Elena reached out with both hands, her fingertips brushing his shoulders and then his arms, as if to confirm that the contours she felt were whole.
“Are you alright? How is your body?”
“I won't die,” Marcus coughed, then added in a frantic rush, “Quick, come with me to the shore. The Saintess of the church, she... she...”
“What happened to her?!”
“She turned into a monster!”
At those words, everyone froze in their tracks.
The night wind blew in from the distant sea, sweeping across the open space in front of the lord's manor and turning Mia's cheeks pale. Under Elena's orders, the manor's carriage quickly appeared before them.
Everyone boarded the carriage. It sped away from the front of the lord's manor, its wheels rattling sharply against the cobblestones as it hurtled down the path leading to the shore.
Inside the carriage, Elena clasped her hands, her fingertips slightly cold. “Why would she turn into a monster?”
Marcus took a sip of water and wrapped himself in a warm blanket before explaining:
“She could only purify the contamination on me, but she couldn't purify the source itself. So, she saved me, but she was contaminated by the source and turned into a monster...”
Elena fell silent for a moment. She turned her head to look out at the dark night, completely bewildered. “Why would she do that?”
“Perhaps... to save me.”
Marcus spoke with deep remorse, but no one could bring themselves to blame him.
Mia stared out the window. The unease in her heart was now fully validated. At the same time, she finally understood why Lovene had spoken to her like that last night. She really had been saying goodbye.
Gale, on the other hand, realized that when Lovene said she wouldn't be around, she didn't mean she was leaving the Oswell territory. She meant she would turn into a monster.
A monster had no way of protecting Lina.
He recalled Lovene's expression before she left. Even though she knew she was about to turn into a monster, she had remained completely calm—so calm it was as if nothing was going to happen at all.
A person like her was a true Saintess.
Gale's perception of Lovene underwent a massive shift at this moment. As he thought of her, an uncontrollable sense of admiration began to swell in his heart.
The carriage came to a halt near the coastline.
The sound of the tide surged from ahead, much closer than the night wind at the lord's manor. It was damp and carried a continuous, low rumble.
A faint light fell upon the tidal flats, illuminating a massive silhouette not far ahead.
The cocoon stood at the edge of the tide line, its surface covered in a fine layer of water droplets, looking like a stone washed ashore by the waves.
Marcus was the first to step down, standing on the wet sand as he gazed in that direction. Mia and the others followed him out of the carriage, letting the sea breeze whip through their hair.
Elena stood at the edge of the tide line, her skirt blowing backward and clinging to her legs.
She stared at the cocoon and asked with a trace of dread, “Is this the monster cocoon?”
As the lord's wife, aside from the tentacles she had seen on Marcus and Dorothy previously, she had barely ever laid eyes on a monster contaminated by the power of an outer god.
Clement studied the monster cocoon carefully for a long time, his expression growing increasingly grave.
“Is there any way to save her?” Elena asked next.
Clement shook his head and sighed:
“...No. Although the monster cocoon is merely a transitional state before fully turning into a monster, she is already no longer human in this state.”
Hearing this, Elena clenched her fists unconsciously. She gritted her teeth and insisted:
“Purification! Surely she can still be purified! The Saintess could purify Marcus back into a human after he became a monster, so she must be able to be purified too!”
Lovene had not only saved Dorothy but also Marcus. She was arguably their family's greatest benefactor. Elena truly could not bear to see her degenerate into a monster.
But reality was far crueler than she imagined.
“But... I have never heard of anyone else who can purify monsters besides the Saintess. No such person exists within the church.”
Clement paused, casting a glance at Marcus.
“Furthermore, according to Marcus, if the contamination source isn't resolved, even if the Saintess were purified, someone else would just end up contaminated next. This is simply a dead end, unless...”
“Unless what?”
Elena gasped, thinking he had a solution.
But his next words made her unable to resist grabbing him by the collar.
“Kill her. Kill this monster, and the contamination source will be exposed. When that happens, I can contain it and completely end the contamination within the territory.”
Elena's voice spiked almost instantly:
“Clement! What kind of joke is this?! Her Highness the Saintess is the savior who rescued my husband and daughter! How could we kill her? Have you turned into an ungrateful bastard now?!”
Her voice trembled slightly at the end.
At this moment, she did not look like the lady of the lord's manor, but rather like the young girl who used to go on adventures with Marcus, full of naivety and stubbornness.
Clement remained standing, not flinching. “It is the best way.”
“You!”
Before she could finish her sentence, the surface of the giant cocoon suddenly writhed violently.
Startled, everyone looked up. They saw the patterns on the cocoon's walls expanding outward as if being pushed from within, emitting a dull, rumbling sound that fluctuated in pitch.
The tide along the shore receded completely as a screech echoed from inside the cocoon. Immediately after, the cocoon began to split from the top, fine cracks spreading downward along its walls like a dried-up riverbed.
The cocoon shell peeled away piece by piece, revealing the silhouette unfolding within. First came the tips of the wings, then their edges. The moonlight fell upon them, reflecting a slowly forming luster.
The monster broke free from the cocoon.
She was a colossal butterfly, her wings shimmering with a faint light in the moon's glow, their edges wrapped in an extremely thin halo. However, unlike a normal butterfly, her body leaned closer to the form of a human girl.
She stood about five meters tall, her face faintly resembling Lovene's former appearance. Her hands were beastly claws, and with every movement, she looked as if she could slice through space itself.
Mia stood on the foremost reef, the sea breeze blowing from behind her. She looked at the monster, trembling slightly. “Your Highness...”
The monster's head tilted slightly, the edges of her wings folding slowly for a moment in the moonlight. She squeezed out a dry, sluggish sound, as if relearning how to speak.
“Mia...”
Mia took a step forward, a surge of emotion rising within her. “Your Highness, you still recognize me!”
“I...”
The monster trembled slightly. For a brief moment, the luster on her wings flared brighter before dimming again. She lowered her head, her gaze falling upon the hands she had splayed open in front of her.
Those were not human hands at all.
Her fingers were elongated, the number of joints was wrong, and the sharp claws at her fingertips were half a meter long. Upon realizing she was a monster, countless chaotic thoughts violently assaulted her mind.
She clutched her head abruptly, her wings flapping violently. A damp gale whipped up, kicking up fine grains of sand across the tidal flats as she let out an exceptionally painful, shrill cry.
“Kill... kill me... kill me!”
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