Vol 3. Chapter 79: [Radiant-Cross Holy Shield]

“You think I want to be stuck to this dirty man who’s ugly, has no presence, no taste, and no self-awareness? If I could leave, I’d have been gone a long time ago!”

The golden-haired little angel stood with her hands on her hips, cheeks puffed out in rage, then collapsed into hopeless sobbing.

“Boohoohoo! Why, why did it end up like this?? I slept for so long, I thought I finally found a nice-smelling, soft Blessing Angel big sister, and then... Goddess, is this Your test for me? But if it’s a test, You could at least let me see some hope, right? What went wrong, why can’t I get free from this really ugly stinky man??”

“You really are a little half-pint.”

Vinny was caught somewhere between laughter and tears.

This thing really was entertaining: she’d cuss him out, then sit on the ground bawling and throwing a fit like a child.

No—she was a child.

At this point he honestly didn’t know if he should knock her down a peg and keep bickering, or try to comfort her a little.

Mm, all of that sounded fine, but he could not be bothered to tell her the truth.

She actually dared call him ugly?? Him, the one and only blossom of Camella Capital, the great campus heartthrob of Carillian Academy, getting called a hideous freak??

A little thing with such trash taste deserved to feel miserable for a while.

After everything this golden-haired big fly had said, if Vinny still didn’t know what was going on, then his brain really had probably been eaten by Milian.

He had more or less figured out why this little thing had come to him, and why, after slamming into him, she couldn’t separate anymore.

But that aside... what was this thing, exactly?

Given that their fusion had happened inside [Painting Hall Tower], Vinny figured the other party was overwhelmingly likely to be a weapon—and one at [Divine Armament] tier or above, at that.

“All right, all right, quit crying. So what exactly are you?” Vinny asked.

“Boohoo... can’t you tell?? Didn’t I say already? I’m an angel, a messenger created by the Goddess! I’m one of Blessing Angel’s dependents and her faithful follower!” the golden-haired little angel shouted.

“You said that already. I’m asking what your function is,” Vinny pressed.

“Tch, what’s that got to do with you? You’re not my master, why should I tell you? I have no obligation to tell you anything!”

The golden-haired little angel pouted, her tiny face turning aside.

“Oh, I get it now—you’re just useless, huh? No wonder you haven’t been able to find a new master all this time.”

After spending so much time around Aesphyra, Vinny had picked up a few little tricks, provocation tactics among them.

“You dare say I’m useless?!”

Vinny’s line about “no wonder you’ve never found a new master” stabbed straight into the golden-haired little angel’s sore spot. Clearly, that one broke through her defenses.

“You’re the useless one, you’re the useless one! Do you even know who I am?? I am a dependent of the Goddess! The firmest shield of every Dawn Saintess through the ages! A high-grade [Divine Armament] weapon, [Radiant-Cross Holy Shield]!”

“Oh, only high-grade, huh? With that tone, I thought you were a [Legendary] weapon.” Vinny raised an eyebrow.

“Only high-grade??”

The golden-haired little angel’s cute big eyes flew wide.

“You really are shameless, you know that? If I hadn’t hit the wrong person, you’d never lay a finger on a [Divine Armament] in your whole life!”

“And besides, I’m extremely important to the Dawn Saintess, my role is far from that simple, I’m very important!” the golden-haired little angel argued, unconvinced.

“‘Very important,’ huh. How important are we talking?” Vinny looked utterly skeptical.

“Tch, you’re just trying to trick me into saying it, aren’t you? I’m not telling you!”

The golden-haired little angel refused to bite.

“Ah, I get it—you must’ve done something sneaky and trapped me in your body, right? That’s it, isn’t it? Hurry up and let me out!” she said, lips jutting out.

“Oh, give it a rest. With that level of IQ, you’ve got the nerve to call yourself a high-grade [Divine Armament]? I didn’t even know who you were before this, how exactly am I supposed to trap you? Everything you say contradicts itself—one second I’m just a plain face, the next I have the power to imprison you. So what am I supposed to be, exactly? Schrödinger’s mortal?”

Vinny folded his arms.

“You really are cracking this young master up.”

“It’s over, my whole life is over.”

Apparently deciding there was no point arguing with Vinny, the golden-haired little angel slumped on the ground again, clutching her head in utter despair.

“I can only wait until after you die before I can go look for a new inheritor.”

“But when are you going to die??”

“You golden-haired little fly, you’re seriously cursing this young master to die now? Let me tell you something, don’t even think about it for the next few hundred years. This young master might not be good at much else, but I do have one strength—tough life.” Vinny snorted.

