PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

Perhaps the greatest irony of her situation was that the only reason an orphan like Eria could sustain those expenses was her payments for spying on Cecilia, just to be led to alcoholism for the guilt she felt.

It’s not that she overlooked her own hypocrisy in feeling guilty about something she kept constantly doing. The truth of the situation was that she didn’t have many other options. Unlike Nana, who was indomitable, Eria was easily intimidated by the pressure on her fearing for her life.

At first, she tried to stay true to her friend Cecilia, but as the harassment, threats, and possible bribes became more significant, it became more difficult for Eria to remain faithful to her.

The stress, impotence, and envy that she had always felt for the beautiful and talented Cecilia led Eria to make the biggest mistake of her life, something that she could never come back from; betray Cecilia.

Since then, the people Eria now worked for constantly threatened her to reveal more and more information about Cecilia and even try to influence Cecilia’s activities for nefarious purposes.

The constant fear of her employers and Eria’s fear of being discovered by Cecilia led her to an endless cycle of stress and guilt that led to her current situation. Trying to shake her hangover, Eria drank a large jar of water and headed back to the church premises to continue her duties at Cecilia’s tower, knowing clearly that she would probably receive bad news as soon as she returned.

The sunlight hit her retinas hard, intensifying Eria’s headache, but her footsteps remained steady. Along the way, some everyday scenes passed in front of her eyes, showing the home lives of ordinary people; probably only Eria would know how much she envied these people.

The large gates of the church compound soon came into her field of vision, and after a brief chat with the guards, Eria walked through the door, being greeted quickly by another of Cecilia’s tower maids who seemed to be awaiting her arrival.

.....

“His holiness Cecilia awaits you in her chambers. It seems that something happened last night.”

Eria looked surprised, but her efforts were in vain since the other maid seemed to care little about her reaction; Eria could understand that the girl did her job, and that was it; nothing else could matter to her.

This was something common among the people who served in Cecilia’s tower; all the girls knew that Cecilia had fallen from the grace of the church despite being the holy priestess, and they only waited for Cecilia’s fall to be able to work for better masters.

From Eria’s point of view, those girls were pretty stupid; at best only abuse and humiliation awaited them serving under the other priests of the church, but Eria wasn’t in a position to say anything about it either. A traitor didn’t have that kind of privilege.

Eria made her way to Cecilia’s tower with a guilty conscience, looking at the majestic building of pure marble decorated by the beautiful stained glass, an image that Eria had come to hate over time.

As usual, maids were doing their respective tasks around the tower. Something that caught Eria’s attention was that there seemed to be some workers repairing the floor and walls of one of the tower’s corridors. Still thinking of her being summoned to Cecilia’s room, Eria pushed the matter to the back of her mind.

Arriving in front of the door, Eria hesitated, the same way she had hesitated dozens of times in the past; the guilt and pressure always grew stronger before opening this door.

Cecilia was, after all, more than her childhood friend. She was, for many, a symbol of hope and goodness, something that Eria understood well. Cecilia was like that; a noble and highly affectionate soul.

Betraying Cecilia was not different from selling her soul to the darkness, and Eria knew it. Her pathetic figure constantly trembled when feeling Cecilia’s loving and tender gaze; those golden eyes full of light was the source of Eria’s greatest pain, the thing she feared the most.

Her mind filled with turbulent thoughts, Eria didn’t realize the door had been opened at some point, and Cecilia was standing in the doorway, looking at her carefully.

Breaking out of her stupor, Eria bowed, showing the courtesies expected of her: “Holy Priesthood, I have come as requested.”

Usually, when they were alone, Eria called her Cecilia, but in public places, Eria tried to maintain proper etiquette. Something Cecilia would always complain about by insisting on being called by her name, the same way Cecilia called her Eria.

However, something changed; Eria knew it at the precise moment she received Cecilia’s answer: “I see, come to my room. We have to talk”

She didn’t call her Eria, nor did she try to correct how she addressed her. A tiny seed of panic was born immediately in Eria’s heart but trusting in Cecilia’s kind character, Eria fearlessly entered the room.

Eria never thought that the next thing she would hear would not be Cecilia’s footsteps entering the room, and instead, it would be the sound of the door closing behind her. Eria looked back, confused, the door firmly closed. Cecilia was not inside the room; she was alone, so she thought until her thoughts were interrupted by a familiar voice.

