Chapter 3
Saintess Rescue Operation (1)
Early dawn, a small port near the capital.
As dawn threatened to break, a chilling dawn light seeped into the maze-like alleys.
This was the small port where they had come to pick up the Saintess on that fateful day.
Lucia, cloaked in a black infiltration robe, stood in the narrow alley, scanning her surroundings.
'…Surely, it must be one of these.'
Back then, she had come here without suspicion, solely focused on completing her mission.
But looking at it again now, a place filled only with warehouses like this was likely a dark market where smugglers stored and traded contraband, based on her experience.
Looking at these warehouses filled with personal greed, she felt dizzy at the thought of searching for a child.
However, she shook her head as if trying to regain her senses.
No matter how she thought about it, searching the warehouses now was much better than guarding the child after she became a Saintess candidate.
Concealing her presence, she surveyed the warehouse grounds.
Then,
'Disgusting. It's so bad, I could believe it's the decaying carcass of an animal.'
She approached the most dilapidated warehouse, one that looked like it had been here the longest, and a rotten stench assaulted her nose.
'It can't be here. There's no way someone could be in a place like this…'
Contrary to her thoughts, Lucia's feet strangely wouldn't move.
Moreover, the warehouse's lock was as new and sturdy as if it were guarding something precious.
'An expensive lock on this rotten warehouse…'
Lucia touched the lock.
As expected, not a speck of dust clung to her white gloves.
It couldn't be this well-maintained if it wasn't handled daily.
The thick iron lock was firmly secured as if no one could open it, but she was already an accomplished master.
The Aura Blade generated from Lucia's hand silently sliced through the lock like pudding.
Then, she pushed the door open.
There was no sign of life, but the stench of filth and other foul odors was even stronger than before she opened the door, causing her to frown involuntarily.
'…Worse than a battlefield.'
That meant,
It wasn't a place where anything living could be, let alone the Saintess.
As she turned to open the door again to leave,
Suddenly, a chilling sound echoed, and Lucia quickly closed the door again.
Was it an alarm?
Concealing her presence as much as possible, the sound soon subsided.
Fortunately, no one seemed to be coming to investigate, so Lucia quietly lit the lantern she had brought.
"…!"
Colorful, rare feathers and an exotic, flamboyant appearance.
Birds of noble appearance that nobles obsessed with vanity would go crazy for.
Wild birds she had never seen before were trapped in cages, filling the dilapidated warehouse.
'The secretions and waste are the cause. I shouldn't have underestimated this small port.'
The value of the illegal trade of the birds here was undoubtedly unimaginably high.
Lucia slowly examined the warehouse.
Fortunately, the rare birds were relatively quiet even when making eye contact, as if they weren't seeing humans for the first time.
'Are there only birds? Where…'
Lucia placed the lantern on the floor and took off the hood she was wearing.
Then, she concentrated and deployed Spatial Synchronization.
Spatial Synchronization was one of the Grand Sword Master's techniques, synchronizing a certain space with one's body to examine it thoroughly.
As she closed her eyes and concentrated, her sensitive senses minutely scanned the warehouse.
And then, she detected the irregular beating of a small heart.
This was not the steady beating of the birds, who were suppressing their presence.
Lucia withdrew the technique and approached the location.
An anxious and extremely nervous feeling.
The faint breathing that accompanied it was enough to make even the bold Lucia tense.
"…"
A child huddled small, clutching a tattered cloth on top of a pile of feathers.
The reason she thought it was a person was because of the black hair that spilled out from between the worn-out rags.
The first proof of the Saintess: black hair the same color as Lucia's.
The second proof of the Saintess: a young age of about 5 years old, barely out of infancy.
And if the third proof, Divine Power, appeared, this small child was definitely the Saintess.
But before she could confirm that, Lucia saw the child's hand peeking out from the rags.
A small, tiny white hand.
It was the same as that day, that image she had tried to forget for half her life.
'It's you.'
What an irony that the Saintess sent by God existed in such a filthy place.
"…Ah."
Just as she was about to say something to the Saintess she had finally found, the child flinched in surprise at the sound.
And Lucia was at a loss for words.
'…Have I ever spoken to a child? No, can a child this age even speak?'
She had no idea.
Lucia had never attended the wedding of a beloved colleague's daughter, nor the birth of a hard-won granddaughter.
And even the last young maid she had lived with was already too old to be called a child.
In other words, there was no connection in her life that would involve a child.
She had rushed to save the Saintess, but she had no knowledge of how to treat a child.
Lucia, her thoughts frozen, stopped and stared silently at the child.
Dirty, tattered rags.
Hair matted with feathers soiled with filth.
The child trembled all over, whether from cold or fear, it was hard to tell.
The pitiful appearance of the child was so miserable that she thought they deserved to resent God more than anyone else born into the world.
