Volume 3, Chapter 11-2 – How Did It Get to Me?!

The tattered white cloaks fluttered in a nonexistent cold wind. Beneath their hoods were no facial features, only empty voids emanating an eerie chill.

They glided through the light like incorporeal monsters. Wherever they passed, the white frost coating the trees began to melt.

One.

Two.

Three.

More and more white figures emerged from the light.

Holding Aetlana in her arms, Stella raised her head.

The white figures hovered silently around her, completely surrounding her.

Stella recognized these things.

Chastisement spirits.

The guards of the White Tower, the Holy See’s most loyal hounds.

As a Saintess candidate who had spent years preparing for the selection, most of Stella’s record consisted of written examination scores. She had never once come into contact with the Holy See’s internal enforcement apparatus.

But that didn’t stop her from knowing about the existence of Chastisement spirits.

They had no bodies, no life, and no emotions. They were enforcers formed entirely from highly purified Holy Light.

Within the Holy See’s hierarchy, their rank stood above that of the vast majority of clergy.

Day after day, year after year, they patrolled the corridors of the White Tower, hunting down every prisoner who dared to escape.

Once a Chastisement Brand was engraved, it clung to its bearer like a disease gnawing at the bone.

No matter where the bearer fled, no matter how deeply they hid, the moment a living being carrying the brand fell asleep, the Chastisement spirits would follow its presence and come after them, never stopping until one side was dead.

Even in the heartland of the Abyss, the Chastisement spirits’ pursuit would arrive without fail.

When dealing with heretics and demons, they had no trial procedure. They would either completely purify the criminal until nothing remained, or the brand itself would be erased.

Under the Holy See’s decrees, heretics, demons, and heathens all fell within the scope of punishment. Killing them carried no risk of the Lord’s punishment or expulsion from the Holy See.

Holding Aetlana, Stella raised her eyes.

More than a dozen white spirits were closing in from every direction. Their pure white cloaks drifted despite the absence of wind, and beneath their hoods there were no facial features, only halos of light outlining their forms.

They hovered in midair and slowly drew closer.

There was no question that the Chastisement spirits’ target was Aetlana, who had collapsed unconscious from her injuries.

The Chastisement Brand was glowing like a lighthouse in the darkness, guiding the hounds toward their target.

But…

Stella truly hadn’t expected that the Holy Light super-supplement specifically named in the Primordial Doctrine as something she absolutely had to obtain would suddenly appear before her in an entire pack.

Thinking about it carefully, though, it made perfect sense. As the highest-level fugitive in the history of the White Tower, it would have been stranger if Aetlana didn’t have a Chastisement Brand.

Rеaԁ оո KаtRеαⅾiոɡCafe

Stella laid the unconscious Aetlana flat on the ground beside her.

She brushed the dead leaves from her skirt, stepped forward, and stood in front of Aetlana.

“…Fellow colleagues, could you maybe cut me some slack?” She cleared her throat. “I’m with the Holy See too. Saintess candidate Stella von Einzbern. Officially on the books, with an actual file and everything… probably.”

“I’ll take responsibility for guarding this fugitive. I guarantee she won’t escape. You can head back first, so there’s no need to trouble yourselves…”

The Chastisement spirits did not respond.

They simply continued advancing.

Dead branches burst into flame out of nowhere beneath the erosion of holy fire.

The Chastisement spirits tightened their encirclement further. Their hollow hoods turned toward Stella, as though examining something.

Then Stella felt it.

An emotionless gaze.

It was like layer after layer of icy blades pressing against her neck, without the slightest trace of mercy.

They were looking at her.

Not Aetlana.

Her.

Although they all belonged to the same system, Stella’s connections clearly meant nothing here.

According to the Holy See’s cleansing regulations, whenever Chastisement spirits were deployed, they generally erased every demon and heretic present at the scene along with their target.

Stella instinctively looked down at herself.

Broad succubus bat wings, a slender tail, and a pair of horns growing from either side of her forehead.

Standard Abyssal heretic equipment.

No matter how anyone looked at her, she was a pure-blooded succubus.

Expecting the Holy See’s jailers to treat her like a Saintess candidate and salute her was pure fantasy.

“…Fair enough.”

Stella muttered to herself.

Who would look at her now and think she was a Saintess?

The Chastisement spirits continued advancing.

The white light grew brighter and brighter, and the oppressive presence of Holy Light began spreading through the air.

‘What now?’

Stella thought about it.

They were all part of the Holy See’s system, yet the other side wanted to kill her as a demon.

Rеad oո КatRеαⅾіոgСαfе

Reasoning with them was impossible.

Trying to pull the fellow-colleague card did nothing.

As for fighting…

They were all colleagues. It would be awful for coworkers to start beating and killing one another.

But if she didn’t fight, she would be the one who died.

This should count as self-defense, right?

‘The Lord would definitely choose to forgive me!’

Besides…

A line from the Primordial Doctrine instinctively flashed through Stella’s mind.

「You need only take the purity of holy souls for yourself. As far as I know, the purest holy souls belong to the Chastisement spirits within the White Tower. Their bodies contain vast quantities of Holy Light energy. Nothing could be more suitable as nourishment for increasing the purity of your Holy Light.」

Eating her colleagues probably wasn’t very appropriate.

