Wendy had already previously mentioned to Nightingale that the monastery was one day attacked by a witch and many people also died during that attack. Taking advantage of the whole chaos, Wendy was able to get out of the monastery, “Also I don’t know which witch had so much courage to dare to challenge the church alone, but she saved you at least.”
“No, Veronica, the with came from inside the church,” Wendy shook her head, “She was, like me, a member of the monastery.”
“What… do you mean?”
“The girls living in the monastery could be divided into three groups, one group consisted out of people like me, who stayed from early age in the monastery, not knowing their own origins; one were orphans who lived on the streets and were adopted by the local church and afterwards sent to the monastery; and the last group consisted out of girls sold to the church by their own parents. We were all separated by age and placed into different quarters, and even the teaching wasn’t the same. From an early age onward we learned how to recognize the words, from ten to fourteen years old we studied carols and after fourteen we were schooled in etiquette. The early classes were called the literacy class by the nuns, and the older classes were called the choir class and the ceremony class. Once we became adults we would be sent away from the monastery.
This was the first time that Nightingale heard the other speaking about this — before, Wendy had never elaborated on her experience during her life in the monastery.
“During the first few years, I could often hear other girls screaming during the night — the screams came out of the direction of the choir classes and ceremony classes. I didn’t understand what was going on until I was old enough to get into the choir classes. Then I found out that during the nights higher ranks of the church would visit the dormitory, always dragging a few girls out of their beds, and only at daybreak the next day would they be sent back. But sometimes… not all of the girls would come back again.”
Nightingale clenched her lips, of course, she clearly knew what Wendy meant.
“This kind of thing would happen once or twice a month, frequently even two days successively. Then it was the day that I was selected. It was Faria who pulled me out of the room, whispering all the while into my ear that I should just bear with it, everything would become well. I was dragged by her into the corner of the garden where a room was built halfway underground. The room was brightly lit, at one side I could see how the females of the ceremony class being tortured, there were four to five men…” Her voice slightly shook. “When they came over to me, one of the women suddenly broke out from her shackles, grabbing the man closest to her, grabbed him by the neck and killing him just like he was a chicken, easily twisting his neck.”
“She… had awakened?”
“I do not know,” Wendy shook her head, “those men had taken off their clothes, but they still wore their God’s Stone of Retaliation around their necks, but she was still able to kill one after another. One of them she seemed to want to skin alive, tearing one limp off after another, while he was still living. The last words he said before his death were… ‘an extraordinary’. The screams of the men alerted the guards and Faria who stood outside of the room. They immediately opened the iron gate and rushed in, but the scene in front of them rooted them on the spot, while the other woman directly rushed in their direction.”
“Was she a witch?” Asked Nightingale thrilled, “Were the guards also not an opponent for her?”
“The gap was simply too great. I later learned that those guards belonged to the Army of Judges. One of them blew his whistle while the other drew his sword. However, when the first one stopped blowing his whistle, she had already stepped in front of him, and penetrated his chest with her arm. In front of her, their armors were nothing more than a thin piece of paper.”
Chapter 128 Pill Test
“Then, she picked up the Judge’s sword, stabbed Farisa, and split the other Judge into two halves, even cutting the guard’s sword in two. However, the whistle had alerted the whole monastery, many guards carrying oil lamps were on their way to us. She then peeled off Farisa’s clothes and wore them herself, then took another man’s weapon and walked in the direction of the rushing guards by herself.”
“I sat in the room full of a bloody mess for a while before I finally recovered. I discovered that one of the dead men was in charge of the keys to the entrance of the monastery, so I went over and dug out the keys from the scattered clothes. At the same time, I also stripped the stones around their necks. I didn’t know what effects they had, I only thought I might be able to sell them for a little money with their crystal clear appearance. The nuns of the monastery, the guards, and the Judges were all attracted by that other woman, and so I could get to the hidden back door without being noticed. There, I had to try several keys before I finally found the right key to open the door and flee from the monastery.”
“Later, I was only able to sell one stone because the rest of them were snatched away from me. Thus I had to rely on the ten silver royals I’d gotten for the one stone during my journey. Two years later, I reached the Seawind Region and had to stop; it was also the time of my awakening,” Wendy paused for a while. “That’s my whole story.”
Nightingale just silently held Wendy’s hands for a long while, until she asked, “What happened to the other women in the church?”
“Perhaps they all died, or they were able to escape just like me. I had asked around, but I only learned that the Church had said that there was a fire in the monastery and that they had to shut it down. No one knew it and even more, no one cared what had happened to the girls. They had all just been abandoned.”
Nightingale used a soothing voice while holding Wendy in her arms, “Now you have us. Everything will become well, so sleep, Wendy.”
After a long time, she finally heard a gentle, “ah…”
The next morning, Roland entered his office while yawning, there he saw Nightingale as always sitting by his table, but this time she had a serious expression on her face.
“Well, what happened?”
“Have you ever heard of something called an ‘extraordinary’?” She asked.
Seeing the Prince shaking his head, Nightingale repeated the story she had heard yesterday from Wendy. “If she hadn’t had her awakening, I can’t imagine a young woman who could so easily decapitate a heavily armed Judge.”
“A witch who isn’t influenced by the God’s Stone of Retaliation…” after listening to Roland thought for a while about what she had heard from Wendy, he started thinking about his own categorizing of the witch abilities, “Maybe she belonged to the type of self-enforcing witches?”
“What, type…?”
Roland took out a piece of paper from his drawer and handed it over to her, “I made a basic classification of your abilities based on the way you use your magic. A self-enforcing type witch constantly consumed her magic power and strengthens herself. Although all witches gets their physical fitness improved due to their magic, the self-enforcing type witch is much more powerful in this aspect. If I have it right then Scroll should also belong in the category of extraordinary in the eyes of the Church.”
“Scroll?” Nightingale couldn’t believe it, “But she…”
“She is not good at fighting, true,” Roland finished her sentence amused, “This classification doesn’t judge the personal strength of a witch and also isn’t necessarily correct, they are only my personal thoughts and speculations. As a self-enforcing type witch, she really could cause a lot of trouble to the Church. Without the protection of the God’s Stone of Retaliation, she could easily kill a squad of Judges, or single-handedly destroy the church of a small town. But in the end, a person’s power is still limited, and the ratio of witches awaken to a self-enforcing ability is much smaller than the other two types, otherwise it would be witches who would be hunting the believers of the Church.” Though he had spoken with ease, but when thinking about the red and black pills, he still had a vague feeling of unease.