In the game, Maple Creek Town was the first major turning point of the case.
After dealing with the living corpses in town, the protagonist party would discover letters hidden in the town church detailing the Snake Cult's plans and contacts.
Although all the contacts were referred to by codenames, the protagonist party was still able to decipher the identity behind each alias using various clues and capture every last one of them.
Among all those codenames, the original Roseliel was naturally included.
Moreover, perhaps because Roseliel was already dead and the Rosenwal family was about to fade into the background, the dev team had given Roseliel an extraordinarily crude codename.
Rose.
How was this codename any different from just giving out her actual ID number?
Roseliel, Rosenwal—they were all words related to roses.
Roseliel was convinced that as long as Lucia wasn't stupid, the moment she saw it would be the day Roseliel died.
That was precisely why she had proposed the plan to burn down the town.
Under such a towering blaze, it was virtually impossible for any letters to survive.
And Roseliel was here to add one more layer of insurance.
Most of the living corpses in town had been lured away, and any left behind had been turned to ash in the intense fire—this was the best possible moment to double-check!
She draped herself in a gray cloak picked up from a roadside hunter's cabin, pulled the hood low over most of her face, and walked toward the town.
Inside the windmill.
Lucia exhaled a long breath, her shirt already soaked through with sweat.
She had never exerted her holy power with such delicate precision before.
Beside her, Amy thoughtfully handed over a wet towel, her voice trembling slightly. "Lady Saintess, my sister..."
"The curse inside her body has been mostly purified." Lucia stood up, stretching her aching back.
Before Amy's smile could even bloom, it was interrupted by Lucia's next words.
"However, she had already undergone partial corpseification. Purifying the curse is a heavy shock to the body itself. For a long time to come, she'll likely suffer from aftereffects."
"What kind of aftereffects?" Amy asked hurriedly.
"Physical weakness, inability to move normally, and occasional mental confusion," Lucia added.
Amy's lips twitched slightly before she offered a bitter smile. "...Just being able to survive is already wonderful."
Then she looked back at the Saintess and bowed deeply to her.
"Amy will never forget your kindness in this lifetime, and I will surely repay you one day!"
Lucia did not decline, accepting her gratitude candidly.
She helped Amy back up. "Take your sister and live a good life; that is the best repayment you could give me."
Just then, someone tugged at the corner of her clothes.
Lucia looked down. Mona was staring up at her, an undisguisable urgency in her voice. "Master isn't back yet. Let's go find her."
Roseliel...
At the thought of that person, Lucia's newly relaxed brows knit together once again.
That's right, she still hadn't returned.
By now, the stars in the sky had receded, and dawn had arrived.
After an entire night, she still hadn't come back.
In Lucia's mind, there were currently three possibilities for Roseliel:
The best scenario: she returned safe and sound, proving her innocence;
The neutral scenario: she had died at the hands of the living corpses;
The worst scenario: the whole thing had been her setup from start to finish, and she had already taken the opportunity to flee.
"Let's wait a little longer," Lucia said, shaking her head.
"Why?!" Mona's voice shot up, laced with a faint tremor.
"We don't know where to look for her," Lucia said calmly. "We have no means of locating her."
Mona lowered her head, her hand clutching her hem tightening and loosening over and over.
Lucia had originally prepared several more reasons, but she hadn't expected the first one to shut Mona down so completely.
"It's all your fault..." Mona muttered softly.
"What?"
"I... I originally placed several curses on Master! Just so I could know where she was at all times, but your redundant blessing wiped my curses away! It's all your fault!"
Mona's outburst left Lucia utterly stunned.
It took Lucia quite a while to process what she meant.
This girl had actually been secretly tracking Roseliel's location the whole time?!
Lucia couldn't help but feel a sudden chill down her spine on Roseliel's behalf.
This affection was frankly a bit too...
Lucia gave an awkward laugh. "Uh, strictly speaking, that doesn't sound very appropriate..."
