章 60: Chapter 57: The First Saint and the Fake Saint
The first saint, Alfrea, had been born into this world a millennium ago. Well, to be a little more accurate, she'd been born a thousand and twenty-something years ago. Not even she could recall exactly when it had been, and—to be fair—it didn't matter much.
Alfrea had never got to meet her father growing up, but she hadn't been lonely. Her mother, Eve, was by her side, and she could perform a ton of cool tricks no one else could. Alfrea was very proud of her mother.
For some reason, her mother was a highly wanted fugitive. Alfrea lived the first years of her life on the run. Still, she was perfectly content, and it never once occurred to her that her life was difficult. She didn't need anything else but her mother—as long as they were together, she was happy. Her beloved mother was also so strong that she utterly destroyed anyone who attacked her.
However, everything had fallen apart when Alfrea was eight. One day, as she'd been playing with one of her mother's faithful pets—a monster—a peculiar light had appeared in her hand, and she'd burned her poor playmate. While Alfrea hadn't understood what had happened, her mother had, and she'd been filled with a sense of dread. She'd screamed at the world—why was it doing this to her? Why did it have to be her own daughter?!
It wasn't long before Alfrea had been thrown into an orphanage. Her beloved mother had abandoned her, and she couldn't figure out why. After a few years, Alfrea, who was then fourteen, learned that her mother was referred to as "the witch." Everyone feared her. She'd attacked several countries, destroyed nature, and murdered countless people. There was no end to the list of her hateful crimes.
That revelation had been a shock to Alfrea, who'd then resolved to stop her mother. She wanted to find her—both in part to discover why she'd been discarded, and in part because she was tired of being despised by everyone for her mother's doings. Or at least, that was what she'd thought at the time. In hindsight, Alfrea suspected that her sudden eagerness to stop the witch might have been drilled into her by the world itself.
Either way, Alfrea had what it took to fight the witch. She was also lucky enough to meet like-minded individuals who decided to help her in her quest. And, after two short years, she and her party found and defeated the witch.
Alfrea became a hero to the people and was nicknamed Alfrea the saint.
Four years went by. During those peaceful times, Alfrea got engaged to one of her comrades. She felt blessed, and she enjoyed every single day as she waited eagerly for her wedding.
One day, she invited her old companions and held a banquet to celebrate her upcoming wedding. They all drank alcohol and partied. She had a feeling she might have thrown her pet turtle in a ditch while intoxicated...um, maybe. Alfrea didn't really remember everything. All she knew was that they were having a great time.
However, as it turned out, letting her guard down had been a terrible mistake.
Monsters suddenly marched into her village, led by a woman—her mother. The combination of alcohol intoxication, complacency from the times of peace, and the shock of seeing her mother—whom she'd thought was dead—prevented Alfrea from fighting properly. She was quickly defeated.
Her mother dragged her away and sealed her in a crystal. Alfrea lost consciousness for a long stretch of time. When she awoke, a new saint had already been born, defeated her mother, and turned into the next witch. Yet another saint had already been born too.
Alfrea had been created by the world to put an end to the witch, however, the world had assumed her dead during the time she was unconscious. It had given up on her and decided to rely on another proxy.
She'd also discovered that someone was protecting her body. While it was one of her former comrades, it was not the man she'd been engaged to. Apparently, her guardian had always been infatuated with her, even if the feelings hadn't been reciprocated. While her former fiancé had been greatly saddened by her death, he'd eventually moved on. He wasn't the type to live in the past. After he'd met another woman, he'd married her and even had children. Her guardian, however, hadn't been able to let go of her. He'd decided to protect her until his death, and, even after he'd passed, his soul remained in that cave. He haunted the armor and continued to act as Alfrea's protector.
Alfrea couldn't help but think it was kind of creepy—he was a little too devoted.
Alfrea also used to have a third knight, but he'd thrown himself into the sea after his wife discovered that he'd been five-timing her. Apparently, that sea had been named after him.
Alfrea couldn't free herself from the crystal, but she soon noticed that her powers resonated with the current saint's, and that she could form a connection with her. She sometimes caught glimpses of the outside world through the saint's eyes, and—though such occurrences were much rarer—she could even speak to her occasionally.
The saint wasn't originally supposed to have such powers, but after sleeping for so long in the crystal, Alfrea had somehow developed this ability.
Alfrea's sporadic interferences did not change the bigger picture: the saints invariably turned into witches after defeating them, or they died trying. Those were the only two paths available, and neither of them would fix the root cause of everyone's suffering—the witch's existence. The world gradually became a dark place overrun with monsters. Nature suffered, and people died.
It always took a long time for a saint to mature enough to defeat the witch, but it only took a few years for her to lose control and turn into the next one. Destroying things was easy, but fixing them was a tedious process that necessitated much more time and dedication. And so, the situation did not—rather, could not—improve.
The struggle of the saint and the witch felt very much like a fixed game. The world struggled and dragged things out, but the ending was certain: it would eventually be entirely destroyed.
Alfrea was put through a living hell. She knew full well how things would end, but she was forced to watch the cycle unfold, powerless to do anything but pray. And pray she did. She wished someone would appear and break this gruesome cycle.
Although she knew her prayers wouldn't be answered, she continued to do so day after day, hoping for a miracle.
◇
Alfrea had never imagined her prayers would be answered.
The current saint, Ellize, was an anomaly. Compared to her predecessors, she was ridiculously strong. Her talent seemed to know no bounds, and she was consistently improving. She was a true monster.
