Back in the Colonna Palace, when the maid heard he meant to visit the orphanage, her eyes flared like a startled dove, then she snapped to and pressed a wallet into the Savior Saint’s hand.

A green frog with a wide, laughing mouth sat on the clasp, cute as a toy, clearly a private keepsake.

He took it without fuss, a quick swallow of guilt; the Colonna royals would surely reimburse this clever maid.

A thin thread tugged at him like conscience: the wallet needed to go back.

He’d already traded silver and copper at the Machu Picchu bazaar for bright swirls of candy, then handed them to the children; he tossed the now-hollow wallet and palmed it again, light as air.

Regret pricked him like a thorn; this was a misplay.

He should’ve asked the Dragon Exorcist to take it back; if he fell here, a dead man’s grip would wrong that maid.

Maybe it was a trinket bought at a street stall; maybe a token from her husband, a ring of promise turned frog; his mind drifted like wind over roads, snagging on tales he’d seen—fierce or tender, all etched deep.

Either way, it had to return.

He asked the matron, a gentle elder whose own line had been cut by monsters, to hold the wallet; if the Dragon Exorcist or anyone came asking, send it back to the Colonna Palace, like a message in a river.

Or he himself would return and claim it, a promise bent into a circle.

Children swarmed like sparrows, begging for head pats; the matron’s warm eyes urged dinner like steam from a clay pot; he still had to leave.

“I’ll become as strong as you, uncle!”

“Make sure you come back!”

“Thanks, uncle. The candy’s so good.”

“My dream is to wipe out all the hateful Demonfolk!”

He only gave a thin, bitter smile, snow-light under his collar, and held his tongue.

Each afternoon the granny spun stories like smoke—Heroes and legends, the Demon King—hoping their fathers’ pride would root like trees, and their hatred would be watered.

To the Savior Saint, it was a chain of hate, iron links clinking; not a flawless cure.

Children are blank paper, easy to ink, easy to fold into shapes teachers desire, origami bent by hands.

“To forge a perfect doll in thought—only dolls never do anything extra.” That venomous, skewed line was the Creator Saint’s, sarcasm made flesh.

And yet it held a shard of truth; education aims to guide the unknowing toward a set shape, the difference lies in the ideal drawn in the mind—he’d seen Nazi brainwashing like black tar, the rigid eight‑legged essays of old exams like cages, exam-cram drills and talk of holistic education like two winds colliding, and he’d listened to other Saints trade views like stones.

In truth, most of it had been the Creator Saint venting, crackling like dry thorns.

He kept his judgments like pebbles at the bottom of a well—he didn’t answer, didn’t praise, didn’t vilify.

Who has the right to stamp right or wrong on the world? He felt he didn’t.

So in the end, his choice as always was a quiet shrug—don’t interfere.

He left the orphanage, helpless smile thin as a razor’s edge, as always.

On a distant slope, the Dragon Exorcist’s pupils narrowed into amber slits, hot air shimmering like summer mirage; with vision beyond human, she watched the Savior Saint who only smiled and echoed.

Little sandals cracked against a stone; she stamped hard and spat, “Idiot!”

The Savior Saint never arrived late; it felt woven into fate’s loom.

Saints walked the mortal world like travelers under vast skies.

In the forest, he moved slow, step by steady step, yet the layered trees streamed backward like a river of green; with each footfall, speed rose, as if he became light.

In future immortal arts, this would be the origin of Light Flight.

In future magic, it would seed the “light‑shift transit” school like a spark under glass.

But to him it was nothing—no mana burned—his rank was simply there; a casual walk leaped millions of kilometers like a stone skipping on time.

To a Divine Being, time is a long river; humans are bright sparks drifting and thinking; that higher sight and higher rank are miracles stitched into the material world, and when such a thing shows itself, the impossible follows like thunder.

When he chose to walk, neither wind nor space could bar his will; his soul had ascended, able to shift worlds by intent; nothing in this world could halt his steps.

This was a Saint who walks the world, hand on unmatched power, legs carrying him across all mountains and rivers under heaven.

Forests, hamlets, brooks, ranges, flower fields blurred past like banners in wind.

In passing, he saw humans hunting monsters, monsters hunting humans; a rule, he’d heard from a Divine Being, laid by god and demon at the world’s dawn—balance like a scale.

Faces like his own falling into dust pulled a chord of grief; and he still counted himself human.

Don’t save.

Even a Saint can’t save everyone beneath the sky.

Don’t interfere.

Even a Saint can’t claim perfect correctness without cracks.

He wanted to do nothing, because—children were still laughing like bells; he had no reason to break what had settled.

He stepped through blood and fire, flowers and grass, bitter smile tight as a knot, and halted at the border of the Helena Blue‑Glow Forest and the plain, waiting for the Hero.

He weighed finding a stone to sit on, but the trio that shook the world had already run up, ready to enter the blue woods.

