Chapter 108
(Lurelia’s Belated Bonus – Update 6/14 🎉)
“Lina, what are you going to do when we get out of here? “
“Me? I… don’t know. You? “
“I’m going to be a knight. I’ll become a knight so bad people can never hurt my friends again. “
“Will you protect me too? “
“Of course! Lina is my friend number one. “
“Then I should become a magician. “
“A magician? “
“Knights need magician friends, right? “
“That’s right! Yes, I’ll be a knight and Lina will be a magician! “
Foolish children dreaming innocently of the future, with no idea of what was to come.
“Didn’t you just see? The sacred object reacted! This is the first time it’s ever pulsed like that!”
“Shut up! I saw it too!”
“How can you tell me to shut up now? What are we going to do? That temporary Marquis bastard suddenly collapsed and died, and now that child’s brother has gone mad!”
A disaster that occurred when she was doing cleaning, pushed by the red-robed priests, and touched a pretty glass that caught her eye.
“I said shut up! Who doesn’t know that?! Fine, we never brought that one in from the beginning.”
“You want to dispose of someone who responds to the sacred object? If she’s the real Saint, this could be our last real chance…! Ack-!”
“I said shut up!”
She was too young to notice that the priest’s eyes were twisted with madness.
“There was never any such thing as a Saint from the beginning. Yes… we can create one. The method to put the Empire under our feet is right in front of us—what does some girl matter?”
A child who witnessed one priest kill another priest, who knew about the disaster, yet didn’t realize a murder had taken place.
“Am I really going to meet my brother?”
“Yes. But you must never act like you know anyone. You can’t make a sound, and you can’t take off this mask. Especially, you must never say your name, understand?”
“Why?”
“That’s how you can meet your brother.”
A seven-year-old child who was so excited about meeting her brother that she didn’t even think to question what the priest was doing.
“What if someone asks me?”
“If someone asks… Ah, yes. You should use your friend’s name. Look, right now your friend has silver hair and you have blonde hair, right? Yes, this is a role-play. Understand?”
“I’m Catherine, and Catherine is me?”
“Yes. But if you reveal your real name and act like you know someone you meet, then you’ve failed the role-play and can’t go home. Bad people will take you away.”
‘”..!”
“Understand? So listen well. Otherwise, you’ll never see your brother again.”
“This role-play is scary… “
“It’s okay. If you just keep your mouth shut, it will be over soon.’
‘Okay… “
If she refused, she would be locked in solitary confinement and starved again.
Her uncle did it, and the red-robed priests here always did it too. If she didn’t obey them, punishment would follow.
So young Angelina nodded.
And thus began the silent role-play.
She couldn’t greet the familiar Marquis household maids passing by. Because she had to meet her brother.
She didn’t acknowledge the Holy Knight who used to play with her when he passed by.
This was what she had to do to meet her brother.
No matter who asked what, she kept her head down and her mouth firmly shut.
She would be able to meet her brother soon, right?
Until she passed through everything and entered the forest. Until she fell asleep in the forest.
And until she woke up alone.
“Ah.”
A short sigh escaped through Angelina’s teeth, and her consciousness snapped.
She had exceeded her limit of endurance.
Aesi caught her as she collapsed like a marionette with cut strings.
He lovingly caressed his sister’s unconscious face.
“Now you understand? This is too much for our Lina to handle. So let’s stop here.”
Not knowing what his sister had seen, he smiled painfully and held her tight. A chilling madness flickered in his eyes.
“Our Lina should let this go now, understand?”
He whispered in an intensely affectionate voice into her unconscious ear.
***
The atmosphere at the Flaubert villa in the capital was strange.
Though everything seemed to be running as usual, everyone was excessively conscious of Angelina.
This was because they had all received one special order.
“Do not let Angelina leave.”
It was a direct order from Ante. Naturally, Angelina wasn’t to know about it.
So they were fully prepared to divert her attention with excuses if she tried to go out.
But that wasn’t why the atmosphere had become strange.
It was because Angelina showed no intention of leaving at all.
Not only did she not leave the villa, she didn’t even come out of her room.
She had confined herself, not allowing even Haley and Laura, who were always by her side, to enter her room.
Everyone was bewildered because she had always been kind and never caused any trouble.
Could she have noticed their orders? Could she have had a fight with the Marquis?
That was impossible.
The two most precious people to each other in the world had never fought, let alone said anything unkind to each other.
Then why on earth was she acting like this?
She still ate her meals regularly, so it didn’t seem like she was sick or too depressed to eat.
Worry turned to anxiety, making the entire mansion unsettled.
Meanwhile…
“This is insane.”
Alone in her room, Angelina was spitting out all kinds of curses she had never uttered in her life.
“This isn’t just mold on a cake. This is like weevils in the flour.”
She was so dumbfounded that she couldn’t even laugh hollowly.
“Who’s the original author? I’d like to see their face. They must be out of their mind.”
Angelina pulled at her disheveled hair while looking down at her diary.
A diary where she had organized everything she had realized so far.
She had written, erased, reorganized, and repeated the process dozens of times, tearing and crumpling up countless papers.
But no matter how many times she rewrote and reorganized, there was only one conclusion.
[First Flower = Me]
The friend Catherine called “Lina,” who was also the “First Flower,” was herself.
[Saint]
And that “me” was the Saint.
‘What kind of deranged author gives a terminal character the setting of being the real Saint!’
And doesn’t even mention it?
At this point, it must be a setting that even the original author didn’t know about.
They probably just created the world and wrote mainly about the male and female lead, while the background was creating, erasing, and changing itself, until suddenly a Saint popped up out of nowhere.
“Either the world has gone mad, or I have. One of the two.”
“Kyu?”
Pudding, who had been silently watching her outburst, placed a front paw on Angelina’s thigh.
Seeing Pudding comforting her with gentle kneading, Angelina relaxed her hair-pulling hands.
“Right. In a crazy world, being crazy is normal.”
With a deep sigh, she held her palms out in front of her.
Concentrating on the center of her palm, and when her head started to ache sharply, a soft, unknown power emerged.
“…Unless this is an illusion.”
Angelina had tried to ignore the black market merchant’s claim that she had holy power. She thought he was just making strange statements based on his own delusions.
But after seeing part of her memories, she couldn’t dismiss it as mere nonsense.
If she had only learned that she was the “First Flower,” she wouldn’t have thought as far as being the Saint.
But when the black market incident and her memories overlapped at the same time, her thoughts naturally flowed in that direction.
So Angelina decided to try wearing the earrings given by the black market merchant and Mason’s necklace to see if she could really use holy power.
At first, there was no reaction.
She didn’t know how to use the power in the first place.
Even though she had seen Haley use magic every day and Mason use holy power, doing it herself was a different matter.
So she felt relieved, thinking, “I knew it.”
But perhaps her persistent headaches had affected her mind somehow.
Angelina drank the holy water given by the black market merchant in one refreshing gulp.
At that moment, she felt a sensation like a whirlwind raging deep inside her body. Drip, drip, something seemed to be breaking.
And…
“Could it just be a temporary effect from drinking holy water?”
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