My Childhood Friend Became an Inquisitor

“It’s alright, young miss. Louis, you don’t need to take the young miss’s side like that either.”
“I’m sorry, Mother…”
“Young miss. I don’t mind about the broken bowl, but I’ll have to scold you a bit for this part.”
“Hee, heek.”
“How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not your mother, young miss?”
*

A Cardinal, especially one with François’s status, can issue a church decree on his own. Even if it’s just a brief conversation in his office, it carries authority equal to a religious court’s ruling.

However, even if he pronounces the sentence, there are administrative procedures, so there was a short grace period before the punishment was carried out. Anne moved busily during that time.

Following the old adage that forgiveness is easier than permission. After all, a sin for which an appropriate price has been paid is as good as absolved.

Suppressing her desire to return to Louis, she instead crossed the main cathedral and forcefully kicked open the door of one of the annexes, the Inquisitor Training Center.

Bang!

All other colleagues had been dispatched externally, and no new baby Inquisitors who couldn’t control themselves after eating the sacred body had come in recently. The only person left in this vast compound besides her was just one.

Berdo, the red-haired Inquisitor. The man whose schedule had been thrown off because Anne snatched away the ‘judgment’ that he should have been in charge of originally.

With a swaggering impression, despite his cruel nature, he was just as devout, and Berdo had been engrossed in self-training, sweating profusely in the training ground until just now.

“Sister Anne?”

Bewilderment fills Berdo’s eyes as he sees her making such an aggressive and sudden appearance. Anne, whose compatibility with the sacred body was surprisingly high, didn’t usually engage in this kind of training.

It wasn’t for nothing that she was called the sacred light of the Inquisitors. The reason why no one could ignore her even though there were veterans who had been passionate about judging heretics for decades was-

Simply because Anne was that strong.

“Were you in training? Perfect timing.”

And now, with everyone gone, there was no one who could stop her.

Anne walked steadily towards Berdo and lightly kicked up one of the wooden swords lying on the ground to grasp it. Though her original weapon is a mace, so while she might be skilled with blunt weapons, she’s not very proficient with swordsmanship.

It didn’t matter. Anne wasn’t the type to rely on technique in the first place. Pointing the wooden sword at Berdo, Anne smiled gently.

“Brother Berdo. Shall we have a sparring match for the first time in a while, as a warm-up?”

However, the fighting spirit rising from the girl’s body was so fierce that even someone who knew nothing could sense it, so Berdo was not deceived by that smile.

“Sister Anne? What’s this suddenly…”

“I’ll take that as acceptance.”

Words close to coercion. Before Berdo could protest, a small and agile figure shot in like an arrow, raising a cloud of dust.

Berdo reflexively swung the weapon in his hand. Unlike Anne who was holding a practice wooden sword, he had been in the middle of training and was holding a real sword with a sharply honed blade.

An incomparable treasure compared to the wooden sword that was practically a club, the sacred artifact Dayblood.

Swoosh.

The second sharpest sword in the imperial family cuts through the air with a sharp sound. However, that sword strike leaving a red afterimage didn’t even graze Anne’s clothing.

It was partly because Berdo didn’t want to cut his sister and restrained his own action, but even if he had done his best, the result wouldn’t have been different.

A speed and difference in strength that made it hard to believe they were the same species. When Anne struck his side, with a heavy impact sound of “pueok,” Berdo’s body was lifted into the air and rolled.

“Kuhup!”

“I appreciate you giving me the first move, but it would be troublesome if you take it easy like that.”

“Who’s taking it easy… Cough!”

It was an absurd thing to say considering she had attacked suddenly without warning, but even more absurd was the situation itself.

Originally, sparring between Inquisitors was commonplace. However, since they had reinforced bodies and their emotions changed somewhat one-dimensionally, once they started fighting, they would often fight until they were battered.

To prevent this, there was one rule in sparring between Inquisitors. The fight ends when a weapon breaks. It was a sufficiently effective rule as most used practice weapons for sparring, but not now.

Berdo had drawn Dayblood in the heat of the moment. On the other hand, Anne was holding the wooden sword with both hands wrapped around the head part rather than the handle to prevent it from breaking.

A radical idea of protecting the weapon with the body because the body is harder than the weapon. If Anne had struck with that much force normally, the weapon would have broken, and the sparring would have ended right there.

“Calm down! Damn it, are you really trying to kill me?”

“It’s just a light sparring, what are you talking about?”

True to her words, Anne was faithful to the rules of sparring. Refraining from excessive insults, addressing each other respectfully, stopping when a weapon breaks to prevent overheating.

However, the chilling coldness in Anne’s eyes was hotter than heat. Eyes that looked not at a sparring partner but as if looking at the enemy of a lover.

With a gaze burning with a mixture of slight affection and even greater sense of betrayal, and regret at not being able to kill, even Berdo, who had faced numerous heretics, was momentarily overwhelmed.

“Have you really gone mad?”

Eyes touching on hostility just short of killing intent. Finally giving up on persuasion, Berdo lightly cut his own arm with his sword.

