[Analysis: Your current emotional state perfectly aligns with the Wizard Marshal's alignment: "Furious at evil, mocks good."]
"Shut up!"
Rimuru's cynical internal monologue instantly derailed. Embarrassed and unexpectedly furious at being called out by his own AI, he shot up from the steps.
For the first time since arriving, he openly rebelled against his savior. He stormed across the courtyard, snatched the broom right back out of the nun's hands, and glared at her bewildered expression.
"Go back inside and rest!" Rimuru barked, pointing the broom handle at the door. "You're pregnant, for god's sake! Do you have absolutely zero self-awareness as an expectant mother?!!"
"..."
The nun blinked her single eye. She stared at Rimuru's disguised, angry face for a long moment. Then, very slowly, she gave a small nod, turned around, and walked back into the house.
Phew.
Rimuru let out a heavy breath, watching her retreat.
I take back what I thought on day one. She is nothing like Alice Kuonji.
Sure, they were both quiet. They both hated small talk. But Alice was stoic because she had absolute conviction; she executed her own plans silently, undisturbed by the world.
This woman? She wasn't stoic. She was just... dense! She was so infuriatingly, obnoxiously purely good!
"Unbelievable..."
The sun finally dipped below the horizon, plunging the town into twilight.
Rimuru sat back down on the porch. He closed his eyes and began the grueling, agonizing process of manually purging the necrotic curse from his superficial wounds for the fourth time that day.
He directed a concentrated burst of holy mana to his heart, temporarily smothering the lethal rot anchored there.
Feeling his vitality slowly tick upward, he opened his eyes. He looked at the empty, quiet courtyard, and then through the open window, where the nun knelt in silent evening prayer.
"Hey. You're heavily pregnant," Rimuru called out, walking over to the window and leaning against the sill, a frown creasing his borrowed face. "Does your husband ever actually come home?"
"I've been crashing here for three days, and I haven't seen him once."
The nun paused her prayer. She looked up at him, her expression serene, completely misinterpreting his tone.
"He only returns once in a very long while," she said softly. "So you can rest here safely for as long as you need..."
"...That is absolutely not what I meant." Rimuru's mouth twitched. Phrasing! You make it sound like we're having an affair!
"Your wife is pregnant, and he leaves you alone in a border town for weeks on end? That's way out of line," Rimuru grumbled, genuinely irritated on her behalf. "Does he even love you?"
"..."
Hearing that, the nun slowly opened her single eye fully. She turned her head to look directly at him.
In the dim moonlight filtering through the window, Rimuru's breath hitched.
For the very first time, he saw her smile.
It was like watching a flower encased in glacial ice suddenly bloom. A face that seemed to have forgotten the very concept of joy was suddenly illuminated by an expression of pure, unadulterated happiness.
It was breathtakingly beautiful.
"Yes. He does." The nun smiled, a soft, radiant warmth in her voice. "He loves me very much."
…
"Princess. We found them."
Under the dead of night, a massive blood moon hung high in the sky, casting an oppressive scarlet glow over a small Italian town.
Shadows writhed through the streets like ghosts returning to a cursed ruin.
The surviving villagers were huddled together in the town square, shivering in absolute terror.
High above them, perched gracefully on the thick branch of an ancient oak tree, Altrouge Brunestud looked down with cold, indifferent eyes.
Below her, the Black Knight held several struggling Dead Apostles by the throat, pinning them to the dirt.
"Found them… Then kill them," Altrouge ordered, her voice devoid of mercy. "If Ortenrosse refuses to keep his dogs on a leash, I will gladly teach them the price of wandering into my territory."
"No, Your Highness! Please, we belong to the White Wing…"
Schwing!
A rain of blood sprayed across the cobblestones.
Altrouge wrinkled her nose in disgust and looked away as Strout severed their heads.
He casually tossed the bodies aside, a flicker of black, demonic flame igniting the corpses and rapidly reducing them to ash.
The Black Princess turned her chilling gaze toward the crowd of trembling villagers. Her eyes locked onto a teenage boy standing at the front.
His face was pale, but his expression was hardened by a cold, desperate fury.
