Chapter 58: The Birth of the Saintess

The moment Stella opened her eyes—

The world changed.

BOOM!

A deafening explosion of light erupted from her body, not just with sound alone, but with something that felt ancient and absolute.

A brilliant golden pillar burst forth from Stella’s small, trembling frame.

It did not rise softly.

It violently tore its way into the sky.

The ground beneath her feet shattered instantly. The road cracked like thin, fragile glass, with spiderweb fractures racing outward in chaotic patterns. Concrete slabs lifted upward and overturned. Parked cars were shoved aside as if they were struck by an invisible wave.

Dust and debris flew outward in a massive ring.

Julia’s corpse, which was lying only a few meters away, was caught in the shockwave. Her limp form lifted from the ground and slammed brutally into the side of a car with a sickening metallic crunch.

It seemed, even in death… she wasn’t allowed to rest.

The golden ray, a few meters wide, shot upward with an unstoppable force as it pierced through the sky.

Clouds that hung above in the sky were obliterated in its path, splitting open like fragile cotton being torn apart. The nearby clouds were pushed away, as they recoiled, revealing a gaping hole through which the radiant pillar stretched upwards infinitely.

The light swallowed Stella completely.

No silhouette remained visible inside it.

Only golden brilliance.

The air trembled around it. The temperature slowly rose. A scent filled the surroundings. It wasn’t smoke—but something pure. Something sacred.

For a few heartbeats… time seemed as though it had paused.

Everything felt still.

The distant car alarms that had been ringing for a while stopped one by one.

Minutes passed.

The golden pillar did not weaken. It remained there, firm and proud, like a divine declaration.

Then—

Four silhouettes appeared at the edge of the destroyed road, about a hundred meters away from the radiant pillar, each wearing a long white robe with a hood over their heads.

Before them stretched a road frozen in chaos.

The road was filled with multiple abandoned vehicles, but no person was nearby, since every one of them had already run away. To their right side, five to ten cars had been crashed into one another, stacked and crumpled from the earlier panic.

And there were some corpses scattered, with their bodies torn, and their limbs scattered. Flesh that had been shredded beyond recognition by the giant ant that had just died.

The four figures looked ahead, at the golden pillar in awe.

Their mouths slowly parted.

Their eyes widened beneath their hoods.

Even from this distance, they could feel the warmth of the golden light touching their faces.

“Ahh~”

One of them, a woman, trembled in exhilaration as a soft exhale, almost a moan, escaped her lips. It wasn’t lust, but reverence, and something closer to worship… or longing.

The kind of feeling someone would have after finally witnessing the miracle they had prayed for their entire life.

The others didn’t look at her.

They didn’t comment on it. Their focus wasn’t on that, but on the scene before them.

“She… she really is the Saintess,” one of them muttered, his voice filled with admiration, and with a hint of fanaticism.

They had heard about it, about the rumours, and even when they were given this mission.

They knew that a Saintess was about to be born soon. Someone who will be above all of them, but seeing it—feeling it—were two completely different things.

Each one of them had a similar expression on their faces.

Shock. Awe. Relief.

At the centre, their leader, the tallest and the strongest among them—Richard. Even he was amazed by the power the golden pillar held.

It wasn’t exactly the amount of holy energy coming from the pillar that shocked them, but it was more about the purity.

Just looking at the golden shining ray of light before them, they felt like the moment they had been blessed in the church for the first time.

Merely looking at it made his chest tighten.

His holy affinity resonated faintly within him, reacting instinctively.

Yet, instead of harmonising…

It felt inferior.

But then Richard’s gaze drifted toward the giant ants.

His brows furrowed.

‘What happened to them?’

The ants…

They hadn’t moved from their places.

They were still.

Completely still.

Each of them had been frozen in their tracks as though they had been turned into grotesque statues.

The others couldn’t see, but he did.

They looked like they were struggling to move.

Their limbs trembled faintly as if crushed beneath some unbearable pressure.

Like something invisible was forcing them down.

