the gap and marched confidently to the front door.
Knock, knock, knock—
"O noble one within, your loyal dog has come to find you. Please, accept me."
The sudden knock, delivered in a polite tone but carrying an incredibly unhinged message, was more than enough to make Ruby freeze.
"Huh? What is wrong with this church? First a pedophile, then a gorilla, and now an outright crazy bitch?!"
The one shouting in sheer disbelief was Camilla, a succubus and the most shunned existence in the church. In fact, Camilla was even shunned by her fellow demons.
Ruby glanced at Camilla with a momentary look of pity. Realizing that she was the temporary master of this room while Seraphina was away, she gathered her courage and squeezed out a voice.
"I-I'm sorry. I have some circumstances right now, so I can't open the door."
The moment the words left her mouth, the flow of air outside the room shifted bizarrely. Ruby had no way of knowing exactly what was happening out there, but an inexplicable sense of dread began to creep over her.
"Ah, aah...! Is it indeed because of my sin of daring to doubt and try to harm the Goddess? I shall repent immediately!!"
Thud! Thud! Crash!
With those final words, the mysterious nun outside began to brutally smash her own head against the door. Every time the sturdy door shook, a sickening sound of crushing bone echoed through the room.
"A foolish sinner like me would rather die here in repentance to join Your side!! If You have any pity for this sinner, please accept me!!"
"Hieeeek?! S-She's a real psycho!!"
Camilla screamed at the sight of a lunatic who seemed even crazier than Seraphina, and Ruby's face turned completely pale.
Why is there not a single normal person around me...
If she left things like this, she would have to clean up a nun's corpse with leaking brain matter slumped in front of her door tomorrow morning.
"S-Stop! I'll open the door, so stop right now!!"
Terrified that the nun might actually die, Ruby flung the door wide open. She did so out of a strange certainty that the woman wouldn't harm her, and trusting in Camilla standing behind her.
Thud—
The moment the door opened, the nun lost her balance and collapsed onto the floor. Crimson blood poured from her pale forehead, completely soaking her face. Yet, as if she couldn't feel any pain at all, the nun simply stared up at Ruby blankly—her face wearing the expression of a fanatical, deeply devoted zealot.
"Ah..."
Sua crawled forward on her hands and knees, gently pressing her lips against the top of Ruby's pale, bare foot as she stood there dazed. As if Ruby's small, white foot were a sacred relic, she began to kiss it with a precious, reverent attitude.
Mwah, mwah.
"Please take in Sua, the Goddess's eternal servant..."
"Y-You perverted nun! Get the hell away from her! She's my master!!"
Inside the room, there was only a crazy, fanatical nun who had boldly kissed a foot upon their very first meeting, an utterly bewildered Ruby, and a little succubus instinctively baring her claws at the threat of having her master stolen away.
Seraphina had wanted to wrap things up as quickly as possible and return to Ruby's side without losing a single second.
But when she arrived at the Belnoa Slums, the scene laid out before her eyes was nothing short of a living hell.
A mother lay collapsed, a sword driven through her back and one arm completely severed, yet she still desperately clutched her child to her chest. A young man, blinded and bleeding from his eyes, gripped a broken club to protect his elderly father behind him. Beside the already cold corpse of another mother, a five-year-old child wailed at the top of their lungs.
The black-masked assassins of Eclipse were snickering at the carnage, as if they were watching an entertaining play.
In that instant, Seraphina's plan to just quickly wrap things up and leave vanished. She knew she wouldn't find peace until she ripped the heads off these pieces of trash.
Before Ruby's arrival, Seraphina used to patrol the slums whenever she was bored.
Old Man Hans, who always handed her wheat bread and called her his granddaughter whenever she visited, lay in a pool of blood, his waist severed in two. Little Emily, who used to make her flower rings while telling her she was the prettiest big sister in the world, was crying as if her world had ended.
"Fuck... I told you to just crawl into the church. Foolish people. Never listening..."
Though profanities spilled from her mouth, tears welled in Seraphina's eyes.
Wiping away her tears, Seraphina vanished in an instant. Or rather, she appeared to have vanished.
"Huh...?"
Before No. 3 could even register that something had passed by, his body was already airborne. By the time he regained his senses, his arms and legs had already been cleanly severed.
No. 2, who had been with the organization for a whopping ten years, was sliced diagonally, squirming on the ground like a bug. The boss, whom he had feared more than anyone in the world, was already reduced to a severed head, his mouth merely agape and twitching.
Just one second. In that briefest of moments, the Pope's secret assassin group, Eclipse, was utterly annihilated.
Paying them no further mind, Seraphina approached the slum residents once more. She knelt and began to offer a prayer—something she almost never did.
Flasshhh!
A brilliant light erupted from her, enveloping the entire slums. Soon, everyone except those who were already dead began to heal. Even the severed upper and lower halves of the old man over there were connected by glowing chains of light and fused back together.
She, not the Pope, was surely the true messenger of God. With that thought crossing his mind, No. 3 could only squirm on the ground, his limbs completely gone.
According to their original plan, not a single casualty should have occurred.
The moment they encountered Seraphina, they were supposed to take hostages and attempt to negotiate. They would drag out the time as much as possible, helping the youngest member dispatched from the Holy See safely assassinate the girl inside. Once enough time had passed, they would confess to Seraphina that the girl of the oracle was likely in grave danger by now.
Naturally, Seraphina would abandon them and rush back to the church to save the girl. Then, the youngest member would safely escape in disguise and return to the capital. That was the perfect plan the Pope had devised.
No. 3, a member of Eclipse, looked at his comrades scattered all over the ground and screamed, the veins in his neck bulging.
"Y-You crazy bitch of a nun...! How dare you do this to our comrades!!"
Seraphina walked over with heavy steps and calmly squatted down beside No. 3, who was weeping tears of blood.
"Do you want to live?"
The moment she finished speaking, a torrential waterfall of murderous intent erupted from her entire body. To No. 3, it felt as if the entire world was trembling in terror.
"I-I want to live...! Please spare me!!"
No. 3, who had been screaming in rage just moments ago, found himself begging and speaking with utmost politeness without even realizing it. His brain was so paralyzed by fear that he didn't even register that he was pleading for his life in a submissive tone.
"Is that so?"
Seraphina looked down at him and smiled as brightly as the spring sun.
"Don't worry. Even if you beg to die, I will never let you."
Tears of blood ran down her smiling face.