The rebel Hero wore many cuts like cat-scratches, all shallow; she moved fine, eyes burning stubborn as coals; her leather was pieced together, mismatched sizes like scavenged plates, clearly looted.

The Arcane Engineer beside her felt off-tone for this world—steel‑blue plates and clean, muscular frames, a hint of cyberpunk shining like neon in dusk.

The third, the fallen Hero, still slept like a sealed statue; the Arcane Engineer had mounted small thrusters on her wings, so battle wouldn’t demand sheltering her.

“The Savior Saint never arrives late”—this was true at a level beyond physics, inside the clasp of pure concept.

He frowned, opened his clenched fist, tugged his studded gloves tighter like binding a vow, then raised his already high collar another notch, a shadow on his face.

The rebel Hero and the Savior Saint spotted each other at almost the same breath; she stopped dead, her boot peeling turf like a rug to show black soil; the Arcane Engineer, warned by her, finally sensed the man.

Good reaction, he thought, like a cat pricking its ears at a whisper.

“Who are you?”

“Some call me the Savior Saint, but truth is—I don’t save people.”

“What do you want?”

“To stop you here, like a gate on a road.”

“Why?”

“Because if I stop you, I’ll meet the Majesty I intend to challenge.”

He answered every question, steady as a lamplight, because there was no need to hide.

He hadn’t planned hostility toward the rebel Hero; as long as the world didn’t burn, whatever humans chose—self‑remaking, mind uploads, or even ceding the earth—were stories told inside the world, and he’d step aside, hoping to dodge problems with no clean answers.

He stretched both hands; the Hero startled like a deer, dragging the greatsword off her back; in truth he only adjusted his studded gloves again—his bad habit, surfacing when battle tightened the air.

“Why tell me so bluntly?”

“Others stay silent out of their fixations or pride. That Majesty’s plan isn’t my business. I don’t have those noble, beautiful things.”

“You’re babbling nonsense,” the rebel Hero snapped, voice like flint; “everyone’s like this! Make it clear! Without clarity, how can people understand each other?”

He kept loosening and retying the cords at his wrists, seeking the most comfortable grip like a craftsman fidgeting; his eyes stayed on his gloves, while she glared like a hawk.

“Because those people you met didn’t want mutual understanding,” he said, voice level as rain. “They wanted you to choose while you two didn’t understand each other.”

“If I know nothing, what can my choice rest on?” she shouted, anger like sparks in dry grass.

“I’m bad at persuasion,” he breathed, shoulders sinking like dusk; “let that Majesty speak; he’ll appear before you again. To keep three ‘outside the story’ heroes from catching you, that Majesty will come meet me, the roadblock. So let’s pause here, Hero; for both of us…”

A greatsword cut slammed down, a heavy arc like a falling moon, and severed his words.

“Out of the way if you won’t explain! We’re on a schedule!”

His mouth tightened under the collar like a drawn bowstring; he hadn’t wanted to fight her.

Muscles coiled to bone like braided rope, pressure building; his clenched fist was a chambered bullet waiting for a trigger.

Just a little force, he thought; hold them here and wait for His Majesty, like a dam across a stream.

The sky‑cleaving greatsword and the mountain‑rending fist never touched their owners.

A pitch‑black coffin bloomed between them, like night sprouting from air.

“Question:”

Its black skin bore silver, chaotic traceries, lines like vines depicting dragons, flames, death, calamity—an alphabet of endings.

Their first strikes left no mark; instead the coffin rumbled like a storm trapped in a cave; something inside struggled, roared, and danced itself hysterical.

But the voice was the opposite—calm, rational, arrogant as a crown, yet like a sage lowering his head to ask.

“Humans regrow like weeds.”

“Monsters regrow like weeds.”

“Demonfolk regrow like weeds.”

Eight bone wings stabbed out from the coffin’s sides, and without a single flap it floated like a grim star.

The Hero sprang back, caution burning like a brand; she retreated until her gut stopped screaming instant death, then halted, back drenched in cold sweat.

The Savior Saint rooted himself and hammered a second punch at the coffin, a blow like thunder under stone.

“Which of those lines is true?” the voice asked. “Which is false?”

The coffin’s face blew outward, crushed from within; a fully black, twisted arm with dozens of joints thrust out and locked on the Savior Saint’s fist; the studded glove trembled, tilting upward unnaturally, and his whitening face showed the weight of the contest pressing down.

And—

Arms, more than one.

A second thin arm, a third filthy arm, a fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth forced their way out, hooking the coffin’s rim and bracing hard like spiders on a wall.

They seemed intent on dragging the true body forth from the dark.

“Answer me, Savior Saint,” the voice murmured, cold as winter water. “What does your ‘correct’ look like?”

An ugly mask drifted out, only its upper half carved, a half‑finished face; it floated like ash above the coffin.

Behind it, pure‑black threads unfurled like roots, tying back into the coffin’s insides, into that endless dark.