NOVEL NEXT Chapter 90: I Committed a Kidnapping
===A Certain Undead With Communication Disorder===
「I shall purify you noooow!」
For some reason, the female commander(?) raised a childish shout unbefitting her age.
Swish.
I caught the sword's blade with one hand.
「…FWWEEH?」
「You understand that your attack can't hurt me, right?」
When I told her this with a dumbfounded look on my face, the female commander(?) gave me this surprised look.
「The Divine Sword isn't working… and… Revival… Dragon…」
She then started muttering something as her eyes lost their brilliance.
Eh, wait a minute? Did I just… stab her sore spot?
「H-hey, are you… okay?」
「U!… U… U…Uu… UWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!」
EH, WHY WAS SHE CRYING NOW?!
And just like a kid throwing a tantrum, she was crying uncontrollably.
People would gather once they heard her cries.
「BUH?!」
I covered her mouth in a hurry and carried her in my arms.
And then, I jumped into a building from a nearby window.
It seemed I had jumped into a warehouse.
I mean, they literally crammed things such as cleaning tools and useless furniture in this place.
「NNNNNN! NNNNNNNNNNNN!」
The first thing I did after that was tie a strong-looking cloth to stuff it into her mouth to prevent her from shouting.
And then, I tied her limbs with the rope that I found.
「…Great.」
F*CK, WHAT THE HELL WAS I DOING?!
Although I did this since she wouldn't calm down, what I did was a literal kidnapping.
The tied-up female commander(?) was looking at me with fear and a desperate look on her face.
「D-don't worry… I won't do anything suspicious…」
「!!!」
「L-Look, I'll leave immediately, okay… I'll also leave the door open so that you'll be found soon.」
And just as I was about to leave the room…
I felt a presence from the corridor walking in this direction.
◇◇◇
===A Certain Female Holy Knight===
「…」
I locked myself in my room after that incident.
I didn't want to see anyone during the time I was sorting out my feelings.
「In the end, they don't even know the truth about what kind of undead… they are removed from this world. In the first place, purifying that guy might have been pretty much impossible… Thus, His Eminence, the Pope, just chose a more reliable method… For a devout believer like me to doubt even that is simply blasphemy.」
But then, even if I understood the logic, my heart vehemently refused to compromise.
After all, I knew that he wasn't a dangerous undead like they said in the news. Deep down, he was a gentle and kind youth.
In the end, I felt empathy for him.
Maybe, I really was unworthy of being a Holy Knight for harbouring such feelings toward the target that I should exterminate.
…But was that really the case?
I mean, he used to be human like us.
In addition, he retained his human heart and will despite being transformed into something that was no longer human.
Did God truly want us to become killing machines that could only execute his orders…?
「Excuse me, Captain Limule.」
「Porm?」
The one who called out to me when I was pondering about the current situation was Porm, the one who worked as my vice-captain when we were assigned to the special squad.
The special squad had already been dissolved, and I was no longer a captain, but she still called me with that title.
「My apologies. Celestina-sama snuck out from her room again… So I was wondering if she was visiting you again…」
「No, she's not here, but… What do you mean by "again"?」
「The truth is…」
My big sister was the commander of the Holy Knights, but her mental state regressed to that of a child due to a certain event a while ago. She was under medical care right now.
She was still acting like a child, but her current mental state was much better compared to when she would cry the moment she felt insecure.
Currently, she was an overly energetic girl who would sneak out of her room or the temple itself to stroll into the city by herself.
「Good grief, big sis turned into such a girl with a troublesome curiosity… It can't be helped then. I'll help you find her.」
It was not like I had something else to do either while sitting in my room.
I needed a change of pace, so I decided to help Porm look for my big sister.
「She should be still within the temple. Everyone has been told to not let her out of the vicinity of the temple after all.」
But then, the temple was big.
Especially the inside of the temple, the spire was at least ten floors tall. Each floor was huge, not to mention the underground floor.
The inside of the spire—which was composed of things such as a chapel, prayer rooms of various sizes, lodging for pilgrims or priests, a treasury, and a reference room—made the temple an extremely complicated place.
The most difficult thing to do in that kind of place was finding a person whose whereabouts were unknown.
「Let's start from the garden and move inside once we confirm that she isn't there.」
The garden that surrounded the spire was really vast, but it wasn't too complicated.
Sometimes, there were trees that blocked my field of vision, but searching the garden was much easier.
Porm and I decided to go around the spire from two directions.
「UWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!」
「T-this voice?」
A short time later, I heard a crying voice from somewhere.
I ran in a hurry toward the direction of that voice.
「It should be around this pla… Uh? These footprints are…」
There were some traces left since the other party was in a hurry.
But there was no one here.
「…Does that mean the other party entered the building from the window?」
There, I found a window from a slightly elevated height.
I couldn't reach the window, but…
The other party didn't seem to be an intruder either since the traffic of the temple was strictly controlled.
But there was a one in ten thousand chance that the other party was a dangerous person. I judged that I couldn't let my guard down and decided to enter the building from inside.
「It should be this room. To think that they chose a warehouse of all rooms…」
After resolving myself, the first thing that I saw upon opening the door was the figure of my big sister rolling on the ground, tied to a chair.
「Sister?!」