Depraved Noble: Forced To Live The Debaucherous Life Of An Evil Noble!-Chapter 601: You’re My Idol

Carmela was ready to fight or flee.

But then something strange happened.

Joy didn’t reach for her weapon. She didn’t conjure her hammer or take a stance.

Instead, her expression, once solemn,slowly softened.

Then, unexpectedly, she began to...laugh.

At first it was a small chuckle, but it grew louder, freer, until she was genuinely laughing.

Carmela stared at her, completely bewildered.

"...What the hell are you laughing at?"

Joy wiped a tear from her eye, still laughing.

"You—hah! You really thought I was going to take you in? Put you on trial? Execute you? Hah! Oh, Goddess above..."

Carmela blinked, utterly confused by her reaction before finally asking in disbelief,

"Wait—you’re not going to arrest me?"

Joy tilted her head, smiling with that same strange mixture of calm and mischief.

"Of course not. What, do you take me for a fool? You think I’d kill the one woman who’s done more to clean the filth off this continent than the Church has in a hundred years?"

Carmela’s mouth parted slightly. "...What?"

Joy shrugged casually, folding her arms.

"I’m not blind, Carmela. I know the people you’ve killed, the kind of nobles you targeted. Every single one of them was a parasite. You didn’t slaughter innocents. You punished monsters."

She paused, then smirked.

"Granted, your methods are a little excessive...but who am I to judge? The Goddess herself once flooded half a kingdom for less."

Carmela was speechless.

"Not to mention..." Joy added. "You’re talking to the wrong person if you think I’d do something like that."

"What...do you mean?"

Joy smirked, leaning back slightly as she spoke.

"If this were any other member of the Church—anyone else—they’d have your head on a pike before you could even explain yourself."

"They’d call you a heretic, a devil, a curse upon humanity, and drag you through the streets before burning you alive."

And Nobles? They’d do worse. They’d want to execute you on the spot just to make themselves feel safer...But me?"

She chuckled, shaking her head.

"Why would I ever do that?"

"My entire life, my entire mission has been about hunting down corrupt nobles and putting them in the ground where they belong."

"Executing them right in front of their peers so everyone learns to fear divine punishment. So, the difference between us..." She said with a faint grin. "...is that I’ve been doing it quietly. You just made it more...dramatic."

Carmela raised a brow. "Dramatic?"

"You like to paint the walls red and leave messages in entrails." Joy shrugged. "I prefer making them confess in front of a crowd and then cutting them down so everyone can see what divine judgment looks like."

"You call it vengeance...I call it divine cleansing."

"Either way, we’re both purging the same filth."

She turned to Carmela and added with a little scoff.

"So why would I arrest my colleague, hm? That would be absurd. If I condemned you, I’d be admitting that what I do is wrong and I refuse to entertain that kind of hypocrisy."

Carmela was visibly taken aback.

"You’re really...comparing me to you?"

"We really are not that different." Joy nodded like she didn’t think of it any other way. "We both carry out wrath in our own way. You do it from the shadows; I do it under the Goddess’s light."

"Two sides of the same coin."

Carmela stared at her, genuinely stunned. This was not at all what she’d expected from the Saintess of the Church.

But what truly threw her off was what came next.

Joy’s expression turned surprisingly warm, which was very strange coming from Joy and she looked at Carmela with a fond, almost nostalgic smile.

"Not to mention..." She added lightly. "...unlike everyone else who trembles at the thought of you, I actually admired you in the past. Idolized you, even."

Carmela’s brows furrowed. "You...what?"

"I know it’s strange. But it’s true. While other children dreamed of being knights or holy warriors or damsels in shining armor, I grew up idolizing you."

Carmela blinked, still utterly confused.

"You’re going to gave to explain a little bit more for me to understand? I mean, the Saintess of the Church idolises their worst criminal..."

"...it doesn’t make sense."

Hearing this, Joy’s tone turned almost wistful as she spoke, the wind catching strands of her hair.

