Vol 3. Chapter 134: And the Selfish One?

Hearing Luna’s words, Vanessa finally let out a heavy breath.

They were... finally safe.

“Lady Vanessa just woke up. Your body is still very weak. Even though Amisha and I have treated your injuries, you should eat more nutritious things—then you’ll recover faster.”

“Here, Lady Vanessa, open up. Say, ah~”

Luna chuckled as she brought over a wooden bowl from beside the campfire. It was filled with thick soup. She scooped up a spoonful and gently brought it to Vanessa’s lips, using the kind of tone someone used to coax a little kid into eating.

“Miss Luna, please don’t tease me like that. And... stop calling me ‘Lady.’”

Vanessa’s pretty face carried a trace of embarrassment and flush.

“Huh? Why? Aren’t you the Lady Saintess?”

“Of course I’m not a Saintess.”

Vanessa said it with complete certainty.

“Then earlier, when we kept calling you Lady Saintess, you answered us every time.”

Luna spoke with amused relish.

“Earlier, the situation was urgent.”

“Then why, when we called ‘Lady Saintess,’ did you subconsciously think we were calling you?”

Luna pressed on with another question.

“That’s because...”

Vanessa choked for words.

“Miss Luna, you’re playing word games with me. My family is a Saintess family. Hearing that title, of course I’d subconsciously assume it.”

“So you also subconsciously think you should be the Dawn Saintess, don’t you?”

Luna refused to let go, smiling with narrowed eyes.

“Miss Luna, that’s a little unfair.”

Vanessa said helplessly.

“Saying something that leaves people with no way to respond—something unsolvable and infuriating—isn’t what a proper lady should do, you know?”

“After everything we’ve been through... is it still not enough to change what you tell yourself?”

Luna slowed her voice.

“The Church of the Dawn’s attitude and actions toward the House of Facilis are plain for anyone to see. Someone as smart as you already knows it too. You’ve just been choosing to avoid it—choosing not to face the issue head-on.”

“But how long can you keep avoiding it?”

Luna’s smile faded. Her eyes were filled with seriousness.

“Your enemies won’t spare you because you compromise. You should understand that better than anyone. If you keep running, you’ll eventually have nowhere left to run—and the Church of the Dawn will become a breeding ground that worships demons.”

“Don’t think I’m exaggerating. You’ve been away from the Church of the Dawn for a long time, so you don’t know what’s been happening inside.”

“Within a hundred years, enough can change.”

“The Church of the Dawn took over a thousand years to go from being ignored in the ancient era, to having believers across the world, to becoming the maintainer of continental order.”

“But it took less than a hundred years to go from a guardian of fairness and peace, a protector of sapient life... into a source that breeds corruption and evil.”

“Destroying something is often much simpler than building something.”

When Luna reached that point, both Fennia and Amisha couldn’t help looking toward Vanessa—each of their eyes carrying an unplaceable tension and a different kind of hope.

They both realized the atmosphere had turned formal and heavy.

“There has never been a time that needs an orthodox Dawn Saintess to step forward more than now. And only a true descendant of Facilis can have that kind of overwhelming rallying power—raise an arm, and win broad support across human society.”

Vanessa stayed silent, so Luna continued.

“It’s not that simple, Miss Luna. The Pope of the Church of the Dawn has already completely branded me as a fake.”

“Whether you’re fake—do they not know in their hearts?”

“Everyone saw your true appearance. Would they not know the truth? Would they not know who’s lying?”

“They can trick everyone for a moment, and they can trick one person for all time. But they can’t trick everyone for all time.”

Luna replied.

“Objectively speaking, Lady Saintess—ordinary people need you.”

“But I’m not trying to morally coerce you, or force you to choose.”

“I just want you to understand: this isn’t something you can settle anymore by only avoiding and compromising.”

“The Church of the Dawn has unilaterally decided you are a thorn in their eye that must be pulled out.”

“If they learn that your bloodline has awakened, they’ll never let you go even more.”

“They know that if you’re allowed to keep growing, sooner or later you’ll have the ability to reshuffle the entire Church of the Dawn—whether you intend to or not.”

“From the moment your bloodline awakened... you and they can only have a relationship that ends with one side dead.”

“No matter what your reason is—even if it’s purely for yourself—you still have to show your stance.”

Luna finished speaking in a sober tone.

“When you should cut but don’t, when you hesitate and dither—that’s the most dangerous.”

“You either run somewhere no one can ever find you...”

“Or you rise up and resist—smash the Church of the Dawn’s current state and reshuffle it completely.”

“...Ordinary people?”

Vanessa murmured softly after a long silence.

“I don’t have that ability. And having that kind of ‘heart’ would only make things more and more complicated.”

