No matter how powerful her regenerative ability was, if she was beheaded after causing so much damage, Diana would have died.
The emotion she had been emitting ceased. Those emotions were warm toward René until the very end.
Her head rolled on the snow as it left her torso. Her smile, as if she were peacefully sleeping, could have been that of the Virgin Mary in some earthly religious painting, or perhaps a statue of an angel.
Diana’s body, with a hole in her abdomen, and head suddenly burst into flames.
The pale, glowing flames devoured Diana’s body, extinguishing it like a lit candle melting, leaving not even ashes behind. All that remained was an empty, blood-soaked priest’s robe, without a trace of charring. And the remains of the silver whip.
“Gone …?”
For some reason, René thought at the time, ‘I’m glad she disappeared’. Even she didn’t understand her own thought process.
It was not only Diana. The bodies of Benedict and Hugh disappeared in the same brilliance. They should have fallen on the snow, but the flames did not melt the snow at all.
“Was that … holy energy? What …?”
“Oh my, maybe you didn’t hear Diana?”
She heard a girl’s voice from very close by. It was not an audible voice, but one that René’s soul could hear.
When she looked up, she saw the girl she had been acting floating.
“That’s right. Because this was magic to protect souls from the Undead and the Evil God. The Undead can’t hear the voice of a person held in the arms of God.”
“Iris…?”
Wavy blond hair and wisteria eyes. A girl magician in a slightly oversized robe.
Iris looked down at René with pity and contempt.
“The Moon Eaters’ last secret. Offering the body as an offering to God and returning it to heaven with the soul. The protection to prevent the body and soul from being handed over to the Evil God. The “Coffin Stigma” … Diana was a Moon Eater. Diana is no longer here. She had to go over there to drag the rest of us up.”
With a head full of confusion, René tried to make sense of the situation.
After death, it was best to avoid having one’s body turned into an Undead of the Evil God, or having one’s soul captured and twisted into something evil. For this reason, high-ranking priests, royalty, and aristocrats who make their living fighting the Undead performed special rituals to protect their souls from being taken by evil after death.
It seems that Diana had prepared something similar to that.
“Diana…? Diana?”
Unintentionally, René looked up into the dark night to find Diana’s figure. There existed only darkness.
No voice, no figure.
The Undead referred to those who have stopped time between life and death.
They are not living, but they cannot escape looking into the afterlife.
With this, the worlds of René and Diana were divided.
“Diana is kind, so I’ll say it instead… you don’t deserve to call her by that name…”
Iris’s words were harsh and cold.
René had killed everyone in the “Dragon’s Throat”. She has taken something precious for Diana, and she has also taken Diana’s own life. It was a selfish thing to ask for sympathy on top of that.
That simple, obvious fact struck René with incredible force.
–There was nothing else that could have been done. When it came to the fight, the option of ‘not killing Diana’ was gone. I had no other choice. There was no other, no other…
“Deal with it. That’s your punishment. If you kill without regard for revenge, you will kill everyone who is important to you. Poor princess, you will suffer alone for every life you take.”
Her wisteria-colored eyes narrowed in a sarcastic manner. As if seeing through René’s anguish to a point where even she herself was unaware of it.
No matter how much she may be a genius magician, Iris was only a child in terms of life experience.
Even Iris can see right through René.
Suddenly, Iris looked up somewhere high.
Then she made a troubled expression.
“… Sorry, Diana, I can’t do that. I can’t deliver those words, even though you ask me to, Diana. I’m not going to forgive her.”
Diana.
It seemed that Diana, who was out of reach of René, said something for her.
Then she asked Iris to pass on a message, which Iris refused to do.
René wanted to hear what Diana had said.
There was no way she could hear.
She couldn’t speak.
“Goodbye.”
Iris waved her hand, and her soul vanished.
Suddenly. As if there had never been anything there in the first place.
She was held in the arms of God, separated from René, the impure Undead.
The cursed red blade left René’s hand and stabbed into the snow.
Literally clutching her head, René broke down to her knees.
“Ah, Ah, Ahhhh!!”
–“I’ve become a monster even in my heart”…? If so, what is this feeling of loss and … despair?
The feeling was not guilt. Like Benedict and Hugh, René felt no remorse for killing Diana.
However, she would no longer be able to see Diana, who had cared for her until the moment of her death.
The feelings that René felt were very similar to those of a motherless child who misses and grieves for her mother.
This time it was not a knight of the royal brothers’ faction. René herself had decapitated her.
The regret of having ruined with her own hands a treasure that should have been irreplaceable and precious to her, was driving its fangs into René’s heart and was about to engulf it.
René had always treated Diana only as Iris.
Her words to René were originally intended for Iris. That would not be considered proper communication.
But even in such a situation, René was fulfilled. René was seeking motherhood from Diana; she was seeking a replacement for her stolen mother.
Even a few drops of water would be heavenly nectar for a traveler who is nearly dried up in the desert. In the same way.
Broken vessels cannot hold water, but only while it is being poured into them can they be moistened.
And in the end, she prayed for René’s salvation, not… Iris, but René.
‘Revenge is all that is left’? She was probably right. But that did not mean that ‘everything but revenge is unimportant’.
René was not a device for revenge.