"I don’t know if you know this, but when I was a child, I lived in the royal palace. And because of that every hallway, every corridor was crawling with nobles—those smug, lying bastards with their painted smiles and rotten souls."

"I hated them. Every single one. But I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t fight back. I was surrounded by corruption, forced to play nice while pretending not to see it."

She gave a bitter chuckle.

"It was suffocating. I felt as if no one was one my side. That they supported these every nobles or were scared of them and I thought I was the only one who openly despised them."

"But then one day I heard about you. The Noble Killer. The monster who butchered nobles in their beds and vanished before dawn."

"I remember overhearing the guards talking about it, terrified, and I..."

She smiled faintly.

"I was thrilled."

Carmela’s eyes trembled slightly.

"I thought, ’Finally, someone out there hates them as much as I do.’ Someone was doing what I couldn’t. Someone was fighting back. I even started collecting every scrap of information I could find—rumors, sketches, reports."

"I used to sneak into the archives just to see if there were any new killings connected to you. It was...exciting. You were my Hero."

Carmela’s expression softened, though her confusion deepened.

"You can even ask my mother." Joy said with a tinge of embarrassment in her eyes. "I had an entire section of my wall plastered with notes about you—your kills, your patterns, the rumors surrounding you."

"I’d stare at them for hours, wondering what kind of person could take down those monsters. I even wrote your name on the wall in big letters: ’NOBLE KILLER.’"

She sighed, shaking her head with a faint, nostalgic smile.

"I dreamed of becoming someone like you. To deliver judgment with my own hands. To make them afraid."

"...You wanted to be a murderer?"

Carmela asked, unable to believe that she actually had a little girl idolising her in the past.

"I guess so." Joy laughed again, a rather reluctant laugh. "Not the most saintly childhood dream, right? But I never considered myself to be a Saintess and rather a instrument of the Goddess."

Her gaze softened as she looked at Carmela with open admiration.

"So yeah, in a way...meeting you is kind of surreal. It’s like finally meeting a childhood hero. The person who made me believe I wasn’t insane for hating the world I was born into."

Carmela opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. For once, she was completely speechless.

Joy shrugged again, her tone easing into her usual calm.

"Of course, I’ve grown up since then. I’m not exactly the same idealistic little girl who worshipped you."

"I work in the field now, with my own duties and blood on my hands. I don’t idolize anyone anymore—but I still respect you, deeply."

"Everything you’ve done...it matters."

Her eyes moved over Carmela’s face, studying her.

"Although..." She added with mild curiosity. "I did expect you to look older. After all, you’ve been active for more then six decades."

"...so how old are you?"

Carmela rolled her eyes. "Eighty years, give or take."

"Eighty?"

"I’m a higher vampire." Carmela said simply. "We don’t age the same as humans. That’s why I look like this."

Joy gave a quiet hum, tilting her head. "Makes sense. You wear it well."

Carmela could only scoff as any compliment that came from Joy felt strange to hear, before she ran a hand down her face, utterly exasperated.

"I can’t believe this. When I first heard about you in the past, the famous Saintess, I thought I’d hate you. The idea of a Church girl preaching holiness made my blood boil."

"But then I learned about your work, how you tear down the corrupt and drag them into the light regardless of their rank...and now I find out you actually looked up to me."

"I...I don’t even know what to say."

Joy exhaled slowly, her expression neutral but a faint trace of warmth behind it.

"Neither do I." She admitted. "It feels strange, knowing the person I once heard about in stories is sitting right next to me."

"If you looked older—say, white hair, wrinkles, the whole ancient-vampire look—I might still treat you with reverence. You’d probably even get a few ’Madam Carmela’s’ out of me."

"But when you look the same age as me, it’s kind of strange."

Carmela waved a hand dismissively.

"Good. Don’t. The idea of the cold, emotionless Saintess suddenly calling me ’Madam’ makes my skin crawl."

Joy smiled faintly at Carmela’s words—an honest, small smile that softened the edges of her usual stoic face.

