Chapter 1521: Chapter 215 - Lucielle’s Pride (7)
Of course, that entire assumption depended on one very important question.
Had Lilith actually lost in the first place?
The more I thought about it, the less convinced I became that she had ever truly been defeated.
At first, the idea that she had been killed seemed reasonable enough. After all, that was the story everyone knew. Lilith had fought against the Seven Deadly Sins, lost, and been shattered into fragments. The explanation was simple, clean, and easy to understand.
The problem was that the more I learned about Lilith, the less that explanation made sense.
That feeling became especially apparent when I thought about her relationship with the Seven Deadly Sins.
If anything, it seemed far more likely that she had allowed herself to be killed.
Actually, even that explanation didn’t sound entirely correct.
Perhaps "allowed herself to disappear" was the better way to describe it.
And then there was Lucielle.
That woman had spent all this time waiting for Lilith’s return.
She wasn’t hoping for that outcome.
She wasn’t praying for that outcome either.
She had simply been waiting.
There was a massive difference between those things.
Hope, by its very nature, implied uncertainty.
Lucielle had never seemed uncertain.
At no point had she ever looked uncertain.
She had always acted as though Lilith’s return wasn’t a possibility, but an inevitability. It was as though she had simply been waiting for the calendar to catch up with a decision that had already been made a very long time ago.
It was almost as though she had known from the very beginning that Lilith’s death hadn’t actually been the end.
And honestly, that thought terrified me more than I wanted to admit.
Because if Lucielle had been right all this time, then that meant one thing.
There was a very good chance that everything had happened exactly the way Lilith intended.
That included her death.
That included her disappearance.
That included the fragments.
That even included me.
The more I thought about it, the more disturbing the entire picture became.
Because if that was true, then I wasn’t dealing with someone who had simply lost.
I was dealing with someone who had planned to lose.
That represented an entirely different kind of monster.
Losing a battle was one thing.
Planning your own defeat as part of a larger strategy was something else entirely.
And somehow, I had a feeling that Lilith was exactly the kind of person who would do something that insane.
Honestly, I really hated how believable that sounded.
Still, none of that changed what I intended to do.
No matter what Lilith had planned, no matter how much she had manipulated events, there were still people I intended to kill.
"You don’t have to worry," I told Foriel.
She looked directly at me.
There wasn’t much emotion in her expression, but I could tell she was paying attention.
"At the very least, I’m confident that I can kill Satania for you."
If she couldn’t believe that I could defeat all seven of them, or rather six considering Lucielle had absolutely no intention of fighting me, then the least I could do was reassure her that I’d kill the person she hated most.
Foriel stared at me for several seconds.
Then she let out a long, exhausted sigh.
Honestly, I couldn’t tell if she was giving up on arguing with me or if she had simply accepted that I was being serious.
Maybe it was both.
At this point, I wouldn’t have blamed her.
After all, from her perspective, I was essentially saying that I planned to fight some of the most powerful beings in existence.
That wasn’t exactly a statement that inspired confidence in normal people.
"Follow me," she said.
Those were the only words she said.
She didn’t argue with me anymore.
She didn’t lecture me about anything.
She simply told me to follow her.
We walked back toward her carriage, which had been parked near the inn where we were staying.
Once we reached the carriage, Foriel climbed inside and began searching through something.
"Right now," she said as she looked through the contents, "there’s probably nobody left who even knows that this cursed sword exists."
She paused for a moment.
Then she looked back at me.
"According to legend, it had disappeared after the century-long war. It was also the only weapon that the Goddess Jeanne refused to touch during her selection of a primary weapon."
I blinked.
That story definitely sounded familiar.
"According to historical records," she continued, "when the weapons were presented to her, she refused to even lay a finger on this one because she believed that touching it would immediately drain her life away."
Her expression remained completely serious.
"I’m guessing you’ve heard that story before."
Well, yes.
I definitely had heard that story before.
I remembered hearing about it during one of Irene’s history lectures.
Back then, I had assumed it was one of those dramatic historical stories that became more exaggerated over time.
Apparently, that wasn’t the case at all.
The story went that during the selection of Goddess Jeanne’s primary weapon, someone from the opposing human faction had secretly placed a cursed blade among the available weapons.
The goal itself was simple.
They wanted her to touch it.
Then they wanted her to die.
It was a surprisingly straightforward assassination plan, honestly.
It was probably one of the few historical assassination attempts that didn’t involve poison, political betrayal, or somebody hiding inside a barrel.
Thankfully, Jeanne never touched it.
The moment she sensed the sword, she apparently became convinced that grabbing it would kill her.
Which, considering what I was currently looking at, seemed like a very reasonable conclusion.
After explaining all of that, Foriel reached deeper into the carriage and pulled something out.
At first, I couldn’t even tell what it was.
The entire object was completely wrapped in cloth.
Actually, calling it cloth didn’t really do it justice.
It looked more like someone had attempted to mummify an object.
Layer after layer of bandages had been wrapped around it until the original shape had almost completely disappeared.
There were so many layers that I couldn’t even properly make out the contours of the blade underneath.
"Be careful with that," Foriel warned. "Otherwise, you’ll end up getting killed."
I took her warning seriously.
I genuinely took her warning seriously.
At the same time, I wasn’t particularly convinced that I was about to die.
After all, I already had experience dealing with cursed swords.
Ayuru alone had taught me that cursed weapons generally fell somewhere between "extremely dangerous" and "actively trying to ruin your day."
So, compared to that, I figured I had at least some level of preparation.
At least, that was what I hoped.
That was very much what I hoped.
I began unwrapping the layers of bandages.
First, I removed one layer.
Then I removed another layer.
After that, I removed another.
And then I removed yet another.
Honestly, whoever wrapped this thing had either been extremely cautious or had simply declared war against the concept of convenience.
Eventually, however, I began to feel it.
I could feel a strange pulse.
A dark, purple energy was slowly leaking from beneath the remaining layers.
The moment I felt it, I immediately understood why the sword had been wrapped so thoroughly.
It wasn’t just dangerous.
The sword itself felt fundamentally wrong.
It didn’t feel evil.
It didn’t feel malicious.
Instead, it simply felt wrong.
It felt like something that wasn’t supposed to exist.
I continued removing the bandages.
I moved slowly and carefully.
I remained as cautious as possible.
Eventually, the sword was fully revealed.
The weapon was beautiful.
At the same time, it was horrifying.
The blade itself was so dark that it resembled a night sky where every star had vanished.
It wasn’t black.
At least, not exactly black.
Instead, it looked like an absence of everything else.
Its hilt was even darker, blackened to the point that it looked almost charred.
For a moment, I simply stared at it.
Then I grabbed it.
I did so without any hesitation.
The instant my hand wrapped around the hilt, the sword reacted.
It reacted immediately.
It felt as though something had latched onto my body.
It grabbed onto my life force.
It grabbed onto absolutely everything.
The sword began draining me for everything I was worth.
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