Read Novel Full Chapter 543: A Person from the Past
Chapter 543: A Person from the Past
"Ugh..." I take a few staggering steps, utterly exhausted, as I reach a wall and slide down to sit on the floor.
"Isabel-sama!! Here are the potions you asked for!!" I hear a girl talking to the woman who manages this church.
"Thank you, Mikaela. Now, please go take care of the paperwork for me? We’ve had so many new faithful for Pandora!" She speaks a name that sends a chill down my spine. Meanwhile, Isabel walks over to me, crouching down to hand me a potion.
"Hi, you just arrived, right? You look hurt and worn out. Here, drink this potion!" She hands me a potion. I bite my lip, tears welling up. Why is that monster’s church so kind? I don’t understand.
"Th-Thank you..." I mutter my thanks, accepting the potion and drinking it. Not that it’ll have much effect—nothing can cure me of those bugs living inside me.
"What’s your name?" she asks, and I don’t even try to hide anything.
"I-I’m...Rosaline..." It’s not like I’m a saint anymore. Revealing my name won’t make a difference. Pandora destroyed everything I had. I’ve completely lost my powers, and I can’t even be considered human anymore.
Ever since the war, where Pandora let me live and gave me money just to humiliate me, I’ve been wandering. The kingdom fell. Everything crumbled for humanity. But I survived, drifting from place to place.
And while drifting, I heard news of what happened—that the demon realm had a religion that accepted anyone. Not that I wanted to join this religion, but I desperately needed a safe place to at least rest and recover a little from being a drifter.
"Strange...your name reminds me of someone, but I don’t think it’s relevant. Anyway, you can stay here at the church until you recover. You can decide to join the church as one of the faithful, but if you don’t want to, I’m afraid you can only stay for a week at most."
"Th-That’s fine...a week is enough...I just...want to rest." The life of a drifter is hard. I don’t even have half the power I once did, and I can’t use holy magic anymore. I’ve been forced to rely on learning normal magic just to survive, and all I’ve managed to learn is a spell to gently light up an area.
"Of course, then..." Isabel stops talking to me and looks toward the door, seeing someone enter. I see a very beautiful woman walking in with someone behind her. The two of them come over and look at Isabel.
"Oh! Lady Tsukuyomi, and Eclipsya! It’s so good to see you!" Isabel speaks in a completely subservient tone to them.
"Hi, Isabel. I came here to bring Eclipsya to help out at the church for a few days," the woman called Tsukuyomi says. I look at the other person and feel a chill. She’s undoubtedly Pandora’s daughter.
’That aberration’s children...’ I don’t want revenge—not just because I don’t have the power for it, but because Pandora has already ruined everything in my life. Revenge would be pointless. I...just want to stay alive. So I avert my eyes.
"Really? That’s wonderful! We always need help here at the church. So many injured and people in bad situations come to this place seeking a little peace...but why?" Isabel asks, confused.
"I’m being punished. Mama Tsukuyomi found out about my Status...and read my Titles," Eclipsya says, rolling her eyes.
"Don’t you roll your eyes at me, young lady! Those Titles are so problematic!! How could you hide that kind of thing from your mother? You need to be more honorable and respectable, so you’re going to learn humility by helping ordinary people!" Tsukuyomi says, frowning.
"But Mom! It’s not just my fault! Besides, I can’t control my feelings and—"
"You planned and kidnapped your older sister. Grimm told me."
"..."
"You can’t control your feelings, but you can control your actions. And your malicious actions deserve punishment. You don’t kidnap people you love."
"...But Mama Pandora kidnapped Lycoris’s mother, and she kidnapped you too..."
"Pandora is a terrible example, Eclipsya!! Don’t follow her life lessons! She’s like one of the worst mothers I’ve ever seen!" Tsukuyomi exclaims. Both Isabel and I tense up, afraid they’ll start fighting right here.
"...Okay, okay. You’ve said that before, Mama Tsukuyomi..."
"As you can see, Isabel, my daughter has been very rebellious and problematic lately. So I thought being around people who need help, and helping them, might be good for her..." Isabel and Tsukuyomi start walking somewhere.
"Eclipsya, for now, you can look around the church. Isabel will come get you in a little bit, once I explain what I think would be a suitable punishment," Tsukuyomi says, walking off with Isabel. I can still hear how frustrated Tsukuyomi is.
"Tsk...why am I being punished just for loving too much..." Eclipsya, who stayed behind, kicks the floor rebelliously. Then she looks at me. She seems briefly confused before sniffing the air.
"...You...smell like Mama Pandora’s pets."
"Ughh..." When she says that, I feel another heavy blow to my self-esteem.
"I-I’m not...I’m not anyone important..."
"They’re inside you." Unlike most, she notices easily. It surprises me—no one, not even me, can see or feel the bugs.
