Chapter 82

‘I wonder if these days will finally come to an end once today is over…’

Chloe thought idly as she stared down at the seedling in the pot she had been handed.
The Alloro seedling—the national tree that spread its roots throughout Aurelia—had its main stem relentlessly gouged and mangled, leaving it slumped lifelessly against the soil.

As far as she could tell from a casual glance around, no other seedling had been sabotaged quite this severely.

It was likely the work of a faction that found the presence of Chloe’s mentor, Guido, to be an eyesore—

‘…No, that’s probably not it.’

Chloe immediately suppressed the thought and offered a bitter smile.

Even with her head bowed, she could feel the hostility.

As the top candidate for Holy Maiden, Chloe had been subjected to countless stares since her enrollment, but none were as filled with pure hatred as this one.

The identity of the culprit was obvious without even thinking about it.

‘Lady Luana… you want to eliminate me that badly?)’

Luana. Her formal name was Luana Contesti.

The daughter of the Contesti Trading Company, a powerhouse within Aurelia, she shared the same father as Chloe—her half-sister.

Chloe’s mother had originally been a maid for the Contesti family, and due to her beauty, she had caught the eye of the head of the house, Aroldo.

However, Luana had never looked kindly upon her half-sister born in the same year.

Despite Chloe’s position as the top candidate, the reason she and her mother still lived in a rural area with poor public safety was entirely because Luana refused to let Chloe enter the Contesti household.

No—rejection would have been one thing, but her hostility was vivid. She systematically sabotaged every lead Chloe had toward happiness: adoption offers, marriage proposals, study abroad opportunities, scholarships, and more.

Her methods were varied, ranging from direct physical acts like hiding needles or tearing clothes, to psychological torment such as spreading malicious rumors or attacking those around her.

Ever since she heard that a friendly classmate had nearly been assaulted by thugs, Chloe had resolved to form friendships only with those who possessed power equal to or greater than her own.

As a result, the only people she could truly call friends were Raul—who kept others at a distance with his overwhelming Holy Magic and noble status—and Gino, the slum-born boy who didn’t give a damn about the harassment of noble daughters.

‘I thought those two would be safe, but…’

Chloe’s trust in them was deep.

However, Luana had devised a scheme that involved dragging even those two into the fray.

Chloe unconsciously pressed her hand against her chest, her fist clenched tight.

Tucked away there was the contract Luana had forced upon her the other day.

Listen well, you daughter of a whore. epending on your actions, your little friends will either grasp the glory of the Trinity or end up as pathetic former candidates.

She recalled those lips, smeared with thick rouge and curled into a nasty sneer.
Luana’s proposal was this:

Chloe must withdraw from the Saint division—forfeit the victory. In exchange, Luana would provide full support for Raul and Gino to enter the Trinity.

Conversely, if Chloe were to become the Holy Maiden, Luana threatened to spread word of the “Whore’s Disease” once the selection was finalized, thereby sabotaging the formation of the Trinity itself.

“Whore’s Disease” was a malady occasionally seen in Aurelia, characterized primarily by festering sores on the hands and feet and abnormalities in the eyes.

It was a terrifying disease that resulted in blindness if it progressed.

And Chloe’s mother had contracted it.

Because this illness manifested only in women—specifically those of “loose morals” in the trade—and was difficult to cure even with Aurelia’s high-standard healing arts, it was called by the derogatory name: the disease of the unvirtuous who repel Holy Power. In short, the Whore’s Disease.

For the people of Aurelia, who held the Holy Maiden in high regard and prized female chastity, it was a shameful disease, making it nearly impossible for a sufferer to receive proper treatment.

Chloe’s mother, Zoe, was a mistress to begin with.

There were few Holy Medical Mentors willing to examine a woman suffering from the socially taboo and seemingly incurable Whore’s Disease.

Furthermore, Chloe’s power was “Cultivation,” not “Healing,” and it was primarily limited to plants; it was useless for medical treatment.

Due to the nature of the illness, she couldn’t even reveal the truth to friends like Raul, a Holy Mage, to ask for help. In the end, Chloe and her mother had to rely on meager piecework to cover medical expenses while remaining dependent on the Contesti family’s aid.

