Chapter 43: The Mother of the Past

This perhaps could be called a bloody crime caused by a bag of shattered glass.

"That liar—hah, a Paladin never lies."

Maria held the bag of shattered glass in one hand and Bargu's severed head in the other, smiling with amused irony.

She lowered herself, gazing at Bargu's eyes, which were still wide open in death, and instinctively reached out to pluck the scales from his body one by one, as if she truly used to hate them deeply.

She recalled the past, when she once had so many "good sons." After finally raising them with great difficulty, they had ultimately died right here on this dock.

"Kevin, Suker, Fila, Ferrand..." Name after name drifted vaguely through her mind.

Twenty years of time, raising batch after batch of children.

Yet, what was the point of it all?

Once they ventured out, without exception, they all ultimately became nothing more than "nutrients" for this city.

The honest lived in hardship, the arrogant met violent ends, the diligent were crushed by illness, the pretty died in the floral alleys, and the ugly died in lonely agony. In the past, every time she heard news of her children reaching adulthood, it was only ever bad news and grim tidings.

Occasional good news? It did exist, but it only served to make the subsequent bad news seem even more ironic.

The ones who made a fortune were scammed into bankruptcy; the ones who married and started families saw their homes destroyed; even those who became Transcendents died along the road.

As for those ordinary children without money, status, or talent—even if they managed to leap out of this pond, how far could they swim?

"No, no, Kevin is one of the current children. The one who became a slave to gambling debts—was that Keith? Kyle? Will?"

She instinctively tried to recall, but another side effect of serving the "Beast" and surrendering her heart to it was that her memory was indeed growing worse.

Too many fragments of memory, an unresolvable self, a heart gradually lost—in the past, she often wondered if she was still Sister Maria, or some entity draped in this skin.

And now? The present-day her no longer had any need to doubt.

"I’ve even forgotten my children's names; I really am an unqualified mother... Forget it, it makes no difference anyway. After being 'driven out of the pen,' they would be slaughtered all the same. This world is too bitter, far too bitter."

What was the meaning of the children she raised? The world of adulthood held nothing but pain and more pain.

In the end, it would have been better for them to enter eternal sleep while still carefree children.

"Is that the reason you killed us?"

One by one, illusory figures of children appeared before her.

Some were familiar, some somewhat strange; some were orphans from the orphanage, while others were merely her previous prey.

These children—some angry, some crying, some trying to hug her legs to question her, while others brandished tiny fists.

"Yes, this is Mother's love. Mother will take you away from this sea of suffering right now..."

Still that gentle smile, still that mask seemingly pinned to her face, yet the short-handled sickle with its faint glow, held in her hand, swung softly.

The blade was fast, but when the phantoms shattered, it merely restored the surrounding peace... She felt a trace of disappointment. It was still just an illusion.

What a pity. A year ago, her heart would still have ached, she would still have felt pain.

But now, perhaps only the moment the blade fell and blood spurted would she feel even a slight heartbeat.

"What a pity, Mother cannot kill you twice, Mother cannot take you with her..." She licked her lips. Was it hunger, or regret?

"Is that the reason you killed those children?!"

The question, arriving once more, made her pause.

An illusion again? It seemed her condition was growing increasingly severe.

"Answer me, Sister Maria!"

Only then, accompanied by the roar of a man not far away, did she completely snap out of the dream.

She looked up toward the other side of the cavern, where the people seemed somewhat familiar.

They were angry, furious? Such an enviable emotion.

"Answer me!"

The furious Paladins raised their swords and demanded an answer.

Yet the young armored Paladin had already begun his charge.

The Beast Herder had been threatened, and the beasts naturally sprang into action. The battle erupted without warning.

This time, there were simply too many beasts; Rein dared not use his dragon eyes, lest he be torn to shreds in an instant.

However, the combat experience he had accumulated previously, along with his adjusted state, allowed him to advance and perform with greater stability.

"Isn't that the liar?" Watching Rein and his party, who had been intercepted but were still gradually drawing closer to her, she fell into thoughtful contemplation.

She could see the fury etched across those young faces... How truly enviable!

At their age, they were still capable of anger! They were still capable of feeling rage toward this world!

Pausing for a moment, Maria seemed as though she wanted to say something, but ultimately, she shook her head and said nothing.

Had it been the past, a year or two ago, she probably would have argued about something, but now, perhaps only death was truly equal.

She looked at the young knights one by one. Their eyes seemed to be burning; they must have possessed an incomparable desire to kill her.

The most furious among them should be that bewildered Arachnid boy. He had unconsciously bitten his lip until it split, and blood was dripping down.

He was actually still clinging to the form of justice? It was naive to the point of being enviable.

Recalling the memory of guiding Larry, Maria's peaceful heart experienced a momentary tremor. What a blissful kind of trouble that was.

Truly worthy of being a nobleman's child. How smooth and unobstructed must his life have been beforehand for him to have the leisure to ask such a foolish question? As for her own children, let alone pondering philosophical questions like justice, they could not survive without discarding everything, including morality.

"My children, why could they not have such a good birth? Why, upon reaching adulthood, could they not ask such foolish questions? Oh, they were too busy just trying to survive, trampling even upon the morals and laws I taught them."

Suddenly, Maria felt that Larry's anger was both hollow and uninteresting, and her gaze shifted to the next person.

That frenzied, hacking Boar-man... Ah, she remembered now, he was also a child born of filth.

He had a good mother, and his mother had a good child.

