The Monster Lady and the Holy Knight - Chapter 110

Dust and debris rained down from the trembling staircase. Leon leaped inside, and just before the rubble crashed down, four knights joined forces to push the door shut. Thud!

“Sir Berg!”

Leon barely made it in. He hunched over, coughing violently. Dark red blood splattered onto the floor where he knelt.

He was reaching his limit. Anyone could see it. The crimson blood was a warning sign from a life forcibly prolonged.

Philip frowned as he strode briskly between the knights.

“Who told you to act without consulting anyone? We had been prepared well in advance. Your sacrifice was unnecessary.”

“What the hell are you talking about? You’re the one who kept sending me out to die over and over.”

Leon wiped his lips and let out a casual laugh. Philip’s eyebrow twitched.

“At least not today. You should have been more cautious.”

Leon Berg had exhausted all his miracles. His once-immense holy power, a blessing from birth, was gone. The Kreuz necklace that had saved him was no longer with him. Knowing this well, he had thrown himself into battle as if he had a death wish, as if he had lost all reason to live.

Philip clutched his throbbing head, sighing. “Is this reckless behavior because of that woman?”

Leon didn’t respond. However, the moment Veronica’s name was mentioned, his faint smile disappeared. Philip fell silent before changing his question.

“Would you feel better if I told you I forced her to leave?”

“No.”

This time, Leon’s denial was resolute. He slowly stood up. Running a hand through his disheveled hair, he brushed off the dust and muttered, “It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. Everything related to her—even my impulsive steps.”

His voice was quiet, chillingly so. Philip, failing to comprehend, instinctively stiffened when he met Leon’s gaze. Beneath the disheveled strands of hair falling over his forehead, his gleaming eyes brimmed with an obsession bordering on madness.

Not your fault. Mine.

Was that what he meant?

Leon clearly wished to claim even the guilt and responsibility for himself. No one else, not a single soul, was allowed to influence her. It was more than jealousy—it was obsession.

He’s lost his mind.

Philip furrowed his brows at the shattered look on Leon’s face. He had seemed fine, cracking jokes even in battle. But perhaps that had been the clearest sign of his insanity.

“You can die all you want, but she won’t come back.”

Philip finally spoke, laced with quiet pity. Without answering, Leon turned away, as if to end the conversation. His breath remained labored, blood still trickling from his lips.

Had he not been born as the Son of God, he might have been happier. That such a man possessed the greatest holy power in the church’s history was nothing short of a tragedy.

***

Leon walked deep into the underground catacombs and settled down. After ensuring he was alone, he leaned his head against an apostle’s sarcophagus.

The moment he closed his eyes, exhaustion crashed over him. After battles, it was normal for his pupils to dilate from the lingering adrenaline and for his head to grow heavy. Today, however, a single question haunted his mind.

Why?

Why did you leave me?

In his frenzy to search for her and fight, he had pushed aside the question. But now it tormented him.

Leon pondered, then scoffed at himself. There were far too many past sins dragging him down.

Even when she didn’t want to, he had forcibly dragged Veronica away from her hometown. He had been kind to her just to manipulate her emotions. Selling her to the church hadn’t been enough—he had let her become a spectacle for the imperial court. He had trampled her already wounded heart. He had hurt her when she was at her weakest, withheld the truth from her, and repeatedly committed selfish, despicable acts, only to shamelessly apologize afterward.

Wasn’t she bound to grow sick of him?

Truthfully, what she had done to him was nothing less than repaying him in kind. She had feigned affection while never truly loving him. She had lied, promising to stay by his side. She had left without revealing the truth, abandoning him in darkness.

A loneliness that gnawed at his very bones suffocated him. The abyss clenched around his throat. Leon clutched his head, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

“The human heart, you see, is different from that of God. It changes so easily. That’s why the one who loves must struggle not to be abandoned.”

From the depths of distant memories, his mother’s gentle voice seeped into his weakened heart.

“Uncertainty… that is the only belief I hold about the human heart.”

He remembered. When she hummed hymns, a scorching pain would crawl over his eyelids. When he cried, she cried with him, embracing him as if her heart were torn apart, whispering that she loved him through her tears. And he would confess the same in return, over and over, like a madman.

His deep distrust of humans had begun with his mother. The day she abandoned the son she claimed to love, Leon understood.

The human heart changes. Only God is eternal.

The moment he felt hot blood trickling down his face, Leon realized something.

At some point, his dagger had plunged into the area near his right eye.

Lowering his hand, he opened his eyes. Despite the amount of blood, his vision remained intact—it hadn’t gone deep enough.

He thought it was a habit he had lost.