“It’s over, how long do I have to wait before I can find Blessing Angel big sister...” the golden-haired little angel said in despair.

“Oh? So the one you’re looking for is a descendant of House of Facilis?” Vinny said, amused.

“Yes! You, you’ve seen her?!”

The instant she heard that, the golden-haired little angel suddenly lit up with hope, a whole new line of thought flashing through her mind.

Can’t she just make this really full-of-himself blue-haired man go find the descendants of House of Facilis for her?

Once they found one, she could give him a little reward afterward—he wouldn’t say no to that.

“Haven’t seen her.”

Vinny casually scratched his ear.

“Then can you take me to find her?? I’m not asking you to search for free—once it works out, there’ll definitely be a reward for you!” The golden-haired little angel’s eyes sparkled with tiny stars.

“Sorry, this young master doesn’t accept pie in the sky. And I also can’t find her.”

“What? How can you not find her? She’s the Blessing Angel, the current Dawn Saintess!” the golden-haired little angel said excitedly.

“How could you possibly not find her? Go to the holy city of the Church of the Dawn, Saintess big sister will definitely be there!”

“How long have you been shut off from the world?”

At that, Vinny’s expression turned distinctly odd.

“Huh? Shut off from the world? Ah, that’s not important! Ehehe, mister handsome, I promise, if you help me find Saintess big sister, I’ll help you find a [Divine Armament] that belongs to you. If we can’t find one, I’ll just keep helping you look—how about that?”

The golden-haired little angel put on a fawning face.

Mm, once she’d found hope, her attitude really did do a full one-eighty. Like some Sichuan opera face-change trick, she immediately dropped her pride to beg this stinky man.

“How is that ‘not important’? Looks like you really have been asleep a long time. You don’t even know the current state of the Cathedral of the Dawn.”

Vinny lifted an eyebrow.

“The Dawn Saintess position was abolished by the Dawn Pope ages ago. Since then, there has never again been a Dawn Saintess.”

“Whaaat?!”

The golden-haired little angel stared at him, stunned for a long time.

Vinny felt like that one line had completely blue-screened her brain. With a single sentence, he’d made her want to re-examine the laws of the world and the operating rules of the entire universe from the ground up.

“How... how dare they?!” the golden-haired little angel gnashed her teeth.

“Who did it? They actually dared to kick the Goddess’s descendants out of the Church of the Dawn—are they just seizing the house outright?!”

“Exactly. In any case, there’s no Dawn Saintess anymore. I can’t help you.” Vinny spread his hands.

“Th-then do you know where the descendants of House of Facilis are now?” the golden-haired little angel asked in a rush.

“No idea.”

Vinny looked like a dead pig unafraid of boiling water.

“For all we know, the line’s died out.”

“What nonsense are you talking?! How could the Goddess’s descendants die out?? Impossible!” the golden-haired little angel snapped, over-agitated.

Then her expression shifted to utter disbelief, her whole body trembling, pupils shaking.

“So, so... House of Facilis, where are they now?”

The golden-haired little angel looked completely unmoored, like she had lost the meaning of her existence in that instant.

“All right, don’t be that depressed.”

“Go away.”

Right now, the golden-haired little angel clearly didn’t want to talk to Vinny at all.

“I’m telling you the truth and you won’t believe me.”

“Huh? What truth?” the golden-haired little angel said in frustration.

“The person you’re looking for is far away in the sky and right in front of you.” Vinny said it with a straight face.

“Far away in the sky—where in the sky? Right in front of me... huh?”

The golden-haired little angel’s big eyes stared at Vinny in disbelief.

“You—you’re saying, you’re the one?”

“If that’s what you think, then sure,” Vinny said indifferently.

“How is that possible?! Y-you’re a man. House of Facilis has never had a male heir. And your hair and eye color aren’t pink at all! ...You’re lying to me!”

The golden-haired little angel instantly felt like she was being played.

“And Blessing Angel big sisters are descendants of the Goddess, they’re all elegant, proper ladies! There is no way they’d be anything like you, a man with no class and no presence whatsoever!”

“See? That’s why I said you wouldn’t believe me.”

Vinny looked like he really didn’t care either way.

He certainly wasn’t going to deliberately transform into Vanessa just to prove it to her. And besides, Vanessa was under a double DEBUFF right now—her refined blood was overdrawn, and her Spirit Soul was sealed.

Both of those were thanks to two women who bore the Carillian bloodline.

“How is this possible, how could this be...”

The golden-haired little angel was still squatting there in a daze, muttering to herself.

Thinking back to how she had successfully bound to Vinny just now, she fell into a heavy silence.

