Chapter 56

***

“Miss, why do we have to come out in the middle of the night for the Saintess?”

At Abigail’s words, Alliot quickly jumped in.

“Lady Abigail. Please refrain from speaking inappropriate words.”

“I was in the middle of a private conversation with my Lady.”

“How can you not know it’s your Lady who will get in trouble when you say such things outside?”

Abigail turned her head, cheekily. Alliot looked at Seria, who was somehow less talkative and opened his mouth cautiously.

“Aren’t you cold, Young Lady?”

“I’m fine.”

“That’s a relief. It’s about time we got word from others.”

Alliot raised his head and looked at the sky where snow was falling endlessly. The knights scattered in all directions. It was decided that the group that would spot Lina first would immediately set off the firecrackers. The firecrackers that could be used in such bad weather were very large and heavy. So they could only use one. Everyone’s nerves were focused on two places, the ground, and the sky.

Seria was waiting with two knights not far from the barracks.

She stared at the sky.

‘What the hell was that thing I saw earlier?’

She didn’t follow Lina from the start. But when she saw Lina earlier, she saw a mysterious darkness that she couldn’t understand.

There were no traces left in that place where Lina had fled. If anything, she could have guessed.

Seria had a hazy feeling.

The black shadow, it looked just like Magi…

The hardened Magi that covered the green laurel manor. She could tell because she had attempted to purify the demon shadow once in the manor. If it hadn’t been for that, she wouldn’t have gotten any sensation from seeing that shadow.

How did that get into Lina’s hands? There wasn’t anything suspicious like this in the original story.

Could it be that Lina was purifying Magi?

Seria immediately shook her head lightly. No, Lina wasn’t purifying it. She was absorbing the black shadow.

‘This wasn’t in the original story.’

Her head was about to explode when someone called her.

“Lady!”

Seria’s eyes widened when she looked at the sky.

***

The holy knight gritted his teeth and jumped at the demon. His sword hit hard against the demon’s metal-like hard skin. It was nearly impossible for a single knight to take on the demon by himself. Amos hurriedly pulled Lina’s arm.

“Saintess! We must escape quickly! It’s too dangerous here! There is a demon!”

Lina, who had been in a daze for a long time, regained consciousness.

“Oh, High Priest….”

“Now, get on the horse!”

Lina hurriedly mounted Amos’s horse. That was when it happened. The sound of horses’ hooves came from not far away as if they had seen the signal. Amos shouted with all his might.

“Here! Here! Stern!”

‘Here is Stern’. Shouting out the sacred words that any knight in holy gold armor could understand, Amos began to run as fast as he could towards the sound of horseshoes.

Lina turned around with a look of horror on her face. Immediately, the blood drained from her face.

“Aah!”

It was because the holy knight screamed horrendously as his limbs were being ripped off by the demon. It was such a horrible sight that she felt like she was going to vomit. Lina covered her mouth with one hand. Amos gritted his teeth and shouted.

“Don’t look back!”

At the same time, the sword slipped from the holy knight’s hand and flew out, plunging into the front of their horse. The startled horse struggled, and Lina, unaccustomed to riding, fell off the horse with a scream.

“Saintess.”

Amos pulled straight on the horse’s reins and finally stopped it. He quickly jumped off the horse and hurriedly to help Lina, who had fallen on the snowfield.

“Come on, get back on the horse quickly…!”

The horse came to a halt in the middle of the road. For a moment Lina’s face twisted into a lurid expression. Amos turned around slowly, groaning in pain. A pitch-black smudge bloomed from his neck.

A human contaminated by Magi.

At that moment, the demon grabbed Amos’s ankle with its mouth.

“High Priest….High Priest….!”

Lina reached out with a trembling hand, and Amos shouted with all his might.

“Stern!” (*a call for help.)

Crack.

“High Priest Amos, please!”

Lina screamed helplessly with a blank face, but that was all. The demon completely bit off Amos’s lower body. Red blood poured out from his severed body.

Blood splattered on Lina’s face as she stared tremblingly at Amos’s face rolled across the floor.

“Lina!”

“The Saintess is here!”

“High Priest Amos…!”

“There’s a demon! Concentrate on the demons!”

“There are three more demons approaching!”