"How wonderful, how truly wonderful. Such a resilient child, and his mother doesn't have to worry that upon waking up, her child will be gone..." At this moment, Maria felt an immense envy toward Dymond's mother, even though she was merely a woman of the floral alleys.

Right now, that child's posture of roaring in anger toward her was even more enchanting.

"My children, why, once they sank into the darkness, could they never climb back up..."

Her own children? When they came back to see her and she asked what they were doing, those evasive, dodging glances used to break her heart. And as a mother, how could she ever blame them? It was all the fault of the world, not the children's.

Rein in his silver armor must have been the core of the team. He was truly formidable, single-handedly suppressing several young beasts.

Right, he always came to the orphanage to visit the children. He was different from the others, too mature—so mature it seemed as though he had already lived through a lifetime.

He had witnessed plenty of darkness, yet he still clung stubbornly to the light, believing his actions could bring about a better future... Truly, truly enviable, making one want to—

"Destroy them." To Maria, the dock district's knight squad had always been far too dazzling.

Every time they brushed past each other, she had to suppress the urge to destroy them.

And now, it seemed there was no longer any need to hold back.

The hand Maria extended held a severed "horn."

What she was about to use was a malicious curse born of life itself.

Yet at this moment, the knights' overwhelming radiance captured her entire attention, while the lurking shadows had long since begun to move.

"Light Lightning Phantom Dance, Bloody Frenzy..."

The instant the assassin in the shadows broke the surface, her innate racial traits granting extreme speed and frenzy activated simultaneously. The lightning-fast leopard expanded a notch, its crimson pupils overflowing with murderous intent.

[Bloody Frenzy (Silver-Tier Racial Trait): Warriors obsessed with blood are unstoppable. While in a blood-frenzy state, you gain extreme reinforcement to your strength, while ignoring pain and low-tier mental sorceries.]

A trait originally suited for a berserker had instead manifested within an assassin—one could only call it the trickery of fate.

Yet at this moment, she was endlessly grateful for her trait!

"Get lost!"

The lesser beasts circling Maria were far too competent as bodyguards. Reacting with extreme speed, they had already lunged to bite.

However, Talia, completely ignoring the pain, her pupils dyed crimson, unleashed her twin daggers at full power until they transformed into shooting stars.

The brute-force assassin slashed the blades in a long arc, packing absolute force into the edges.

In a mere fraction of a second, the blade edge had already intersected with Maria's neck!

"Malice..." The incantation, chanted halfway, was abruptly interrupted. Maria, who could hardly be considered a competent warrior, couldn't react in time at all as her head went flying straight up into the air.

Long immersed in illusions, she didn't even register her own death; her fingers simply continued pointing toward her target.

"We won!"

The strategy of making a feint to the east while attacking the west had borne fruit. Seeing the headless corpse devoid of its head, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

"...Let the flower bloom, chains of purgatory."

Yet that head floating mid-air actually finished the latter half of the incantation!

"Hum!"

The ground violently split open, and blooming "teeth" erupted from beneath the earth.

They tore into the lesser beasts and man-beasts within the knights' vicinity, while completely ignoring that kind of attack.

Bone spikes drove straight into flesh, instantly piercing through boots, forcing the knights to fall back and adopt a defensive posture.

Dymond, the weakest and clad only in chainmail, was covered in blood.

"Oh my, if it isn't the dear Sheriff, long time no see." The head floating in mid-air was actually still able to speak.

Sister Maria's headless body reached out, grabbed her own head, and tried to place it back onto her neck... But the gushing blood prevented her.

Looking somewhat helpless, she could only carry her own head—holding her own severed head in her left hand and enemy Bargu's severed head in her right, making her look inexplicably and rather absurdly comical.

Just looking at this scene, it felt somewhat like a slapstick comedy, yet equally like a horror film.

The assassin had no intention of stopping there; if she couldn't kill her once, she would just do it again.

Having once been a hitman, she knew that even in the world of Transcendents, no one ever possessed true eternity—most things that seemed unkillable simply needed to be killed a few more times!

Talia gritted her teeth, shook off the lesser beast clinging to her, and dodged the lunging man-beasts.

Attempting to forcefully slip back into the shadows, she still intended to continue her assassination.

However, those lesser beasts with broken horns also reared up on their hind legs.

The snow-white monsters transformed into pitch-black fiends, their distorted eyes filled with densely packed pupils, while their twin claws carried the overwhelming pressure of a apex predator.

This time, the threat they posed to her was several times greater than before.

Their very existence completely restricted Talia's transcendent abilities.

Looking at the three black beasts closing in around her, she faintly sensed the arrival of her own doom.

"Get out of the way!"

At that very moment, Rein forcefully burst forward.

Wearing the Hill Giant gauntlets and supported by heavy armor and an antique shield, he launched into a ferocious brute-force charge, attempting to forcefully carve a path through the beast horde.

Watching Rein approach, along with Talia being shredded by the "matured cubs," Maria smiled.

She was not in a hurry; the ones who were anxious were her enemies.

She simply carried her own head, turned around, and retreated, preparing to exit from the opposite end of the cavern.

Yet Rein was already within a few meters of her. He swung his sword with all his might, secret sword techniques brewing within his mind...

"Ah!" Talia's miserable scream drew the man's attention.

Forcefully assassinating while enduring the bites of the lesser beasts had already inflicted numerous wounds upon her, and now, surrounded and mauled by several evolved man-beasts, she could finally hold on no longer.

At this moment, Rein gritted his teeth, shifted the edge of his sword, and chose rescue.

"Hold on."