“I’m afraid the holy priestess will not be present at this meeting.”

The indifference present in the male voice did not prevent Eria from immediately identifying her, but that was exactly the problem; the owner of that voice should not be here, or more precisely, the owner of that voice should not be alive.

“You must be the worst spy I’ve ever seen. You should at least hide your facial expressions better, though I suspect that wouldn’t have made any difference; Nana and Cecilia are too good at reading people.”

Desmond’s first reaction was coming out of his hiding to criticize Eria’s poor acting skills, who had immediately panicked upon seeing him. Eria wanted to know what was happening; she wanted to know why the man in front of her was still alive and why he was here. But what she wanted to know most urgently was if Cecilia knew about her betrayal, as the man had insinuated.

Having been weak-minded from the start, Eria stammered out her questions between sobs and groans. However, her pathetic state did not arouse any kindness in Desmond, who gave the girl a calm but brutal reply.

“Why do you think I’m still alive? Why do you think Cecilia called you to this place? Even she couldn’t tolerate your betrayal any longer.”

It was as if the world around her lost all traces of color and meaning, Cecilia knew; that realization nearly shattered Eria’s psyche completely. Eria stood there frozen with a blank expression painted on her pathetic face like a mechanical doll whose windup had run out.

Her sorry state brought back many memories of Desmond; faces he had seen in the past, weak characters who succumbed to despair and fear; people Desmond despised from the bottom of his heart.

Whether Desmond’s dislike for heroes and saints stemmed from some kind of envy or lost admiration was a very different matter than his contempt for people like Eria.

Pathetic lambs that fall into depravity and dementia, naive canaries that build flimsy cages around themselves, cowardly mice tremble nonstop, waiting for their end without doing anything to avoid it and save themselves or others.

Desmond had seen it all, the crueler, more cynical side of humanity exposed by the hardships of the dark ages. From fathers prostituting their wives and daughters to brothers killing each other for a piece of bread, the atrocities Desmond witnessed were the precursor to his contempt for those who committed them.

Eria was a pathetic canary that sang the secrets of its benefactor, the reasons did not matter, and there were no valid excuses. Those who chose the path of the prey were destined to fall into the jaws of a predator.

This feeling brought Eria out of her state, the feeling of being watched by a predator, a hungry wolf staring with naked bloodlust in its gaze.

“To be honest, I don’t want to waste my time with a person like you, but Cecilia insisted that I do you the least amount of damage possible, So do your best to bear it.”

Under normal circumstances, Desmond would have felt sorry for a girl in Eria’s state; his parental and protective side would have prompted him to comfort her, but that wasn’t the case for someone like Eria.

Betrayal was one of the biggest taboos in Desmond’s mind, and not in the mood to try to calm the girl down and comfort her; Desmond went on to directly use the pain to talk some sense into the girl.

For Eria, it was as if Desmond had teleported, instantly appearing in front of her; Desmond extended his arms, taking Eria’s face in his hands.

The soothing sensation of the water mana on Desmond’s hands lasted not even a second; soon, streams of water mana began pouring into Eria with wild force. The surges of mana grew in intensity and temperature, and soon it was as if Desmond was running boiling water into Eria’s veins before forcibly accelerating the blood flow.

Soon it was as if every vein and artery, every hair fiber within her circulatory system was on fire; Eria’s cries of pain reached a peak in seconds, leaving the girl’s voice hoarse almost instantly.

Every person inside the tower heard the screams of agony; maids and workers trembled in their places, wondering what the source of those screams was.

Just behind the door of the room, Cecilia was the one who heard everything with greater clarity, also the only person who could see what was happening inside the room. Within Cecilia’s golden eyes, a turbulent maelstrom of shifting sparkles showed how chaotic her emotions were at that moment.

The expression of horror and agony on Eria’s face was something Cecilia could see clearly. The tears kept falling like an endless waterfall, but the screams were getting lower and lower as Eria’s voice got more and more damaged from screaming.

Cecilia couldn’t tolerate it anymore; no matter what Eria had done to her, she didn’t deserve this kind of torture. Cecilia couldn’t go on doing nothing about it; It wasn’t in her nature to ignore someone in pain regardless of her circumstances.