Chapter 113 | The Vampire Princess Later Drew the Holy Sword

After the aftermath of the Solar Flare subsided, a scorched mark several meters wide was left on the main road.

The soil burned by the holy light showed a sickly, pale white color, with tiny golden flames still sizzling along its edges.

Yat stood less than three paces outside the scorched mark. A piece of Achilles's left shoulder armor had been scraped off, the metal at the break still glowing faintly red before being patched and repaired by other parts.

“Phew, that was close. I almost became barbecue.”

She shook her left hand, flinging the lingering heat from her fingertips.

Hector, mounted on her right foot blade, had heated to its limit. The sword-spear was blazing white all over, and the air around the tip of the spear was warped into rings of transparent heat waves.

She was in no hurry to attack.

Earlier, when Constantine had been mentioned, her sword had slowed for a split second.

Yat had noticed, so she planned to use it again.

“Say, what exactly is your relationship with Constantine? How does he see you? Do you know?”

Cecilia did not answer. The holy light on her cross sword flared up once more.

The light gathered even faster and brighter than before. She clearly did not want to continue this topic.

“Afraid to talk to me about this? Are you scared he'll hate you?”

Yat continued speaking, her foot blade lightly scraping against the ground, making a harsh metallic screech.

She was calculating the distance, and also calculating the time.

Meanwhile, Cecilia silently held the cross sword vertically in front of her. Pressing her left index and middle fingers together, she wiped them from the guard all the way to the tip of the blade.

Wherever her fingertips passed, the holy light on the blade was drawn out, splitting into three parallel arrows of light in the air. Pointing her sword forward, the three arrows shot toward Yat simultaneously from the left, center, and right.

Achilles's foot blade dug into the ground, catapulting her backward. The three light arrows pierced the spot where she had been standing, drilling three bottomless, scorched holes into the dirt.

Before she could even adjust her posture, Cecilia had already rushed in front of her. The cross sword slashed down from above, its blade dragging a heavy trail of holy light, slicing through the air with a sharp hiss.

Yat raised her right leg, using Hector's spear shaft to block the slash directly. At the moment of impact, holy light and intense heat exploded once more, engulfing both of their figures.

Then, in the center of the shockwave, a silvery-white light suddenly went out.

The miniature sun-shaped stigmata on Cecilia's forehead, without any external interference, suddenly flickered several times along its edges before instantly going out like a candle blown out by the wind.

In that instant, the holy light surrounding her body weakened by nearly half.

She took a step back, the light on her cross sword dimming as the tip of the blade lowered toward the ground.

“...Her Holiness?”

For the first time, her voice changed. It was no longer a calm devoid of joy or sorrow, but something closer to a mixture of confusion and unease.

“Oh?”

Yat tilted her head, resetting Hector, but she did not seize the opportunity to attack. She too felt something was off. The concentration of holy light in the air was rapidly dropping, and the 『Sanctuary』 Cecilia had set up earlier was collapsing on its own. The blessing personally carved by the Pope was vanishing, which meant that somewhere, Beatrice's power had been defeated.

“...Retreat.”

A very thin thread of holy light emerged on the holy emblem on Cecilia's chest, tracing out the command to leave against the emblem.

Cecilia sheathed the cross sword back into the scabbard at her waist.

She raised her head and glanced at Yat. There was no anger or resentment in her eyes, only her usual calm.

She slipped her flintlock pistol back into the holster on her thigh. A corner of her nun's habit's hem had been sliced off during the battle, revealing the dark red lining underneath, but she did not look down at it.

She turned and walked toward the City of Holy Radiance. Her pace was just as swift as when she arrived, though the layer of holy light that had always enveloped her shoulders had completely gone out.

“...Hey, leaving already?”

Yat called out from behind.

There was no answer. The pink hair swayed in the wind for a moment, and then she was gone.

Yat stood in place, waiting a few seconds to make sure Cecilia wouldn't turn back. Only then did she take a deep breath, detach Hector from her foot blade, revert it to its cube form, and retract it into her necklace. Turning around, she dashed toward the Northern Main Road.

Achilles's foot blades rapidly treaded over the cracked soil, each step leaving a shallow indentation on the ground.

『Godspeed Cavalry』 was active. Her foot speed was already fast enough, but under the blessing of this ability, her speed exploded into an even more astonishing velocity on top of her baseline.

The end of the Northern Main Road drew closer in her field of vision, the edge of the charred wasteland shimmering with a hazy grey light under the afternoon sun.

And then, she saw it.

In the center of the wasteland, the area that had been completely altered by Genesis and then utterly destroyed, the cracks in the ground were deeper than elsewhere. The soil was not the charred black of burning, but a sickly pale white bleached by the holy light.

In the center of the ruins, where the lingering warmth of 『Light』 still remained, were two figures.

A blue-haired girl knelt on the ground, the hem of her white linen robe spread over the scorched earth.

Her head was lowered, her deep blue hair cascading down the side of her shoulders to cover her entire face, her arms still locked in a hugging embrace.

A black-haired girl lay in her arms, her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling faintly. The Holy Sword rested to the side, the light on its blade having grown soft and warm, like a small campfire.

“...Yat.”

Esper spoke weakly.

Yat stopped her steps.

“Alright, alright. Although one is unconscious and the other is heavily injured, in short, you won't die, right? Is your regeneration still running?”

“...Yes...”

“That's good then.”

Achilles's armor receded from her body, shrinking back into silver cubes that hung on her necklace, making a faint clinking sound. She looked down at them for a long time.

“...Ah, the youth have such great health. They can just fall asleep the moment their heads hit the ground.”

She muttered softly, walked over to the two of them, fed Esper a sip of high-grade healing potion, and then sat down with her back to them. Crossing her legs, she began waiting for Eladia to wake up.

The afternoon wind blew from the north, brushing over the charred wasteland, over the surviving poplar trunks, and over the two figures leaning close together.

“Do you plan to wait here until she wakes up?”

“...Yeah.”

Yat shrugged, taking off the third silver cube from her necklace and gently rubbing it between her fingertips. The patterns on the surface of the cube lit up with a very faint blue light, then dimmed again.