Finale – 3

“Hup!”

Margarita let out a grunt and swung her flail. As the flail, imbued with divine power, swung, the monster’s head, struck by the weighted end, burst into pieces, scattering blood and flesh.

Filthy bodily fluids and chunks of flesh were plastered all over her pure white armor. But Margarita didn’t care at all. Rather, she rampaged even more wildly, as if wanting more blood.

It wasn’t just Margarita. Everyone in the Holy Nation was rushing in with fire in their eyes to kill even one more monster with their own hands.

The competition was so fierce that humans seemed even more ferocious than the monsters.

“The Saint is watching over us! For the Sun! For the Moon!”

With Margarita’s encouragement, countless monsters were sliced, burst, and cut down, meeting their end.

Corpses piled up like mountains across the battlefield, but human ones were virtually nowhere to be found among them.

The reason was simple. The Saint had commanded them to prove their faith, and if they died, they couldn’t do that. That’s why they would never fight to the point of neglecting their lives.

Those who were injured and transported to the rear were quickly treated and then immediately returned to combat. This was natural, as everyone in the Holy Nation’s population, excluding combatants, took on the role of healers.

In fact, there were so many healers compared to the injured that competition arose to heal each other. That was the only way for non-combatants to prove their faith.

“The light is weak! Was your faith and belief only at that level?!”

Margarita’s voice resounded loudly across the battlefield. Hearing her words, an even brighter and purer divine power erupted from the bodies of the battle nuns and Holy Knights.

This was also why the Holy Nation had become even more fanatical.

Since Delta performed the miracle of the Sun and Moon rising in a blood-red sky, the divine power of all citizens of the Holy Nation had been strengthened by at least one level.

They had witnessed firsthand the miracle of their belief purifying, their faith solidifying, and their divine power strengthening, and were experiencing the aftereffects of that miracle in real-time, so they couldn’t help but be overcome with emotion and run wild.

Of course, the truth was it was thanks to Eclipse, not Delta, but no one in the Holy Nation knew the truth.

“Where are you hurt, ma’am?”

“My arm is broken.”

Margarita, who had been leading the charge in clearing out monsters and was temporarily transported to the rear, calmly raised one of her arms.

She had blocked the monster’s attack with the shield on her left arm, but the impact was so great that she couldn’t fully absorb it even with the shield, and her bone broke.

“I understand.”

Two nuns came over and skillfully removed her gauntlet. Then, the broken bone tearing through the flesh and protruding out was visible. The area was drenched in blood.

It was a sight that would make an ordinary person frown just by looking at it, but no one here was surprised. They had seen too many injuries to be surprised by a broken bone.

Margarita calmly knelt on the ground and began to pray. In response, a nun recited a divine spell over the broken bone. Golden light enveloped her broken arm.

Although she had returned after being imprisoned in hell for hundreds of years, Margarita adapted quite quickly to the current Holy Nation.

Her skill was recognized, and she rose to a considerably high position in the Holy Knights Order, having recovered quite a bit of her former skill, though not entirely.

‘The one who saved me was the Saint…… Perhaps my time in hell was also the great will of the Sun, to help in His holy war.’

Along with a grand delusion.

The incident where Delta was dragged to hell with Kaikilia had passed through people’s mouths again and again, eventually being packaged as him having left for a holy war with the wielder of the Holy Sword to purify hell.

Margarita had been personally saved by the Saint and even became a person who witnessed that grace firsthand.

The hundreds of years she had spent in hell had long been considered the insight of the Sun and Moon, meant to help the Saint-nim.

Of course, there were more than one or two strange points for it to truly be a mission to purify hell, but Margarita had splendidly recovered her faith, so she ignored all such ‘minor’ discrepancies.

“It is finished.”

The nun retracted the light. Margarita, who moved her perfectly healed arm a few times, put her armor back on and got up.

“Why are their numbers still the same! Is your faith only that much?!”

“No!”

And shouting loudly, she leaped back into the battlefield.

A pair of silver-white eyes were watching all of this from the Holy Nation.

Nyx clutched her dizzy head and stopped the vision sharing. Minerva also ordered her clones to stop with the Holy Nation and observe the Empire more carefully, then cut off the vision sharing.

“I wondered if they might need support, but it seems that was a needless worry.”

“Even if we didn’t help, they looked like they’d push them all the way to the end of the continent on their own.”

“……What on earth did that child do?”

Minerva leaned back against the backrest, her body having unconsciously straightened. No answer came, but it was just a thought she voiced aloud, not a question she expected an answer to anyway.

She couldn’t even imagine what he had done to make the calm and gentle people of the Holy Nation change like that.

“Child, do you happen to know why the monsters changed like that?”

“I have a guess. It’s not certain, though.”

“Even a guess is fine. Tell me.”