Stella glanced at the barely breathing Aetlana, then at the Chastisement spirits drawing ever closer.

‘Forget it.’

Eating one dragon demon was eating.

Eating a pack of Chastisement spirits was eating too.

Stella clenched her fist.

Holy Light, Pale Power, Valentine bloodflame, and the Laxia rules that had just devoured the essence of a dragon species.

It was the Abyssal components inside her that had become so excessive they were practically overflowing.

The real question was how to eat them.

Stella suddenly remembered a Holy Art.

More than a month ago, during Human Interrogation Studies at Lilith School, in order to save Lainia, who had been tied to the torture rack, she had once used a high-level Holy Art recorded in the Primordial Doctrine.

‘What was it called again?’

‘Oh… Holy Radiance Extraction.’

Right, that was it.

It forcibly stripped the divine energy from a target’s body and converted it into reserves for the caster.

Back then, she had used it to draw Holy Light out of Lainia’s body. Now the target had simply been replaced with the much purer Chastisement spirits.

The effect should be about the same, right?

Aetlana was beside her, but there was no time to worry about that now.

Do it.

Reaⅾ oո КаtRеaԁіոɡCafe

Stella raised her right hand, her palm facing the white spirit directly ahead.

Her cherry-colored lips parted slightly.

“All light returns to one, grace flows back.”

—————

Aetlana’s eyelids trembled a few times.

Her vision was blurred.

Every wound still held warmth. Every trace of warmth tugged at pain. Every pain cried out for healing. Every act of healing barely held her body together.

She watched the spirits radiating pure Holy Light close in from every direction.

The muddy fallen leaves curled beneath the heat of the holy fire, while the light drove away the dark-red haze within the dark forest.

The jailers of the White Tower.

The nightmare that had followed her like a shadow throughout her years of exile.

Countless times, she had been bitten, pierced, and burned by white hounds in her sleep.

Their claws could tear through dragon scales. Their spears of light could pierce bone armor. They knew no mercy, no exhaustion, and no end.

In the past, Aetlana naturally could have dealt with an entanglement with Chastisement spirits if she put in some effort.

But now, she didn’t even have the strength to stand.

Aetlana braced herself against the muddy ground, trembling as she tried again and again to rise.

Now she was as powerless as a mosquito caught in a spiderweb.

Her long exile and the succession of brutal, high-intensity battles had already left her utterly exhausted. With numbness enveloping her now, she didn’t even have the strength to end her own life.

There was nothing left.

Nothing but numbness.

She couldn’t even feel herself anymore.

No matter how long the night, dawn would eventually come. But had this dark stretch of her life truly gone on for too long? So long that it seemed she would never see the dawn.

The Chastisement spirits drew closer and closer.

Aetlana’s gaze passed between the white figures and settled on a silhouette woven from silver and red.

It was Stella.

She was right there beside her.

She was standing inside the Chastisement spirits’ encirclement, and the Chastisement spirits seemed to have included her among their purification targets, closing in on her as well.

Aetlana’s heart shriveled like grass and wood drained of all moisture.

‘No…’

Rеαd оn КαtRеaԁіոɡСаfe

‘Weren’t they here for me?’

‘Wasn’t me brand the thing summoning them?’

‘Why are they approaching the Young Mistress?’

Aetlana opened her mouth. She wanted to shout, to tell Stella to run, to tell her to get away, to tell her…

But all that emerged from her throat was a faint, useless rasp.

She was too weak.

The Chastisement spirits had clearly come for her. They would kill everything standing in their way.

And Stella would die.

She would die because of her.

Aetlana’s vision gradually blurred.

She wasn’t afraid of death.

From the very first day she stepped out of the White Tower, Aetlana had understood that death was merely a question of sooner or later. The Samael family’s pursuers, the Nexus Council’s wanted order, the Chastisement spirits hunting her…

But she had only wanted to see the Young Mistress once before she died and make sure she was safe.

Now she had seen her.

More than that, she had held her hand, heard her voice, pulled her into her arms amid the howling winds of their fall, and even felt the warmth of that lip print on her cheek when Stella kissed her goodbye.

That was enough.

It was already enough.

There was no time for careful thought.

She couldn’t look back, and she couldn’t even look ahead.

She couldn’t dwell on the past, nor could she imagine the future. The past was a page in a book, incomparably beautiful and unbearably sorrowful. Reading even a single line would dissolve her courage and destroy what little strength she had left. The future was a terrifying blank, like the world after floodwaters had receded.

Now, Aetlana knew what she had to do.

Chastisement spirits were clean-up agents that recognized only the brand. As long as she burned away the last of her life force, forcibly drove her magical circuits, and erupted with the aura of a higher demon in a single instant.

She would unquestionably become the only beacon in the dark forest.

Every Chastisement spirit would be drawn away by her, while Stella would remain safely beyond the danger zone.

As for the problem of surviving afterward in the middle of nowhere.

Before the Nightmare carriage crashed, Aetlana remembered that the old demon’s red flare had already risen into the sky.

Their current location was also along the fixed route between Nightmare Street and Lilith School. The surrounding patrols and passing carriages would soon follow the signal and descend.