My Childhood Friend Became an Inquisitor

“It’s still okay.”
“Huh? What, have you already made friends with the other kids?”
*

The re-education center was located in the deepest underground of the Great Cathedral to suppress the rising evil aura.

This meant that even if Anne was fast, it would take considerable time to reach her destination. Even if she could match the speed of a horse with her bare body, she couldn’t run like that in the reverent corridors.

This was for both the trivial moral reason that hitting a passerby could cause near-fatal impact, and the practical reason that if such a thing really happened, it would terribly delay her.

Therefore, Anne was constantly plagued by the thought that she was ‘already too late’.

“Louis!”

The re-education center that looked like a distant white horizon.

However, those who retain holiness can see the path through the distorted space. With no more reason or leisure to restrain herself, Anne began sprinting down the empty street.

Since she was the one who had put Louis in the re-education center in the first place, she couldn’t possibly not know his location. Moreover, the thick smell polluting this flawless space guided her way.

The scent of blood, so familiar she had become numb to it, was causing dizziness particularly today.

“Louiiis!”

She could see him. The red-haired man smiling outside the iron bars. Now not only his hair but his body and armor were dyed red.

However, Anne’s gaze was consistently fixed on one place. At his feet, sprawled inside the bars.

“Oh, Sister Anne. What brings you here?”

But there was another wall between them besides the bars.

The red man with a smirk on his lips. Inquisitor Berdo showed no piety or holiness unlike his title. He was of the same kind as the heretics he had been judging, gaining pleasure from blood and pain.

Whether this should be called self-loathing or not, Berdo was quite skilled at catching heretics because of it. For one, he had been active as an Inquisitor longer than her.

Normally, she would have maintained at least minimal courtesy and decorum even with an unpleasant counterpart according to the Church’s laws, but.

“Move aside.”

“Oh my. Why so impatient? My work is almost done, so if you just wait a moment…”

There was only one courtesy she could keep now. Restraining the urge to smash that brazen face right away.

“Move.”

Boasting about longer experience and more merits only worked inside the Great Cathedral.

This place was underground of the Great Cathedral, but it was clearly a separate space from it. With extremely few people coming and going, whatever Anne did in here wouldn’t be known until she went outside the re-education center.

In a barbaric world where the laws of civilization don’t apply, the law of violence rules. Just as Berdo could torment Louis at will because he was stronger than him.

Anne was stronger than Berdo.

“What are you angry about, Sister Anne? I’m just asking, just in case.”

However, the opponent was not easy enough to back down with simple intimidation. Even if lacking in physical strength, he surpassed her in experience of facing death.

“Are you trying to protect this heretic?”

“Yes.”

Berdo had already heard her sorrowful cry as she rushed down to the re-education center. Anne took a step forward while briefly affirming.

The space that wasn’t so narrow becomes filled with the aura of the two people. But Berdo was clearly being pushed back. With each step Anne took with an expressionless face, beads of sweat formed on Berdo’s face as he stubbornly held his ground.

Nevertheless, he didn’t easily try to back down. Whether it was simple stubbornness, wounded pride, or professional sense of duty.

“Sister Anne, your aura is ominous. Are you planning to harm me? Surely you haven’t really fallen…”

“You seem to misunderstand.”

Either way, Anne had no intention of respecting it.

“Brother Berdo. You’ve touched what’s mine. That heretic is my catch, my achievement.”

“I didn’t intend to steal your credit. You weren’t the type to care much about such things anyway, were you?”

A clumsy smoke screen. Too flimsy a basis to explain why the usually cold-hearted Inquisitor was behaving so emotionally. But to some extent, it was also Anne’s intention.

Even at the risk of being questioned as if bewitched by a heretic, to ensure that others wouldn’t dare touch Louis.

“That doesn’t mean you can lay hands on what’s mine.”

The low, intimidating tone she had never used when living in the village had now become familiar to her lips.
Instilling fear had become her specialty. She never thought she would do it to her brothers and sisters of the same faith.

Anne didn’t hesitate. She approached Berdo in one breath, pushed him aside, and looked down at the iron box full of his sadistic preferences. The glistening blood on the blunt edges of the torture tools was as fresh as if just applied, further inciting her heart.

Anne lifted her foot and stomped on the iron box. Under the kick of the girl who looked almost dainty, the tools made of solid wrought iron crumpled miserably. They were crushed, pressed, and finally shattered with a dull scream.

Crunch.

A sound of destruction that could not be distinguished between metal breaking or teeth grinding. As much as she wanted to do the same to that bastard, Anne barely suppressed her inner rage.

If she did that, it would truly be irreparable. Also, although revenge was important, there was something she had to do first now.

“Leave. While I still call you brother.”

Grayish-blue eyes burning with fundamental fury instantly overwhelm the crimson eyes symbolizing noble blood.

If Berdo’s madness was a flame, the madness Anne harbored was like an iceberg. Unbreakably hard and unmeltably cold, with only a fraction visible of what was shown.

No matter how fiercely a flame burns, it cannot melt an entire iceberg. In the end, Berdo clicked his tongue lowly and turned his head.

If he uttered even one word here, he would no longer be a ‘brother’. Intuitively realizing this fact, he finally chose to withdraw in silence.

Only after the bright red figure was buried in the white horizon did Anne move towards the even redder figure.
“Are you alright?”

She crosses the silver bars without hesitation. No matter how loosely the bars are spread, if she enters, she won’t receive the protection of the deployed holy barrier.

It’s fine. He would never harm her.

“Did it hurt a lot?”

Louis was in a miserable state. Anne gently stroked his form, which was closer to a splashing lump of meat than a person.

She could see the wounds healing little by little. Anne couldn’t distinguish what emotion was welling up in her heart. Whether it was complicated feelings, or the heretical emotion of being glad he was alive…

But for this moment, in the deepest cell of the re-education center where no one’s gaze reached.
Anne decided to purely feel relief as Anne Ailard the human, not Anne the Inquisitor.

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

Louis, who seemed to barely maintain the shape of his features, was constantly mumbling something even though he was unconscious.

Though it wasn’t a response to her words, Anne quietly listened.

‘No…’

‘It’s not… my fault…’

‘I… didn’t… do it…’

His pleas and appeals to the world were pitiful, not reaching anyone’s ears.

Not anymore. Anne carefully bent down and embraced Louis, who could barely move.

“That’s right.”

‘No…’

“It’s not your fault.”

Love that even surpasses faith. Even if the whole world curses and points fingers, there is at least one person who will never change and stay by your side. If this isn’t a miracle, what else could be called a miracle?

Louis was that for Anne. As much as rural villages have a strong sense of community, they are also closed-off, and as innocent as they are, they tend to reject things different from themselves.

A pretty girl obviously from a noble family, who would live in a different world from them. Whether they thought she wouldn’t understand because she was young, or truly believed that noble ladies lived in a world so different they couldn’t understand their vulgar words.

The raw words poured towards the young Anne who was delicate, weak, and staggering without support. The whispering gestures, the distancing gazes.

When she was about to close the door to the world, not wanting to be hurt, one kind hand suddenly reached out through the gap.

Now it was Anne’s turn to reach out her hand.
Even if it became clumsy, violent, and disrespectful of the other’s will.

“You’re not bad.”

Words whispered knowing he couldn’t hear, knowing she shouldn’t say them.

What’s really bad is…