"As agreed," Altrouge said, her voice carrying effortlessly through the night air. "I have eliminated the rogue Dead Apostles threatening your town. Now, it is your turn to tell me where the vampire I am hunting went."
"…"
The boy glared at her, his jaw set, refusing to speak.
"I held up my end of the bargain."
Altrouge hopped down from the tree, landing silently in front of him. She was barely taller than he was, but her presence was a suffocating weight.
"I believed you were a boy who kept his word. That's why I trusted you, wasn't it?" She tilted her head, a sweet, terrifying smile curving her lips.
"But if you've decided to break our contract… I don't mind using the lives of everyone in this town to jog your memory."
The villagers behind him gasped, shrinking back.
"I'm not breaking my word," the boy gritted out, his voice shaking but defiant. "The direction he went… is the exact direction you came from."
"Oh?"
Altrouge's crimson eyes widened for a fraction of a second before she let out a soft, amused laugh. "I see. So, you used me to clear out your local pest problem…"
"You can kill me. But leave the town alone."
The boy reached into his coat and pulled out a heavy pouch of lira. It was the money Rimuru had left him. The cold hatred in his eyes flickered, replaced by a complex, agonizing grief.
"He told me… he told me that not all demons are evil. That some of them can be reasoned with…" The boy's voice cracked.
"I wanted to go to the Church to get revenge for my parents. But I didn't have the courage. I knew if I went… I would die there. And the Church would abandon this town forever…"
"How fascinating…"
Altrouge stood up straight, appraising him with a new light in her eyes.
"It's a pity. I do enjoy expanding my faction, but this territory doesn't belong to me."
She reached out and gently tapped the pouch of money in his hands.
"Those two Dead Apostles Strout just killed? They have several cursed items on their ashes that reek of vampire mana. Go sift through it. Take those items, take your money, and head northwest. There are plenty of the White Wing Lord's subordinates entrenched there. I imagine quite a few of them would find a boy with your… drive… very interesting."
She smiled, a genuine, terrifying expression of amusement.
"Good luck, little one."
Revenge is always the most potent fuel, Altrouge thought lazily as she turned away.
She saw potential in the boy, but she despised using revenge as a primary motivator. People driven by vengeance tended to have extreme personalities and a knack for attracting catastrophic trouble.
Given her faction's strict policy of not actively provoking the Holy Church unless necessary, a rabid dog like him was much better suited for Ortenrosse's chaotic meat grinder.
If he causes trouble for the White Wing Lord, good. If he causes trouble for the Church, even better. They are the true enemy anyway.
"Princess," the Black Knight said, stepping up behind her.
"Mn." Altrouge nodded, looking back the way they came. "I know where he went now."
"A very clever little trick."
"He miscalculated the Church's aggression, which led to that massive manhunt. Therefore, he couldn't possibly keep heading South into the Vatican's backyard. He had to double back. The boy wasn't lying."
"Speaking of the Church," Strout rumbled. "The White Wing Lord's forces are taking heavy fire from the Burial Agency."
"Yes. But what's interesting is that the Church hasn't deployed their Trump Cards against him. Not even their first-rate Executors."
"Which means my future subordinate is in grave danger," Altrouge giggled. "The Church never puts all their eggs in one basket. Even if his little detour fooled me and the main pursuit force… the Burial Agency definitely scattered their elites to block his alternate escape routes."
She raised a pale finger, tracing an invisible map in the night air. Her nail stopped over a small, coastal nation.
Croatia.
"Tell me, Strout…" Altrouge murmured, a sadistic gleam in her eye. "If I swoop in and save his life right now… do you think he'd finally be willing to submit to me?"
Highly doubtful.
Strout raised an eyebrow beneath his helm, but wisely kept his mouth shut.
The night fell silent once more, leaving only the Black Princess's crimson eyes shining beneath the blood moon.
….
+20 chapters on my p@tr3on: Kazuma_trash
you can join my discord server: https://discord.gg/5Y7uZ2kN2Y
Or in short just click in join via invite link in your discord and enter this code: 5Y7uZ2kN2Y