Chapter 3. The Villainess’s Ally

Ella turned her hand over and examined it. Still tingling, stained with blood.

She curled her trembling fingertips into a fist and murmured.

“That definitely wasn’t holy power.”

Holy power, no matter how excessively discharged, never produced a phenomenon like this. Even looking back at Marian’s final moments confirmed that.

It might have been a temporary thing if there was still malevolent energy left from incomplete purification.

But even if that were the case……

‘I don’t have holy power strong enough for that.’

She barely had enough for healing herself. Her power had always been that faint.

And yet what she had just experienced was incomparably more intense than anything before.

The feeling of a solid wall inside her, something that had been blocking her, shattering.

“What on earth……”

Her eyes trembled faintly with bewilderment. Faced with a confusion she had never encountered before, Ella felt as though the path ahead had gone dark.

“……For now, I need to get out.”

Her reason, which had been motionless for several minutes, came back.

She removed the blood-soaked saintess’s robes and wiped her face clean with the holy water set out beneath the statue.

“I need to find someone too.”

Getting toho leaves was one purpose, but Ella had also planned to look for a guild today that could assist with her work, just in case.

‘In the Empire, the Miransel Guild, the Seirmi Guild, and the Deloa Guild are considered the finest. Those three can handle anything and deal in everything, you might say.’

Based on what Marquis Harsen had told her before, she intended to look into the three major guilds, starting with the Deloa Guild.

Ella felt around beneath the chief god’s statue and pulled out a men’s tunic, trousers, and a hooded cape.

“I need to move quickly.”

She began her disguise in a hurry.

Right after the chapel was completed, Ella had hidden various items she would need for her excursions. Clothes and shoes, and a wig as well.

The items she had obtained with difficulty, along with self-defense tools she had brought just in case, were tucked inside a vase holding artificial flowers.

Ella had already taken on the appearance of a slightly built young man.

She tucked all of her platinum hair under the black wig and walked toward the vase beside the statue.

“I hope I never have to use these……”

Ella pocketed the paralysis powder and a small dagger, then her gaze landed on the shattered marking.

More precisely, on the empty space beneath it.

“Shall I go, then?”

The hidden secret of the chapel at Lake Wellea had just been revealed.

***

Descending into the dark space, the lights came on by themselves. Under the dim glow, the shape of an underground tunnel was revealed.

“Hmm, so this is what it looks like.”

Narrow rails ran along the stone floor, and on them sat a small cart just large enough for one person.

The thick layer of dust told the story of years gone by.

“Marian used this on her third excursion too……”

Ella climbed in and pulled the mana stone handle.

The cart began to move slowly forward. It picked up speed in an instant.

Ella pressed the black wig down firmly so it wouldn’t fly off and stared ahead.

‘How strange……’

Mana stone-powered devices beneath a chapel like this.

The Bailia Grand Temple had never been fond of even mana stone lighting.

They had brought it into most spaces under pressure from the faithful, but the central chapel still used nothing but candle lighting.

Looking at the cart running on mana stones as fuel, Ella let out a quiet, contemptuous laugh.

“Sucking out the sweet parts while hiding something this underhanded in the back. Truly laughable.”

Digging a secret passage like this too.

Ella’s lips twisted.

She rode the cart for half an hour before it gradually slowed and came to a dead end.

The cart stopped completely, and Ella approached the firmly shut iron door before her.

The door was covered in dense inscriptions of the ‘Prayer of Blessing’ alongside illustrations of four sacred objects. It was a marking drawn in hope that the chief god’s blessing would rest upon whoever passed through.

A door that had opened easily with Marian’s holy power. But that was a power Ella didn’t have.

Her gaze dropped to her own hands.

Recalling the tremendous pain she had experienced in the chapel moments ago made her fingertips tremble again.

Along with the unknown force that had burst from within her.

“Will it…… work again?”

Ella cautiously extended her arm and placed her hand over the prayer inscription.

