Chapter 38 – The Red-Haired Saint of the Slums – 3

A knight I met at the border once said something like that. When I look at the night sky, I sometimes think of my hometown. He said that if he counted the stars in the sky one by one, he could picture the constellations that would have appeared in his hometown by now, and on days when his appreciation deepened, he could even hear his mother’s laughter melted into them.

Maybe I’m thinking like that right now. I looked up, but the rain had stopped and no matter how much I looked at the pitch-black sky, the only thing that penetrated my heart was the cold wind.

Well, no matter how much I push my empty heart, there is no way to run, so there is no way to see anything. Dream. Fate. Colleague. Hometown. As I emptied out the things that once filled my heart, I couldn’t even remember what I was like before. Nonetheless, I continued to empty. The memory is empty, until the bottom is revealed.

And in the place where memories were empty, her image always came to mind.

It’s like putting salt on a wound. Memories from my hometown are fading away, but I keep thinking of Ellie. Even if you try to recall the happy memories of her by scraping the bottom of her empty heart, the only thing that appears in front of her is her crying figure.

…

It’s already been a long time since I was released from petrification, but time still passes slowly when I think of the things I lost.

“…I’m nervous, but why is Luka-san meditating here?”

“Rachel.”

I called out her name on purpose to clear the thoughts from my mind. Rachel reached out her hand, watching me perch perched on the corner of her roof in the shack.

“Please upload me too.”

“It might collapse.”

“Ah. If you don’t like it, just say no.”

“Okay.”

“100 million.”

Instead of holding her hand, I grabbed her by the nape of her neck and lifted her up. Rachel let out a muffled scream and collapsed onto the roof, expressing her displeasure.

“Take it a little softer.”

“I think it’s rude to hold hands carelessly.”

“I said it’s okay to treat you as a pet, but you’re still too…”

Rachel stretched her out and she let out a sluggish yawn. I asked questions while listening to her breathing, which was strangely steady.

“Vanessa?”

“I’m putting the kids to sleep. No, should I say putting them to sleep? To be precise, I’m knocking them out. At least, it seems like they’re in trouble because Bella is gone.”

“He’s always trouble.”

“Well… There are other kids who are really troublesome.”

It was obvious who she was talking about just by shaking her shoulders as if she was tired of it. I asked, mentioning his name.

“How is Sara doing?”

“As if the sleep magic effect was running out, she kept calling Mr. Luka’s name and talking in his sleep. No, to be precise, he’s not calling, but screaming. Thanks to that, the kids are in a state of fright. Vanessa pulled out some teeth. It’s because it’s just dried.”

“Even if I pull out her teeth, the voice comes out.”

“That’s not the problem now.”

Rachel smiled and patted her on the shoulder with her fist. A tickling sensation spread over her shoulder, as if she had been playing a prank for the first time in a long time. I took a deep breath and slightly bowed my head.

“Rachel, can I ask you something?”

“I can guess what the question is, but I’ll listen. What is it?”

“Why are you helping me so much?”

“Because you will pay it back someday.”

She tried to lay her body on her roof, but when she felt the cold water, she jumped up in surprise. Looking at her, I shook my head.

“Only parents can expect repayment and show grace.

“Should I tell you for superficial reasons or should I tell you honestly?”

“Tell me both.”

“On the surface, they say that if I don’t do it, they’ll find another way. I don’t know, but it’s much more dangerous. I have to save you and bring you in front of that girl.”

“Then give me an honest reason.”

“I thought it would be fun.”

“Be honest.”

“What…”

As I met my irritated eyes, Rachel looked her in the eye for a moment, then turned her gaze to her shoulder. Wherever her gaze reached her, a small star was twinkling.

“Looking into your eyes reminds me of that girl.”

“…”

She thought she was just asking. But she went on with her words.

“It was like that then too. I think I have to accept this request. I thought that. At that time, I said it was just because I was pretty, but to be precise, I had an eye that made it impossible to refuse the request. The same goes for you. “

“Is that all there is to it?”

“In the world, you don’t need a reason other than you think. That’s really it.”

Rachel said that as she looked straight ahead and scratched her head as she lamented.

“And Mr. He said he had no one to trust but me.

“It’s not that ugly.”

“It’s a joke. Well, it’s a compliment, so I’ll take it.”

She gave me a soft smile. But I couldn’t even force a smile, so I just lowered my head because I had no face.

“…Sorry.”

“No, so don’t say sorry to me…”

It was a voice that sounded like a bone. Rachel shook her body, and she burst into anger.

“In the first place, while you’re killing people, your heart is too weak. I’m in danger of watching you.”

“Is it.”

“Of course, it’s not like they’re unnecessarily merciful or hesitant… Ah, then it’s not like they’re weak.”

“No what?”