The cheat power of the Evil God’s Divine Protection, the life experience in the previous life…, even if she wore such strength like armor, René was just a wounded girl who wanted to be embraced by her mother once again, who only came out of herself with resentment and pain. René had forgotten that. Now she remembered.
“I don’t know much about politics, but I can’t believe that people who make a little girl look like that are decent.” “Hey! That’s the cutest thing you’ve ever said to me!” “If you wanted me to take care of you, not Iris, I’d do it.” “Because you want me to take care of you, don’t you…?” “I don’t want you or any other child to look at me like that. I want you to smile.” “I’d be happy if you could find … enough happiness that you wouldn’t … have to take revenge anymore.” “But … they are also terrible things to do to a girl who is so young.” “The smile of a girl, in particular, is like magic in itself.” “It’s poison to the body and the soul to be angry, and you can’t leave a pretty girl with that look on her face.” “I know it’s selfish of me, but before I die, I’d like to take a moment to pray for you and my friends…” “I wish I had time to pray for you, to stop you from being so pained, to stop you from being so sad.” “I’m not sure if it’s possible to do that, princess. If you can be fashionable…, you might even be able to fall in love.” “You might be able to do it, too.” “Ha … lonely girl.” “It can’t be helped…” “I’m just wondering if… my prayer will change your destiny…” “I feel sorry for you, and I wanted to do what I could for you.” “I hate … the people who made you like this.” “Good luck, I’ll always be … watching you.”
“I wanted you to live your life as a… normal girl.”
“Uwaaaaaaaa!! Waaahhhh!”
A blade was thrust deep into her chest.
Her heart was distorted.
It was the same pain that she had felt in the living hell that deprived her of all human dignity, the pain that distorted her heart.
René shook her head, while still holding it.
But then… Suddenly, an electronic sound rang out from nearby, bringing her back to herself.
It was a melody deep from somewhere in her memory. Or rather, a sound effect.
It was the old-fashioned ringtone, “piririririiriririri”.
“Huh…? What? What’s that sound…?”
Something that produced a sound was in the pocket of her robe.
René stood up unsteadily and put her hand into the pocket of her robe. Her hand bumps into something hard.
When she pulled it out, she found that it was a button-operated cell phone, which was already not very common on Earth before her reincarnation. It was a “Flip Phone”, as they call it.
There was no way such a thing could exist in this world. In fact, there should have been nothing in the pocket of her robe until a moment ago.
When René picked up the cell phone, the ringtone stopped by itself, and an extremely inorganic synthetic voice began to play.
“This is the Evil God Network Cheat Service Support Department. The trial period for the cheat you have received will expire at 24:00 today. If you want to cancel the trial, please click 1, otherwise, please click 2.
This is the Evil God Network Cheat Service Support Department…”
It was the voice of the Evil God herself.
–Now…it’s been a month since then?
The day she was decapitated on the execution platform, that abominable day. The day she met the Evil God. The beginning of René’s revenge.
The Evil God who gave René power stipulated a trial period of one month. If she didn’t like the cheat, she could return it within this period and rest in peace.
René huffed (or, more accurately, turned her face upward, holding her left hand).
What if she were to give back the cheat here and now and cease to be an Undead?
Would she be reunited in heaven with her mother, who was guillotined? Would she be able to jump into her mother’s chest, cry that it hurt, cry that she was scared, cry until she was tired of crying, and then rest in peace? Would she gently stroke her head as she used to do?
Will she be able to follow Diana’s footsteps? If she saw her again and apologized for … everything, would she embrace her as René and not as Iris? Of course, Iris would look at her with disgust. Will she be willing to tell her what she was trying to tell her through Iris?
According to the church, people were judged by God only according to their sins during life (I guess this is the kind of doctrine because people who became/were undead would not be punished if they accounted for their sins even after death). If that was the case, then there should be no problem getting to heaven. The only sin René committed before death was accidentally stepping on a line of ants that were crossing the road.
Nope. As long as she could see her mother and Diana once more, it would not matter if her destination after that was hell. If it would be atonement for what René had done since then to throw away the Divine Protection cheat given by the Evil God and receive the judgment of the Great God, then…
René.
René gritted her teeth.
“…The trial period for the cheat you have received will expire at 24:00 today. If you want to cancel the trial, please click 1, otherwise, please click 2.”
The audio cut off on the third loop.
René slashed at the phone with the red blade.
“Nevertheless…”
René exclaimed as she looked at the cell phone, which was silently losing its shape and dissolving into the air.
“But still … all I have left is revenge! I am an avenger. ‘Rose Princess of Hellrage’. I am René “Rosey” Ruvia Ciel-Terra. I will not draw the curtain on my revenge until this resentment is cleared up. Nobody will pull the curtain!!”
Whether selfish. Whether irredeemably evil. Whether lonely.
René was too damaged to be saved, too resentful to atone.
If so, then.
Only fight.
Only to take revenge!
Kill the enemy, destroy the country, until her blade reached God…
–……Fight!!
René stood up, stepping on the snow, and wiped away the tears that had been seeping out of her eyes before she knew it.
“Wash your necks and wait. Lawrence, the treacherous Knight Commander…! The Pretender Hilbert…!”
What dwelled in the girl’s heart was not righteous anger. It was not justice.
The girl, deprived of everything, only resented and hated. Then she started walking again. The flames of the black resentment that were about to burst through her small body and burn like a wildfire.
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