Becoming The Strongest Angel With A Saintess System-Chapter 42: The Truth

"We’re all going to change," Tomas said.

Everyone froze for approximately half a second before complete chaos erupted.

"AAAAHHHH!" A woman screamed, pointing at Tomas like he’d just grown a second head. "HIS EYES! HIS EYES!"

"E-Everyone stay calm! STAY CALM!" Grace shouted, which was pretty rich coming from her, considering she was definitely not calm.

Tomas lunged forward and grabbed the nearest villager by the throat, lifting him like he weighed nothing.

"Shoot!" Grace summoned her light blade. "Put him down!"

Tomas turned to look at her, tilting his head sideways at an angle that necks absolutely should not bend. He grinned, showing way too many teeth.

"The angel speaks," he said in a voice that sounded like someone gargling gravel.

"Yeah, the angel speaks, and the angel says DROP HIM!"

Grace charged forward, trying to look more confident than she felt. Tomas tossed the villager aside and came straight at her.

Before, this would have ended with Grace tripping over her own feet and being mauled for a few minutes until someone else stepped in to help. Now, after training with Seraph and Diana for at least a little while, it didn’t.

She ducked, the way Seraph usually recommended, and stabbed into his arm as he passed. The golden rapier sank in easily, but the guy didn’t even blink.

"What the...?" Grace muttered, staring at her blade like it had personally betrayed her.

Focusing her Aura Sight on Tomas, she spotted something weird. The corruption wasn’t just in his eyes - it ran through his entire body in creepy blue-purple veins. And it seemed to be... protecting him?

She pushed him away, and as she concentrated harder, her vision suddenly shifted. Now she could see deeper, beneath skin and muscle, to a pulsing mass of blue-purple energy nestled in Tomas’s chest like some kind of parasite heart.

A notification flashed in her mind:

「Skill Leveled Up: Aura Sight (Level 2)」

「Can now see corruption cores and energy patterns」

"Grace! Behind you!" Diana’s voice cut through her thoughts.

Grace spun around to see three more villagers shuffling toward her, all sporting the same glowy demon eyes. One was a woman whose fever she’d healed yesterday. Another was a kid who couldn’t be older than ten.

"Uh, they’ve all got the freaky eyes!" Grace called out.

"No shit!" Diana landed beside her, summoning twin daggers of light. "Did the murderous expressions give it away, or was it the whole ’we’re all going to change’ speech?"

"There’s something inside them," Grace explained quickly. "Like a ball in their chests. I think we have to hit that!"

Diana raised an eyebrow.

"What?"

"J-Just trust me, aim for their- ACK!" freeweɓnovel.cѳm

The child lunged forward with a screech, fingers curled into little demon claws. Diana caught the small body mid-air, holding them as they thrashed around.

"I don’t want to stab a kid," Diana grunted, struggling to keep her grip.

"Maybe I can handle it!" Mara pushed through the panicking crowd. "Hold them still!"

She pressed her palm against the child’s forehead. Blue light flashed from her hand.

The child let out a sound like a cat being stepped on, then went completely limp.

"What did you do?" Grace asked, wide-eyed.

"A suppression technique," Mara said, already moving toward another corrupted villager. "Temporary. Something we Compassion Sisters use to momentarily render people with very painful wounds unconscious while we heal them. We need to get these people tied up or something."

Grace turned back to Tomas, who was just standing there watching them with that creepy head tilt.

"The flock resists," he said, sounding way too pleased about the whole situation. "How amusing."

"Who the hell are you calling a flock?" Diana snapped, throwing a light dagger that embedded itself in Tomas’s shoulder.

He didn’t even flinch. Instead, his corruption core pulsed brighter, pushing the dagger out as the wound closed.

"That’s just not fair," Grace muttered. "The corruption is healing them!"

"Really? Great," Diana groaned. "As if regular demons weren’t annoying enough."

More screams erupted from across the village as other corrupted people revealed themselves. Within seconds, the square devolved into complete mayhem. People running, chickens flapping everywhere, someone’s goat bleating on top of a roof.

"We need to evacuate the normal villagers," Mara ordered, taking charge like the boss she was. "Diana, secure the north side. Grace, stay with me."

Diana nodded and took off, her golden wings snapping open as she launched into the air.

Grace stuck close to Mara as they moved through the panicking crowd. With her upgraded Aura Sight, she could easily pick out the infected. There were at least twenty scattered throughout the village.

"There!" Grace pointed to a woman calmly walking against the flow of the crowd. "And him! And those three by the well! They all have corruption cores! Uh, by their hearts!"

Mara worked quickly, zapping each one with her suppression technique while Grace kept watch. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but it bought them time to figure out what the hell was going on.

"What’s happening to them?" Grace asked as they dragged another unconscious body to the growing pile in the village square.

"I’m not too sure," Mara said, blowing a stray hair from her face. "This is not like anything I’ve seen before. It’s like they’re being... converted."

"Into what? Budget demons?"

