Saintess? Not Anymore! I'd Rather be a Destroyer-Chapter 311 - 248: Leave Paige
"I need to ask a question?" Aurianna’s voice carried throughout the room, silencing all who were giving her praises. All eyes were on her as she started walking past those in attendance before eventually stopping before a statue of Paige. She was now in the front of the room.
"Why did you join the church?"
"Well to serve goddess Paige and help those in need!" A person answered, a slightly perplexed expression as they looked at her. Presumably because that selfless answer was common belief where they were.
"Hahahahahah, help them? Do they give you money or gifts once you’re done?" Aurianna raised an eyebrow.
"Well only a few people, but there’s no need for that. Just helping them gives me joy," another person said softly.
"Same for me."
"Me too!"
"Hah, the same innocent fool just like how I used to be," Aurianna sneered.
"What do you mean by that?" High Priest Chris retorted and stumped his feet.
"You won’t understand unless I show you. I’ll just show you the miserable fate you all suffered. The goddess abandoned you all a lot of time ago. Because she didn’t like your good-hearted ways," Aurianna said as she pointed her finger and a bright white light appeared from it towards everyone’s head.
[ Memories of the Past ]
Everyone present in the room had their memories from the time before Eva reversed it. They served the church wholeheartedly just as the people did. Yet they killed the Saintess for no just reason and even attacked them for supporting the Saintess when they had done nothing wrong. The people who they had once helped attacked them as the women were raped before their gruesome deaths. And the men were killed immediately, while the children were sold as slaves. Their paladins weren’t enough to save them. Those who even attacked them for their main reason were driven by money. The nobles offered them money if they killed those in the church. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢
Just for money, they were willing to kill those who had been healing them for years. What’s more, the main church didn’t plan on saving them. So they were abandoned by Paige from the beginning.
High Priest Deille saw the vision of him trying to devise a plan to save Aurianna, however, King Girsal brought his army and captured those who were alive and burnt them on the stake with Aurianna.
Screams and cries could be heard in the Altar room. As people outside wondered what was going on. But most shrugged it off as them rejoicing for the birth of a new Saintess.
Once everyone was done receiving their memories from their past life a person yelled, "It’s a lie. A lie, you’re using witchcraft to twist our memories to abandon our faith in Paige."
"If I’m lying, why do you seem scared?" Aurianna asked with a cold smile.
"It’s because you’re afraid and you know what you saw can actually happen," Aurianna kept on going with a mocking tone.
The lady bit her nails in frustration, the man in her vision who raped her before ending her life would always come to the church every week and ask her to go out with him. But she had to refuse since she was a nun. However, this guy never took a hint and even threatened her. If not for the paladins who knows what could happen to her.
"I too thought it was all fake when it happened. I wanted to brush it off as a dream, but the boiling hatred inside of me and the disgust felt for myself still lingered there," Aurianna convinced.
"The spell I used only says the truth and you know that, once the supposed Demon King was defeated they found the church as a threat and found out that some magic can take away a priest’s power. And they were after me as well to continue a secret experiment the King does to make weapons of the main church of Paige," Aurianna explained.
"We sacrificed our normal lives to save the injured and heal the sick. We gave alms to the poor and helped those in need just to be sucked dry and stabbed in the back.
In our past, before time was rewritten we saved them from plagues, famine, bandits, and even maintained peace and harmony, for them to kill us off for a few pieces of gold?" Aurianna raised her voice.
"Do you want to continue living in your delusional dreams that the world is all flowers and rainbows? Well, it’s not! Humanity is cruel and selfish and would do everything in its power to achieve its goals. So why should we be selfless for them?" Aurianna said as the members of the church listened to her attentively. Due to her talking skill, those in the crowd who once held looks of disgust at her rejection of their ideals, slowly gained gazes filled with awe. They were starting to hang and absorb every single sword that left her lips. Aurianna was prepared for some of them to reject the memories she showed them however most believed her. And due to her extremely high charm stat, she had no doubt it would be no less than 100% successful.
[ You have charmed 1670 people ]
"My father King Girsal finds you all a pain. I can even play a recording for you," Aurianna said. Just as the words left her lips, she raised her hand, a cube in it.
"The church is a bunch of fools who would do anything for the people. Once they’re no longer useful we’ll kill them off and take Aurianna back. After all, I got permission from Sacred Kielbasa. We just need to wait for the restraint he would provide and Aurianna would be ours. There’s no doubt with her powers the quality of weapons would increase drastically," those were the words that could be heard from the cube. It was clearly and undeniably King Girsal’s voice.
"That bastard!!" Dielle growled, rage burning in his eyes. He clenched his fists so hard that his nails dug into his palm, blood sliding down his sleeves.
"You see, do you all want to live such unfruitful lives? Do you always want to be made as a stepping stone for others? Then let’s abandon them and create a new church!!" Aurianna shouted, the crowd of people before her followed suit, cheering loudly in agreement. They were fully rallying behind Aurianna’s newly announced cause.
Upon seeing the crowd eating her speech up, she smirked before continuing to speak, "From now on we’ll be disconnecting ourselves from the human goddess Paige."
"But wouldn’t Paige and the main church destroy us for being heretics?" A voice cut through the crowd, everyone falling silent. The individual in question was a youth, dressed in white priest robes. He was slightly shaking, sweat on his brow, "Won’t she come after us?"
"She wouldn’t dare. Right bitch?" Aurianna laughed antagonistically. She glanced up at Paige’s statue, the eyebrows being wrinkled at her words.
The eyes of Paige’s statue shifted to look at Aurianna, clearly hearing her provocation. All in the room watched with bated breath as the statue remained stationary. To their surprise, it simply removed its gaze from Aurianna, looking straight once more.
Paige had watched the whole scene play out through the eyes of the statue. She wanted so badly to intervene, but she was terrified. Terrified of the strange goddess that could control time, daring to threaten her. She felt a being of that caliber could easily crush her if they were to fight seriously, and unfortunately the person she wanted dead the most, Aurianna, was currently being protected by her and the High god.