‘In Aurelia, a nation full of devout followers of the Church of Owl… for the mother of the Holy Maiden to have the Whore’s Disease… it’s unthinkable. If it’s exposed, I will surely be dragged down from the seat of the Saint.’

It would have been better if she simply couldn’t become the Saint from the start.

The problem was the risk of Zoe’s illness being discovered after she was unofficially selected as one of the Trinity.

The Holy Trinity only functioned when all three—the Holy Maiden, the Holy Swordsman, and the Holy Mage—were present.

As seen in the incident thirty years ago, if a Holy Maiden is found unfit, they do not simply promote a runner-up.

‘Master Guido was originally selected as a Holy Swordsman. But because the Holy Maiden of that time passed away, the Trinity itself failed to form. With nowhere else to go, his only choice was to resign himself to being an academy teacher…’

Later, some Cardinals realized the importance of teaching at the academy and followed Guido’s lead, making his transition to teaching seem fairly natural today.

However, for a man who had long desired to rise in the world as a Holy Swordsman, being suddenly confined to the closed world of the academy must have carried an immense sense of failure.

In fact, those around him still tended to treat Guido like he was “fragile cargo.”

‘Neither Raul nor Gino wants a Cardinal position given out of pity, or a seat as an academy teacher treated like a nuisance. What they want is the supreme power and status of the Trinity—’

Recalling their conversation from last night, Chloe furrowed her brows.

Those two had dreams they wanted to fulfill, burning ambitions, and an overflowing passion to achieve them.

She could never allow herself to stand in their way.

The cleverness of Luana’s contract lay in the fact that, in exchange for Chloe’s withdrawal, it promised not only the continuation of Zoe’s treatment but also support for Raul and Gino.

Raul, being a noble, faced many complications, and Gino, being from the slums, would likely find it difficult to gain support from the Cardinals.

With the backing of the influential Contesti Trading Company, the two of them would likely enter the Trinity without a hitch.

‘As long as I step back… Raul and Gino can fulfill their dreams…’

At her chest, she heard the faint crinkle of paper.

In the end, Chloe had signed the contract Luana thrust upon her.

Each sister held a copy of the document. Made from the fibers of the sacred World Tree, its contents became absolute, binding the signees with an unbreakable grip. Should she attempt to renege on the deal, every manner of calamity would surely rain down upon Chloe’s life.

‘Just for today. If I just stand here vacantly and do nothing… it will all be over.’

Chloe stared blankly at the pot before her and whispered a small, “I’m sorry.” Seeing the seedling—wounded because of her and slumped over in the dirt—made her heart ache.

“—Honestly! What on earth are you doing!?”

Suddenly, a sharp, angry voice rang out as if scolding Chloe.

It came from right next to her—the very edge of the arena where the candidate from Luden stood with her blonde maid. Though the maid seemed to be keeping her voice down, she was leaning in so close she looked ready to grab her black-haired mistress by the collar.

Chloe couldn’t help but eavesdrop.

“I said! Elma! Ordinary! Be ordinary!? Why, in the middle of this, are you solemnly pulling out an array of suspicious medicines!”

“Calling them suspicious is a bit rude. This is a medicine passed down directly from my brother; it rapidly repairs all plant life even from dead cells, while simultaneously acting on the chloroplasts to explosively promote photosynthesis and growth—”

The girl speaking with such detached composure was named Elma, if Chloe remembered correctly.

Because of the incident in the waiting room yesterday and the warnings from her mentor, Guido, Chloe had been stealing glances at her—but as expected, the girl looked like nothing more than a plain, unremarkable student. Was she really the one who had effortlessly evaded Holy Magic from four directions and made a former Holy Swordsman like Guido admit he “couldn’t gauge her true strength”?

For a moment, Chloe even forgot her troubles with Luana as this question filled her mind. However, the words flowing from the girl were indeed full of unfamiliar terms and carried a strange, intense pressure.