“You don’t have that heart, you don’t have that ability—are you referring to the time you drove back a Demon Pillar in the Selena Cathedral, saved the entire Academy, and even the whole continent?”

Luna smiled, as if she’d caught another gap in Vanessa’s words.

“If you truly didn’t have that heart, then why did you step forward back then?”

“Even if the Academy itself couldn’t solve it, it still wouldn’t have been your turn—someone who defines herself as a ‘normal person.’”

“Miss Luna, you really do like asking questions that are hard to answer.”

Vanessa paused, then sighed softly.

“Is it hard to answer... or does Lady Saintess not want to answer?”

Luna’s smile and voice were like honey—sweet and cloying—yet it left Vanessa utterly helpless.

“...”

Vanessa fell silent.

She knew Luna was right.

In truth, she understood these things like looking into a mirror. She had just been avoiding them—only wanting to live like a normal person, not wanting to be dragged into these storms.

Because she had never forgotten what her fate had been in her previous life.

So if she could avoid being pulled into the whirlpool, she would avoid it as much as possible.

Even though she’d always been unlucky and constantly forced into all kinds of mainline events, what she’d wanted was always just an ordinary daily life. She had never wished for her whole life to be this “heart-stopping.”

Even if she loathed the Church of the Dawn, she also knew that once she became their enemy, the nature of it changed.

It would become a fight to the death.

Until one side fell, the battle would never end.

How many blood-soaked incidents would that ignite?

If she could avoid it, Vanessa didn’t want that.

But now, it was clearly no longer a matter of what she wanted.

The Church of the Dawn simply wouldn’t give her a path to live. Her endless concessions only earned worse and worse from them—until in the end, they disregarded so many lives and manufactured this whole incident, just to forge her death into an “accident.”

This Church... was already rotten to the core.

From top to bottom, it reeked of something beyond saving.

Forced into a corner, she only had one road left.

Resistance.

“Then... Miss Luna. What do you want me to do?”

Vanessa sighed.

“I don’t think I should go high-profile right now—raise my arm and let more people know who I am.”

“Of course you can’t do that right now.”

Luna smiled with crescent eyes.

She knew that if Vanessa could say that, then Vanessa’s heart definitely held the will to resist the Church.

Even if she hadn’t before—

after Foreno pushed her like this, she did now.

Because this was the Church of the Dawn unilaterally doing things to the extreme, leaving Vanessa no space to survive—determined to crush her, make the goddess’s descendants go extinct. And even in the “best” outcome, she would become a canary trapped in a cage.

In that situation, anyone would grow a heart of resistance.

“I also don’t support Lady Saintess doing that.”

“If you do, you’ll become the target of everything.”

“Right now, discourse power and absolute strength are both in the hands of the Church of the Dawn. If Lady Saintess does that, the Church of the Dawn will definitely declare you a fake Saintess, then disregard all voices and send troops to encircle and suppress you.”

“For us, hiding our light and biding our time is the best choice.”

Luna swept her gaze over Fennia and Amisha.

“When Lady Saintess’s realm breaks through to the height of the Saintesses of the previous generations—when you possess the authority to grant and revoke [Saint’s Envoy]—then the Church of the Dawn will only have one option left.”

“Surrender.”

“Then the Church that looks like a towering colossus will kneel at your feet.”

“There’s something ugly I need to say up front.”

Luna paused, her tone turning meaningful.

“Since we’ve conspired to this point—everyone here: if anyone leaks any of this, if anyone is disloyal to Lady Saintess... they’ll be ground to ashes together with us.”

Those words were naturally meant for Fennia and Amisha.

“After all, the current Pope has a habit—his suspicion runs extremely deep.”

“So even if someone regrets getting onto the thief’s ship now, it’s too late.”

“That old man won’t spare any of us.”

Luna said it half like a joke.

“Lady Luna, don’t worry. Amisha and I will absolutely never betray Lady Saintess.”

Fennia said firmly.

“I swear on my family, my personal honor, and my life!”

“Mhm! I’ll fight for Lady Vanessa to the very last moment too!”

Amisha nodded along.

“Of course. I’m only saying this to remind everyone—we’re on the same ship now. One prospers, all prosper. One falls, all fall.”

Luna smiled.

“I can naturally feel the two of you’s loyalty to Lady Saintess.”

“See, Lady Saintess? Not everyone in the Church is so ignorant that they blindly believe the Pope.”

“You still have followers of your own.”

Then Luna turned back to Vanessa.

“Miss Luna... I have a few questions.”

Vanessa fell quiet for a moment before asking.

“What questions? Lady Saintess—although I haven’t formally sworn loyalty to you yet, I’ll certainly tell you everything I know.”

