Chapter 140 The Book of the Broken Nun
Chapter 140 The Book of the Broken Nun
Several days ago…
In the frontier city of Staraya, the southernmost settlement of the Uruk Kingdom, Christina—the bunny-eared nun—stepped out of her tiny church.
The orphanage’s demihuman children bustled around the yard, doing their chores with that clumsy, cheerful energy only kids could have.
“Bye-bye, big sister Christina!”
Little Phil—the boy with round bear ears—waved from the branch of the big fruit tree beside the worn-down church. Even at his small age he could climb easily, plucking fruit and dropping them down for the other kids to gather.
Christina smiled.
“Just be careful, little ones,” she said, her long ears bouncing as she adjusted the bags in her arms.
Simple vegetables. A humble harvest. Enough to share.
She planned to walk through the city and give them out to the families who always helped the orphanage survive.
“Thank you, Mother Lux, for this harvest,” she murmured.
“In Your name… we will share it with the people.”
She stepped onto the stone streets, bowing politely as she went.
“Hello—please accept this gift in the name of the Goddess Lux.”
“Good day. May Lux bless your family.”
“This is from our harvest. The Goddess provides.”
She walked with a gentle smile, a soft, almost fragile aura of holiness around her.
Staraya—though technically part of the human kingdom—was a frontier city, and because of that it was a little more tolerant of demihumans like her and the children. Not perfectly safe, of course. But accepted. For now.
Not long ago, the orphanage had been threatened—nearly seized by force.
A group of knights wearing the sigil of a death tree rode into the city and tried to throw her and the kids out. They even threatened to kill them, flaunting fake authority supposedly granted by the crown. The city guards and the citizens had been too scared to do anything.
But thanks to that young man and the young girl who helped them, justice actually prevailed.
They arrived with overwhelming strength, smashed the corrupt knights, and even left behind a small fortune in gold for the children.
Since then, life had been better—still simple, still fragile, but better.
Christina paused, lifting her hands for a brief prayer.
“You always answer our prayers, Mother… and put the right person in the right place…”
After finishing her deliveries, she walked beyond the city walls—into the quiet woods—to visit an elderly woman living alone in a collapsing house.
“Thank you, child,” the woman whispered. “You carry the same gentleness as the late Father Lian…”
Christina bowed, offered the vegetables, prayed, and began her walk back.
She picked mushrooms and roots along the forest trail.
“This will make a wonderful soup,” she murmured—light, hopeful.
Then she stepped out of the woods, glanced toward Staraya—
—and her smile instantly died.
Thick pillars of black smoke boiled into the sky.
“Ah—!”
She dropped her bag and sprinted, her powerful demihuman legs hammering the dirt. She vaulted fences, dashed across rooftops—then leapt with all her strength.
Then the chaos hit her:
People screaming.
Steel clashing.
Blood smeared across the streets.
Fire, bodies, raw panic everywhere.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
“No… no… no…”
She ran harder. And then she saw it—Her church. Burning.
Flames swallowed the wooden beams, devouring everything she’d built, everything the kids called home.
“The children—!”
She rushed toward the entrance—
But something flickered at the edge of her vision.
A shadow. A shape.
Slowly—trembling violently—she turned toward the large fruit tree beside the church.
The tree that once fed the children.
Once full. Once alive.
Now it was blackened.
Dead.
Twisted.
Her breath stopped.
For a moment—just one cruel trick of the mind—she saw the children standing there, smiling, waving from the branches.
But the illusion flickered… and vanished.
What remained was the truth:
Their small bodies, impaled by the warped branches. Hanging. Limp. Still. Every single one of them.
Christina collapsed to her knees.
Her hands came together in instinctive prayer, shaking uncontrollably as tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Oh… oh dear Goddess… Mother of all children… You who rise in the sky and illuminate our world…” Her voice cracked apart. “Please… protect them… You who destroy evil and pierce the heavens—!”
Golden light burst from her body, swirling around the death tree, around the impaled children—
—but nothing happened.
No miracle.
No warmth.
No divine answer.
Christina choked on her sobs, gasping between broken words. “P-please… p-please… M-Mother Lux… please…”
The light dimmed.
Then, like dying embers, it faded.
And the bodies—the little bodies she loved—remained limp and unmoving, hanging like discarded dolls from the cursed tree.
CRUSH
A wet, violent sound tore through her breath.
Christina coughed blood, the metallic taste exploding across her tongue as white-hot pain ignited in her stomach.
“G-gh—!”
Something rammed through her abdomen, lifting her clean off the ground. A dark metallic cord—barbed and glowing with magic—had impaled her, hoisting her into the air like some captured animal.
Blood spilled down her midsection, dripped from her chin. Her vision blurred and doubled.
She was yanked downward—hard—until she hung in front of a man.
A towering figure. Ancient. Battle-worn. Long white hair draped over his shoulders.
His presence—like a war god.
Alexander looked like a legendary warrior in his sixties—scarred, weathered, dangerous.
He was flanked by two younger warriors in their forties who resembled him: Atticus and Viktor.
Both had the same cruel arrogance carved into their faces.
“That’s the supposed nun, Father?” Atticus asked with a twisted smirk.
“She’s pretty,” Viktor added. “Shame she’s just a lowly animal.”
Alexander didn’t answer at first.
He pulled Christina closer along the barbed cord, her body twitching in agony, her ears drooping like dying petals.
Then his cold eyes locked onto hers.
