When I woke up, the first thing I felt was imminent peril.
I could tell I was in a sickroom, probably in the cathedral’s medical wing. But the more pressing concern was the half naked Horny Slut right in front of me, steadily creeping closer. In a moment of shock, I made the snap decision to grab her by the collar and push her over, but that only made things worse.
“Ah! No, we— We mustn’t—!” she moaned.
I stared down at her, at a loss for words. Apparently, Her Salacity—I mean, Her Sagacity, the Horny Slut Nevissa Vernalia—had gotten a taste for being on the bottom as well. I shoved her off the bed and turned to look out the window; the autumn leaves had already started to fall.
“You were asleep for quite a long while,” she said. “It’s been three days since then. I was concerned you might never wake up, and I’d been wondering whether I ought to at least take your purity...”
“What the hell are you talking about, and do you want to die?”
“I’d gladly die by your hand, Miss Alicia...”
Shit, I screwed up. I should’ve killed her, actually.
“So did you just give up on the Holy Saint bit?”
“I— I would never, Miss Alicia! I’m always fully devoted to my duties...”
Get out of my face, shut up, and stop breathing like that, dammit!
As the saint crawled toward me on all fours like a dog and I tried to push her back, the sound of the commotion brought Cion rushing in. As soon as she saw my face, her expression hardened, and she charged at the saint and shoved her away. The woman Cion had been assigned to guard fell off the bed with a thud.
Miss Cion...?
“Alicia... Alicia, you’re alive!”
“Yup, I’m right here. It’s me. It’s Miss Alicia...?”
As I watched the tears well up in Cion’s eyes, I resolved never to make this girl cry ever again. Well, if at all possible, I never wanted to end up like this again, period. I didn’t want to die—unlike a certain perverted saint.
“What happened to the devil-touched children?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Have there been any new orders for what to do with them?”
Unfortunately, the best person to answer my question was currently lying unconscious on the floor. (She was fine, probably.)
“Uh, well... The saint said that she’ll keep sending out ships for the ones who want to move to other cities or get asylum overseas, the same as before—or they can work as her guards if they want to. A bunch of priests got really mad about it, but when His Holiness came back, he just said ‘Let it be so,’ and that was it. Actually, a couple of them are guarding your room too—”
“It’s just a job, got it?”
The dog-eared man poked his head into the room.
“It looks as though your memories have returned, then?” I asked him slowly.
“Yup. We were just chatting about the best way to beat the shit out of you once you woke up.”
Well, that’s sure scary.
“I apologize for my actions the other day. I lost my temper and hurt you terribly.”
“We got the whole story—heard it straight from the saint,” he said. “So, you kinda ended up saving us, indirectly. We’re not gonna just forgive and forget, but let’s say we’re even for now. But, if you ever mess with any of my brothers again, there’ll be hell to pay.”
“Understood.”
As I gave a small bow, Cion looked at the two of us with a smirk of amusement. “Hey, Schnoë, weren’t you the one who volunteered to guard Alicia? You were saying you didn’t trust the Church’s knights to handle it.”
“S-Sir Elcyon—! You promised you’d keep that a secret!”
“Hmm? Did I? Anyway, you were worried about her too, weren’t you?”
“I wasn’t worried—!”
Everything seemed to have resolved itself peacefully, one way or another. Tuning out the bickering for a moment, I rolled up the hem of my clothes to examine my scars, but I didn’t have a single one. I’d been on death’s door after that fight, but I’d healed this much in only three days—demonification really was incredible. It was only natural they’d want that dog-eared man as a guard. The gap between humans and demons was more than just a difference in specs; we were built differently at a fundamental level.
Maybe that power was also what had let me copy the Deathwatcher’s skill and understand the mechanics of the saint’s brainwashing? I’d lost myself completely in that moment; I still didn’t know what had happened back there.
“Hmm...”
I idly wondered whether I’d be able to make the two noisy dogs next to me shut up for a second. I stared at my right hand and tried to focus my mana, but I couldn’t remember how to control people at all. The same went for the Deathwatcher’s shadow-manipulation powers—or maybe it was more like wearing shadows, or becoming shadows? Thinking back on it now, I couldn’t even recall how it worked.
People in life-and-death situations displayed feats of superhuman strength sometimes; maybe what I’d done had all been the product of some sort of desperate survival instinct. In any case, if I didn’t know how to reproduce it, then I couldn’t afford to count on it in the future.
“Cion, could I get some time alone? I’m feeling a bit tired...”
“Ah— Sorry! A-Are your injuries still hurting?! Are you okay?!”
“I’m all right. I’d just like to sleep for a bit.”
Cion hesitated; she looked like she still wanted to say something. But at the dog-eared man’s urging, she grudgingly stepped out of the room.
“Just call me and I’ll come right away, okay?”