The Monster Lady and the Holy Knight - Chapter 106

Sweat beaded on her forehead. The number of Bahamut surrounding them was growing. By the time they reached the desolate outskirts, red eyes filled the darkness on all sides. She was honestly relieved she hadn’t brought Nightstar with her. Humans were selfish even in such small ways. Veronica felt a faint disgust toward herself.

That was when one of the Bahamut trailing closely behind grabbed the horse’s tail. The poor creature nearly went into convulsions, thrashing wildly, and both riders were violently thrown to the ground. If Oscar hadn’t instinctively grabbed her and rolled with the fall, she might have been seriously injured.

As her vision spun, Veronica smelled blood and earth.

“Oscar!”

The moment they stopped, she screamed his name. The force rippling outward like a shockwave burst the approaching Bahamut’s heads and innards. Overexerting her power, Veronica crawled toward Oscar, blood trickling from her nose.

Oscar, his chest rising and falling heavily, muttered the moment he saw her, “Leave me behind.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“If I weren’t here, they wouldn’t be chasing us.”

That was probably true. The Bahamut saw Veronica as one of their own. But…

“Don’t say something so absurd. What kind of person abandons a friend to save themselves?” Veronica shook her head furiously.

Oscar’s temple throbbed as he looked up at her. His green eyes, like a rain-soaked forest, shimmered with sorrow. Veronica felt anger toward Oscar, who acted as if he bore some kind of knightly duty.

Sacrifice—one fool doing such a thing was already enough.

“Then what kind of person kills their friend’s father?”

Oscar spat out the words with venom. The light drained from Veronica’s eyes as he turned his head away from her.

“We are not friends. We never were from the beginning. You are nothing more than the mistake Sir Berg made—nothing more, nothing less.”

“……”

“You corrupted the knight I respected, you spoke an ominous prophecy, and now you’ve even killed my father.”

Each word struck like an arrow to her heart, setting it ablaze. Veronica clenched the soil beneath her fingers, her nails raking through the damp earth.

“…Then why are you trying to die for someone like me?”

“Because you were chosen by God. Even if no one else knows, my soul, which heard the prophecy, understands.”

Oscar closed his eyes.

It wasn’t because of pain. He was trying to hide himself. Making eye contact meant exposing oneself, laying one’s heart bare like an open book. Oscar did not want to reveal his true thoughts.

Veronica, watching his stubborn expression, trembled with a surge of emotion—an unbearable mixture of rage and sorrow. She didn’t know what to call it.

“Don’t do this…”

She desperately denied his words.

“Don’t say we were never friends. You sincerely apologized to me. Those evenings I spent with you and Hannah were precious to me. More than anything, it was not Leon but you two who gave me the will to keep living back then.”

Tears streamed down her face. The Bahamut corpses around them turned the landscape into a wasteland. They were adrift in a sea of blood. A thin trickle of blood escaped from Veronica’s lips as well due to her excessive exertion.

“Don’t die. Please. His Holiness… never intended for this to happen. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

She bowed her head, whispering frenzied apologies—not just to Oscar but to the dead Pope, to Benjamin, to the brigands of the wilderness. Even if they had sinned, she had never believed they deserved death.

A single tear slid down Oscar’s cheek as he lay with his eyes closed. His lips trembled as if about to speak. But before he could, his body was suddenly dragged away.

Veronica gasped, unable to react in time, her mouth opening in shock. She watched, stunned, as Oscar was pulled backward, his body scraping along the ground. A Bahamut lurking nearby had grabbed his ankle and flung him into the center of the horde.

No. No. No!

She tried to stop it, but the atmosphere wouldn’t bend to her will. As the scene warped before her, nausea overwhelmed her, and she collapsed, retching. She had pushed herself too far. But Oscar—

Like a swarm of ants, the Bahamut descended upon their helpless prey and began to tear him apart. The grotesque sight left Veronica weak and unable to move.

Whenever she struggled to stand, another Bahamut would shove past her, knocking her down. Hitting the ground hard, she trembled uncontrollably and screamed.

“Please… stop. Let him go! Let him go!”

She cried out in despair, but her godless voice carried no weight with them. They had devoured even horses. To them, a human’s scream was nothing more than an insignificant obstacle.

In the blink of an eye, he was gone, leaving no trace behind.

