90 chapter 30: Intermission part 1

In the capital of the Holy Kingdom capital city, Saint Haven Cathedral.

The pope private chamber suddenly swung open, and a figure quickly rushed inside.

"What is the meaning of this intrusion, Cardinal William." the pope asked.

"Your holiness...bad news...once again, the invasion has been halted!" the cardinal reported.

"Hmm? What happened?" the pope questioned.

"Your holiness, it seems like after the Rosen army arrived at the border and set up camp for the night, the Evergreen troop somehow manage to infiltrate and sabotage their entire camp, burning rations and destroying our "stone punishers." using fires!" he reported.

The pope suddenly turned around, noticing another presence inside of his own chamber.

"Stop hiding and come out," he ordered.

"Oh, you found me." Sirius walked out from within a shadow.

"Grand Inquisitor Sirius!!! What are you doing here?" William shouted out in surprise.

The pope just gave him a glance and sat down on his chair.

"Why are you here?" the pope asked him.

"To give you a bad news of course," Sirius said with a bright smile on his face.

"Is that something that you should be happy about?" the pope asked him with an eyebrow raised.

"Well, it is amusing after all," Sirius told him.

"Amusing? Tell me, what is it?" the pope now's too curious about the so call bad new.

"An inquisitor just betrayed the church and ran away with a man from the enemy side," Sirius told the two of them bluntly in the face while he has a straight face expression showed.

The pope, in all his years ruling the Holy Kingdom, has heard many bizarre and strange things throughout his life, however- he had never heard anything so...ridiculous.

One of the church inquisitor, whom renown as a bunch of ruthless killing machine for the church, actually ran off and betrayed the church for a man, and it's their enemy no less.

The pope then looks at William, who also had a speechless expression on his face.

*slap, the pope slap William on the face, which then even further confused him

"Your holiness! Why did you hit me!" William cried out for being wrong.

"...I just want to see if I'm dreaming or not." the pope replied.

*****

Back to the road between Trost and the Rosen army camp.

Luminous was sitting on the dead horse while looking at the courier who was beaten black and blue by her.

"You two got everything down right?" Luminous turned her attention to the two soldiers that stood behind her while she's doing the interrogation business.

"Yes ma'am!" the both of them shouted out fearfully.

"Good, dispose of him and clean up the mess, we don't want people to find out what happened here." she then gave the order and walked off.

The two men look at one another and then quickly rushed in to dig a hole to bury the two (one soon to be a corpse)corpses, a horse, and a man.

Luminous now was sitting by herself.

"...is what he said true?...." she began to question herself, about what Leonard told her, and what it could all mean.

Flashback, roughly twenty years back, in a village near the border of the Iron Mountain Free City, the small village was stationed nicely near the border of the Free Republic in the territory of the Holy Kingdom.

"Daddy! What have you brought back today?" a little girl asked a bearded man who was holding a pheasant on his hand while carrying a bow and a quiver on his back.

"I got us a pheasant, Estel," the man said with a smile.

"Yah! Daddy brought back a pheasant!" the little girl, Estel cheered.

"Eat up, grow strong!" the bearded man flexed his arm.

However, one day it all changes.

"Run Estel! I'll try to hold them off! Run and do not look back!" the bearded man, now covered in blood, and wounds all over his body shouted at his daughter to run, while he holding a sword in hand facing a group of unknown soldiers.

From that day onward, Estel has escaped into a nearby town, where she was taken in by a clergyman of the church- it is there that she was taught the words of the saints and god.

It was until one day, a man from the capital happened to cross paths in the town, where he met her and saw some sort of potential inside of the girl, he offered her to be his disciple.

Later she found out that he was a man with "special" identity within the church, she was taught how to kill on the church behalf for years on end, and took on many dangerous missions for the church itself.

It was on a certain mission that the seed of doubt about the church was sow inside of her heart, it was a mission where she had to kill the leader of a group of heretic.

Only to find out that the heretic she was supposed to kill was her own father, the man she thought had died back in the village in order to buy her some time to escape.

"Father...why! Why are you the heretic!" she screamed with tears running down her eyes as she held the dying man close to her.

"Estel...I'm sorry...that you have to suffer...all these times *cough." he coughed out a mouthful of blood.

"Father no, don't talk- let me try to treat your wound!" Estel, or now Luminous frantically try to look for some sort of medicine and bandage to fix up her father wound.

"Don't bother, my sweet little girl...I know my own body best...I don't have much time..*cough *cough…" blood dripped out of his lip as he tries to talk.

"Father-" Estel try to keep the pressure on the wound.

"Estel, you must listen to me- the one who destroy our village..*cough" the man grab hold of Estel's shoulder with his bloody hands.

"It's..the...church….do not...trust them…." his eyes became lifeless and his arm dropped as he spoke his final words.

"Father, father...noooo!!!" she screamed as more tears continued to flow out of her eyes.

From that mission, she kept everything her father told her on his dying breath a secret, however it is hard for her to believe that the organization that ruled over the people with such kindness could be responsible for such a heinous act.