She was already strong enough to defeat a seasoned saint at a young age, and after she'd invented bizarre training methods that no one else had imagined before, she'd continued to improve dramatically. As a result, she'd grown strong enough to easily defeat all the past saints and witches together at once. She truly was the strongest in history.
A flick of her wrist was enough to make the ground shake, and she could manipulate the seas as easily as she could breathe. Even the weather was under her rule. She could summon storms, drop bolts of lightning, and summon tornadoes to annihilate monsters and their dwellings in one fell swoop. She could also make volcanoes explode and erase her enemies from existence with her all-powerful light.
She wasn't simply good at offensive magic—her defensive skills were flawless too. She repelled even the most powerful of attacks without breaking a sweat, and she'd never suffered so much as a scratch. She could also heal any wound or illness, no matter how grave. As long as the person was still breathing when she got to them, Ellize would fix it. The same went for nature itself—she'd brought it back to life, making barren lands flourish once more.
What the hell is that girl? Alfrea had thought.
Had the world gone mad after losing to the witch for so long? Had it decided to create an overpowered counter because it had grown tired of the status quo?
Ellize's might was unparalleled. The young woman appeared to be goodness and justice personified. A few years had been enough for her to cast light upon a world that had slowly, over the course of a thousand years, been dyed black by the witches.
Alfrea had started to hope that maybe, just maybe, Ellize would be able to bring everything to an end. If Ellize didn't end the cycle, the world would be doomed anyway. If Ellize became a witch, no one would be able to stop her.
That was why she'd been trying her hardest to get in touch with Ellize. Oddly enough, however, while Ellize was overwhelmingly powerful, her saint power was the weakest Alfrea had ever seen. She had some of it, sure, but it was barely one-tenth of what the average saint possessed. Her mana reserves were remarkable, though, which had convinced Alfrea that she could easily knock down the past saints, even with far less saint power.
All in all, she wasn't a very well-balanced saint.
Alfrea had tried getting in touch with Ellize countless times, but no matter how hard she'd tried, she hadn't been able to reach her. Instead, for some reason, she often connected with Eterna—a young girl who was sometimes near Ellize, but wasn't the saint.
One day, fortune smiled on Alfrea, and Ellize came to Fuguten, the island on which Alfrea remained imprisoned. With Ellize so close, Alfrea was certain she could reach her. She'd been successful, so she immediately asked Ellize to visit her cave.
When Ellize had arrived, she'd entered her spiritual realm, and the two had finally been able to meet.
Alfrea had lost her self-confidence the second she saw Ellize with her own two eyes—the other girl was something else altogether, like a work of art. Her skin, her hair, and every other particle that made up Ellize was simply perfection. For the first time, Alfrea felt a spark of attraction for another girl. She was even somewhat irritated by the fact that Ellize's privates were hidden behind some sort of light.
Her erotic thoughts had disappeared as soon as Ellize had opened her mouth, though—her mind was too busy trying to process the bomb Ellize had dropped.
"I'm not the saint. I simply happened to be born in the same village as the true saint. I have strong magical powers, so I was mistaken for her."
How could that be?! The greatest saint in history who'd achieved what no one else before her had been able to...wasn't a saint at all? Ellize was a fake?!
It's terrible news, Alfrea thought. What did that make the real saints? They were wastes of space who couldn't accomplish a fraction of what the fake did. Alfrea couldn't accept that. She couldn't let her self-worth crumble like that, so she decided to proclaim Ellize a saint instead. The newly appointed saint's reaction had been yet another blow—she'd simply looked at Alfrea like she was an idiot, making her feel even worse.
Still, she'd put those feelings aside and had taken another look at Ellize. Mistaking an ordinary girl for the saint was absolutely unheard of, but with Ellize in front of her, Alfrea understood. She was the very embodiment of what a saint ought to be. If you polled people and created a perfect saint based on their opinions, you'd get Ellize—the very picture of beauty.
In fact, it was no coincidence she looked that way. Sometimes, imitations appeared to seem even more genuine than the real deal. Ellize had deployed every effort and used magic to shape herself into that image from the day she'd awakened in this world. Not a single part of her persona was genuine, but it was so believable that even Alfrea—the first saint—had been deceived.
Needless to say, Alfrea didn't know all that. She simply assumed that she'd mistaken Ellize for the saint because she looked like one. Even if Ellize hadn't pretended, Alfrea would've assumed she was the saint if the two ever crossed paths. That just went to show how perfect Ellize looked—anyone would assume she was the saint.
It's not my fault—anyone would agree, she thought in an attempt to justify herself.
After that, she'd explained her relation to the first witch—or rather, she'd watched Ellize reach the right conclusions all on her own. Either way, Ellize had understood her. That was the important part.
Ellize isn't the real saint, but I guess that's for the best, in a way, Alfrea thought.
After all, she'd called Ellize here for two reasons. The first had been to make sure she wouldn't turn into the witch. Ellize wasn't the saint to begin with, so there was no risk! Her worries were unfounded, and she could relax on that front. That meant she could focus on her second goal: entrusting Ellize with the task of ending this all. Alfrea knew how to do that.
"Lady Alfrea, could you explain why you called me here?" Ellize asked.
"Wouldn't you like to know? I'm sure you're dying to know, even. You are, aren't you?!"
Ellize had figured out most of what Alfrea wanted to tell her before she'd gotten a chance to explain, so she wanted to tease her a little before saying anything. Unfortunately for her, Ellize started disappearing from the spiritual realm.
"WAIT! HANG ON! I'LL TELL YOU, SO WAIT!" Alfrea screamed through sobs.
(2.3k word count)
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