Ch.71Purification Operation

The monster let out a silent roar, opening its mouth wide as it charged at Christine once more.

Where its teeth had shattered against Christine’s impenetrable body, new ones had already grown in their place.

Soil and stones were sucked into its mouth as if being vacuumed. Dust swirled everywhere as the deafening sound of the monster’s body scraping against the ground echoed.

It was an attack powerful enough to instantly demolish even sturdy castle walls, yet it couldn’t penetrate Christine’s skin.

The monster’s mouth half-closed, then abruptly stopped. Between its closing jaws and the motionless Christine, its teeth shattered into pieces under the excessive pressure.

Even in this situation, the monster desperately tried to devour Christine, but the moment its palate touched her, its flesh sizzled and burned away with a scorching sound.

The monster thrashed wildly in agony as its entire mouth melted.

Fundamentally, monsters are antithetical to holy power. Moreover, Christine’s holy power was immeasurable in its depth, making this outcome inevitable.

Of course, a Black Blood monster could typically withstand the holy power of mediocre priests through sheer endurance, but before Christine, such endurance meant nothing.

Everything burned equally.

The massive black worm, over 30 meters long, writhed in pain, snapping nearby trees with each convulsion.

As Christine moved to step toward Heronie, her gaze fell on the monster’s fallen tooth. She picked it up.

Black liquid coated its root. A single drop precariously hanging from the tip fell onto Christine’s forearm, where it was purified and vanished with a puff of dark gray smoke.

Black Blood.

Noticing this fact, Christine quietly turned around. In the distance, the monster was thrashing in agony from the holy power burning its mouth.

“It was a beast with Black Blood.”

And she recited words she had spoken before.

To Christine, monsters weren’t entities to be distinguished with individual names.

Red Blood creatures were beasts that would be purified and vanish merely by her presence, while Black Blood creatures were beasts her god despised with all his might.

Thus, she only distinguished between Red Blood and Black Blood.

In other words, once the giant worm before her was confirmed as a Black Blood monster, it became a beast Christine must eliminate.

Simply because her god had commanded it so.

No other reason was necessary. That alone was sufficient.

Why would she need any other reason when her god hated these creatures and ordered her to kill them on sight?

The brief five minutes she had spent in the mouth had long passed. There was no reason to hesitate any longer.

Christine clenched her fist. A white flame with faint yellow streaks began to burn from her hand.

While ordinary monsters could be torn to pieces with a simple swing of her arm, Black Blood monsters were somewhat different.

These were creatures her god personally ordered destroyed. Merely tearing their bodies apart was far from sufficient punishment for their sins. Their flesh had to be burned with holy power, their souls shattered to force repentance.

As immense holy power rose, nearby monsters unanimously retreated. They were now so distant they appeared as merely a vague black carpet rather than the writhing wave of monsters they had been.

With the thud of Heronie collapsing in relief once Christine’s gaze turned elsewhere as her signal, Christine kicked off the ground and charged.

Her target was one of the four split mouths.

Holy power pressed heavily on the air. Realizing what was about to happen, the Black Blood monster split its mouth into four parts and desperately spewed something out.

Stomach acid.

While it might have been a small amount from the monster’s perspective, “small” was relative to a creature over 30 meters long.

By human standards, enough stomach acid to easily dissolve dozens of people flew toward Christine.

Christine didn’t dodge. She firmly planted her left foot on the ground, pulled her right shoulder back, and thrust her fist straight ahead.

The acid dissolved nothing. Instead, it transformed into the highest grade of holy water the moment Christine’s fist touched it.

While other clergy would have been astonished by this sight, the one who performed it simply waved her arm a couple of times to clear away the holy water floating in the air.

Realizing that teeth, acid, and everything else were useless against the woman before it, the monster changed tactics. It decided to flee.

The Black Blood monster immediately shoved its head into the soil and tried to burrow. Or rather, it attempted to.

Christine, who had approached in an instant, firmly grasped the monster’s shell or skin. Despite the monster’s size forcing her palm to be almost completely flat, it was enough.

Christine applied force. The monster’s body began to be pulled from the ground as if by magic. The monster’s desperate efforts to hide itself were meaningless.

It was a sight no one would believe if described in words. Who would believe that an apparently ordinary nun could overpower a gigantic worm monster in terms of strength?

After completely pulling the monster’s head from the ground, Christine raised her foot and stomped on one of the four split mouths.

The crushed teeth shattered, and Black Blood seeped from the mangled flesh.

The monster thrashed its enormous body. But the mouth pinned under her foot didn’t move at all. Instead, the surrounding flesh was torn away.

She had wanted to pluck out its eyes first, but being a worm-like monster, its eyes were difficult to locate. Or perhaps it had none.

In that case, she would simply tear apart its mouth.

Christine walked into the mouth, crushing teeth underfoot. The monster desperately tried to pull its mouth away, but its struggles were futile.

It couldn’t close its mouth, couldn’t pull it away, couldn’t swallow the woman inside. Meanwhile, she was getting closer to its throat.

It would die at this rate. Instinctively realizing this, the monster decided on a final measure.

It raised its tail upward and swung it at its own head. The tail, sharp as a well-honed blade, easily severed its head.

Black Blood gushed from the severed surface. The spilled Black Blood rapidly began contaminating the air.

The soil rotted instantly where the Black Blood seeped in. The air became lethally toxic. Had anyone been nearby, they would have died the moment they inhaled.

Christine remained unaffected.

She was merely calmly angered by the fact that she couldn’t burn this beast’s body and soul to force its repentance.

Just as the severed head rapidly decomposed, contaminating air and soil, and as Christine contemplated burning the remaining body with holy power to atone for her failure—

The end of the tail that had just severed its own head began to split into four parts. Teeth sprouted between the splits, and the sound of air being sucked in was heard.

The monster’s tail was transforming into a new mouth.

“So it was not taking its own life.”

Christine’s pupils dilated with joy. This was even better. Now she could tear apart this heretic’s entire body herself.

She exploded with holy power, completely incinerating the flesh that had until moments ago been the monster’s mouth, then clenched her fist again.

The surrounding air had already rotted into toxic poison, but this was meaningless to Christine.

However, the Black Blood monster still seemed unwilling to fight Christine. With what had once been its tail but was now a mouth, it forcefully pierced the ground and burrowed downward.

Christine’s face contorted. Fleeing again would be an even greater sin against God. She couldn’t allow that.

As the monster had half-crawled into the ground through its newly sprouted mouth, and as Christine was about to stomp the ground to overturn the earth—

A blue slash flew from the distance, exploding the ground near the monster’s head.

“Are you alright, Sister!”

Christine’s eyes turned toward the direction from which the slash had come.

She realized that the smaller monsters that had surrounded the area, not daring to approach her, had disappeared. Since monsters wouldn’t flee and leave humans behind, something or someone must have killed them all. Probably whoever had just launched that slash.

In the distance, a group of knights in armor approached. At their head was a woman with fiery red hair.

Christine stood blankly, then revealed a quiet killing intent as she recognized the armor’s design.

That woman.

That blonde-haired, blue-eyed infidel.

It was armor of the same design as that accursed heretic. Upon confirming this fact, Christine’s neck turned with a creak.

Regardless of Christine’s reaction, the red-haired female knight boldly proclaimed while looking at the monster:

“Alesia Beneviento, Captain of the Royal Seventh Knight Order! I have come to eliminate the Black Blood monster!”