“Whoa!”

Suddenly, a cute scream came from behind. When she turned her head, Bella was trembling, with her excrement all over her body.

“Mistress, I’m surprised…Why are you here!”

“Uh, hello Bella. I saw earlier that Vanessa was looking for you?”

“Shhhhh! Please be quiet. If you get caught, you’ll be in trouble.”

“How the hell did you get up here?”

“That’s easy. First, cut a hole in the roof…”

“What is it? Was the rain leaking because of you?”

“Bella!”

A sharp voice came from below. Bella closed her eyes tightly and Rachel waved her hand gladly.

“Vanessa! I found Bella!”

“Take them down. I’ve told you many times not to climb the roof. It doesn’t matter if you break your neck while coming down, but I said I’ll kill you if the roof collapses.”

“You’re still brutal…”

As they descended from the roof, Vanessa grabbed Bella by the scruff of the neck and nearly threw her into the house. He sighed and looked at Rachel.

“Rachel. You should prepare soon. The kids are all asleep, so let’s start.”

“Ah… It’s already started.”

“Where are you going?”

When I asked, Vanessa patted his hand in response.

“It’s the basement. Instead, the kids will have to sleep here, Luca-san, would you like to look after it?”

“Can I be without you?”

“I already have them tied up in the basement.”

Experience was buried in the calm tone. I nodded and looked back at Rachel.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“Of course. Right now I’m even a little bit nervous. Don’t worry and take good care of the kids.”

“…Okay.”

She smiled brightly again and went inside. There was only darkness in the house where the last fire was turned off to put the children to sleep.

“How long will it take?”

“Well…You may have to stay up all night. So, eat comfortably and get a good night’s sleep. The next morning it will be all over.”

Vanessa and Rachel’s eyes glowed in the dark. As I sat down, staring at the two of them, Emily gave her a light wink.

“Then see you tomorrow morning, Mr. Luca. She will return as a saint.”

“…Okay.”

The two left a final goodbye and disappeared into the basement. Silence fell like dust with the sound of the door closing.

…

As the surroundings became quiet, the thoughts came back like a nightmare. Is this again I was about to let out a sigh when I suddenly heard a small voice.

“Murder brother. Has the priest gone?”

Normally, I might have felt it was annoying, but I thought it was better. I slowly opened my mouth to answer Bella’s words.

“Whoa. To be honest, I’m nervous Vanessa. Do you think she’ll have a beauty like never before?”

It was meant to ease the tension, but she didn’t even laugh and made a cruel joke.

“Yes. Say it as much as you can with that voice.”

“Because it’s no fun.”

“You have a bad attitude. I make mistakes when I’m in a bad mood.”

“It was actually a lot of fun.”

“It’s late. Detective lady.”

Vanessa lit a candle on the table. Then, a subtle yet soft scent spread in the basement, which had been filled with the scent of wood, and a low light spread into the pitch-black space.

And, the face of the saintess hidden in the darkness was revealed.

Now that her sleep magic had been completely dispelled, she was glaring at us with fierce eyes. Clearly, even though her whole body was tightly bound, her strong eyes seemed to be mixed with the screams of an angry girl. But Vanessa walked towards her as if he didn’t mind any of that.

“Now, Holy Lady. It’s surgery time.”

“…”

The saintess continued to look at Vanessa with her bloody eyes. When those eyes that made me tremble just by looking at them turned towards me, I hurriedly turned my gaze to Vanessa.

“Hey…How exactly do you do this?”

“Are you good at listening to cruel stories?”

“Oh, no. Then I won’t listen.”

“Then lie down there for now.”

She pointed to the seat next to the saintess. It wouldn’t happen at all, but for some reason I thought I might get bitten, so I went to a place a little further away and lay down. However, Vanessa’s face was immediately heard.

“Lie down closer.”

“Ugh… That’s scary.”

“She probably killed two today, but I just killed three.

“At least Vanessa is my friend.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed here?”

She grinned and began pulling tools and tools from a corner of her cellar. A basket full of water, a fairly clean cloth. And at the end, when a sharp knife was lifted out, I closed my eyes tightly.

“Ugh. Hey, does this hurt?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll give you anesthesia.”

“That anesthesia, isn’t it like hitting the back of the head like you did to the kids earlier?”

“If magic doesn’t work well, I’ll do that. Have you checked your exorcism level?”

“It must be very low. I once did some magic training.”

“Really? I don’t think the mana I can feel is high.”

“Well…The talent wasn’t dirty.”

I smiled faintly, but as soon as Vanessa set her tools down beside me, I felt any lingering pleasant feelings evaporate. Her lips, which had been shut for a moment, were opened again by anxiety.

“Um…When do you get anesthesia?”

“You talk a lot. Don’t worry, I’ll do it soon.”