“It’s probably because of that dragon. The one about whom you, Goddess-nim, urgently announced was coming, to the point of personally descending into the room.”

There was no other particular reason. Moreover, if that guy was the one who mutated the monsters, it even fits surprisingly well chronologically.

“Still, something’s strange.”

“Strange, you say? What is it?”

“If that guy really did something like this, he wouldn’t just stop at merely mutating monsters.”

She had heard a few things about the Eater of Worlds from the Goddess while reconstructing her body. Putting together what she had heard, he was absolutely not the type to just strengthen monsters and be done with it.

Minerva frowned, about to ask something, when a black orb appeared before Nyx’s eyes.

“It’s a call from the former Emperor. It seems they’re already ready to move on to the next stage. To be so much faster than me, it’s an unbelievable speed.”

Nyx shook her head in disbelief. The speed at which they adapted to memories was getting faster and faster. It was a very positive phenomenon, but strangely, it was hard to shake off the feeling of having lost.

“I need to help Delta-ssi as soon as possible, so I’ll be going now. What about you, Minerva-nim?”

“I’ll stay here. My body hasn’t fully recovered, and since the child said it was strange, I should monitor the Empire a bit more.”

“I understand.”

Nyx immediately returned to her room and first checked on Kaikilia and the Pope sisters.

Kaikilia was leaning on the sofa, catching her breath, and the Pope sisters were similar to Kaikilia, except for the fact that they were holding hands. The others had not yet woken up.

“You’ve already recovered? That’s amazing.”

“……Quiet. Just move on to the next part.”

“Next, you say……”

Nyx pondered for a moment. She wondered if, for Kaikilia, she could start the true memory sharing instead of just a teaser. Even if she started now, it seemed quite possible.

“You’re hesitating, short woman.”

Kaikilia read Nyx’s thoughts perfectly. Her golden pupils shone eerily. Even after stepping down from the Emperor’s throne, Kaikilia was still Kaikilia.

“You’re wondering if I can accept the true memory transfer. If you weren’t, you would have injected new memories as you’ve done until now. Am I wrong?”

“……That’s right.”

Nyx sighed softly. Since she had been found out, hiding it was meaningless.

“Your adaptation speed is beyond my imagination. Honestly, I think there’s a good chance of success even if we start now. Of course, life comes first, so we should be careful with the decisionㅡ”

“Then do it. Right now.”

Kaikilia strode over and met her eyes. Because the height difference was considerable, Kaikilia was naturally looking down and Nyx was looking up.

“The very fact that such hesitation occurs is proof of my potential. Isn’t Delta still fighting that? I cannot delay time on futile matters any longer. Do you understand?”

Futile matters, Nyx gave a bitter smile. Her soul could be damaged the moment something went wrong, yet such an attitude.

“Alright. If that’s what you want.”

“……We also ask for your favor.”

Another voice was heard right beside them. It was Floreta and Luna. Those two had also gotten up on their own. Though slightly slower than Kaikilia, their adaptation speed was also tremendous.

“Are you really alright, Your Holiness?”

“Yes. I am prepared.”

Floreta and Luna nodded with determined expressions. Nyx looked at the remaining six, who were still dazed with their heads bowed, unable to escape the memories, then quietly prepared the magic.

“This time, it’ll be truly different. It continues infinitely until the soul can realize its true nature, so there’s no ‘just endure a few times and it’ll be over’ this time. It will probably end before you read all the memories, but…… that’s a personal difference, so I can’t say for sure.”

And she warned in a calm voice. It was a warning that might be the last voice those three would ever hear.

“So, grit your teeth and endure.”

Kaikilia stood in a mountain. It was a mountain with a moderate amount of grass, trees, and rocks.

“……!!!!!!”

Before she could even grasp where she was, a brutal grip seized her head. A part presumed to be a thumb pierced her right eye deeply.

A finger instantly penetrated the lens, stirring the vitreous humor within, and lodged deep inside her skull. Kaikilia let out a silent scream.

Her hand, flailing in the air, grabbed the arm gripping her head. She tried to push the arm away somehow, but the grip didn’t budge an inch.

This was not Kaikilia’s action. It was merely replicating Delta’s struggles exactly, from just before the attack began until just before death.

Of course, as could be seen from it being stored as a death memory, it was a meaningless action. This time, her right thigh was seized. Her knee joint bent backward and shattered.

-Crunch!

Immediately after, an immense agony was felt, along with the sensation of her side flesh being torn off whole. Kaikilia looked down with her one remaining eye.

The monster was tearing at and eating her side.

Kaikilia’s struggles-or more precisely, Delta’s struggles-continued until her abdomen was almost entirely torn away and eaten. As soon as her upper and lower body separated, the struggles also ended.

But death did not end.