Chapter 37: The Saint Relics

“So… is it him?”

Having said all she could, Floris asked, her hands clenched, hiding the little nervousness she felt.

Floris wasn’t very good at hiding her feelings. Or maybe Lily had simply seen too much, because she could sense the anxiety and unease in her at a glance.

What else could she do, then? Only be gentle.

“It might not be him. What you sensed could be some creature carrying his scent or power, something that fooled your senses.”

To make Floris believe it, Corollis offered a few examples.

“I know of monster rats in the forest that collect fur left behind by animals. They steal part of the original owner’s memories and come back disguised as them to deceive people.”

Hearing this, Lily suddenly realized it sounded rather like the stories from her hometown… rats that ate people’s nail clippings, scholars, that sort of thing.

“Or night illusions, birds that love to imitate others… any of these could be it. What you sensed isn’t necessarily really him.”

Corollis gave several examples. Floris had heard of them and nodded. But Corollis, who knew the truth of those examples, felt uneasy about deceiving her.

Those examples were almost impossible to come by. Passing off a fraction as the whole was half a lie, albeit a well-meaning one.

What Floris had sensed might truly be the Foley she spoke of, the adventurer she liked.

In the brief five minutes just now, Floris had said three times that he didn’t like her. But Corollis felt he might not dislike her at all. Otherwise, there was no explaining why he had come looking for her.

Floris was fairly pretty, and she had a good personality. Maybe she was just a little insecure.

Lose something, gain something… Floris had lost her sight, and her hearing hadn’t been enhanced much either. That meant her sense of smell was fine. After all, she could even smell something as abstract as ‘the flowers crying.’ Her instincts probably wouldn’t be wrong.

But Floris herself didn’t know that. She took Corollis’s low-probability examples to heart and spoke with a pleading tone.

“Then… if you ever meet Foley, please tell me. Let me… let me… feel his presence.”

Her voice was hesitant.

“I still have money… I can pay you.”

She clutched her cloth pouch. Inside were twenty-seven gold, eight silver, and twenty copper. It was all the savings she currently had.

Floris saved money because she remembered him saying he wanted to become a truly great adventurer.

And adventurers needed a lot of money, didn’t they? Equipment, food, piles and piles of things. So she saved.

The flower shop didn’t earn much. This was her savings from several years. The shop had been left to her by her parents, who had passed away early.

Few people needed flowers. The potions Corollis and Lane bought were only two sales in the past few weeks.

It was also because nothing there was worth anything… otherwise, a greedy person would have long since stripped a blind girl’s shop of anything valuable. She had encountered a few, but they never found where she hid her money.

Life after going blind was hard. It was exhausting.

It showed in every detail. Even so, Floris lived on, optimistic and cheerful, except that when facing her crush, she always carried a timid sense of inferiority.

The Little Nun took Floris to her room. Not with any bad intentions, of course, but because she felt that as a blind person, Floris needed someone to look after her.

She had simply forgotten there were some strange things in her room.

She pushed the door open. Three headless skeletons were sleeping on the floor. How could you tell skeletons were sleeping? Because they were asleep!

“Huh?! I forgot about you, Mr. Saint Relic!” The Little Nun instinctively moved to shut the door and apologize to Floris, then abruptly remembered that the latter couldn’t see.

“Saint Relic?” Floris asked in confusion.

This time, the Little Nun caught herself and swallowed the words “I almost forgot you can’t see.” She silently praised her own brilliant quick thinking.

So she told Floris about the Saint Relics, the story of those saints from five years ago.

“Can I… touch them?”

Hearing this, the Little Nun looked at the headless Saint Relic’s neck. Seeing it nod, she told Floris, “You can.”

So Floris shook hands with the Saint Relic, or more precisely, its palm bones. They were nothing special, just cold bones.

“I’ve only heard that the holy church has strange things inside. Foley also mentioned seeing bones that could run and jump outside the church. I thought he was joking.”

“Cough, cough…”

The Little Nun felt a little guilty. If the Saint Relics had been seen outside the church, that was most likely her failure for not keeping watch over them.

That had been years ago. Foley had said it to her casually years ago, and she remembered it clearly.

“Are their hands and spines red?” Floris asked.

“Wrists and necks are red. That’s blood that seeped into their bones through a noose…” the Little Nun explained.

In her haste, she had left something out. Of the three Saint Relics, only one also had blood on its palm bones, like red gloves. It was the very one Floris was touching.

So Floris curiously felt over the Saint Relic’s body. The Saint Relics had power above the sixth rank, but they had no airs whatsoever. Well, they were just skeletons, after all.

“There really is no skull…”

Floris’s hand went up past the collarbone and found nothing. The headless red-gloved Saint Relic made a nodding motion anyway.

Mm-hmm, that’s right, no head~

Even the Little Nun, who had spent a long time among the Saint Relics, often had no idea what they were thinking. She wished more people could get to know them, but their appearance was simply too frightening for outsiders.

But Floris, who couldn’t see, didn’t seem afraid of them. She listened to the Little Nun’s story, touched the wondrous moving bones, and showed no disgust or fear.

This made the Little Nun breathe a small sigh of relief. She felt bad for forgetting the Saint Relics were in her room, and happy that Floris could get along peacefully with them.

The Little Nun had no complicated thoughts. She wasn’t clever, nor was she stupid, which was why she was the Saint Relics’ keeper.

Only a child like this could watch over the Saint Relics, who were just as childlike.

Logically, the Saint Relics’ current existence was a good thing. Three gentle, kind sealed relics of the sixth rank added an extra layer of insurance to this place.

Emotionally, she wished the Saint Relics had died ten thousand years ago.

After all, no one knew what kind of soul had endured those nearly ten thousand years inside those bodies, beneath those movements.

Before being unearthed, had they lain buried in the cold ground for ten thousand years?

Looking at the lively Saint Relics, the Little Nun shook her head.

Probably not.

***

Meanwhile, on the other side, Corollis and Lane stepped into the Gate of Sin.

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