How Could the Villainous Young Master Be a Saintess?

The Abyss-Dweller’s strong wings beat frantically, restless and agitated, trying to drive its body away from that strange flame.

It did not understand.

In its concepts and consciousness, there was no such thing as a mortal’s “fear” or “terror.” That left it wholly unable to understand why its body was reacting like this.

But it could not leave.

After its failed sneak attack, it discovered that it had been entangled by the light curtain of the holy shield. Like prey clamped in a crocodile’s jaws, it could not escape no matter how it struggled.

This was one of the Radiant-Cross Holy Shield’s enchantment effects, the follow-up effect of [Final Mercy]. Any part of the enemy’s body that came into contact with the curtain of light or the shield would be pinned firmly in place, like a frog locked down beneath a beam of light.

As one of the sacred relics left behind by the Dawn Goddess, the Radiant-Cross Holy Shield possessed both the [Shield Against Physical Force] and the [Shield Against Energy]. [Final Mercy] was the [Shield Against Physical Force], while [Original Sin Backlash] was the [Shield Against Energy]. Both could punish and counterattack after receiving an enemy’s assault.

The only problem was that both shields had very long cooldown times.

Vanessa put away Frostfang, held the shield in one hand, and let a wisp of [All-Gods Consecration Flame] rise in the other. Walking through the air, she slowly drew closer to the Abyss-Dweller.

The monster from the abyss grew more and more frantic. The pressure radiating from that tiny flame made it deeply wary, and there was nowhere for it to hide. From that strange little flame, it smelled the long-forgotten scent of “danger,” and instinctively wanted to flee.

“So it seems you do understand the urge to seek advantage and avoid harm.”

“But what, exactly, is it that makes you think you can storm in here and commit evil as you please?”

The angelic girl’s voice remained calm, yet it was filled with oppressive force, like the verdict of a chief judge passed upon the guilty.

“As expected, it’s because you think no one here can restrain you. No one here can punish you, isn’t it?”

Whether or not the Abyss-Dweller understood Vanessa’s words did not matter.

If a sinner felt no fear, punishment was meaningless.

These monsters and minions from the Demon God Abyss possessed no humanity and could not understand human concepts. Part of the reason was because they were immortal—or rather, because they could not be killed by human means. Human judgment simply did not reach them.

For monsters that treated boundless evil as an everyday habit, human values could not be used to judge them, nor could human laws be used to convict them.

Just like that red-eyeball priest who had submitted to them before. As he himself had said, he did not believe he had done anything wrong. He had not specifically wanted to kill anyone. Sacrificing passersby had simply been the faster method, and it made no difference who the sacrificed victims were. Subjectively, he believed human lives were worth nothing at all. Just like how, when a traveler passed by, no one cared about the ants crushed beneath a footstep, and certainly no one would hold a funeral for a few ants. So he did not think he had committed any wrong.

He believed the customs and habits produced by human civilization were nothing more than humanity amusing itself. Higher-dimensional beings would never pay any attention to such things.

The Demon Pillar minions from the abyss were even more like that.

They likewise did not think they had done anything wrong.

Because they would not be punished.

Because they would not be killed by humans.

Vanessa had no intention of doing something as stupid as trying to make a pack of abyssal monsters understand humanity.

She was merely informing these freaks equally—informing those traitorous hounds who had betrayed humanity as well—that this was Tyrelis Continent.

If they came here, then they followed the rules here.

She extended the sacred flame in her palm and touched it to the Abyss-Dweller’s wing.

The Abyss-Dweller immediately started beating its wings in panic, trying to flee in blind confusion. Some unknown emotion was wildly building inside its cognition, making it more and more frantic.

Its shrill howls shook the surrounding stone until fragments began cracking and falling. The sound was like knives scraping across glass, unbearably unpleasant, crushing down on the spirit.

Though Vanessa could not understand the Abyss-Dweller’s language, she could vaguely make out the meaning in what it was expressing.

‘Embodied [Destruction]... what kind of madness is this...’

The instant the flame touched the Abyss-Dweller’s wing, it spread at once. [All-Gods Consecration Flame] was like something that had found premium fuel and settled itself comfortably onto the monster’s body.

As expected.

[All-Gods Consecration Flame] could deal with them.

Thinking about it, that made sense.

When Selena had used overwhelming [All-Gods Consecration Flame] to drive back Erunes, Vanessa had been there in person.

Even the Demon Pillars feared this thing.

A mere Demon Pillar minion was nothing by comparison.

The Abyss-Dweller’s shrieking made cracks spread through the surrounding walls. The effect of [Final Mercy] ended, and the Abyss-Dweller immediately slashed at Vanessa with its other claw.