But then Joy noticed how strange it was

In just these few minutes with Carmela, she realized she had probably shown more emotion, more reactions, and spoken more freely than she had in the last ten years of her life combined.

Normally, her words were measured, her face still and detached. She’d become so used to being the Church’s stoic blade—the unfeeling Saintess who judged without hesitation that she had forgotten what it was like to actually feel.

And yet, here she was.

Smiling. Laughing. Talking like a normal person.

Joy looked at the sky, her expression relaxing as a quiet thought crossed her mind.

’Maybe I’m still that same girl.’ She mused. ’The one who used to sit in the palace corridors, fuming at the nobles, secretly hoping the Noble Killer would strike again.’

For a moment, she almost wanted to laugh at herself.

A Saintess, someone who was supposed to represent divine calm fangirling over a vampire assassin.

The realization was both embarrassing and oddly comforting.

But then she exhaled slowly, letting the faint amusement fade.

The warmth that had briefly colored her tone vanished, and the Saintess everyone knew returned—the calm, collected, unreadable Joy.

But still, there was something she wanted to ask—something heavier.

After a quiet pause, she finally spoke, her tone lower and thoughtful.

"Carmela." She began quietly, her voice low and deliberate. "There’s something I want to ask you."

Carmela tilted her head slightly, sensing the shift in tone. "Hm?"

Joy’s eyes studied her for a long moment before she spoke.

"Do you ever think..." She said slowly. "...that your vengeance...all the nobles you’ve hunted, all the blood you’ve spilled—it wasn’t only about your people’s suffering?"

Carmela’s expression stilled, but Joy continued, her tone calm but penetrating.

"I mean from what I’ve seen, your hatred feels too directed. Too personal. It’s not just revenge on behalf of your race. It feels like something deeper."

"Like someone took something from you directly—something you never got back."

She paused, before adding on a personal note,

"I know what that feels like. To carry something you can’t let go of, something that burns through you no matter how much time passes."

Her voice was calm, but the undertone was something closer to empathy.

"So I can’t help but think there’s more to your story than what everyone believes."

"And to tell you truth, I normally wouldn’t ask such things." She quickly admitted.

"I don’t care much for other people’s personal tragedies. I’ve seen too many, and I’ve stopped feeling sympathy a long time ago. But..."

Her eyes turned tender faintly.

"Right now, I don’t know why, but I feel like I should ask. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen something of myself in you. Or maybe it’s because...I think you need to tell someone."

Her voice was quiet, almost careful now.

"So if you can...tell me. What really happened? What made you become this?"

Carmela was silent.

For a brief second, her whole demeanor shifted—the relaxed, confident aura she always carried flickered. Her eyes lowered, her fingers brushing the dirt beside her.

She looked...uncertain.

Of all the things Joy could have said, that question hit the deepest.

Because it touched the one thing Carmela had buried more than any corpse, the truth she never wanted anyone to know—the real reason the Noble Killer existed.

Her first instinct was to deflect, to scoff and change the subject.

But she didn’t.

Instead, she looked up slowly at Joy.

The Saintess’s face was calm, patient, unjudging.

There was no disgust there, no pity. Just that calm, unflinching gaze that said she was willing to listen.

For the first time in a long, long while, Carmela felt that she didn’t need to hide behind her usual wall of indifference.

That maybe, just maybe, this woman across from her could understand because she too had once been consumed by pain and purpose.

And for reasons she couldn’t explain, Carmela felt like for once she could actually speak her heart.

"...If you really want to listen."

She said quietly, her tone heavier now.

"Then listen. But I’ll warn you—it’s not a pleasant story."

Joy’s lips curved faintly again, though her tone remained dry.

"I don’t like pleasant stories anyway. They’re unrealistic in this current age."

Carmela huffed a small breath, almost like a laugh.

"And besides..." Joy added. "...looking at where you ended up, I doubt this one ends happily. So, go on."

Carmela gave a slow nod, her gaze distant now, the faint shimmer of memory returning to her eyes as she began.