A Runaway Villainess, Now Healing In An Enemy Country - Chapter 71

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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【Chapter 71】

“What are you going to do if it doesn’t work? Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”

“What soup?”

Having no way to explain, I just shrugged my shoulders.

Nishe, who seemed to think it was some kind of insult, frowned and spoke in a deliberately serious tone.

“It’s nothing to lose anyway. With our lord here, it won’t be too dangerous. If it works, great, and if not…”

A murderous glint flashed in his orange eyes.

“We’ll send them all to the Drens Security Forces to work them to the bone.”

“Poor things.”

Jepi immediately replied, but his tone was so flat that he didn’t sound particularly sympathetic.

I wasn’t sure, but it seemed like a tough place to work since it was in the border region. About a dozen or so retainers in the Knight’s Order’s black uniforms were trembling nervously.

“Anyway, I don’t care. You take responsibility for your own subordinates.”

“Is it okay for the Countess to say that? Huh?”

“I’m not a Countess, I’m a Sanctum Awakener, so it’s fine. If you don’t like it, go awaken your own sanctum.”

Easily ignoring Nishe, who was complaining that it was all the same thing, I unfolded the mountain range map.

Since Giselle had marked the outposts in advance before we left the castle, we didn’t need a specialized vermin subjugation guide.

And the fact that this map was in my hands meant that I had somehow ended up becoming the commander of this operation battalion…

‘There’s a Duke and a Knight Commander, so why me again?’

I sighed and took the lead.

Among high-level vermin, individuals with unique names like griffins were classified as Named.

Named vermin reproduce and live in colonies, while ordinary nameless vermin don’t have such reproductive functions.

The prototype of most vermin are animals and plants tainted by magi, and their method of increasing their numbers is to infect living beings with magi through their bodily fluids.

Along with this, mutant vermin showing unique characteristics occasionally appear throughout the continent, but the principle behind their birth remains unknown.

“Wow…”

The outpost we arrived at after a smooth mountain trek.

“They said they were babies. Is that really right?”

There weren’t many mutant individuals, but as Nishe said, they were unbelievably large to be called babies.

House-sized giant eagles were sitting in groups, and as reported beforehand, they had two heads each.

Kieek!

Kueek!

And as if each head had its own consciousness, they glared at each other as if ready to kill and screeched horribly.

With dozens of heads doing this in total, it felt like my eardrums would burst. Whether it was civil war or what, they didn’t even look our way.

It was an increasingly disturbing sight to watch.

I examined one individual that seemed to have fallen behind from the group and was sitting alone, then poked Nishe’s side.

“First, go quietly catch just that one. So I can try purifying it.”

“Sure. You guys go catch it.”

He didn’t even pretend to draw his sword. Instead, he passed it off to his subordinates who were seeing high-level vermin for the first time in their lives.

Except for Marisa, they all turned pale and stammered. Regardless, Nishe was stubborn.

“Just do exactly as I taught you, just the basics.”

“It absolutely won’t work…”

“Tsk. Can’t you read the room?”

Having suddenly become a woman with no tact, I pursed my lips and stepped back. Then Davuer advised.

“Leave him be. He’s not the type to play around with lives. He’ll step in before it gets dangerous.”

“I know that, but… No, why is he so serious about training the Knight’s Order?”

“Because the ceasefire might break.”

At those words, I stiffened a little.

Davuer, noticing my reaction, immediately denied it.

“It’s not particularly because of you, Irene.”

With the noise of retainers reluctantly charging at the griffin and Nishe enthusiastically giving advice behind us, he quietly explained.

“The current Emperor doesn’t seem to want to cause conflict, but if it’s a choice made out of necessity, she won’t hesitate to do it.”

“…”

“The contaminated region is expanding and moving south quite rapidly. However, the contamination isn’t spreading well to the north.”

From that point, south was the Empire, north was Belmayer.

Looking back at it this way, it was definitely strange. It looked exactly as if the contamination was moving while avoiding Belmayer.

Davuer spoke almost definitively.

“Belmayer is relatively safe from external magi.”

“…Why?”

“You know that magi has the property of submitting to stronger magi. I formed a hypothesis from this.”

Then he revealed his magi outwardly.