Vanessa raised her shield to block. At the cost of shifting her position slightly, she intercepted the bony spike stabbing toward her.

Such terrifying strength.

The Abyss-Dweller roared without pause, putting more and more force behind it. When its bony spike was blocked by the Radiant-Cross Holy Shield, it tried to crush Vanessa outright with pure strength.

But even for it, grinding Vanessa down through brute force alone was not something it could achieve in an instant.

For a human, Vanessa’s strength was simply too great—so great that even the Abyss-Dweller, a void creature, could not overpower her immediately.

The Abyss-Dweller could not understand it either. How could such a small, delicate-looking human possess this much strength? There was no sign of it from the outside. The only explanation it could reach was that she too carried some blessing from a god.

After seeing that [All-Gods Consecration Flame] was effective, Vanessa added more fire, increasing the output. In that instant, it flared into a small pillar of flame and punched straight through the Abyss-Dweller’s chest.

Anything touched by [All-Gods Consecration Flame] became firewood, little by little consumed by that unextinguishable fire.

At Vanessa’s current realm and mana capacity, she could already output [All-Gods Consecration Flame] at this level.

But she still could not sustain it for long.

Her essence blood and mana were being consumed at terrifying speed. Extending that flame across the Abyss-Dweller’s broad chest and arm was already her limit. She could no longer release it at any distance at all. If she spent too much essence blood, she would be in real danger.

Using [All-Gods Consecration Flame] was still far too much for her.

Even a brief, short-range release nearly emptied her mana reserves.

When she had watched Selena drive back Erunes before, it had looked simple.

But the more Vanessa’s own realm rose, the more she doubted whether she could ever wield [All-Gods Consecration Flame] as effortlessly as Selena had.

Setting aside the issue of control over the sacred flame—

she simply could not endure the cost.

Two fires had now been set on the Abyss-Dweller.

The first fire had merely ignited one of its claws.

The second, however, had punched straight through the monster’s chest and ignited all the little eyes clustered there.

Those little eyes, packed together like a crushed-open pomegranate, blinked wildly up and down, as though that alone might extinguish the sacred flame burning on them.

From another angle, though, this did mean she was finally dealing effective damage to the Abyss-Dweller.

It was no longer the earlier hopeless situation, where it had been invulnerable to blades and immune to magic, leaving her at a complete loss.

Yet even with sacred fire burning across its chest and arm, the Abyss-Dweller did not fall.

Instead, it only became more frenzied.

Because the amount of [All-Gods Consecration Flame] Vanessa had released was extremely limited, nowhere near enough to cover the Abyss-Dweller completely, the sacred fire had not fully consumed it. It could only eat away at it bit by bit.

With sacred fire burning on its chest and arm, the Abyss-Dweller seemed to conclude that as long as it killed the winged girl in front of it, those strange flames on its body would go out.

Though even now, it still could not understand why a creature like it—one that bathed in alkali fire in the Demon God Abyss—could be hurt by a human’s flame at all, let alone heavily wounded by it.

The black bony spike pressed against the holy shield, growing larger and larger in Vanessa’s field of vision.

She no longer had the strength to keep releasing [All-Gods Consecration Flame].

At her previous distance, she had only been able to burn the Abyss-Dweller’s claw. To hit its vital area, she had forced herself into close range and released the sacred flame from there.

That had exhausted her mana and consumed a great deal of her essence blood.

Now she was no longer in good condition.

Her body had weakened.

Even her strength had dropped sharply.

Vanessa braced the holy shield with both hands, protecting herself behind it. Her wings beat, trying to stall for as long as possible—stall until the Abyss-Dweller burned to death completely.

The Abyss-Dweller clearly understood her intention.

Its spindle-shaped head twisted, and it poured even more force into the struggle. Little by little, the black bony spike pushed past the holy shield.

Vanessa was already using every last bit of her strength just to resist one of the Abyss-Dweller’s claws.

But she had overlooked one thing.

One of the Abyss-Dweller’s claws had been ignited by her—

but it still had a tail.

The Abyss-Dweller’s tail, as thick and powerful as a giant whip, swept in from behind her. The air cracked around it.

[Final Mercy] was still charging and could not be used again.

And with the Abyss-Dweller’s claw pinning her down, she could not move.

The whip-like tail slammed viciously into Vanessa’s back, smashing her from the air down toward the ground.

The overwhelming force and momentum made sweetness rise in Vanessa’s throat. Blood spilled from the corner of her mouth. At the instant she was struck, the pain was so intense that her mind went blank.

She crashed heavily through the ground.