"Something like that, I’m sure, but—" Mara suddenly stopped, staring toward the forest edge. "Ah, dammit."

Grace followed her gaze and felt her stomach do a somersault. Demons. Actual ones, now. Dozens of them, lurking just within the treeline. Their red eyes glowed in the shadows, watching the village.

"Why aren’t they attacking?" Grace whispered.

"Good question," Mara replied, frowning. "They should be all over this. The chaos, the fear... Any other time, by now, they would have already started."

Diana landed beside them with a thud, her armor splattered with random fluids.

"North side’s handled," she reported. "Knocked out five infected, tied them up with some lady’s washing line. But we’ve got bigger problems."

"The demons?" Mara asked.

"Yep. They’re surrounding the entire village. Just... watching like a bunch of creeps."

Grace studied the demons with her enhanced sight. Unlike the corrupted villagers, the demons had no central core. But they were keeping their distance, which was weird because, as far as Grace knew in her admittedly limited experience, demons didn’t normally do the whole "strategic planning" thing.

"It seems like... they’re afraid," Grace said suddenly.

Diana snorted.

"Demons don’t get scared. They’re too stupid."

"No, I swear, look at them," Grace insisted. "They’re keeping their distance. Testing us with these corrupted villagers instead of just rushing in themselves."

Mara looked thoughtful.

"She might be right. This is strange. Demons don’t usually coordinate attacks like this."

"Because demons are mindless killing machines," Diana argued. "They don’t do tactics."

"Then something’s changed them," Mara said. She glanced at Grace with a calculating expression. "Or someone’s making them behave differently."

The three angels stood watching the demons watching them, like the world’s most dangerous staring contest.

"Something here is freaking them out," Mara continued. "Something that’s making them cautious instead of just charging in like usual."

Diana’s eyes widened.

"Or someone."

Both angels turned to look at Grace.

"What?" Grace asked, suddenly self-conscious. "Do I have something on my face?"

"You can kill demons permanently," Mara said. "No one else can do that."

"So?"

"So," Diana continued, "if I were a demon, I’d be crapping myself right now at the sight of you."

Grace blinked.

It took a moment to realize what they were implying.

"You think they’re afraid of ME? But I’m nobody!"

"You’re the only angel who can truly end them," Mara pointed out. "And somehow, they know that. Or, maybe they can feel that. Some sort of... instinctive fear, perhaps."

Grace looked back toward the forest. The demons remained there, watching, waiting. Testing. One of them, bigger than the others, stepped slightly forward. Its eyes locked directly on Grace.

"That’s... unsettling," she mumbled.

"They’re targeting you," Mara said.

"No," Diana corrected. "They’re studying her. These corrupted villagers are just test dummies. That has to be it. They’re trying to see how she deals with them."

"What do we do now?" Grace asked, gripping her light blade tighter and trying not to look as terrified as she felt.

Diana summoned fresh daggers.

"We kill them all. Starting with these corrupted villagers."

"We can’t just kill villagers!" Grace protested. "They’re people!"

"Not anymore," Diana said flatly. "Look at them."

The first of the suppressed villagers was starting to stir, blue-purple light flickering behind their eyelids.

"There has to be another way," Grace insisted.

Mara sighed, squeezing Grace’s shoulder.

"If there is, we need to find it fast. Because right now, we have demons surrounding us, corrupted villagers inside our perimeter, and absolutely no clue what we’re doing."

Diana’s eyes suddenly narrowed.

"Wait. Grace, you said you can see some kind of corruption core in these people, right?"

"Yeah?"

"So what happens if we stab it?"

Grace thought about it.

"I... don’t know. But maybe it would free them?"

"Or kill them," Mara cautioned.

Diana shrugged.

"They’re pretty much screwed either way if we do nothing."

Grace stared at the stirring villagers, then back at the demons in the forest. Diana was right.

[We do need to try something,] she sighed. [As bad as I feel for them, given how some of the people who weren’t even kidnapped got corrupted, it can probably spread to people.]

Grace walked over to the closest corrupted villager - the child Diana had tackled earlier. Kneeling down, she focused her Aura Sight. The pulsing core was clearly visible now, like a parasite with gross tentacles reaching throughout the child’s body.

Grace held out her rapier.

She positioned her light blade directly over the child’s chest, right where the corruption core pulsed beneath the skin.

"Here goes nothing," she muttered, and plunged the tip of her blade straight into the center of the corruption.

The child’s body arched up, an inhuman scream tearing from his throat. Blue-purple light erupted from the wound like someone had punctured a glow stick.

Then, just as suddenly, the kid died.

Grace stared for a while. She wasn’t too sure what she’d been hoping would happen, but this was definitely not the preferred outcome.

A hand fell on her shoulder.

"This is all we can do for them," Mara told her. "Until we figure out more of this. But, we can’t exactly study all of this with these demons around."

"... Yeah," Grace said, still staring at the now-dead kid. "I-I know. I know."