The Evil God Summoned by the Saintess-Chapter 56 - 54: Nothing Special Here

Boom!

The whole small hill was flattened by the wild bombardment. Blake, the principal of the Divine Magic Academy and the Archbishop of the Huijin Divine Hall, looked at the ruins and shook his head.

"Sigh, looks like they’re all dead. Well then, I’ll just put up a memorial here for them..."

Boom!

Before he finished the sentence, the leveled ruins suddenly exploded open, revealing a deep cave where debris was blasted aside.

After that, a group of people rushed up shouting about friendship and bonds and whatnot, but Blake punched them all back down one by one.

He didn’t even wait for them to reach him—he just stood at the cave entrance and gave each one a punch as they came up.

Until the very last one got up, his fist stopped right in front of the person’s face.

"Eh? You’re not a knight? Oh, you’re a Holy Daughter candidate this year."

Blake withdrew his fist and looked the girl over: "You must be Hilia, right? Why are you here?"

Hilia gave a Holy Court Ceremony salute, "Hello Principal Blake, I came to clear out the heretic base."

"You? Clearing out a base?"

This was even crazier than just showing up inside a base.

If she’d just appeared at a base, it could be explained as accidentally falling in, then Alina and the others went to rescue her.

But to deliberately come clean up the base...

Blake realized something, smiled slightly, stroked his beard and said, "Haha, I get that young folks want to save face. But as your principal, you don’t need to pretend in front of me. Give me the truth, it’s for your own good and will help you improve in the future."

Hilia stayed silent, but before she could answer, Alina grabbed the chance to speak up while rubbing her shoulder as she got up: "Principal, you got it wrong this time. Hilia wasn’t lying at all. She really did go deep into that base and cleaned out the heretics."

A knight stepped forward to back her up: "Yes, after our inspection, Miss Hilia destroyed a total of twenty-five magic puppets, five of which were Tier Two. Besides that, she killed over thirty heretics."

"Yeah, we can all vouch for this."

Blake stroked his beard faster, scanning everyone’s faces in suspicion.

After pondering for a moment, he figured there probably wasn’t a conspiracy big enough to fool him with this many people, so he waved his hand, "Alright, alright, I get it. Hurry up and clean this place up, use the Restoration Skill to put the mountain back together."

After tossing out the order, he called to Hilia: "Hilia, come with me for a bit, I’ve got some questions for you."

"Okay."

Hilia followed Blake outside the ruins. When faced with his questions, she considered Rose’s battle scenes and answered carefully.

He asked about all the base’s details, what happened inside, why she was here, and how the fight went down, stuff like that.

When he was done, he took out a Memory Crystal.

"Everything I just asked and your answers are all in here. When you get back, write it down and hand it to your mentor."

"Okay."

Hilia took the Memory Crystal and put it away.

Blake remembered something else: "By the way, Alina said you modified the basic runes of your puppet. Is that true?"

Hilia nodded, "Just a few tweaks, made the puppet suit me better."

Rose had told her long ago: modifying the puppet’s runes was her own work. Since then, she felt no pressure about saying it out loud.

"Summon your magic puppet for me to see."

"Summon? Uh... it’s not with me right now, I can’t summon it..."

"How did you clean out a base without your puppet..." Blake paused halfway. "Never mind, doesn’t matter if I see it or not. When you get back, write your method into a thesis. Once I’ve dealt with things here, I’ll come find you for it and help you post it on the Star Spirit Network."

This kid must’ve fought so fiercely she blew her magic puppet to bits, huh?

Blake thought, amused.

"Thank you, Principal Blake," Hilia said, letting her happiness show.

This happiness was a little unhappy, though. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

After all, who’d be thrilled to write two reports—one of them a full research paper? Hard to stay happy about that.

Blake looked Hilia over, top to bottom, left to right, more convinced that this girl was something else.

"In the end, will it be this kid who wins the preliminaries?"

Blake thought to himself.

As Archbishop and principal of the Divine Magic Academy, he wasn’t allowed to favor any one candidate.

But handling things officially didn’t mean he couldn’t release a bit of goodwill here and there.

Blake decided he’d help Hilia with these two things to give her a little extra support.

"But, she’s only a bit better than Doris. The other three? No telling at all, they all play their cards close."

Every round of Holy Daughter candidates is a fierce battle; no one knows who wins until the very last moment.

Blake sighed, then called Alina over: "You, take our little Saintess back to school first, and come back after she’s safe."

"You got it!"

Alina, who had zero interest in cleaning up the ruins, immediately agreed.

She summoned a Flying Device, pulled Hilia onto it, and took off toward Deep Red Town.

"Huijin City isn’t far, I can take you all the way, if you want," Alina said.

"Nah, just to Deep Red Town is fine, I’ve got some things to do."

"What things?" Alina asked.

"I have stuff at the Mercenary Guild I need to pick up. I brought my Flying Broom over here, so I can fly back on my own. No need to trouble you, Ms. Ailina; you’ve got bigger things to handle."

Puppet still not on board, and she’s already running off.

Besides, Hilia just didn’t want Alina escorting her home; going solo gave her more freedom.

"You really don’t want to go home straight? Grabbing your things won’t take long," Alina said.

She really had zero desire to return to help Blake clean up the mess.

Blowing up the mountain, burying herself, and then still having to clean up for everyone? Alina so didn’t want any part of that.

But since Hilia was firm about it, Alina had no choice but to leave.

"Fine then, just make sure you stay safe getting back. And don’t run into the deep mountains."

"Got it, Ms. Ailina! Do your thing, don’t worry about me."

"..."

After watching Alina leave, Hilia immediately tried to sense the location of her puppet.

The faint sensation made her pause, and she quickly asked Rose, "Mr. Rose, didn’t you say the puppet came back?"

"Oh, right after you got out, I sent the puppet out again."

"Where to?"

"To go check out the Deep Red Spring."

"Oh..."

No wonder he hadn’t said a word all this time.

Goes off to see the pretty scenery but doesn’t take me.

The girl grumbled to herself.

...

Deep Red Spring.

This place was about two kilometers from Deep Red Town. Thanks to Hilia boosting her Spiritual Power lately, her maximum control range with the puppet had increased, so Rose could move the puppet over to check out the Deep Red Spring.

"It’s all Holy Court people around here. Seems like the Deep Sea Mutual Aid Association used the Deep Red Spring as a medium for summoning the white whale,"

Rose stopped a ways off from the spring and used Spiritual Power to scan it over.

From the outside, nothing strange could be seen; the spring water was clearly full of Magic Power, but it was so contaminated with impurities, no one could drink it straight.

He drew a bit closer, tried to probe underground with his Spiritual Power, seeing if anything unusual was buried there.

Like maybe his "corpse."

But when pain suddenly shot from Hilia’s side, Rose stopped the investigation.

"Doesn’t look like there’s anything weird here. This spring is just an ordinary magic item. Other than abyssal demons, who’d even like this stuff?"

"My heart isn’t here either, and it’s not where the Sea God is hiding. It’s just that the Deep Sea Mutual Aid Association happened to use it as a summoning medium, so the Holy Court sent people to check it out,"

"Whatever—time to head back."

Rose set a return route for the puppet, then turned his attention back to Hilia’s side.

Only to find a surprise here.

Hilia saw the man who’d led them into the Deep Sea Mutual Aid Association’s base—

Eric.

When he saw Hilia—she hadn’t even disguised herself this time—he acted like he knew it was her, and cut her off on purpose.

Just as Hilia was about to cast a spell to take him down, Eric suddenly looked incredibly relieved.

"Thank you," he said.