Ch.148The World After Defeat – 3

After suffering a crushingly overwhelming defeat in her battle with Olivia, Christine wandered aimlessly throughout the kingdom. She was gathering sacrificial offerings for repentance to her god.

With the face of a loyal dog abandoned by its master, the nun walked around whimpering with her hands clasped before her chest, leaving dozens of towers made of human flesh and blood in her wake.

The timing was opportune. Following the evaporation of the kingdom’s capital and Charlotte’s mysterious disappearance, public sentiment had grown extremely anxious.

During such times, vile criminals typically ran rampant as if they owned the world, making it inevitable that Christine—a woman walking alone while sobbing—would become a target.

Her goddess-like beauty that seemed to have descended from heaven, her chest that was not merely beautiful but violently so, her slender waist, and the garter belt wrapping her svelte thighs produced countless bandits who, bewitched by her appearance, failed to recognize their own limitations before charging at her.

Fortunately, this meant she never lacked sacrificial offerings for repentance.

With a vacant expression, she wandered the continent without destination, slaughtering every human who approached her with vile smiles, offering them as sacrifices before moving on.

Christine only stopped her aimless wandering after nearly two weeks of walking.

“My God. My Lord. Please look upon this poor lamb and bestow your revelation. Show me the path forward. Illuminate these foggy eyes with your light. What must I do? Where must I walk? My God, please…”

Prayer-like whimpering echoed through a blood-soaked cathedral. The cathedral wasn’t particularly large, standing only about two stories high, and its exterior was shabby.

Had it not been for the pagan symbols embedded in the door, it would have been the kind of building one might simply assume was someone’s forest dwelling.

The heretics who had been praying to their god in this cathedral spotted Christine passing by and attacked her to supplement their insufficient sacrifices, only to end up becoming sacrifices themselves.

Around Christine lay the thoroughly shattered statues of the evil god the heretics had worshipped.

She had destroyed them so completely that only fragments remained, with no trace of their original form. No one could possibly recognize these remains as statues.

In one corner of the cathedral interior was a mountain of corpses, all with their limbs and heads torn off, leaving only torsos.

Beside it stood a hill made of human arms, and next to that, a hill of legs. It was evidence of Christine’s meticulous classification.

The most important parts—the heads and spines—were naturally lined up in a row against another wall.

The cathedral floor had formed a kind of pool from the overflowing blood, completely submerged and having lost its original color.

Christine’s body, too, was covered in blood that had splattered when she executed the heretics, giving her the appearance of a demon.

Sniffling sobs filled the chilling scene the cathedral had become.

Christine felt utterly lost. The last revelation her god had given her—to “transcend”—was difficult to realize.

“What more must I offer for my faith? Where is my faith lacking? What more effort must I make? Please, please give me the answer. If sacrifices are insufficient, I shall offer more. If prayers are lacking, I shall give more. So, so please bestow a ray of light upon this lamb. As God’s lamb seeks answers through tears, please…”

She wasn’t ignorant of what “transcend” meant. It was undoubtedly an instruction to draw more power and prove her faith.

But the method was the problem.

No matter how long she prayed or how many sacrifices she offered, she never felt she had transcended her limits.

Christine blamed the situation on her own inadequacy.

Her god had believed in her until the very moment of being kidnapped by the wicked apostate, yet she was failing to repay that faith.

Faced with this cruel reality, Christine continuously berated herself, shedding tears filled with anguish.

A week passed. The cathedral remained stained with blood.

Normally, blood outside the human body should coagulate after a short time, but Christine’s divine power prevented the decay and transformation of the sacrifices—a miracle made possible by her firm belief that offerings to God must always be maintained in optimal condition.

Even though her faith was being tested and her heart torn apart, even as she keenly felt her powerlessness, Christine remained Christine.

However, when no enlightenment came despite the passage of time, she eventually chose the method she knew best:

Praying until her god bestowed revelation.

If her god did not respond, if her god did not hear Christine’s prayers, she would cling to her faith until that revelation came.

Even if it took an immeasurable amount of time for her god to change his mind.

“…”

Four weeks had passed since the boy was taken.

Christine remained in the cathedral, continuing her prayers. Her posture hadn’t changed at all since she first began praying.

The mountain of corpses in one corner of the cathedral had grown taller. The number of extracted arms and legs had also increased.

This was the fate of unfortunate humans who came to investigate reports of a blood-soaked building and disturbed Christine’s prayers.

Christine went berserk at these interruptions to her sacred act of prayer, slaughtering all the unfortunate humans, and after classifying them, returned to focusing on her prayers.

Now no one approached the cathedral. They couldn’t.

Not a single person who approached the cathedral had survived.

“Ah.”