But even that severe impact injury was far less vicious than the tail strike from the Abyss-Dweller itself.

The female-style [Armor Fortress] had weak physical protection.

Vanessa nearly lost consciousness from the pain.

And the Abyss-Dweller in the air was not about to give her a moment to recover.

With one powerful beat of its wings, it plunged toward the ground like a falling meteor.

The human body was simply too fragile.

If Vanessa had not been a Blessing Angel, with bones and flesh far tougher than those of ordinary transcendent beings, that blow alone would probably already have turned her into a cloud of blood.

But even though she was not dead, Vanessa—on the verge of blacking out and losing consciousness—had no strength left to resist the monster descending from above.

‘Big Sister Vanessa, wake up!’

The holy shield had been thrown aside. Seeing the plunging Abyss-Dweller, the little angel cried out in panic, but could not rouse Vanessa’s consciousness.

“...”

Vanessa forced herself, but still could not open her eyelids. She could only watch that enormous shadow gradually cover her vision.

Torn feathers drifted through the air.

Was the journey about to reach its final curtain?

Helpless, Vanessa closed her eyes.

Within the darkness, she saw the golden-haired elf girl trapped in misery, sitting alone in that maddening hell, sobbing until she could hardly breathe.

“...”

“BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!!”

The Abyss-Dweller crashed down. It hurled up the hard-packed soil like a mad thing and smashed the ground open into a massive crater.

By all logic, it should already have dealt with the threat.

And yet, in the smoke rising not far away, a burst of cherry-colored holy radiance flashed.

The blood-covered pink-haired girl, at the very instant the Abyss-Dweller had been about to strike her, had bitten through the tip of her tongue and cast [Mind-Clearing Art], forcing herself back into a measure of lucidity and evading the monster’s mountain-crushing plunge at the absolute limit.

She had missed being smashed into pulp by less than a hair.

After dodging it, she forced her spirit upright and used the little magic she had left to cast a healing spell on herself.

Under the support of holy light, in less than a few seconds, Vanessa’s injuries recovered by most of the way.

She spread [Immaculate Holy Feathers] once more and shot out through the smoke.

Unexpectedly, the Abyss-Dweller appeared above her first, the black bony spike stabbing down at her with savage force.

In midair, caught completely off guard, Vanessa had nowhere to dodge.

And if that bony spike hit her, this would not be as simple as firing off one more burst of holy healing light on herself.

It would be instant death.

She would not even get the chance to cast a healing spell.

Seeing that her wings could not change direction in time, Vanessa noticed the rock wall directly in front of her.

In the midst of crisis, inspiration struck.

Her body, though already exhausted, burst forth with tremendous hidden potential. Moving with explosive speed, she fired [Saint King’s Baptism] at the rock wall.

Countless feathers shot out from her wings and bombarded the cliff face ahead.

Vanessa was blasted away by the aftershock of the explosion.

That attack had caught her as well, but it also let her narrowly evade the Abyss-Dweller’s bony spike.

The Abyss-Dweller had not expected Vanessa to have a move like that and released a shrill howl.

As a minion of the Lord of Delusion, to be locked in such a bitter struggle against a human was something it could not accept.

The Abyss-Dweller beat its wings and pursued the blasted-away Vanessa.

And though Vanessa’s condition was terrible now, though her strength had long since run dry, she knew that relaxing at this moment was the same as giving up.

And once she gave up, everything would be over.

At a time like this, the more desperate it became—

the more she had to surpass herself.

Surpass the limit.

Vanessa took out the ice-crystal earring and transformed it once again into the Frostfang Spear. She unleashed its strongest enchantment and hurled it at the Abyss-Dweller.

She knew full well that at her current realm, and with her current magic, she could hardly injure the Abyss-Dweller.

But now, all she could do was gamble.

As long as Frostfang could delay the Abyss-Dweller’s attack for even one second—

even half a second—

that would be enough.

I’m counting on you, Frostfang.

Go!

Full-output [Icefang’s Roar]!

Vanessa did not throw it blindly.

The place she aimed at was not anywhere else.

It was the Abyss-Dweller’s wings.

A roaring frost dragon was hurled out by Vanessa. Its wings shook the air, and the roar of the frost dragon made the temperature in the underground chamber plummet in an instant. Thick frost spread across the surface of the rock walls.

That spear.

That attack.

Again and again, it had saved her from danger.

This time, against a Demon Pillar minion—

would it still work?

Only to see the frost dragon, standing in arrogant majesty, roar as it shot forward. Claws and fangs tore toward the charging Abyss-Dweller, leaving nothing but frost and snow in its wake.