“That’s exactly it!? ‘Rapidly’!? ‘Explosively’!? You’ve clearly stepped off the ordinary path with both feet! Did you actually look around you before making that decision!?”

“No, well… everyone else seemed to be doing their absolute best, and since I am not confident in my Holy Power, I thought I should take the best approach available to me… I wondered if that was ‘ordinary’—ah, Irene, what are you—”

“You idiot!”

The maid, apparently named Irene, seemed to hit her breaking point. She snatched a glass vial from Elma’s hand, quickly uncapped it, and made to throw it toward the floor.

Before the vial could even touch the cobblestones, Elma’s hands darted out to catch both the bottle and the cap—terrifying reflexes—but a single drop of the liquid sloshing inside flicked out and went flying.

By pure coincidence, that drop landed right inside the pot Chloe was staring at.

‘Eh…?’

For a split second, the soil in the pot seemed to shudder. Chloe rubbed her eyes.

In the very next heartbeat—the seedling that should have been slumped in the dirt began to thicken its stem before her eyes, its leaves snapping outward to the left and right.

‘Wh-wh-wh-whaaaaaaat!?’

She screamed internally. In fact, a bit of it leaked out of her mouth and nose as a bizarre “Fs-h!?” sound.

‘Wh-wha…!? Eh!? Eeeeeh!? Whaaaaaaaaaat!?’

There was no way. How could life recover to this extent without Holy Power?

Because Aurelia was blessed with an abundance of Holy Medical Mentors compared to other nations, its standards for medicine and science were conversely quite low. The phenomenon occurring before her eyes was far too abnormal to be dismissed as “the plant got better because I gave it medicine” (though, to be fair, it would be abnormal even in a medical-science superpower). Chloe’s dark green eyes went wide as she stared intensely at her neighbor.

‘Is… is ‘medicine’ a unique Luden expression for Holy Water? Or maybe it’s actually an Elixir…?’

If she thought of it that way, it made a bit more sense.

“Just how motivated were you, preparing a medicine like this!”

“Eh? But isn’t it standard to keep two or three small vials of medicine tucked away in one’s bag, depending on the mood of the day?”

“They aren’t perfume bottles!? I mean, you’re the only one bringing man-made chemicals into this sacred place at a turning point like this! Now, hurry up and put that ominous bottle away! Look at your surroundings! Do you understand!?”

“Surroundings…”

While the rapid-fire whispered conversation continued beside her, Chloe missed the rest of it in her shock, turning back to her pot with stiff movements.

The seedling had completely regained the shape of its leaves; they were glossy, reflecting the sunlight. She almost had the hallucination that the seedling was shouting for joy. Chloe unconsciously whispered, “I’m so glad…”

A constitution that made her easily loved by plants. To be honest, she lacked confidence in the “unparalleled cultivation talent” her mentor and Raul spoke of, but it was a fact that she truly loved touching the earth and nurturing greenery.

“—‘Let there be light, amidst the tufted leaves’…”

She hummed just a single verse.

It was an apology, a thank you, and a blessing. It was a simple, honest song woven from her genuine feelings as she stood before the miraculously recovered seedling.

Then.

—Flash!—

“…!?”

An unusually strong light overflowed from around the pot, making her shoulders jump. Before a frozen Chloe, the seedling gained height with such momentum it almost made a sound. Its trunk thickened, and in the blink of an eye, it grew into a young tree so large it threatened to shatter the pot.

“Oh…!”

“It became a young tree in an instant! Amazing…!”

She could hear the spectators stirring. In truth, Chloe herself was deeply shaken.

Her own singing voice, which promoted the growth of plants—never before had she seen it have such a dramatic effect.

“—Cultivation via singing. I see.”

A cool, calm voice reached her from her left.

The sound slid easily into her ears, cutting through the noise of the crowd. Drawn to it, Chloe turned to look. At the end of her gaze, the girl in glasses gave a slow, deliberate nod.

“Irene, I finally understand. After all, the current trend is—organic, isn’t it?”

“…Excuse me?”

Coincidentally, the maid named Irene spoke at the exact same time.

And after that—Chloe witnessed a miracle.