It was around this time that Christine finally received revelation from her god.

Whether the boy truly sent her a revelation, or whether it was a self-fulfilling belief born from Christine’s faith, was impossible to know.

But one thing was certain: Christine, who had been trembling with fear that she might truly have been abandoned, had finally proven to herself that she had not been forsaken.

Christine wept uncontrollably with joy.

“Huu-hick… Thank, hic. Thank you. My, sniff, God…”

The relief of still being useful to her god and the reassurance that he was still watching over her combined to transform into faith that swelled almost to bursting.

The very day the revelation came, Christine left the cathedral. As soon as she disappeared, the human blood and corpses sloshing inside the church began to decay rapidly.

A new ghost story was born in that territory at that moment.

“You commanded me to find the holy relic. I shall fulfill this revelation even at the cost of my life.”

Enter the temple and find the holy relic. This was the revelation given to Christine.

The meaning was simple: Visit the magic tower owned by the boy and find the holy relic sleeping inside. The temple mentioned in the revelation was the magic tower.

Although the capital had evaporated in the aftermath of the battle, the magic tower where the boy stored cursed artifacts hadn’t collapsed.

Charlotte had temporarily relocated the tower by changing its spatial coordinates to obtain the dragon ring stored inside.

The relocated tower was later returned to its original position during the capital’s reconstruction, which is why the cursed artifacts remained intact even as the capital was blown away.

“As quickly as possible, for my God…”

It was a lifeline she had finally grasped after wandering in darkness for a whole month. Christine had absolutely no intention of letting go. Her mind was completely filled with the thought of finding the holy relic.

Christine advanced in a straight line toward the magic tower, breaking, purifying, and destroying every obstacle in her path.

Citizens trembled in fear and some guards tried to stop her, but that was of no concern to Christine. It was nearly impossible to stop Christine once she had lost her senses.

Had Charlotte been active, there might have been another battle upon receiving word that a holy maiden was approaching the capital.

But Charlotte had secluded herself, not emerging as she worked to perfectly control the dragon ring before departing to subjugate the dragon, so no conflict occurred.

This was incredibly fortunate for the citizens who had returned to the rebuilt capital.

“Is this… the temple that God revealed to me?”

Upon arriving at the antique-looking mansion, Christine instinctively knelt and bowed her head, sensing the holiness emanating from within.

No matter how well disguised by magic, it was useless before Christine. After briefly praying to her god, she advanced toward the main entrance.

As her mana nullification activated, the overlapping space tore into pieces. A magic tower appeared, standing tall where the mansion had disappeared.

People stopped in their tracks, murmuring in confusion at the sudden appearance of the enormous tower. Christine ignored the noise and stepped inside the magic tower.

The defensive magic on the door failed to activate due to her mana nullification, and adamantium was no different from ordinary steel to Christine.

“Ah… Ahhh…”

Upon entering the magic tower, Christine trembled like an aspen tree at the immense divine power she felt. She had never experienced a place so filled with divine power.

There was something at the top of the tower. Something possessing such enormous divine power that even its leakage overwhelmed Christine.

Without needing to see more, she knew it must be the holy relic her god had commanded her to find through revelation.

With eyes closed and hands demurely clasped before her chest, reciting prayers, Christine climbed the circular stone staircase one step at a time toward the top floor.

She felt she might faint if she didn’t pray. The concentration of divine power grew stronger as she approached the top floor. Her body’s convulsions intensified accordingly.

By the time she was just one floor away from where the holy relic was located, she could no longer stand upright and had to crawl up the stairs on all fours.

Upon finally reaching the top of the tower through this desperate crawling, Christine prostrated herself flat on the ground, wailing loudly.

“I am, I am unworthy, my God. I am so insignificant and filthy that I dare not have the courage to face what lies beyond with these dirty eyes. It would be defiled by someone like me. That must not happen. This sinner, this sinner is not worthy of encountering something so pure.”

The top floor was simple. Walls made entirely of stone and a single wooden door. The rest of the space was completely empty.

But the divine power Christine felt was on another level. She was certain that if she directly witnessed the holy relic behind this door with her own eyes, she would absolutely lose her sanity.

It took Christine more than a full day to gather the courage to enter the room after being overwhelmed by the divine power. Now it was time to make a decision.

Her body trembled uncontrollably, tears flowed ceaselessly from her eyes, and her heart beat so rapidly she feared it might burst.

Still, she had to do it. To fulfill God’s revelation and return to his feet, to atone even slightly for the sin of failing to protect her god, she had to do this.

Christine didn’t even think to wipe away her flowing tears as she grasped the wooden door’s handle with trembling hands.

And as soon as she opened the door, she fainted from the immense divine power emanating from within.