CH 152

[The Fourth Player, the Saintess]

“Haa… haa…?! Why is everything going against my way!”

After taking Iris’s blow, Joseph’s injuries became severe again. He even caught a glimpse of the revolving lantern for a moment.

Just before his imminent death, he had noticed that there was still one puppet left connected to him beside the one in the cathedral.

He had remembered Iris saying “We’re finally getting the last one”.

With that being the case, he would be lying if he said that he didn’t suspect it to be a trap.

Even so, Joseph had no choice but to cling to it.

Because to him, anywhere was better than the cathedral, where only hell would await him.

(I’ll run away as soon as I open my eyes! I have to survive first! Everything else can come after I survive!)

He was furious and wanted to kill Sakurai and the others. But Joseph had lost a large number of puppets, as well as his arrogance.

So, without hesitation he decided to run away, even if it meant throwing everything away.

“Run—nh!”

When he opened his eyes, he found himself in a familiar room. While currently there was no one else around, it was the room where the saintess was hospitalized.

And, should he say as expected? The puppet’s body was tied up with a rope and was unable to move.

But that was it, it was not a problem for Joseph.

With ‘Morph’, he could effortlessly create a small animal puppet from the humanoid puppet.

Joseph immediately used his skill to create a dog out of the female knight he was possessing.

After transferring to it, he charged forward to break through the door of the room, but just before he could…

“Bah?! Agagagagagagagagaga?!”

Joseph touched an invisible wall and screamed as his whole body was electrocuted.

“…I didn’t expect you to really show up.”

Hearing the scream, a woman on crutches popped in through the door.

It was the ‘Saintess’ Cordelia Tyner, still dressed in a patient gown.

“Haa, haa, haa, haa!”

“You take deep breaths to relieve pain. Your body is supposed to be that of a puppet, but the way you react is surprisingly very humanlike.” Cordelia walked in slowly as she observed Joseph’s condition, then she plopped herself on the bed, facing him.

Joseph, meanwhile, began to regain his composure and he noticed that a barrier had been put up around him.

“‘Saintess’ Cordelia Tyner…!”

“Yes… I wonder how am I supposed to welcome you in this kind of situation? I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with situations like this.”

While expressing vigilance and impatience, Joseph wondered if he could dispel the barrier surrounding him. When he tried to touch it, his hand was shocked and his face was distorted in pain.

Cordelia stared at him with an expressionless face and waited until Joseph calmed down enough to listen to her before she spoke, “—I have devoted myself as a ‘Saintess’. I have no complaints about it, but from the perspective of my late husband as well as my daughter Ethel, my devotion is apparently ‘abnormal’. Unable to bear with it, my daughter even left me.”

“What the hell are you rambling about.”

“I love Ethel dearly. But I was so preoccupied with my role as a ‘Saintess’ that I never told her my feeling. I foolishly thought my love would be conveyed to her even if I did not say it out loud.”

“What do you mean to say.”

“Only after we talked with each other with our feelings laid bare that I was able to realize how foolish I was. If you don’t verbalize your feelings, most of them will not be conveyed. In that regard, you, who always speak your love, have my respect.”

“That’s only a natural thing to do as a parent! What are you trying to say!”

Forced into a situation where he had to choose between staying here or returning to the puppet in the cathedral, Joseph shouted in frustration.

Even though he was desperately trying to come up with a way to break the barrier, hearing the words ‘daughter’, ‘love’, and ‘parent’, he couldn’t help but be conscious, breaking his concentration.

On top of that, the content of Cordelia’s story was only a matter of course to Joseph (as a father), and hence he couldn’t get the intentions of the ‘Saintess’ and snapped in frustration.

Cordelia, on the other hand, was silent for a few seconds with an expressionless expression.

“I’m angry,” she eventually said bluntly, “I love my daughter. That is why I don’t want her to experience danger, which was also why I asked her to quit being an adventurer.”

Her face was still expressionless.

However, her gaze and voice contained something cold that emerged from the darkness.

“You are a parent as well, don’t you understand how I’m feeling right now? You’re one of the perpetrators who created the situation where my beloved daughter had to go through danger.”