That was all he did, but the griffin that had been rampaging under the Knight’s Order’s attack, as well as the other individuals that had been in civil war, suddenly hesitated.

They were quite far apart, not even touching, but their reaction was as if they had been electrocuted.

“The magi I possess is greater than anything in this land, so other things don’t dare approach within my territory.”

…Indeed.

The principle of destruction hinted at in the ‘original work’ might not simply be because he went berserk, but because his berserk magi devoured everything on earth.

When I had speculated that far, Davuer brushed off the snow that had stuck to my hair like white dust and continued speaking.

“The Emperor constantly sends personnel to survey the border region. She has already grasped that Belmayer suffers relatively less damage.”

“So… if she thinks ‘Belmayer is safe from magi,’ does that mean she’ll invade?”

“Perhaps. I think it’s premature, but with the Countess gone, there’s no guarantee she won’t act aggressively.”

It was a perspective I had never considered before.

To think that having a Demon Duke actually made us safer from magi. To think that the Emperor might covet this barren land just based on those results.

It was such a plausible reasoning that it seemed like it could be realized immediately. I spoke in as firm a tone as possible.

“I’ll protect Belmayer.”

“…You?”

“I have great sanctum power now. Well, it’s slightly less great at the moment…”

First, I had to succeed in purifying that vermin to consider it buttoning the first button.

Leaving the silent Davuer behind, I approached the griffin that had been subdued while we were talking.

“Ugh, what a sorry state.”

It had one head and two legs cut off, and judging by Marisa’s proud expression as she gripped the sword stuck in its wing, it seemed to be her handiwork.

Nishe, who had rushed over as soon as I approached, spoke in a subtly expectant tone.

“Hurry up and try it. Please heal those guys too.”

Those ‘guys’ were sitting some distance away, dazed and muttering like this.

“Ah, it’s a demon… A real demon…”

“I want to see my mom…”

Watching them made me shake my head involuntarily.

It looked like just muscle pain and some scratches. It was definitely not something that needed healing with sanctum power.

“That kind of thing will heal if you just put some spit on it.”

“Don’t you feel sorry for those fragile baby birds?!”

I cleanly ignored the squawking Nishe and brought my hand toward the griffin.

Perhaps because sanctum power was a primordial force, its operation required no calculations. It only demanded concentration close to intuition.

When I concentrate, the soul feels like a world unto itself.

Life force is a wave flowing through blood vessels. Calm yet rough. That wave rides on gentle wind, moving in one direction all together, slowly.

A sensation as if every cell in the body was crying out that it was alive. A spiritual dimension of heartbeat beyond the physical pulse.

The wind blows stronger and stronger, disturbing the pulse. Waves hitting a dead-end wall surge roughly as if meeting a storm—

Whoosh!

The moment I exhale, it collapses outward.

A white burst of light erupted from my fingertips.

“It worked…!”

When I raised my head, I could see the griffin’s form, touched by the sanctum power, crumbling like sand while wrapped in light.

And within a few seconds, it disappeared without a trace, as if it had been erased from the world entirely.

Nishe, who had been watching from close by, whistled.

“The Griffin didn’t become too strong after all.”

“…Huh.”

“What’s wrong? Didn’t you succeed in purifying it? Why are you reacting like that?”

Just as he said, the purification was definitely a great success.

But something was different. What I had just done was completely different from what I knew before—a purification method that felt somehow alien.

What was different, and how?

When you purify someone in the process of becoming Vermin, they return to being a complete human, but when Vermin receive purification, they die while even their corpses evaporate.

It was the same when I purified the Vermin on the day Lishie awakened the evil God’s Sanctum that ‘absorbs life force.’

…Come to think of it, when Davuer absorbed the Vermin’s Magi in the past, that also left no corpse behind.

Could these two be operating on the same principle?

“Magi comes from corrupted Sanctum.”

It may have disguised itself perfectly as something holy and golden, but as long as that Sanctum belongs to an evil God, it’s corrupted power.

In other words, it’s essentially no different from Magi.

“…No wonder I felt like I was missing something.”

The corrupted Sanctum possessed by the evil God and Davuer’s Magi have the same essence. So what Lishie did back then as purification was…

Actually an act of plausibly ‘absorbing’ the Magi, making it seem like it had been purified.

But the purification I just performed was…

‘Erasure.’

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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