***

The sounds faded. Within the sinking darkness, Oscar recalled the past. The first memory that surfaced was hiding behind a monastery pillar, secretly watching the ordination ceremony. A red-haired man clad in white armor knelt before the Pope.

Leon Berg. Back then, he was Oscar’s idol. No, to put it more accurately, he was the pride of all the Bergs.

A child born without God’s blessing had been acknowledged as the Son of God—an event that profoundly influenced public perception. Even the lonely boy buried in the monastery like a ghost found himself momentarily under the spotlight.

“Hey, they say Bergs are born with more holy power. Is that true?”

Before the noble boys who asked such questions, Oscar had shrunk back, ashamed of the grand title “God’s Spear” bestowed upon him. The man who stood proudly in white armor, wielding the holy sword, was the embodiment of his dream.

“A goal? Me?”

At eighteen, he had the honor of facing him. The knight Oscar served under at the time was Louis, a viscount’s son and an acquaintance of Leon. He still vividly remembered Louis slinging an arm around his shoulders, cheerfully remarking, This kid has set his sights on the deputy commander.

Leon, holding a drink, had given the nervous Oscar an amused look. But Oscar could no longer remember what Leon had said. The only thing he recalled was Heinz Kraus, laughing boisterously at his side.

“Hey, think carefully. A deputy commander’s life isn’t something I’d recommend. If you blindly follow along, don’t blame anyone when you hit a dead end.”

Looking back, perhaps that had been God’s warning, spoken through a man’s voice. That following Leon’s path would only lead to hardship.

“Tonight, I will pray in your defense instead.”

At eighteen, Oscar met Leon. At twenty-three, he met Veronica. A woman who wasn’t even human had spoken the words he most longed to hear.

“How about I say that today, you were the most like a son of God among all the knights I’ve met?”

It wasn’t love. It was too faint to be called love—closer to admiration. If love was a raging storm, then his feelings were nothing more than a light drizzle.

Even in his lack, he had unconsciously followed in Leon’s footsteps. And that, in itself, was a tragedy. One who chases another’s path can never walk ahead.

Oscar, ever obedient to God and the Pope, had always maintained a level of caution toward Veronica. She was a Bahamut, and he did not know how to betray the Pope. He owed an unpayable debt to the father who had taken him in late in life. Even in war, he had obeyed the unreasonable command to remain within the Holy See without question. For reasons unknown, the Pope had always been particularly fond of him, despite his humble origins.

Those were days of gratitude and torment. Every time news arrived of holy knights dying in battle, he plugged his ears in self-loathing. The boy who had grown up in the shadows of the monastery had never escaped them even as an adult. Sometimes, he resented the father who kept him bound. But then, wracked with guilt, he would pray for repentance.

Each cycle of repentance only deepened his devotion, his self-loathing, and the vicious cycle continued. In the end, lost and confused, Oscar pleaded to God, desperate for direction.

He had prayed for the right path, for guidance according to His will.

Immediately after that prayer, he had encountered Veronica on the staircase. She had fled at the mere sight of him, looking deranged. And when he finally reached the Pope’s office, he understood why.

The Pope lay there with an axe buried in his head. In the corner, a group of executioners, too small for their bulky forms, were trembling in fear.

He understood the situation from the details given. It was a simple matter.

Veronica had killed the Pope.

But why?

The sheer shock made his mind eerily calm. His gaze followed the Pope’s vacant eyes to a book on the desk.

The History of Kart

It felt like being struck over the head.

Oscar read the first page and immediately recognized it as the answer to his prayers.

He killed the executioners and set fire to the three corpses. With a broken voice, he recited the consecration prayer. It was agonizing, yet as he walked out of the Holy See, he felt no regret. For the first time in his life, he had made a decision independent of Leon’s shadow or the Pope’s influence.

Oscar had finally become his own person.

He had become God’s Spear and upheld his faith.

That was enough.

The fact that he had been dragged away by the Bahamut before uttering his final words—perhaps that was God’s mercy.

He had almost spoken the sin in his heart.

She was the one who killed his father.

It was an emotion that had never blossomed into love, a bud that had withered before it could bloom.

Within God’s grace, Oscar lay dying. The final scene of his fleeting life flashed before his eyes—an evening in a cozy home. There was a man with a limp, a woman heavy with child, and another, so pale he felt the urge to shield her.

They all laughed together.

It was warm.