"It's all your fault!" Mona had no intention of listening to her explanation.
Lucia tactfully kept her mouth shut.
If this little girl tries to go out and look for Roseliel on her own, I'll just knock her out.
Lucia thought to herself.
In truth, she hadn't told Mona the entire truth; she wasn't completely incapable of sensing Roseliel's location.
Just as she could sense the prayer on Roseliel, she could likewise sense the talisman she had given her.
And this raised a new question.
Why had the blessing she placed on her vanished so quickly, while the talisman remained present until it moved beyond her range of perception?
Where on earth had Roseliel gone?
Stronghold, living corpses, insider...
The tangled threads of clues crossed in her mind like a matted ball of yarn, impossible to unravel.
Lucia walked over to the window, her gaze landing on Maple Creek Town, which had already been reduced to ruins.
"Holy crap, was it kept in a basement all along?"
Amidst the ruins, Roseliel was immensely thankful for her own extreme caution.
Relying on the layout she had memorized when she first arrived in town, she quickly located the church.
After rummaging through the ruins for quite a while—among ash heaps, under rubble, beside charred wooden beams—she found nothing.
Just when she thought everything was clear, as she turned near a corner of the wall, a hollow echo suddenly resounded from beneath her feet.
She knocked on the ground. It was hollow underneath—the church actually had a basement!
She remembered now. In the game, these letters were looted from a Snake Cult priest who had come to retrieve the evidence after he was killed.
Now, because of Mona, she had bypassed the step of deciphering the prophecy and arrived at Maple Creek Town two days early, so naturally that priest hadn't shown up yet.
Thus, the letters were still lying in the basement right now, completely spared from the fire.
"Caution keeps the ship sailing forever," Roseliel let out a long sigh of relief.
Luckily she was cautious enough. Otherwise, after going through such a massive detour, dying anyway would be a total loss.
She lit the small remaining candle stub in the basement and, by its dim light, flipped through the yellowed sheets of paper. The contents were basically identical to the game text in her memory.
The letters involved a total of four major codenames:
Viper, Rose, Executioner, and Drunkard.
Viper was the Snake Cult leader for this operation. As the final boss of Chapter 1 in the game, he had already perished during that night's attack, taken down directly by a powered-up Lucia.
Rose, needless to say, was Roseliel, whose responsibility was bringing the Snake Cult into the academy.
And the most important ones were naturally the remaining two.
Executioner, real name Silas Voss, whose identity was an alchemist and surgeon of the Royal Medical Society.
He was primarily responsible for developing dangerous chemical potions for the Snake Cult and using his position to corrupt high-ranking nobles during surgeries.
As for the other, Drunkard, his real name was Simon Foster, and as for his status...
Roseliel recalled Bishop Seraphin, whom she had met before.
Simon was none other than Seraphin's student.
In a sense, he was also Lucia's senior fellow disciple.
...
"Phew." Near Maple Creek Town, the veteran from Oak Town took off his helmet, casually tossed his sword—covered in flesh and foul blood—onto the ground, and collapsed limply to the earth.
All around, soldiers were hurriedly bandaging their comrades with gauze soaked in holy water.
Last night had truly been the strangest night of his soldiering career.
First, he had witnessed a blaze grander than any he had ever seen in his life, and then he spent half the night battling a horde of living corpses.
"Damn it all, a massive horde of living corpses actually chasing a single horse together." A friend beside him cursed grumpily as he sat down next to him.
Yes, just last night, a horse had suddenly charged straight into their marching ranks, nearly bowling over several soldiers.
And then came the scout's report that a massive horde of living corpses was approaching from ahead.
It was pure rotten luck.
"I've already sent scouts ahead to Maple Creek Town to scout out the situation." The veteran flexed his joints, checking his body for any unnoticed wounds.
"Do you think... could it be..." his comrade asked, deep in concern.
"I don't know. Let's hope not."
He cut off his comrade, his eyes fixed on Maple Creek Town in the distance.
Rate on N.U.