A field of pure white snow, a rain of blood on top of it, and a white and red energy of death enveloped the moonlit night.

“Lina!”

Kalis quickly ran to Lina. At that moment, some of the Berg Knights appeared on the other side as well. The man leading them was the Grand Duke Lesche Berg.

“We found the target! Everyone, join in!”

“Yes, sir.”

The Berg Knights immediately lined up to hunt for demons. Lesche hastily assessed the situation.

“Damn it!”

The person who had horribly died near the Saintess was High Priest Amos. That cruel amputation undoubtedly was done by the demons.

Lesche said, cursing.

‘I came to find a person, not a corpse.’

At that moment.

“…!”

Kalis, who had gotten rid of the demons and was heading towards Lina, widened his eyes dumbfoundedly. All the knights had the same reaction.

“Um, what is that…!”

“The moon. …. It’s the moon! The moon has come out.”

The ice-cold blue moon appeared behind Lina. At the same time, Lina’s body began to float up into the air.

Kalis knew what it was because he remembered seeing it clearly on the Grand Duchess’ terrace at Berg Castle.

It was a large moon that had suddenly fallen. Lina was being sucked in. The moon was taking Lina with it as it was slowly disappearing. The moon had a different color than it was back then…but… It didn’t make sense why the moon suddenly appeared.

“Kalis!”

Lina swung her arms and legs in a struggle as she shouted his name, but it was of no use.

“No! No!”

“Saintess!”

“Lina!”

Lina screamed incessantly. At that moment, the nearest knight, Lesche, came into her view. For a moment, time seemed to slow down. Lina reached out her hand earnestly toward those red eyes.

“Catch me…!”

Lesche’s silver hair glistened coldly in the unusually bright blue moonlight, and his red eyes were as cold as ice. Lesche reached out to snatch Lina’s wrist, which she held out to him with all her might.

“Lesche…!”

Her words were cut short. Lina was completely gone with the bright blue moon.

Gasp. Gasp.

At the same time, the knights who were fighting with the demons let out ragged breaths. Because of the disappearance of Lina the constellation gold armor rapidly turned cold.

It was the first time that Stern, who should be right next to them, suddenly disappeared. They felt the temperature difference that they had never experienced before which was horrifying. For some of them, it even clouded their eyes. The temperature difference was harsh, like being thrown into a frozen sea in the warm spring.

Although they had placed silver branches inside their constellation gold armor, it was only a temporary measure. With a startling shock to their heart, one of the holy knights fell down.

“Pull yourself together! We have to be careful! There’s another Stern nearby! She’ll be here soon!”

The knight, who fell on the snowfield, punched himself in the cheek to wake himself up.

Brawling on the floor with no visible wounds was a common trait of panicked knights whose constellation gold armor’s temperature had dropped to the limit. The knight’s head hit a stone and blood was spilled in a steady stream.

One brisk horse stopped beside him.

“What?”

“Please help me….”

The knight’s eyes grew wide. Stern’s distinctive, shimmering cloak came into view.

“It’s Stern!”

Seria Stern. The knight finally stopped rolling madly on the ground. He had scrapes all over his body, but they didn’t hurt. Because the extreme temperature difference seemed to have just numbed his nerves.

The warmth was circulating the knights’ bodies like an illusion. The severed heads of the demons fell to the ground.

***

Lina was gone.

That wasn’t all. There was no small amount of damage caused by the demons that suddenly appeared in the middle of the night.

How could High Priest Amos die…

It was a complicated feeling. Seria couldn’t believe that the person she just talked to the day before suddenly died. She didn’t see his dead body. Lesche’s cloak was covering something on the ground, and she knew it must be someone’s corpse, but Seria didn’t realize it was the body of High Priest Amos.

Seria didn’t feel well. She walked slowly along the barracks path.

The barracks was turned upside down when Seria, Lesche, and the rest of the scattered knights returned.

The barracks, which was full of high ranking nobles, knights, and attendants, had a wretched atmosphere that could not be described. The High Priest was dead and the Saintess was missing. It was okay, though. According to the original story, Lina would reappear in the capital a year later. Of course, there were parts that didn’t progress in the same way as the original.

Especially the part where Lina disappeared. In the original story, Lina disappeared from a frozen lake in Berg territory, not from this snowy plain.