episode_0084

“Yes, but…”

Bishop Inari looked at Elise with confused eyes.

Shameless attire that cannot be called priestly, let alone saintly,

Their actions and words seem to show no reverence or even respect for the goddess, and they even commit a blasphemous act of directly tearing off the head of the statue and throwing it away.

Anyway, does this mean that the goddess forgives everything and shows favoritism just because she is a saint?

Just because they threatened a saint, they took away all the divine power from others and left them to die like bugs?

As a result, if we only look at the reality of what happened now, we can only say that it was so, but Bishop Inari could not accept such a conclusion.

“That can’t be possible. The goddess could do that…”

“Puhup, puhuh, ahahaha!”

Bishop Inari, who was continuously muttering negative words with an expression of confusion, embarrassment, despair, regret, resentment, and other mixed emotions, heard the sound of loud laughter in his ears, and her eyes moved towards the source of the laughter, Elise. .

“What’s so funny?”

Bishop Inari’s voice was clearly ridiculing, but it contained deeper hopes and expectations than the shallow anger that lay on the surface. Elyse raised the corners of her mouth and made a sneer.

“Fuhuhu…. That’s right. A goddess can’t do that. The goddess has nothing to do with it. I don’t know if I don’t do it or I can’t…”

When Elise directly said that the goddess had not received divine power, Bishop Inari’s face brightened noticeably.

“I was thinking of not saying anything and just letting her worry about it, but I also don’t like making people think that something like a goddess can do something great.”

“That’s truly unbecoming of a saint… But if the goddess didn’t take it away, then what did she do?”

Although his face was distorted, Bishop Inari asked with a much more relieved expression than before, and even his anger had subsided considerably, perhaps because Elise had revealed that he had not lost his divine power due to being abandoned by the goddess.

“It is the power of someone better than a goddess. A lovely person who is worth serving and serving…”

As I found out after returning, the warrior’s power was not limited to simply increasing and amplifying output.

In Elise’s case, she was able to gain control over the sacred power of others within a certain range, and with that power, she instantly depleted the sacred power of others, including Bishop Inari, to the point where they could not be used for the time being. It was thrown away.

Elise did not explain it in detail, and Bishop Inari did not ask for more details.

However, Bishop Inari only let out a single word as if he was sighing as he watched Elise wrap her arms around herself, twist her body, tremble, and look somewhere with eyes filled with love.

“You really fell into heresy.”

“It doesn’t matter if you look at it that way. Anyway, I can still use this power as I wish.”

An ordinary priest would have taken the word heresy as an insult, but Elise seemed unimpressed and paid it no mind.

Rather, as if showing off, he radiated strong divine power with his fingertips and showed it to Bishop Inari in front of his son-in-law.

“Ha…. What kind of goddess is….”

Despite not denying the term heresy, Bishop Inari’s face was filled with embarrassment as he saw the divine power shining brilliantly at Elise’s fingertips.

Should we also accept this as the goddess’ deep meaning that is difficult to understand with the human mind?

Or is the goddess really unable or unwilling to do anything?

Or is it true that the goddess does not even look down on the hall where she is enshrined?

Various thoughts were floating around in confusion in Bishop Inari’s head.

What stopped her thoughts was pain, a stimulus coming from outside.

“Keu, ahhh!”

Even if you have mental power and will, if you are unprepared and unguarded and exposed to pain, you have no choice but to reflexively scream like an animal.

An equally simple scream escaped from the mouth of Bishop Inari, who suddenly folded his fingers in the opposite direction without any time to prepare, touching the back of his hand.

Fortunately or unfortunately, perhaps because he could have predicted it after the second time, only a small moan escaped Bishop Inari’s lips.

“Ugh, ugh….”

“As expected, I can tolerate this well.”

The divine power shining from the hands of Elise, who spoke in a delicate voice, restored Bishop Inari’s hands, which had all five fingers bent in reverse, to their original state.

Bishop Inari, who sensed the implications of Elise’s actions, opened his eyes wide and shouted.