Luna smiled.

“When we first met... did you already vaguely guess my identity?”

Vanessa asked.

“The first time we met?”

Luna nodded.

“I had a sense, yes. But even I couldn’t see through your male disguise.”

“...So you did it on purpose back then?”

Vanessa’s virtuous, gentle smile was starting to hold on by force.

“Huh?”

Fennia and Amisha listened at the side, completely confused.

“Miss Luna, what does Lady Saintess mean by ‘on purpose’?”

“Oh dear~ I almost forgot. You two probably still don’t know, right?”

Luna covered her mouth and giggled.

“It’s not really something worth hiding. Thinking about it, it’s pretty funny, isn’t it? Lady Saintess?”

Funny my ass.

Where is it funny? How is it funny?!

All she’d seen was a poor, fallen village girl with a ruined family, struggling and running around for living expenses!

Vanessa pressed her lips together. A flash of embarrassment passed through her eyes, and her dignified voice squeezed out a few words.

“It’s nothing. Don’t say it.”

As she said that, she kept shooting Luna looks.

Back then, she really had picked up a rock and smashed her own foot.

But it was fine.

As long as she didn’t admit it, she could always say it was Luna slandering her.

“Oh right—I just remembered something.”

“Lady Saintess, you won’t mind, will you?”

“...What?”

Vanessa felt an ominous premonition when she saw Luna’s ingratiating smile.

“Say it.”

“It’s just... in my shop, to prevent theft, we usually scan with Recording Stones.”

“???”

Vanessa knew what Luna was trying to say the moment she heard it.

Just hearing it, you could tell it was bullshit!

“Miss Luna... what are you talking about?”

Vanessa was already trying her absolute best to keep her tone proper.

“This is the first time I’ve ever heard of someone using a Recording Stone that has to sleep for over ten hours after running for over ten minutes as surveillance.”

“What exactly are you even monitoring?”

“Oh dear~ you caught me.”

Luna laughed behind her hand.

“It was just a harmless joke, Lady Saintess. There isn’t anything.”

“...”

Vanessa stared at Luna without speaking, with the feeling that her emotions were being completely—gripped—by Luna.

“Huh?”

Amisha and Fennia, seeing the back-and-forth, got even more curious.

“What was it?” Fennia blinked those curious big eyes and asked, completely without fear for her life.

“Fennia...”

“Don’t. Ask. Okay?”

Vanessa turned her gaze over and gave Fennia a straight-up death smile.

“Wah—sorry, Lady Saintess! I won’t ask that kind of question again!”

Fennia hurriedly said.

Ah... ah, did she...

make Lady Saintess angry again...?

Fennia instantly fell into self-blame again, scolding herself for being so bad at talking, so bad at reading people’s moods.

That kind of humiliating black history...

should just rot forever in a corner no one ever visits.

Vanessa thought silently.

“Then—do you have any other questions, Lady Saintess?”

Luna asked.

“Miss Luna... helping me—was that your personal will? And why help me, a powerless ‘fake Saintess’?”

Vanessa pondered a moment and asked the question she cared about most.

“Lady Vanessa, what I want to say is—my family has served the Dawn Goddess and the Saintess since ancient times.”

“Second: you’re asking what I want out of helping you.”

“On that—do you want to hear the ideal reason, or the selfish one?”

Luna didn’t avoid it at all.

“Tell me the ideal one first.”

“The ideal one—I already said it when I faced off against Foreno.”

“We’ve seen the corruption and degradation inside the Church now. Whether it’s the Tyrelis Continent today, or the Church of the Dawn, both urgently need a Saintess to appear and break the deadlock.”

“And luckily...”

“In my generation, I got to wait for her.”

“If she appears, the deadlock can be broken?”

Vanessa asked.

“Of course.”

“Facilis is the goddess’s descendant. Your bloodline awakening itself symbolizes a kind of mission, doesn’t it?”

“After all, this is a world where Demon Pillars and gods truly exist. ‘Mission’ is a theory accepted by most.”

Luna replied.

“Then... the selfish one?”

Vanessa asked.

“The selfish reason?”

Luna curled her lips.

“I want to leave a heavy stroke in the history of the Saintess’s restoration—be praised as a great contributor.”

“Does that count~?”

“And of course—if you don’t succeed, then I die along with you.”

“Besides...”

“If Lady Saintess thinks my ability is sufficient, that I’m worth using, then I believe I can also help you to a great extent.”

“After all...”

“My ancestors produced a Pope, you know~”

Luna said with a bright smile.

(These two chapters are about Vanessa’s mental shift, so the pacing will be a bit slow 0.0)