"There are quite a lot...maybe insects, since they’re small?" The more she talks, the more I shrink into myself.
"..."
"Do you need help?"
"Y-You would help me?"
"Yes. I know exactly what Mama Tsukuyomi wants me to learn. She wants me to learn to be humble and understand the value of free will and helping those in need."
"So I should help people. Not that I get it—why should I help someone as pathetic and filthy as you?" Her cold words make me shiver. Of course she wouldn’t help me out of kindness. She’s that terrible monster’s daughter.
"C-Can you take them out of me?" I ask, hopeful.
"No. They seem too deeply rooted in you. Removing them would kill you. Unless you consider death a merciful form of help—in that case, I can kill you."
"A-Ah..." Pandora mentioned that before, that I’d die without them. Seems it’s true.
"I-I don’t want to die...I-I’m just here to heal my wounds, eat something, and rest before I go back to wandering aimlessly..." I don’t want to stay in the demon realm for long.
It just so happened that the demon realm, by a twist of fate, is the only place accepting beings of any race and offering some help. So it was the only place I could go to get assistance.
"I see. Well, I don’t have...wait...what’s your name?"
"R-Rosaline..." When I say it, she stares at me as if assessing me. She soon points a hand at me, dousing my body with a surge of water that washes away the mud, blood, and grime from my face, which had been well hidden under that crust of filth.
"!!!"
"I knew it...I knew I’d seen you before! You’re from one of the books about Mama Pandora! You’re the Saint of Humanity, Rosaline!" She growls at me.
"I-I’m not a saint anymore...b-besides, Pandora let me live!!" I say quickly, afraid of being killed. She stops moving as if thinking.
"...You’re right. You have Mama’s shadow pets inside you, and you’re here even though you were her enemy on the battlefield...I guess you got a second chance...lucky you, really..."
"Here..." She pulls a box from inside her clothes.
"I-Is that..."
"Food. I was going to give it to someone, but Mama Tsukuyomi wants me to help people. The sooner I start, the sooner I can pretend to understand the empathy and humility she wants me to have, so I can get out of this punishment."
"..." She’s like a lying snake. She doesn’t even try to hide that she’s just going to pretend to be good. But I accept the food, because I’m starving. I open the box, and the meal inside is beautifully and finely made. I start eating quickly with my hands.
I can’t stop crying. It’s been so long since I’ve eaten something this good. I’ve survived practically on scraps, garbage, and mostly dead animals. The money Pandora gave me didn’t last long because I got robbed a few times.
Never having lived on the streets and without my powers made me an easy target for theft.
"Th-Thank you..." I thank her for the food.
"It’s no big deal. You seem to have plenty of magic. You’re living this pathetic way just because you don’t know how to use it. If you learned to use water and fire magic, that would be enough to live more properly."
"You could take baths whenever you want, and hunt and cook animal meat," she says, sounding arrogant yet giving advice.
"I-I...don’t know how to use elemental magic properly..." I mostly used holy magic in the past. I never needed to focus on learning other things.
"Well, tough luck for you. But the city has a public library with general knowledge and magic. You can go there and try to read some books—as long as you take a bath first so you don’t dirty them."
"Public library?"
"You don’t know what that is? It’s like a private library, but anyone can access it. It has magic, history, geography, and a bunch of other materials. And for those who can’t read, there’s even a tutor who uses magic to implant knowledge directly into the brain."
"It hurts a little, but you can learn to read in just a week of practice." When she says that, I’m amazed. The human kingdom never had so much freely available to commoners.
"Wh-Who came up with this? This idea..."
"Mama Pandora. She’s the one who had most of the ideas for what to do in the city. Besides that, she also left maps, plans, and notebooks with ideas to be implemented over time."
"Like, 10 to 100 years’ worth of content to get through. A lot of stuff, really."
’S-Seriously?’ I’m shocked. This city is amazing. Just from entering it, I saw how incredibly organized it is, and how happily and stably the population lives—even though the laws are very strict and many offenses lead to death, not to mention they force anyone entering to learn the most important laws.
"Now I’m going to look around. I hope you find your path, ex-saint Rosaline. And be careful—your face is described in the war history. I bet there are demons who’d love to kill you for revenge. This city isn’t safe for a weak enemy."
"I-I’ll leave soon..." I say, biting my lip. I didn’t even want to stay here long anyway. I just needed a break.
"You don’t have to leave. Just dye your hair and use magic to interfere with recognition. Mama Pandora is quite benevolent toward those who stay in the city. You could easily live here." She speaks while walking away, giving a lazy wave of her hand.
’Live here...’ I don’t know. I don’t think I’d like to stay in a place created by the one who put me in this pathetic situation. But it’s a fact that if I want to survive, I need to learn magic properly. I’ll never come close to the power I once had, but I can at least gain enough power to survive without being so dependent on handouts.