"So, who are you working for?"
Zero directly asked about the mastermind behind all this mess.
"... The Lord! I don't know what his real name is but this is what other Devils call him."
Priestess Helena answered.
Zero was in deep thought. He couldn't remember anyone with that name. He knew the name of most of the Devils who are strong due to the knowledge from the novel but he had not seen anyone with a name or nickname of The Lord.
It meant that Hiro and the others never fought with him. It was possible that he had already been defeated by the time Hiro and the others encountered the devils, or perhaps he would appear later in the story.
"Can you tell me about his appearance? Or maybe something that could give me an idea of his identity."
Zero asked.
Priestess Helena shook her head, fear visible in her eyes. "No, I don't know anything. He emanated an aura of death that made it impossible for me to even look at him."
"Hmmm…"
Zero pondered over the vague description, but it didn't yield any useful insights. The only thing that was clear was that The Lord was a Rank-SS devil. He was potentially one of the enemies that he believed he would need to face in the future.
However, currently he stands no chance against such an entity. He would be lucky to even be able to escape from such an opponent, not to mention defeat.
"Why did you work for him? Power? Status? Or did he promise anything else?"
Zero asked.
"Wrong!!!"
Priestess Helena answered in a loud voice. It seems like she felt wronged by Zero.
"It was all because I wanted to live! I just wanted to live so I did what he asked."
Priestess Helena continued.
"The Lord promised many things and provided resources. However, all I wanted was to live in peace."
Priestess Helena answered.
"However, I could not refuse and Cardinal Hildred had already agreed to his proposal. She wanted to make use of his assistance to become head of the Church. She was blinded by greed."
Priestess Helena said. She was scared of The Lord, but on the other hand, Cardinal Hildred thought that it was an opportunity given to her to finally become Pope.
She glanced at her body which was neither dead nor alive. Maybe this is the retribution for betraying everyone, Priestess Helena thought.
"Hmmm… How did you even meet this Lord?"
Zero asked. Just listening to her story, it was certain that Priestess Helena and Cardinal Hildred were not the ones searching for them. Rather at one point, they seemed to have been threatened by the so-called The Lord.
Priestess Helena slowly began to tell the story.
It all began with the selection of a Saintess candidate. The previous Saintess was reaching her limit and was soon to die. Before that, the next Saintess was to be selected and trained by the current Saintess.
Then began the hunt for the Saintess Candidate, of which one was Priestess Helena. Priestess Helena was found by Cardinal Hildred and obedient to Cardinal Hildred. Cardinal Hildred hoped that Helena would get selected by the Saintess.
She would gain much more influence if she had a future Saintess who is on her team.
However, there was a strong candidate from another camp who was Amelia. Her capabilities were greater than Helena and other candidates and she was often praised by the Saintess herself.
Unless something happened, it was certain that Amelia was going to be chosen.
However, that was something that Cardinal Hildred couldn't stand.
Therefore, she devised a plan! A plan for Helena to get recognized by the Saintess and the Church. It was for Helena to create a legend or something that would point to her as the reincarnation of the goddess herself.
To do that, Cardinal Hildred decided to have Helena kill a Rank-S Devil. Yes, a Rank-S Devil!
However, it was all going to be fake. She was going to make use of Rank-S Holy Knights and beat the Devil to death and then have young Helena give the final blow. And she was going to capture all this in 'Eye of Wyvern' which captures images of all that it sees just like an advanced camera.
With this evidence, Cardinal Hildred wanted to push the idea that Helena was talented and better suited for the Saintess role.
However, all that changed when they went to hunt for the Devil. They obviously didn't go to the Devil's Domain but went to the monster territory which was unexplored.
This is a territory where you can meet all kinds of species. Be it elves, dwarfs, or devils. It didn't belong to any domain and was dominated by monsters.
They were going there to try their luck! Find a Rank-S Devil, beat him up, and have Helena kill it.
It was a rather bad plan but Cardinal Hildred decided to follow it anyway. Along with a team of elite Holy Knights, they entered Monster territory.
Helena met one horrifying creature after another. She was young and the weakest member of the team. However, she had no choice as Cardinal Hildred dragged her from one place to another for months.
They met quite a lot of Devils but they were weak and not something which would help with their plans. Even so, she didn't leave them alone and killed them all.
This was a mistake!
Having so many of their Devils dead, the Devils became alert. They knew something was going on in Monster Territory. After finding out the cause, they sent a much stronger Devils team after them.
Cardinal Hildred and their team stood no chance as the Devils had multiple Rank-S Devils. The Rank-S Holy Knight that they had trusted stood no chance against them and was killed easily.
However, rather than getting killed, Cardinal Hildred and others were captured and taken away. And that was when Cardinal Hildred and Helena met this Lord. However, Helena, who was terrified, had her head down on the ground and didn't dare lift it up.
The Lord offered salvation to them on the command that they had to give them the Saintess dead or alive. With such demand, Helena knew that becoming Saintess was not good as she would end up dead in the future.
While she was thinking about surviving, Cardinal was thinking about all the benefits that she would get. She didn't care whether she was betraying the Church or humanity. All she cared about was the power and status that she would get after fulfilling the Lord's order.
They were escorted back by the Devils. And the incident was covered up as the Monsters ambushed them and only she and Cardinal Hildred survived. Others were deemed useless, so they killed everyone except them.
By the time they managed to come back, the next Saintess was already announced. It was candidate Amelia who was going to be the next Saintess.
The opposite camp who supported Amelia to be the Saintess took advantage of Cardinal Hildred being absent and managed to push Amelia as the number one candidate. In addition, the final decision was because Amelia was much more talented than all the other candidates, so there was not much resistance.
Cardinal Hildred didn't like that her rival team managed to get what they wanted. But thinking about the new backing she got, she wasn't much against Amelia becoming Saintess.
Then Amelia began training under the Saintess. At the time, Cardinal Hildred devised all kinds of plans to have the Saintess given to the Devils and obtain all the Church power.
She shared all the information she knew with the Devils.
When Saintess Amelia was training and was sent to Monster Territory to fight with Devils, Cardinal Hilderd leaked information that prompted them to send Rank-S Devils. Luckily, before the Devil got to her, she was saved.
Then Saintess Amelia was guarded heavily after that incident. And she was rarely allowed to go outside. The Church feared that the same thing might happen, so they did everything to protect her.
Now that Saintess Amelia was protected. Cardinal Hildred began targeting the other people in her rival's camp.
She slowly began utilizing devils' support to kill one after another, and fully eradicated the camp that supported Saintess Amelia in the next 5 years. Besides the Pope, Cardinal Hildred became the most influential person in The Church and Priestess Helena helped her with that.
Then not much happened for the next few years, and all Cardinal Hildred had to do was give information about the Church and all that is happening in the human domain.
Then the war between Devils and humans started. That was when The Lord sent an order to kill the Saintess.
However, since the Pope and all the people were there to protect the Saintess, she couldn't make her move.
That's when Lord Aamon, one of the strongest devils came with the plan to lure the Saintess out. All the Cardinal had to do was have the Saintess join the war and then give her location to the assassins.
And the rest was all that Zero knew!