Vinny didn’t bother with her. He looked around instead, wondering when exactly he’d wake up and be able to leave this place.

“Hey, what’s your name?” the golden-haired little angel suddenly asked.

“Me? This young master is Vinny, Camella Idea King, the one and only blossom of Camella Capital.”

“So, is your name by any chance Vinny Facilis?”

The golden-haired little angel ignored everything after that self-introduction.

“Yeah. What about it?”

“A man with such a plain, ordinary face actually has the surname Facilis??” the golden-haired little angel said, deeply doubtful.

“What, I’m surnamed Facilis, and you’ve got a problem with that?”

“I do have a problem.” The golden-haired little angel pouted.

“How could some rough man possibly have the surname Facilis?”

“If you’ve got a problem, you can choke on it. It’s not like this young master picked the surname himself.”

Vinny sat down as well.

“So, how do I get out of here now?”

“Once you wake up, you’ll be able to leave,” the golden-haired little angel said.

After a moment, she couldn’t help asking again.

“Are you really surnamed Facilis?”

“I’ve told you so many times already. Believe it or don’t, whatever,” Vinny said irritably.

“Could it be... that afterward, some people with ulterior motives changed their surname to Facilis?” the golden-haired little angel said, suspicious.

“You golden-haired little fly, that imagination of yours is something else. Who could just change their surname to that? You think the people at the Cathedral of the Dawn would just sit back and watch?”

Vinny couldn’t help laughing.

“Speaking of which, you’re [Radiant-Cross Holy Shield]? High-grade [Divine Armament]? Then who was your previous master?”

Vinny figured he might as well ask, since he had nothing better to do before he woke up.

The golden-haired little angel didn’t answer him. Clearly, she wasn’t in the mood to talk.

“If you won’t say, let me guess—was it Sophia Facilis?” Vinny asked.

“...Lady Sophia.”

The golden-haired little angel’s eyes flickered.

Only when her previous master was mentioned did those eyes, now like dead water, stir even a little. After a long time, she finally spoke.

“Her final outcome—how was it?”

You should know, right?

After all, a [Divine Armament] only returns to its unowned state after its master dies. Death is the only thing that can dissolve a [Divine Armament] bond.

But looking at the golden-haired little angel’s current state, Vinny didn’t say it that bluntly.

“It was a pretty good ending,” Vinny replied.

“...”

The golden-haired little angel lifted her head in silence, looking at Vinny, clearly doubtful.

“As the last Dawn Saintess, she perished together with the Demon King to protect all living beings, famous for generations, still worshiped by countless people to this day. Isn’t that a good ending?” Vinny said.

“Last one...”

The golden-haired little angel repeated those words, not sure what she was thinking.

“That old fox who did all that evil—did he die?”

“He did. Though Sophia also died from her heavy injuries, that old fox was burned to death by [All-Gods Consecration Flame].”

“After the Tyrelis Empire was destroyed, humanity’s greatest surviving crisis was resolved. But humanity also lost the Saintess forever.”

“Then... what do you think of Lady Sophia?”

The golden-haired little angel looked at Vinny, her eyes stirring again.

“Me? What else do you want me to think of her? All of humanity benefited, and only my family got wrecked. I haven’t even blamed her when I look at it from the big-picture side, so what are you asking that for?” Vinny said, half-joking.

“So, you’re Lady Sophia’s...?”

The golden-haired little angel hesitated.

“She’s my great-grandmother,” Vinny answered.

“You—so you really are a descendant of House of Facilis?”

“So you didn’t listen to a single word I said earlier, huh?”

Vinny shot her a look.

“Do you honestly think I’m some shameless fraud with a stolen identity?”

The golden-haired little angel fell silent at that.

“It’s just too hard to believe. You’re nothing like Facilis, and you don’t have the slightest trace of Blessing Angel about you.”

“I know. It’s been like that since my grandfather’s generation.”

“You mean, Lady Sophia’s child?”

“Yup. You’re my great-grandmother’s [Divine Armament], so you should’ve seen what my grandfather looked like as a kid, right?”

“No. Strange as it is, after Lady Sophia had a child, that child almost never appeared in public. Everyone just knew House of Facilis had an heir, but no one had ever actually seen Lady Sophia’s child. Back then everyone just assumed it was to protect the next Saintess,” the golden-haired little angel said, recalling the past.

“Oh, so that’s how it was. No wonder. They really couldn’t let people see, or it would’ve caused a panic.”

Vinny nodded.

“After all, the inherited Saintess blood suddenly breaking off is basically the same as a dead bloodline.”

“Of course, there was another rumor going around—that the Demon King cursed the Facilis line at the moment of his death. No one knows if that’s true.”