That coldness was a murderous intent sourced from wrath.

A manifestation of humanity—quite surreal to see in a ‘Saintess’ who embodied mechanical selfless servitude.

Cordelia was silently exuding something that had never been seen in any of the ‘Saintesses’ known to Joseph in his long life.

Joseph broke into a cold sweat inside.

His frustration was now gone.

Because he understood.

He himself had a daughter named Ayako whom he dearly loved, and he’d be furious when she got hurt.

Her anger must be equal if not higher to his towards Sakurai, so it was only natural for her to want to kill him.

Different from the violent sense of death he’d received from Sakurai and Iris, the one from Cordelia felt like a cold blade had been pressed against his throat.

Even so, he didn’t lose it because he had a doubt: If she was so furious, why hadn’t she taken any action?

If he was in her place, he would have killed him immediately.

The fact that she hadn’t killed him yet must mean something. And that something would be his opportunity to escape.

Thinking so, Joseph waited for Cordelia to continue while making predictions in his head.

“I wish to exorcise you right this instant.”

“……”

“However, I’m a ‘Saintess’. I’m not allowed to act out of personal feelings.”

“!”

As if he had been waiting for those words, Joseph who was possessing a dog puppet lifted the corners of his mouth.

A ‘Saintess’ should be instilled with the idea that she must think and consider her position before taking an action.

He expected that she’d next bring up ‘salvation’ and ‘forgiveness’, the favorite words of people of faith like her.

(It’s not that she’s naïve. But her faith compels her to act generously and benevolently so as to secure a position to uphold the ideal of helping and supporting the weak. As the ‘Saintess’, she has to offer ‘salvation’ and ‘forgiveness’ even to someone she hates like me!)

That was how faith and the people of faith that Joseph knew were.

Therefore, Joseph thought that the ‘Saintess’ Cordelia would propose a deal in exchange to forgive him.

“I will propose to you a deal as a ‘Saintess’.”

“I’m listening.”

And as he expected, the ‘Saintess’ was offering him a deal.

“Admit the crimes you have done due to your twisted fatherly love and obediently receive the capital punishment. Do so, and I will put in word so you will be recorded to have died as a ‘human’.”

That was the maximum concession she was willing to give to Joseph, who had committed so many crimes.

Despite being the one to have suffered direct damage, she was still trying her best to give salvation to a criminal who deserved the death penalty by any standard.

This meant that, after the penalty was carried out, it would be written in records that “He atoned for his crimes as a ‘human’ before his life ended”, which would mean that ‘society acknowledged his existence’.

It would serve as proof that Joseph Asanaga was a person who was born and once lived in this world, even though he had committed a great deal of crime.

It was the only ‘salvation’ and ‘forgiveness’ that could be given to someone who had strayed from the path of humans to that of heresy and assumed the body of a monster.

Although he was the one who had put her beloved daughter in danger, ‘Saintess’ Cordelia Tyner still stretched out the most feasible hand of salvation to Joseph as he had expected.

“—Huh?”

However, that was neither salvation nor forgiveness for Joseph.

From his standpoint, it was nothing more than bullshit that wasn’t worth listening to.

“Huh? Admit my crimes and receive capital punishment, and I will be recorded as a human? Huh?”

Joseph couldn’t understand at all.

What he wanted was to ‘survive’, he didn’t care about whether the world would remember him after he died.

He had been expecting Cordelia to ask him to apologize or recompense, so Cordelia’s words came out of the left field for him.

“A-are… are you…”

In the first place, people that were sentenced to death were normally left in records.

What was the point of her putting in word for him?

“Are you fucking kidding me!”

More importantly,

“Are you saying that doing something for my beloved daughter is a crime?!”

There was only Ayako and him in the world that Joseph saw.

Therefore, he didn’t feel guilty for using people as materials to make puppets.

He didn’t mind apologizing for using materials (humans) without permission and recompensing their owners.

But Cordelia had called it a crime. How could doing something for his beloved daughter be a crime? He couldn’t understand.