“Now, wait a minute! hang on! Oh, why! Why on earth!”

The agony swirling around in my head had already disappeared.

What remains is a question.

All I can understand is defeating and killing the antagonist.

Bishop Inari had already given up hope of surviving this after seeing that everyone else who attacked the saint with her had died.

However, being exposed to violence bordering on torture without knowing the reason or purpose was a different story.

“Even if you ask me why… you have no idea. I have no intention of telling you, and you won’t be able to understand.”

“What? What on earth does that mean, huh…”

With a calm expression, Elise lightly bent Bishop Inari’s finger upside down again and spoke in a calm tone.

“This is just an expression of anger. All you have to do is accept my anger.”

However, despite Bishop Inari’s expression and voice being dull and stuffy, with only a slight smile on his face, he was startled and trembled when he read the overflowing emotions in Elise’s eyes.

A hostility mixed with contempt and hatred that felt so intense that it felt like it would tighten one’s heart just by making eye contact, but somewhere, rather than looking directly at her, a malice that was twisted in the target was conveyed through Elise’s eyes.

Although he had vaguely noticed it before, now that he realized the extent of the malice that was far beyond his expectations, Bishop Inari felt the regret he had been harboring deep in his heart as he thought about what might have happened until the very end disappeared.

Even if he hadn’t gathered people to attack the saint, Elise, here today, the conviction that Elise would have somehow come to her and tried to force her into the pain she was in without reason came to her suddenly, like an epiphany.

However, even after searching through his memories, Bishop Inari could not even figure out why Elise would harbor such serious malice.

Until recently, when he returned from an expedition to exorcise the Demon King, the relationship between Elise and Bishop Inari was not bad, and Bishop Inari had never felt even a hint of malice from Elise.

If so, it’s probably because of something that happened during the expedition to exorcise the Demon King.

Bishop Inari couldn’t even guess what on earth that had to do with him.

It was natural since there was no way that the current Bishop Inari would know that Elise, who met the Demon King, regained her memories of the old freight car with the Demon King’s help and learned what Bishop Inari did to the hero in a future that has not yet happened.

If I could deduce the truth from the current situation, I might have to call it a wall of delusion.

For that reason, Bishop Inari’s doubts were not answered until the last moment, and she continued to wonder until the end, suffering from Elise’s anger and losing consciousness forever.

95.

“Why, la…. That’s what I wanted to ask too.”

Elise looked down at the cold body of Bishop Inari and muttered to herself.

“I also wanted to hear the answer.”

These were all things that had disappeared and happened in a time that was neither the future nor the past, and neither the perpetrator nor the victims existed anymore, and could only be seen in the memories given by the devil.

To be honest, it wasn’t revenge, it wasn’t punishment, it wasn’t even a preemptive preventative measure.

Bishop Inari was not a person with whom he could not communicate, and he was able to cooperate and prevent the hero from touching him without necessarily having to kill him through this means.

So, as I already said, this was just a way to vent my anger.

An expression of anger without justification or meaning.

Elise stared at her dirty hands.

Hands covered in various bodily fluids from the human body, including blood, and even bone powder.

I felt uncomfortable, but no other feelings came to mind.

In some ways, it could be said that Bishop Inari, whom he saw in the memories given by the Demon King, and Bishop Inari, who has now become a corpse so mangled by his own hands that it is difficult to open his eyes and see, are different people.

Strangely, I didn’t feel any regret or guilt at all.

“Change…me? Is there an impact?”

Although she was called a saint, she was not an extremely merciful and benevolent person as is commonly thought, but she did not seem to be so cold-hearted that she would not think anything of it after killing someone she had been close with for quite some time after torment that bordered on torture…

Elise tilted her head and thought for a moment, but stopped without coming to a conclusion.

Human nature is difficult to evaluate objectively, and even though it was just a misdirected anger, there was a reason to be angry.

Instead, the terrible sight she had seen in the memory returned by the Demon King began to appear in her mind, the miserable appearance of the hero that had caused her to resent and hate Bishop Inari.