“High Cure!”
In a room deep within the temple in the royal capital, Ursula’s spell visibly healed the burns of the disciplinarian maiden whose body had been half burned by Karla’s spell. As a “holy maiden,” Ursula could heal with remarkable speed.
But Karla was still gripping the maiden’s arm. Her smile widened as flames spouting anew from her palm again scorched the maiden’s recovering body.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!”
Though the maiden’s emotions should have been completely dulled by her training, the torture of being burned and healed at the same time was so intense that she shrieked. Everyone else was stunned, unable to move as the hellish scene continued until, finally, the vigorous flames won out and turned the maiden’s body to charcoal.
“You! How did you survive the poison?!” Ursula demanded.
The Disciplinary Corps maidens were sweating, and not just from the heat filling the room.
Karla, who had leisurely drained the poisoned tea, brushed the soot off her hand, her smile unchanged.
Sephriore blossom extract was a muscle relaxant that could be used medicinally in small amounts. Too much of it, however, and it became a difficult poison for sorcerers to handle; it numbed the mouth, making it difficult to speak and chant. The existence of such dangers was exactly why Karla—who trained to fight alone—had willingly risked her life and taken a variety of poisons to build Poison Resistance.
But her tolerance to the toxin wasn’t the sole reason she could still cast.
“Restrain her!” Ursula commanded. “She can’t chant yet!”
The frozen disciplinarians finally began to move, their needle daggers at the ready.
But Karla, still seated, effortlessly mouthed words. “Did you not just see me use a spell without chanting?”
Chanting was a basic requirement for sorcery-based spells. Even magic-based spells—which required no incantation, as they relied on complete understanding of the spell’s structure—still required an invocation—the chanting of an activation word.
Ursula and the others had naturally assumed that they’d simply not heard Karla’s invocation. Even if basic sorcery could be cast using the same principles as magic, they had assumed that in a fight like this, under the effect of the poison, Karla shouldn’t have been able to accurately enunciate the invocation.
But they were wrong. Even monsters could activate non-elemental combat techniques by roaring, after all. All it took was to accurately visualize the meaning of the invocation.
Karla was indeed poisoned. Even with Poison Resistance, she couldn’t fully negate the toxin’s effects. However, she had practiced her spells hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. Through precise visualization, she could still activate them using the same principle that underlay combat techniques, even if the overall efficacy of the spell was somewhat reduced.
And even with her muscles relaxed, she could still manipulate her own body with Soul Thorn. This meant that she could silently chant the Cleanse spell and rid herself of the poison.
The maidens had attacked non-vital points, like Karla’s shoulders and arms. As powerful as Ursula’s Holy Disciplinary Corps was, its members didn’t have the authority to execute a noblewoman—especially one engaged to the crown prince. Their plan was to confine the troublesome Karla and “educate” her with drugs and spells, thus effectively banishing her and forcing her withdrawal from the position of royal fiancée.
But Karla Leicester wasn’t so ordinary that she could be stopped by such half-hearted measures. Black, thorny patterns writhed on her pale skin, manipulating her body to leap up and avoid the attacks.
Though the church was aware that Karla had obtained Soul Thorn—a gift from the dungeon that enhanced her sorcery—they hadn’t expected it to affect her physical abilities as well. Ursula and the others had known she was strong but still thought her to be an ordinary sorceress.
They watched in amazement as Karla practically flew around the room, dodging each strike, her arms spread like a bird’s wings.
Sensing massive aether gathering at the girl’s limbs, Ursula jumped back and commanded, “Get away from her!”
“Fireball.”
Explosive flames roared through the room, reducing the remaining three maidens to charcoal so fast they didn’t have the time to scream.
“What have you done?!” Ursula demanded angrily.
Using area-of-effect fire spells in enclosed spaces was madness.
In the blazing room, only Ursula remained standing, thanks to a combination of her quick retreat, mithril-fiber robes, and timely casting of the Level 4 Light Sorcery spell Blessing, which increased physical and sorcerous resistance.
Karla, who kept herself safe from the flames using only her own surging aether, emerged from the inferno and glanced for a moment at Ursula, the sole survivor. Then, she cast a puzzled look around the room. She asked, “All this racket and no one has come to intervene yet? Did you send all the others away?”
Aware of the possibility that Karla might put up a fight, Ursula had moved the priests who weren’t aware of the circumstances from the temple to the chapel dormitories. Only low-ranking priests and orphans had rooms within the building, so that hadn’t been particularly difficult.
Using her own aether to confirm there were no other human sources of aether in the temple itself, Karla sensed something deep underground and turned her gaze to the floor.
“Oh! Looks like there are still people below us,” she said.
“What are you?!” Ursula asked, wide-eyed.
Not waiting for an answer, she readied her concealed mace and closed in through the flames. With an explosive crack, the mace connected with the burning oak table and shattered it.
Karla, who had leaped back mockingly, lunged through the burning door toward the corridor.
“This way, perhaps?”
“Wait!”
Ursula gave chase, but each time she felt Karla was within reach, the girl managed to elude her. Her features slowly twisted with anxiety—a feeling that was completely new to her.
Though the priests and orphans had been sent away, the next generation of Disciplinary Corps members were still being educated underground. To the orphaned Ursula, everyone in the temple was family. This was especially true of the children underground—her beloved sisters, who would carry on her mission to correct the world with the Holy Church’s light when she was no more.
As she proceeded into the temple’s depths, Karla spotted an iron door—currently unguarded—and sensed faint aether beyond it. She pointed a finger toward it, gathering aether around the tip.
“Stoooooop!” Ursula cried out in anguish.
But her screams reached no willing ears.
“Levinstrike.”
Lightning whipped forth from Karla’s fingertip, and the massive bolt pierced straight through Ursula, who had tried to shield the door with her own body. When it struck the iron door, the now red-hot metal ignited the surrounding wood, sending massive pillars of white smoke billowing up.
Though her body and organs were completely scorched, Ursula still lived thanks to the increased sorcerous resistance afforded by Blessing. She crumpled to the floor, begging the heavens for answers.
“Why...?”
Why could such evil be allowed to exist in the face of the divine?
Why had faithful servants of the heavens, who’d done nothing but destroy the enemies of the Holy Church, met such a fate?
Ursula’s heart filled with hatred, for the evil in the world and the divinity that would allow it to exist. For the high priest’s grandson, who had sent this monster to her.
As she cursed the heavens and everything related to them for the first time, Ursula’s unrewarding life drew to a close.