Aisia was simply kind, though that didn't mean she couldn't distinguish between good and evil, or right and wrong.
Was Father Filid a good person or a bad one? That was something that required no hesitation or thought at all.
Because he never even tried to hide it.
Regardless, just because he wasn't good didn't mean Zeroy was good either.
"Even so... why did you have to do that... it was too cruel..."
No, to be precise, calling it cruel wasn't enough to describe what Zeroy had done to Filid in that civilian house, right before her eyes.
Just recalling it made Aisia tremble all over, her reason slipping toward another faint.
"Was it really that frightening?"
Zeroy slowly, carefully, gently extended her hand toward Aisia.
"—!"
Aisia instinctively wanted to shrink back into the blankets again.
Abruptly, then, she remembered the reasoning Zeroy had just explained to her, and even though her body moved on reflex, Zeroy's gesture never changed.
She held herself back and, in the end, allowed Zeroy's hand to rest on her head.
"...Mm."
"Then it's good that you were afraid."
Zeroy's expression was incomparably soft as she spoke.
"That way, people will feel fear, and they won't dare to become bad people like that mad priest."
"It may sound harsh; however, if people aren't restrained and guided, not all. Although at least most will be unable to control the beasts inside their hearts."
"When they act cruelly toward others, if there's no timely restraint or warning, they'll truly come to believe that harming others isn't a big deal."
"..."
"So it's not that I want to do it, but that I have to do it—though I kill, I'm truly saving lives, child."
"That... I..."
Aisia fell into confusion and helplessness.
Because after hearing Zeroy's reasoning, she found it... genuinely convincing, even painstakingly thoughtful.
And yet, it was also truly terrifying...
"When I swing the blade, the driving force that sustains it is love."
"Uu..."
Aisia wanted to argue, yet couldn't find the words.
In the end, she slowly began to understand everything—
"You... must be suffering a lot, aren't you?"
"Not at all. This is simply what I must do~"
...
Pests, come in on your own.
Humans, not allowed.
"What are you mumbling about? Get in here already!"
Zeroy grabbed a pest and shoved it into Little Hell, refining it in an instant.
This town was managed fairly well. With not too many people, plus Rias, the younger sister of a Demon Lord, stationed here, the number of pests had dropped considerably.
Nonetheless, there would always be a few that slipped through the cracks.
Now that Zeroy had arrived, their days were numbered.
By morning, Zeroy had once again begun her rounds of pest hunting.
Anyhow, that was only her side task for now. She already had a main target in mind.
Before she arrived, both Aisia and that mad priest had been following the orders of a group of Fallen Angels.
It was they who had been sheltering them.
The mad priest had long since been abandoned, resisted, even marked for liquidation by the Church.
As for Aisia, she was once a former Saint. That said, because she used her Longinus [Smile of the Virgin] to heal a devil, and that devil schemed to reveal it, the Church eventually found out.
A Longinus that could heal devils—that was unacceptable to the Church. Aisia was deemed a heretic, a witch, and exiled.
Albeit the Fallen Angels weren't genuinely trying to protect the two of them.
The mad priest was merely a useful dog.
Aisia, meanwhile, had a Longinus within her that they had their eyes on.
[Smile of the Virgin]: Not only can it heal injuries of humans and angels, but it can also heal devils and Fallen Angels. No matter the wound, it can be healed; nevertheless, it cannot restore stamina, nor regenerate lost body parts.
Through direct contact, it could close wounds. With improved user mastery, it could even perform remote healing, with its range and effectiveness growing accordingly.
It might not sound so extraordinary; however, in this world's system, there was no such convenient healing magic.
Aisia's healing of Longinus was exceedingly rare and useful.
That was why they had marked her. The day they finished preparing the spell to strip her of Longinus would be the day she died.
Those Fallen Angels were nothing good either. They were the same as pests.
They treated humans as insects, had no resistance to killing, and might even enjoy it—or so Zeroy guessed.
As for these Fallen Angels, Zeroy hardly remembered them.
Only that they had vile personalities, and in the original story, they killed the protagonist once, then killed Aisia once as well. From the perspective of an anime protagonist, they were pure villains.
As to whether they were really pests, whether they had harmed innocents beyond that, Zeroy couldn't recall.
So today, Zeroy was going to test them, to judge their good and evil.
If pests appeared along the way, she would harvest them too.
On the outskirts of Kuoh Town, in the forest, stood an abandoned church—
It had long been deserted, repurposed as a temporary gathering place for the Fallen Angels.
As soon as Zeroy approached, she detected a barrier meant to ward off intruders and disperse the curious.
When she slashed it apart in a single stroke, a swarm of priests and exorcists poured out of the church like cockroaches from a nest.
Without exception, every one of them was a despicable pest.
Like the mad priest, they too had violated the Church's laws, been expelled, or even marked for liquidation, and had no choice except to cower here under the Fallen Angels' protection.
They were to exorcists and priests what stray devils were to devils—stray priests and stray exorcists.
And judging by the black miasma seeping from them, their expulsion clearly wasn't for reasons as innocent as Aisia's.
On her journey from Europe to Japan, Zeroy had already encountered several of their kind.
At their core, they were nothing more than villains abusing the Church's powers.
The Church itself, on the whole, was fundamentally good. In this world, God and the angels truly belonged to the camp of order and good, constantly sheltering humanity and preserving stability.
However, that didn't mean those wielding the Church's power were always good.
In the past, perhaps. Before God's fall, this had been strictly regulated.
The Church's power originated from God. Only those who sincerely believed in Him and acted uprightly could wield His power.
Albeit after God's fall, the system He left behind had long since sprouted countless bugs in its endless operation.
To the point where even those with corrupt deeds and evil hearts could now wield that power.
...
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