Lucia looked at the lantern in her hand.
The only light in this place.
When the lantern was placed in front of her, the child was startled and burrowed further into the corner.
Lucia suddenly remembered the child she had picked up on the battlefield when she was seventeen.
The situation was similar, but even that child was older than the Saintess.
'Heath… He must be around 18 now.'
The whimsical fellow who had become her member with his innate talent flashed through her mind.
As she sat silently in front of the child, lost in thought, there was a rustling sound.
Perhaps because Lucia had been simply watching for too long, the hidden child was slightly lowering the cloth covering them to assess the situation.
And finally, one clear eye, hidden by long hair, met hers.
"…Mom?"
Lucia froze.
The clear golden eyes in her memory and the last words that child had said before letting go of her hand flashed through her mind.
*
Year 4 of the New Imperial Calendar.
Gerach region, an orphanage in a small rural village.
Late at night, all the lights were off.
Moonlight streamed through the old windows, illuminating the bunk beds that filled the room.
And from somewhere on the edge of those beds came a small moan.
The sound came from the lower bunk of a bed where a small girl with rare black hair had beads of sweat on her round forehead as if she was having a nightmare.
-Creak
It was the sound from the upper bunk of the bed where the black-haired child was lying.
The rickety bed shook slightly, and a girl who looked about 10 years old skillfully climbed down and approached the small child.
"Annie, wake up. Annie."
The girl, who looked quite neat for someone raised in an orphanage, whispered in the ear of the child having a nightmare and carefully woke her up.
"…Hng, hng!"
"Shhh."
"…O, Onni."
"Yes. Yes, it's Mia Onni. Did you have another nightmare?"
The child who had been sweating woke up with a start, but the girl named Mia patted the child as if she was used to it.
"…"
Although she was still a child and couldn't pronounce it properly, Annie knew the word nightmare.
But she couldn't answer because she didn't know if it was a good dream or a bad dream.
That dream was about her mother coming to find her in a fancy carriage.
Like a nightmare, but the happiest dream.
"Here."
Mia held out her hand.
The reason why the girl naturally reached out her hand was because of the child's habit of desperately holding her small hand whenever she had a dream.
Mia, who had wandered through many orphanages, had met many children with this habit.
From what she had observed, it was one of the habits that arose when parents abandoned their children here, the last thing they lost was the warmth of their mother's hand.
But strangely enough, Annie was abandoned from birth and had lived here her whole life.
"…Scolding."
Annie said to Mia, who was lying next to her, as if worried.
In the orphanage, there was a rule that each person had to use a different bed, even in such a narrow and dilapidated place.
It was a cruel rule, but it was to prevent the children who would one day leave the orphanage from becoming too attached to each other.
"Don't worry. I'll go back to my bed when you fall asleep again."
"…Uung."
The child nodded weakly as if exhausted.
"Annie, was work that hard today?"
Mia quietly spoke to Annie, who seemed to be having trouble falling asleep again, as she felt Annie fidgeting while holding her hand.
"…That vile trash of a director. To fill the empty spot with a child like you while I'm being adopted by the Baroness."
Mia's harsh words seemed to be out of guilt because Annie had to take her place because she was being adopted tomorrow.
"I'll come back for you someday when I'm successful. I'll work hard so it won't take long, so just hang in there until then. We'll definitely meet again."
Annie only nodded her head at Mia's vow mixed with guilt and anger.
"And I told you, right? When those arrogant village kids bully you, throw that shovel at the kids who are wielding it. Got it? They're really nothing."
'Dirty Annie! Smelly Annie!'
At Mia's words, the sound of the village children teasing her echoed vividly in her head, and Annie squeezed her eyes shut.
The orphanage in this small village had reduced the sponsorship of Baron Gerach, so they made the children do chores for the village.
It was a job that even adults avoided because it was dirty, cleaning the village's public latrines, but it was the best job to entrust to the pitiful children who had lost their parents, even though it was harsh.
The children of the village, who had parents like those adults, were just like their parents and always went there to bully the children of the orphanage.
"Ugh. There's no way you'd do it properly with your kind personality. Go to sleep."
Mia pretended to close her eyes and sleep as if to show her.
As Annie closed her eyes while holding her hand, Mia, who had been harshly cursing, opened her eyes again with a worried look and looked at the child.
Annie knew that Mia was worried about her even with her eyes closed.
But Annie was lonely because she knew that there would be no one to hold her empty hand anymore, rather than the things Mia was worried about.
But Annie believed.
She believed in the words that Mia, the smartest person she knew, had once said, that dreams are the opposite.
Even though she had lost her mother's hand several times in her dreams, she believed that one day when she appeared in front of her, she would hold her hand tightly and be with her.
So, even though she was always sad because of her regret, this was not a nightmare.
