One Hundred Nights with the Devil - Chapter 13

Saintess Elena, who survived and returned solely by holding onto her fervent desire for revenge against her biological father, the Pope. She sneered as she looked at him staggering in shock.

“Refuse the Imperial Family’s request because it’s certain I’ll die if I go to the West? That’s funny. For the person who wished for my death more than anyone to say such a thing as an excuse.”

Glaring at the Pope, she inadvertently clutched her shoulder. The mark forcibly carved onto Exorcists at the Grand Temple and the brand of being a child abandoned by her biological father. That terrible wound, where she had to accept a hot iron into her raw flesh at merely thirteen years old, throbbed so much she couldn’t bear it.

“You always wished for the illegitimate child you took in on a momentary impulse to die. Yet you didn’t want to dirty your noble hands, so you racked your brain every time you saw me on how to get rid of me without repercussions—did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“Elena, did I not explain that is all your misunderstanding?”

At her sharp accusation, the Pope staggered and knelt. Even while doing so, his mouth did not know how to rest at all.

His cunning tongue moved to confess his sins.

“Yes. In my youth, I was harsh to your mother and unkind to you. But to say I wished you to die, that cannot be true, can it? I merely……. had no choice but to treat you as a clergyman serving God, not a mere human. You becoming an Exorcist was God’s will, just as I had no choice but to become a priest. So please……. do not try to harm yourself just to be heartless to this father. Hmm?”

Tears shimmered in the man’s eyes. Even the wrinkles where the flowing tears gathered were beautiful, making it a truly pitiful sight. But in Elena’s eyes, it only looked disgusting. She wanted to spit on his face immediately to insult him, and crush him with a poker to inflict terrible pain.

“To say I am jumping into a dead end to be heartless to you. Your treatment is too severe for an abandoned daughter. Did I look like such a foolish human?”

“Elena…….”

“Just once, I begged you to please help me just once, saying I would forget everything about you abandoning my mother and ignoring me, and live as if I were dead. What did you say to me then?”

She kicked away his hand that reached out to her with all her might. Then she glared at the Pope with a gaze full of contempt. Just as he had done to her when she held onto his trouser leg and begged miserably.

I just, simply wanted to live.

“You asked if I still hadn’t fixed the habit of begging on the streets. You said it was so shameful you doubted if I was really your daughter, told me that dying as an Exorcist would be the only achievement in my pathetic life so I should follow without complaint, and even ordered me to be flogged.”

“That was all strict discipline to educate you…….”

“What did you do when I barely returned alive from Esslingen? You scared me asking why I came back alive, saying if I didn’t do as you said, I would be framed as a demon’s minion and killed. You incited the priests saying I had to be locked in solitary confinement for life to offer prayers of repentance. Did you think I forgot that?”

“During Swabia, that was also all done for your future!”

The Pope, staggering as he raised his body, began his excuses. It was the same sound he made every time. That his heart also ached, but following God’s will was good for everyone, so he had no choice but to be harsh with tears in his eyes…….

“Forgive me. Elena, my daughter.”

Truly, it was terrible.

That cunningness of referring to her as his daughter only when he needed her, and the voice swarming with shameless ambition pretending to be an upright priest were disgusting and terrible.

“Are we not each other’s only family? Hmm?”

The Pope’s appearance, famous for his handsome face in his youth, was also just terrible in Elena’s eyes.

In her childhood, whenever she looked in the mirror missing her mother, the fact that the foreign matter stuck like mold between her dead mother’s face was clearly revealed on his face, that this man’s blood was mixed in her body…….

It was so terrible that she couldn’t even look in the mirror properly even now.