“Can’t you just let me sleep right now? My heart is beating fast. Wouldn’t it be bad if I did this?”

“Stop talking nonsense and go to the side.

“Ugh…”

The tension that never felt good made chicken skin grow. I thought I should move at least a little bit, so I turned my head, and then my eyes met the saintess’s eyes.

If it wasn’t for this situation, I would have thought she was such a cute girl. Cute cat-like slanted eyes and tightly packed features. And even the small lips like a doll. But she was staring at me with a frown on her pretty face. I looked at the ceiling again when hatred dripped from the eyes that could have made a very pretty eye smile.

Usually pretty girls get jealous from women. Seeing that I, who was not very pretty, was hated by so many women, I must have been a very sinful woman.

As I murmured a monologue that didn’t even sound like a joke, she moved her body toward her saint, when she opened her mouth for the first time and threw her words at me.

“Don’t come closer.”

“Ah…Yes.”

“What is nep?

“Don’t let that girl come closer to me. It stinks.”

A careless word left a deep scar. But Vanessa peeked out and laughed, giving her saintess her scolding.

“Who are you to command me?”

“You were a priest of the Ennessic Church. Of course you should listen to me.”

“I still look like a priest. Can’t see anything with both eyes?”

“So you. Your eyes are missing, but your nose seems to be fine. Doesn’t that smell?”

“Does it smell like that…”

I involuntarily sniffed and sniffed my scent. It had been a while since I had washed it, so it smelled a bit like sweat. The saintess turned her head toward me and said in an incredibly cold tone.

“It’s not from your body. It’s just your attitude that stinks to the point of irritation. She says it makes her shudder when she sees a woman who doesn’t even know where she came from rolling around on the street flirting with Luca.”

“Uh…Me?”

“Yeah. It’s really annoying to see you pretending not to know anything and pretending to be naive.”

There was even hate in her voice now. I tried to turn away from her, but she kept pouring out her words from there.

“Even when I said that I would receive my voice, you were actually happy, right? Then you will be loved by Luca more. Right? But don’t be mistaken. Luca loves me as a person. We’ve been together for so long. Do you think you can overcome just because your voice is taken away?”

“That’s a lot of dirty talk. Now, please be quiet, saintess. She’s going to get annoyed just by listening to it from the side.”

“If you’re thinking of touching my body, don’t even dream about it. If nothing else, I will never accept giving that woman a part of my body.”

“Why don’t you say that to Luca-san too?”

“If you tell me the truth, you might change your mind.”

The saintess suddenly looked at me with a cruel smile. And she sniffed me once again, frowning.

“Yes. I think I know now because I smelled it up close. Why the hell does it smell so nasty? But why do I keep feeling like I’ve smelled it?”

I made no reply. Instead, he stared at the ceiling.

“I’m also a Saint of the Church of Ennesian, and I keep sniffing it, to the point where I get chills. Yes, that’s for sure. This smell…”

…

“It’s the smell I smelled in the land of demons.”‘

…

…

…

The saintess stared at me. A memory of her past flashed through one eye, and a memory of her as a saint passed through the other. She said, this time to Vanessa, when I didn’t meet her eyes.

“Actually, you felt it too? That this woman came from the land of demons. Why are you pretending not to know?

“…”

“Why can’t you answer? You didn’t know? Then I’ll tell you. This bitch, you’re a demon. You can be sure. Well, if you’re able to set foot in the Holy Land, you’re not that kind of demonic. Maybe it’s just the bugs that used to live there?”

“Be quiet. Holy lady.”

“Why. It’s embarrassing that I didn’t know? It could be. But now that I’ve told you, I can’t pretend I don’t know anymore, can I?”

“From the beginning.”

Vanessa opened her mouth slowly. Then she looked clearly at her saintess with one eye and said.

“I knew from the start.”

The saintess frowned at her firm tone. Vanessa looked at her and started arranging her tools.

“I’ve been in the church long before you became a saint. Of course I knew from the time I entrusted her request.”

“You cooperated with the demons in the body of a priest?”

“It happened often when I was dispatched.”

A little startled, I raised my head and looked at Vanessa. But she calmly continued her words.

“War is fun. If it goes on too long, there are times when the enemies you see face-to-face every day seem more familiar than your family at home. Being of a different race is no exception. There are times when I’m more worried about the impaled ogre.”

“You look like a crazy woman…But you’re still a priest?”

“Although I’m an outlier, I wasn’t the only one who felt close to the demons. Even the knights felt the same way. It’s hard to say this, but some of them even had sex with them. Talking about it, a knight fell in love with slime. It reminds me. Being a romantic who believes in the old-fashioned bullshit that love has no borders, I liked it quite a bit. So when his leg was cut off, I cut mine off without even realizing it.”

