The expression aloof yet complicated, the girl gazed with serene eyes at the Su Yuzu before her.
Though the timbre of that voice was no different from Lyudmila's, Su Yuzu could nonetheless clearly sense the difference within it.
If she absolutely had to describe it——
It was probably that Lyudmila's voice sounded a little softer, made one feel that she'd be a little easier to bully.
Su Yuzu understood that the girl before her was no longer Lyudmila, but rather the deity lodged within Lyudmila's heart——Saint Michael.
Saint Michael was straining to put on an air brimming with dignity.
Trying, in this fierce battle of attrition with Su Yuzu, to reverse the disadvantage that had earlier been exposed by Lyudmila's sorrowful weakness.
The Saintess attempted to display her own majesty.
And then... Su Yuzu's right hand gripped a little tighter.
"Mm-hngh——"
Mere inches away from Lyudmila——no, the Saintess——Su Yuzu could clearly catch the sorrowful, feeble whimper being squeezed out from between the Saintess's slender, snow-white throat.
How adorable.
It seemed no different at all from the Lyudmila that Su Yuzu had bullied.
No matter what manner the Saintess before her——or rather the Saintess——might display, the body of the girl named Lyudmila seemed to have already firmly remembered the invasive fragrance upon the girl before her, remembered that girl's wickedness and malice.
The corners of Su Yuzu's lips slowly curved upward.
Even an existence like Saint Michael, who ought to have been tempered by the wind and frost of countless years, could not help but feel a flutter of panic in her heart upon seeing the upward curve of the girl's lips.
"Su..."
"Su Yuzu..."
"I advise you..."
"Eek!!!"
Dripping Holy Light suddenly flowed through the stairwell, illuminating the originally near-dim space within the academic building's stairwell.
The girl, with what seemed like flickering flames flowing in the depths of her eyes... now truly revealed a trace of panic in her expression.
It wasn't that Saint Michael failed to understand the girl's trump card.
The power lodged within the girl before her... a power equal to, or even more powerful than, her own former self, could——like a Blessing brought down by 「Fate」——grant a person a cleansing that came from the very soul.
That was the truth behind why even Lyudmila found it so hard to resist the 「Combat Records」.
That cleansing, enough to crush a Saintess's will, did not cleanse only strength and body, but the soul as well.
In the process of cleansing... the one being cleansed would, helplessly, find their favorability toward the girl before them rising.
And... even the present Saint Michael could scarcely resist it.
In other words——
Throughout the long span in which Su Yuzu had persistently, unrelentingly carried out the Development of Lyudmila, Saint Michael had borne very nearly an equal intensity of Development.
Toward Su Yuzu, she... was nothing more than a sheep draped in a wolf's pelt.
Su Yuzu's knee lifted again, just a little, propping up the Saintess——who was on the verge of sliding down to the floor——so she could gaze at her at eye level.
"Lord Michael~~~"
"Advise me of what?" The girl tilted her head slightly and revealed an 'utterly steeped in sin' smile.
The girl's earlier bullying of Lyudmila had hardly been an accidental cop-a-feel.
Including the way she'd so wickedly... seized hold of Lyudmila's weakness.
But it was only that the girl had long since foreseen it... that the Saintess would surely be unable to restrain herself.
As for... what if the Saintess hadn't appeared?
Then naturally she'd have left the helpless Saintess to wretchedly, miserably hug her own knees, putting on a pitiful, just-bullied appearance there in the stairwell.
"I..."
"I advise you not to wade into those murky waters."
Evidently——
Saint Michael also possessed Lyudmila's memories.
The Saintess, who had originally wanted to say something fierce, with her weakness gripped firmly in the girl's hand, could only whimper miserably... fierce in appearance yet cowardly within.
「Had I known, I never would have come out.」
[How shameful...]
[So shameful!!!]
Su Yuzu looked at the Saintess before her, who wore that helpless appearance——who, compared to Lyudmila, only seemed slightly more dignified, but who was in fact even easier to bully than Lyudmila.
"Ah-ya-ya-ya~"
"How nice it would've been if the Saintess had been this cooperative from the start."
Saint Michael glared resentfully at Su Yuzu, but after seeing the girl's crimson... mocking eyes, she instantly reverted to a meek and obedient demeanor.
Actually... as the Saintess of the 「Holy Royal Court」, Saint Michael's entire life could be wholly described as naive and unworldly.
Once, every thing and every sensation in this world... had to her been something worthy of fresh wonder.
"So..." Saint Michael's tone even carried a hint of pleading for mercy.
"You absolutely must expose all of this..."
"The reason that child has collapsed to this state... what on earth is it."
"That... child?" Su Yuzu carefully mulled over Saint Michael's way of referring to Lyudmila.
Saint Michael and Lyudmila seemed to be two completely distinct individuals.
Though they were intimately connected, more often than not, the image Saint Michael served as seemed truly to be only that deity within the girl's heart.
Su Yuzu earnestly looked into the eyes of the girl before her. "Has Lord Saint Michael heard of the 'brain in a vat'?"
"A person has surgery performed on them by an evil existence, their brain cut out and placed in a vat capable of keeping the brain alive."
"There's a computer... or rather a Holy Relic, transmitting illusions to his brain, making him think everything is still normal."
"He's still alive."
"He can see the sky, can taste desserts, can even... see these very words."
"Such an existence... is it really good?"
Saint Michael pressed her lips together.
The expression with which she looked at the girl before her was equally complicated.
"Lyudmila lives within the world that Lord Michael has woven for her..."
"Isn't that so——"
"And even..." Su Yuzu's expression turned somewhat sorrowful. "In this world, does the child Lyudmila truly exist at all?"
"She does." Saint Michael's expression suddenly became very resolute.
"Of course she does."
Su Yuzu looked at the Saintess before her and suddenly revealed a trace of surprise; Saint Michael's resolve was somewhat beyond her expectations.
Perhaps one should say she was indeed worthy of being the Saintess who had truly walked out of the 「Holy Royal Court」 Inquisition.
"Miss Yuzu... must have tried to investigate my past." Saint Michael reclaimed just a sliver of the initiative; she tried to prop up her own body, only to find in the end that it was futile.
Wanting to make herself look a little tougher, in the end she could only cling to the girl's shoulders, the two of them looking for all the world as though they were intimately inseparable.
"I did investigate." Su Yuzu looked at Saint Michael.
"Did you find anything out?"
Su Yuzu gently shook her head.
"Miss Yuzu..."
"Do you know my name... before Saint Michael?"
Su Yuzu continued to shake her head.
"Lyudmila..."
"Lyudmila Michael."
"Before being crowned with the holy name, my name was Lyudmila Michael."
She looked at the girl before her, and Su Yuzu revealed a look as though she'd thought of something.
"That child..."
"is the one in my ideal——the one who never had so many troubles and regrets..."
"Lyudmila."
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