Wouldn’t that mean everything parents did for their children was a crime and they had to be put to trial?

“Is that accepted in society?! Is that the way of thinking that’s maintaining society?! That’s so wrong?!” The man who was unaware of the sins he had committed grandly pleaded his case and denied the sins.

“I wasn’t guilty” he kept insisting.

“…………”

At this point, ‘Saintess’ Cordelia regretted.

She felt stupid and naïve for saying that she had some respect for this man.

He had strayed too far as a human and he couldn’t be tolerated.

With that being the case, there was only one thing Cordelia could do.

“‘Sacred Magic: Cleansing Light Holy Purification’.”

“?! Wait, stop!”

The inside of the barrier was filled with light. It was one of the sacred magic spells that she had mastered as a ‘Saintess’.

It was a spell far superior than the one used by Ethel. A light that invited being who were still wandering the mortal world to their rightful path.

Therefore, the holy light would not tolerate those who still clung to the mortal world.

“Rrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhh?!?!?!?!?!?!?!”

Amid the light, Joseph was torn off from the dog puppet, revealing his ghostly body.

A number of bands of light encircled his body, and bolts of divine punishment-like lightning were crackling off them.

The pain from being burned all over his body—which was different from being burned by the ‘Divine Flame Holy Sword’—made Joseph unable to stop himself from screaming. “Aaaaaargh?! Graaaaaaah?! Fuc–aaaaaaaarrrgggghhh!!!”

Cordelia involuntarily grimaced listening to the scream of pain.

Many of her sacred magic spells were highly effective against the undead and ghosts, but she never saw them as techniques for combat.

The sacred magic of the ‘Saintess’ was a means of healing wounds, detoxifying poison, and comforting wandering dead spirits.

She had never used them for ‘exorcising’ like this.

“Uugiiiiiii!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh!!!”

“……”

Cordelia was not a warrior.

The screams brought about by her own hands took a heavy toll on her mind, which in turn impacted her body which was already weakened by the wound on her back that had not yet healed.

“Urf.”

Along with the unfeminine voice indicating nausea, her mental illness manifested in her body, causing her physical condition to worsen.

Her mental and physical problems affected the magic she was using, and Joseph escaped during that momentary opening. Cordelia had no way of stopping him.

“Ugh, I’m a ‘Saintess’, yet I’m so useless.” Cordelia, teary-eyed from enduring her nausea, involuntarily lay down on the bed and rebuked herself as she was having a cold sweat.

The fact that Joseph had fled to the puppet he had left here must mean that all the puppets he had hidden across the city had been destroyed by Iris.

On top of that, the fact that he had escaped here despite being in a heavily injured state meant that he had no puppets outside the city.

Meaning that it was highly likely that the place he was escaping to this time was within the confine of the cathedral’s barrier, where Ethel should still be.

Will Ethel encounter Joseph…? Cordelia, unaware of the situation within the barrier, could only pray for the safety of her dear daughter.

Then a person came to her mind.

It was the boy who should be by her beloved daughter’s side, the disciple of the ‘Sword Saint’ who had saved both her and her daughter.

“Please, Sakurai-san, please protect Ethel.” Cordelia reached her limit as she muttered in prayer, then she let go of her consciousness and fell asleep to heal her body.

—

“I mean, there’s nothing we can do now that he’s gone. We should just come out clean and ask for the authorities’ cooperation.”

“Think harder! I’m sure you can come up with something, Tōru! Weird and crazy but somehow work plans are your specialty!”

“Even if you say that, I can’t do a thing about things that are physically impossible—”

“……………Gah?! Haa!!”

“?!”

“—Mm? What’s up, Ayako? Huh? Is that puppet moving?”

“Haa? What are you… it is moving.”

“Impossible, impossible, impossible! Why, why is this happening?!”

“Huh? Joseph came back? Why?”

“Don’t ask me. But doesn’t this make things convenient?”

“!!”

“Well, you’re right. I don’t get what’s happening, but we should be happy that our prey returned! Okay, let’s kill him.”

“Your killing intent is so light”

“—!! —!!!!!”

“Your killing intent is so heavy.”