“Tell me, bitch…” His voice was deep, steady—terrifyingly calm.
“Where is Iryoku Taiyou? Where is that killer?”
Christina trembled, breaths shallow and broken, blood trailing from her lips. And then she saw it—the insignia on his armor. The same death tree as the knights who once tried to take the orphanage.
Her throat tightened. She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t even breathe properly.
All she could do was beg inside her collapsing mind:
Dear Goddess… protect the children…
protect the people…
please…
Alexander’s expression hardened—flat, cold, final.
“To hell with that religious bullshit,” he muttered. “Gods don’t exist… or maybe they just don’t give a damn.” He leaned closer, voice dropping into a cruel whisper. “After all… I keep doing whatever I want. And nobody says a damn thing about it.” His gauntleted hand twitched.
The metallic cord jerked upward, wrenching her into the air—then whipped sideways, slamming Christina into the monstrous tree.
The chain drove her body onto a branch, sliding her onto it like butchered meat.
The branch she landed on was already occupied.
Little Phil’s small, lifeless body hung there—limp, colorless, still.
Christina’s eyes widened. Her arms moved shakily, instinctively, and she wrapped them around him, hugging the boy tightly.
Then her body slackened.
Her head fell forward.
She stopped moving.
Alexander stepped back, breathing hard.
“Atticus. Viktor.” His voice was low and controlled, but rage seethed under every syllable. “Keep searching. Kill everyone if you have to. And find him.”
“That bastard who killed Max and our knights,” Alexander added.
“The men are already interrogating the guards of this miserable place,” Viktor said.
“Good,” Alexander growled.
But then—
Something flickered.
A soft golden glow began rising from Christina’s corpse.
All three men turned sharply.
The light grew brighter—hotter—until her entire body was wrapped in a holy aura.
Christina gasped, eyes snapping open as she screamed—half agony, half prayer.
“Mother Lux—!”
The branch beneath her snapped, dropping her onto the dirt with a brutal thud.
Her abdominal wound knitted itself closed, flesh rebuilding as radiant gold pulsed from her chest.
Alexander and his sons stared in disbelief.
Christina pushed herself upright, trembling, whispering:
“Destroy all evil… you who illuminate the skies…”
CRACK
Another wet, brutal impact.
Her chest was pierced clean through—Alexander’s strike moving faster than a blink. Christina collapsed again, blood spilling from the fresh wound.
Only moments passed before—Light again.
Bright, holy, blinding. Her body arched as healing overtook her once more.
She prayed, voice weak and shaking:
“M-Mother Lux…”
And somewhere in her fading mind:
What about the children…? Why only me…?
Alexander’s face twisted into something animal.
He struck again—
His hidden blade punching straight through her skull, killing her instantly.
Her body fell.
Light swelled.
She revived again.
Alexander stared.
Then he started laughing—slow at first, then louder, growing into a manic roar.
“Ahahahaha…” Alexander stepped forward, eyes alight with feral excitement. “What a gift we’ve stumbled upon… Something as fascinating as that immortal demon.”
He turned to his sons. “Give me the flesh orb.”
Viktor lifted his hand. A round, pulsing mass—dark red, veined, wet—rested in his palm. It throbbed, faint ripples crawling beneath its surface.
Alexander took it with a reverent grin.
“Seriously… these things Sigil created, crafted from demon-corpse experiments…” He admired the orb, fingers sinking slightly into its trembling flesh. “They’re on a whole other level.”
His eyes returned to Christina’s limp, glowing, eternally reviving form.
“And this bitch…” he whispered, almost tenderly. “She’ll make even more wonderful things for us.”
His eyes shone with pure, starving hunger for power.
Christina opened her eyes again—just in time to see her body being swallowed by a dark, reddish flesh.
It crawled over her limbs, her torso, her throat—
hot, wet, alive.
It wrapped around her like something breathing.
She tried to move.
Tried to scream.
Tried to pray—
But nothing answered.
Her body was locked, frozen inside that translucent, pulsating membrane.
A huge sphere—
a cocoon of flesh—closing in until it imprisoned her completely.
Only her eyes could move.
And all they could see…
was the death tree.
The corpses of the children. The branches stabbing through their tiny bodies. The city she had loved—turning into a graveyard before her eyes.
Why…?
Why are you not saving them, Lux Mother?
Don’t revive me—keep my life, take it—but give them back their light…
Her mind screamed until her thoughts shredded.
They hoisted the cocoon up and hurled it into a carriage. Rope tightened around the already bound, suffocating sphere.
She couldn’t wipe the tears.
She couldn’t blink them away.
She couldn’t even close her eyes to stop seeing.
The carriage wheels creaked. They started moving.
And Christina was forced to watch—every second, every street, every horror.
Bodies on the ground.
Neighbors she had blessed.
Families she had helped.
All lying twisted, burnt, broken.
Homes she had prayed in front of—collapsed or still burning. The orphanage—her church—reduced to a pile of blackened bones.
Then, at the city gates, she saw them—
A row of city guards. Dozens. Kneeling with their hands bound behind their backs, heads bowed in shame and fear.
Alexander raised his hand. His voice was cold. Almost bored.
“Kill them all.”
Steel flashed.
Bodies fell.
The flames rushed in to finish whatever death hadn’t touched.
The carriage never stopped.
Never slowed.
Christina’s tears soaked the flesh cocoon around her as the burning city shrank behind them—
a dying glow on the horizon,
the final light of a place she once called home
crushed into darkness and ash.