Vanessa raised her sword, reminiscing about her past. Her figure was reflected in the razor-sharp cross-section.

“I gradually became insensitive to my body, and when I lost about a third of my weight, the superiors told me to go home. I have to say thank you, don’t I?”

But it wasn’t an expression of gratitude at all. Rather, it contained hatred.

“But, actually, I’m not very grateful. I went back to the church expecting to be treated as a war hero, but what I got back was a look of contempt. The priest, full of holes as if his whole body had been eaten by worms, was shocked by the image of the new church led by Archbishop Bobby. I guess it didn’t fit. But I didn’t have that complaint. It didn’t matter how they looked at me, as long as they took good care of my little sister.”

“Her sister…Was there?”

“Uh. It was a nuisance with a difference of more than 10 years old. Even though we are only one family, being messed with constantly was so annoying that the goal was to somehow abandon them at the church. Fortunately, my sister, unlike me, looked fine, so Archbishop Bobby ordered her to be a priest, so she went with the other children. “I took her with me. That was the happiest time of my life. It was around that time that I thought about leaving my sister in the church and starting an orphanage and embezzling donations. It was the time when everything went perfectly.”

The last word was always mixed with words that predicted doom. I wanted to cover her ears, but she wouldn’t stop talking.

“It must have been the half year since he entered the priestly education. At that time, I was in a state of resignation as a priest in charge of the incinerator just because I had seen everything I had to see. Garbage, cigarette ash, saliva, and condoms that priests use, you know. Bastards. It seems like they use ten bottles a day.”

“Miss Vanessa…”

“One day when I was acting like the anus of the church, a neatly dressed high-ranking priest came to the incineration plant. He gave me a lot of money and asked me not to ask anything and to clean up the trash he brought. Of course I agreed. And he threw me some corpses of young girls.”

“Even if you stop…”

“And among them, of course. My sister was also in the mix.”

I closed my mouth. However, Vanessa’s expression was calmer than ever.

“At first I didn’t recognize it. Half of the face was a mess. But those eyes. I couldn’t recognize those ugly eyes. Even there was only one side. I wondered where the other side went, so I looked it up…

She suddenly approached the saintess and gently pressed her right eye.

“There was a faint smell of semen in the hollowed-out eye sockets.”

Even the saintess now shut her mouth. Vanessa stared at her.

“Do you understand? Those corpses were girls who were raped and murdered by Bobby, the great Archbishop of the Church of Ennesic. But maybe he was just bored of eating the bottom holes, so he decided to put them in my sister’s eye sockets. I guess he was satisfied. I don’t know, but, well, maybe the last thing I saw was him getting a cock stuck in my eye socket.”

She removed her fingers from her saintly eyes and brought her hands back to her instruments.

“That day, I killed six priests and escaped from the church. It was easy to kill, but I couldn’t recover her sister’s body because one of her legs was crippled. So I decided to take the remaining part of her body. Did.”

Suddenly, Vanessa’s blue eyes flashed cruelly. Her pupils, which she thought were her last remaining assets in her unpaid good deeds, were actually her sister’s last keepsake. She looked at her saintess with her own eyes and said.

“Since that day, I have a goal, a saint. It’s nothing special, and my sister didn’t like the fact that the last thing she saw was that son’s dirty genitals. So I decided to show you a different scene. I entrusted a detective for that. I didn’t pay much attention to it, even though I was full of energy. No, rather, I thought it was a golden opportunity. It would be much more certain to entrust it to the demons who have invaded the holy land than entrusting it to a person who is not shy.”

Suddenly, a knife was in her hand. The face of her saintess was now reflected in the sharp shining cross section.

“How can a priest hold hands with the demons? Then, does it make sense for the church’s archbishop to drive his cock into the eyes of a child? Whatever it is.”

She was holding her sword right in her saintly eyes. She made eye contact with her saintess for a while, and then she suddenly spoke to me.

“That doesn’t mean I feel sorry for you, detective girl. Actually, I like her quite a bit. I think it wouldn’t matter if I called her a friend.”

“…Thank you.”

“I’ll be sure to give you anesthesia. But it seems like you don’t have enough magic power to do that. I don’t think there’s any magic I can use for you, saint.”

“What? That…!”

“You’re not a Barbie, but I think you’re going to have a good time anyway. To be honest, I don’t have any good feelings for you either.”

“Lu…If Luca hears my voice!”

“I wouldn’t mind. And it’s surprisingly soundproofed here. It’s more like an air-raid shelter for kids than a basement.”

“You…!”

Uh…

As the two spoke, their vision gradually blurred. Apparently, the magic Vanessa cast had begun to take effect. Vanessa’s words quietly resonated in the distance of consciousness.

“Then. Let’s have a fun time. Holy lady.”