Restricting their movements and locking them in place.

They weren’t simply paused.

They were struggling.

Straining.

Their movements were restricted, even their mandibles were half open, but he couldn’t understand how it was happening.

He studied his surroundings, even expanding his senses, but there was no one around other than the Giant ants, Stella, who was inside the pillar, and Julia’s corpse nearby.

No hidden presence. No aura fluctuations.

‘It couldn’t have been the Saintess,’ he thought to himself.

He knew for a fact that it wasn’t her.

She had already fainted.

Even without seeing her, he could feel it. Her consciousness was absent—submerged somewhere deep within the pillar’s cocoon of light.

She wasn’t controlling this.

The phenomenon was acting on its own.

‘Is it because of the pillar—’

He paused, since he didn’t have any more time to think about that.

Because—

The ants had already started moving.

Their movements were slow at first, almost sluggish, like they had just been released from their invisible restraints.

Their limbs twitched before moving forward, and their frozen mandibles clicked slowly, grinding against one another with irritated hunger.

Their black compound eyes turned toward the source of light.

Towards Stella.

Some of the ants shifted their attention to Julia’s broken body, probably with the intention of eating her.

Richard’s expression hardened.

He didn’t care about the dead woman, Julia. She was irrelevant.

But he had to protect Stella.

She was not merely important.

She was irreplaceable.

She was the biggest asset to them, and he knew the Pope wouldn’t forgive him if any harm came to her.

No.

Maybe forgiveness wouldn’t even be considered.

“Kill all the monsters in the vicinity.” He commanded, his voice heavy.

“I’ll take care of this sector.”

Listening to his words, all of them snapped out of their thoughts immediately.

They nodded in unison, pulling out different weapons from their robes.

One removed twin daggers, and the other two drew out their swords, each shimmering faintly with holy energy.

Richard reached beneath his robe and drew his own blade.

A massive, broad sword, which was almost half his size, its metal pale and neat, with some engravings carved into it.

The moment it came out of its sheath—

The sword shone with a golden energy, as it was engulfed in his holy affinity, warm and sacred.

He stared at it briefly.

‘This is ridiculous,’ he thought as he looked down at his sword, at the golden, liquid-like energy flowing through it. Then, his eyes drifted to the pillar, and feeling the purity radiating from it, a bitter smile touched his lips.

His energy, refined through years of devotion and faith, paled before the untouched brilliance erupting from that girl.

There was not even a comparison between the two energies.

His was totally inferior to Stella’s.

His holy energy was sanctioned, something bought through devotion, through faith.

But hers—

Hers felt divine by default.

Richard exhaled slowly.

He didn’t linger on that too much.

Now wasn’t the time to think about that.

Comparison was meaningless.

The ants were already getting closer to the pillar.

He bent his knees slightly.

The ground cracked beneath his boots as he shot from there, appearing before a giant ant in seconds.

He planted his feet firmly on the ground, raised his massive sword overhead, and brought it down in a wide, vertical arc.

Slash.

Holy light extended from the blade’s reach by another meter, forming a crescent of luminous energy.

The ant screeched slightly before his sword, still covered in the holy energy, sliced through its hard exterior.

Its body split cleanly in two.

It died instantly.

Richard didn’t pause, already moving to the other one.

Another ant lunged.

He pivoted smoothly and swept his blade horizontally.

The second ant lost three legs instantly before a follow-up thrust pierced through its skull.

Again, he moved to the other ones.

It took him nearly one to two strikes to kill a giant ant.

Behind him, his comrades engaged the remaining ants. Flashes of holy light appeared again and again as steel met hard chitin.

They were strong, but they still needed a little longer to kill each of the monsters in comparison to Richard.

The monsters screeched and thrashed before finally collapsing.

Within a minute—

Silence returned.

The ants lay scattered across the broken road.

Some were split apart, with some missing their limbs.

All dead.

Richard stood still, his sword dripping with dark liquid that slowly faded under his holy energy.

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