Staring blankly at the dagger in his right hand, he ran his fingers over his empty left palm. Something surfaced in his mind. As if chasing that thought, he drove the dagger down. Blood splattered across his face, distorting the smooth curve of his eye. He pulled it out again. Just as he was about to drive it back in, a sharp intake of breath sounded nearby.

Leon turned his expressionless face and met Joachim’s wide, shocked eyes. The dried ham, which the boy had clearly intended to hand over, rolled on the floor. Their eyes met, and the boy, stumbling backward, awkwardly lowered his head in greeting.

Leon thought to himself that this was troublesome.

Indeed, it didn’t take long before the frightened boy ran off to fetch Philip. Standing beside the apostle’s sarcophagus, Philip muttered with a weary expression the moment he saw Leon.

“I hope this is a protest against wielding a sword. Please don’t tell me it’s mere self-harm.”

“Self-harm?”

Leon frowned and repeated the words. His strange gaze fell upon his bloodied hand. He hadn’t thought of it as self-harm. It was just that the wound Veronica used to press tightly had suddenly come to mind. That habit had developed after she was left behind in the black corridor.

Veronica was his god. So this was closer to the way a devout monk flogged himself to reaffirm his faith.

“Is this because of betrayal? Are you angry that she left with another knight? If it’s because of that woman, this foolish act—”

Philip, who had been speaking, abruptly fell silent. It wasn’t just because of Leon’s silence. Philip was a man who could talk endlessly even to himself. But the cold sensation at his throat was harder to ignore.

Lowering his gaze, he found himself staring at Leon’s sword. The lion emblem engraved on the blade proved that it was Apocalypse.

“Where did she say she was going?”

Leon asked quietly. His voice was so low and devoid of emotion that it barely registered as human. Philip remained composed despite the abrupt question.

“Well, I don’t know. I imagine there’s nowhere to go but the wilderness once you leave Kart.”

“Cut the nonsense. Would the church send one of its knights to accompany someone heading to the wilderness?”

A person imbued with holy power couldn’t survive long in that land. Which meant Veronica must have gone somewhere else. Realizing the flaw in his logic, Philip clicked his tongue and unfolded his arms.

“If it’s any consolation, I doubt she left willingly. How many people in this world would joyfully embrace sacrifice?”

“What?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t understand. She left to find ‘it.’”

A cold silence fell. Leon froze, motionless like a taxidermied figure. His wide, vacant pupils didn’t even blink.

The human heart changes. But she was his god.

“Why do you look like that? Shouldn’t you be happy to have your love proven? If I had to guess, I’d say the person she most wanted to save was you.”

“Shut up.”

Leon spat the words out like a curse. His chest ached as if all the oxygen had been drained from his lungs. His stomach churned violently.

Veronica had left to find ‘it.’ Of course, that was the kind of person she was.

Pathetically, somewhere deep inside him, he had harbored hope that she would return. And if she did, he had resolved to cling to her, to beg to stay by her side. If her anger hadn’t subsided, he would have pleaded for her to kill him with her own hands.

That meaningless resolution had crumbled before it could even take shape.

Veronica would never return. She had set out from the very beginning with the intention of dying.

If she had run away to save herself, he could have accepted it, no matter how painful. But knowing the reason she had left, he felt like his mind was being devoured from the edges.

The woman who had told him not to carry all the burdens of sin had taken the sins of the world upon herself and vanished beneath the waves. Even if she had smiled outwardly, inside, she must have been crying. He had been blind to the festering wounds right in front of him. He had failed to notice.

The pain crushed his heart, and Leon’s eyes twisted with anguish.

Strangely, when he thought of her now, the first thing that came to mind was her tear-streaked face. Her black hair fluttering in the snowy plains. Her pale, slender neck. The brilliant red eyes looking up at him. The thin garments clinging to her frame, revealing every curve.

Whenever he pictured it all, a raw, primal desire surged within him. But he could never pinpoint its true nature, and soon he would even forget that he had felt anything at all.

The sharp tip of his sword slowly lowered. Leon stared blankly at his own trembling hand. Seeing the way the sword quivered, Philip assumed it was a sign that Leon’s holy power was finally depleting.

But Leon thought differently.

His hand wasn’t moving of its own will.

The sword was moving on its own.

Releasing his grip, he set Apocalypse down on the ground. With a sharp scrape, the sword twitched and came to a stop, pointing in a single direction.

At the end of the blade was an ordinary stone wall deep within the catacombs.

Philip shot him a questioning look, but Leon, ignoring him, stood up and ran his bloodstained hand across the wall. His fingers left a red trail until, at one point, they halted abruptly.

In that instant, the wall slid backward, revealing a pitch-black passageway beyond.