When she focused on her fingertips, a very faint blue light began to gather.

Something was different.

She could feel it instinctively.

A strange, subtle sensation unlike the faint holy power she had known before flowed through her entire body.

‘Hm……?’

Ella’s eyes went wide. The color of the light seeping from her fingertips was slowly shifting to a blue-violet.

And in that moment,

Creak.

With an eerie sound, a gap opened in the firmly shut iron door.

Startled, Ella stumbled back. The blue-violet light that had wrapped around her hand vanished at the same time.

“……”

Ella turned her hand over and examined it, then bit her lip.

‘……This is definitely different from holy power.’

The days were already busy enough just dealing with what was in front of her. What on earth was happening to her body.

Her heart beat irregularly with unease.

After a long moment of blankness, Ella blinked twice. Her gaze moved to the warped door.

The iron door with its gap forced open looked as though ogres had pried it apart with their bare hands.

“……Focus on what needs to be done today first.”

She would think about this problem afterward.

With her resolve set, Ella stepped through the gap in the door. She climbed the underground stairs of the building and emerged into a ruined space.

“What a mess.”

Broken altar pieces, worn furnishings, old dust, the carcasses of birds, and filth filled the place.

“A chapel, they say…… fits Solea perfectly.”

Ella laughed quietly.

If the saintess‘s room in the Grand Temple was connected to the Hooly Forest, this place was connected to an abandoned makeshift chapel building.

It wasn’t far from Parem, the capital. It was especially close to Hazet Street.

Marian had come to this street after her miscarriage to help the abandoned children there and piece herself back together.

Marian, who had no political power whatsoever, probably had no other way to help them.

The place called the darkness of the capital.

Even the Emperor deliberately left Hazet Street to fend for itself.

A greedy emperor would never give up the profit he extracted from it.

‘The guilds run by the merchant houses should be there.’

Ella pulled her hood up and quickened her pace.

***

Haven stepped onto Hazet Street, having received Meivia’s message.

The street was dark, nothing but the light leaking from taverns.

Drug addicts collapsed in various spots and the shouts of brawlers reached his ears, but Haven walked forward looking only ahead.

His black cape swayed with each step.

“I’ll hear what she has to say and leave immediately……”

For the sake of his promise to Ella.

His senses were still in turmoil, but the red that had been in his eyes had returned to their original violet.

The message had come through the communication device Meivia had given him that morning.

‘I found it. Which tribal family your mother belonged to.’

Three days since Haven had given her the order.

If she had found the cause, there would surely be a way to suppress these symptoms as well.

‘Meivia would have found that too.’

Haven’s steps quickened with a mix of anticipation and unease.

He was just heading toward the back door of Meivia’s general goods store when his steps faltered.

His eyes suddenly came alive.

“Ella?”

This was unmistakably Ella’s scent.

A scent only Haven could recognize, one that had been etched into every cell of him since that night.

On top of that, the scent drifting through the air was growing stronger.

‘It’s Ella’s scent!’

His heart hammered as though it would burst from his chest. The faint trembling in his eyes began to fill with red again.

Haven ran after that sweet scent without hesitation. As though Ella were pulling an invisible leash……

It was beyond his control.

***

At that same moment, Ella was passing near the guild building run by the Deloa Guild.

The three major guilds of the Empire that Marquis Harsen had mentioned.

Ella had decided to visit the Deloa Guild first.

She was also curious about Deloa, which commanded the highest trust despite having the least information available about its master.

“Is this the place?”

Ella recalled Marquis Harsen’s words and looked over the gray building.

‘The Deloa Guild has a distinctive emblem, just like its name. It looks like the moon is smiling.’

The smiling moon.

The Deloa Guild’s symbol, a crescent moon lying on its side, did look like a smiling mouth at a glance.

The entrance was nothing but a crescent moon model lying on its side, glowing red, with no other markings.

It even gave off a slightly eerie feeling.