If he fought with half-hearted feelings, he might really be killed. Even if she only held a wooden sword, she was an opponent incomparable to himself, so he would fight with all his might!

Flames began to flicker over the blade of the sacred sword that had drunk noble blood. True to its name of the Sun’s Blood, the flames wrapping the blade were pure white like the midday sun.

“Don’t get angry, Brother Berdo.”

Anne also had her own sacred artifact, but because she had come through the main cathedral, her mace Polaris was sleeping in the weapon storage, not in the Inquisitor Training Center.

Of course, if two Inquisitors fought with their sacred artifacts, it would be a disaster and a major incident in itself. Therefore, in the form of sparring,

Since it’s widely known that they are battle maniacs, this incident will only remain as a small catastrophe that occurred when emotions ran high during an Inquisitor’s sparring.

Swish!

The sacred sword is swung in a semicircle, leaving a white trajectory. It was a strike that would end the sparring immediately if it hit even once, either cutting her or cutting the weapon, so Anne skillfully stepped back, avoiding the sword’s orbit.

Engaging in close combat with an opponent stronger than oneself is suicidal. Instead of chasing Anne, Berdo maintained a constant distance and swung his sword repeatedly.

The extended blade length wrapped in flames, the heat wave and sparks following the swing block approach. The attempt seemed quite effective.

Crack!

Until Anne leapt in through a gap too brief for an ordinary person to even see, and then struck down on Berdo’s head with her fist holding the wooden sword.

Even though the reinforced body absorbed all the impact of the collision, she could feel the wooden sword in her hand cracking just from applying force. Hopefully it would hold out until her venting was over.

Anne charged at Berdo again as he was staggering to get up and delivered a roundhouse kick.

His jaw bent at an absurd angle, and his body that was trying to stand up fell again. Berdo swung Dayblood convulsively, but the sun-like flames of the sword did no more harm to Anne than slight heat.

Eventually, as the blood dried up, the flames of Dayblood extinguished. As if not giving time to feed it blood again, Anne launched a merciless assault on her fallen opponent.

She hits and strikes with her fist holding the wooden sword. She tramples and kicks with her feet. Of course, no matter how strongly she hits, she can’t inflict pain comparable to the persistent and cruel torture he had inflicted.

For instance, this is a form of venting. Something that can’t be stopped even knowing it’s futile.

She tramples methodically. No matter how strong Anne’s power is, she can’t break an Inquisitor’s reinforced body with bare hands, but rather because of that, Berdo couldn’t faint and had no choice but to engrave the pain. In his bones, and in his heart.

She doesn’t kill him. Anne kept the promise she had made to François before coming here.

‘I won’t let anyone touch Louis.’

She also keeps the promise she made to herself with this. A chain of absurd violence. Just as Berdo had done to Louis, Anne indiscriminately passed on the pain to Berdo on Louis’s behalf.

No matter how tough an Inquisitor’s body is, each of Anne’s full-power kicks is enough to kill a wolf. There was no way there wouldn’t be an impact resonating heavily deep inside the body.

“Kuhek.”

Clang.

Finally, Berdo dropped his sword, and Anne quickly kicked the man who had quickly become covered in blood, smashing him against one of the walls of the training ground.

She approaches the fallen opponent who still can’t control his body, one step at a time. Anne grabbed Berdo’s hair and lifted the man larger than herself with one hand, as if pulling out a weed.

“Brother Berdo.”

She warns in a low voice while looking into the dull red eyes from which madness had disappeared.

“You shouldn’t have touched ‘what’s mine’. No matter how much you coveted it.”

“Covet? Hu, huhu… Is that even possible for servants of God like us?”

However, though the flame had gone out, the man’s eyes were still firm even in the ashes. His will, armored with faith and shielded with conviction, was so firm that it didn’t easily break even under the baptism of violence.

Eyes of a fanatic like herself. Anne, for the first time, found it unpleasant.

“Don’t pretend not to know, Sister Anne. You must know that Brother François, and I too… are ultimately worried about you.”

“……”

“You, cough! need to be more aware of your position.”

Instead of answering, Anne struck with her fist once more. Even while being beaten and coughing up blood, Berdo continued speaking without stopping.

“A talent that attracted attention from the beginning, and an Inquisitor with a higher possibility of corruption than any other profession. Kek! If you protect a specific heretic, how many people do you think will be ready to tear you apart?”

“Shut up.”

“No, even right now, we’re suspicious. Sister Anne, when I tortured that heretic, he said something like this.”

The topic of Louis. The punching that seemed like it would never stop unknowingly paused for a moment. Taking advantage of this brief gap, Berdo quickly continued speaking.

“He said he was innocent, that he hadn’t committed any sin… But Sister Anne, you’re also well-versed in torture, so you should know.”

“…What are you trying to say?”

“Ordinary people, in such situations, confess everything and beg even for things they didn’t actually do. Because it’s too painful and agonizing, they want to feel better right away.”

Bam! Anne struck with her fist again. However, because Inquisitors were not ordinary people, Berdo steadfastly said what he had to say even in the pain that shook his mind.

Such strong will was, of course, not something an ordinary country boy would possess.

“Was that heretic’s spirit so strong that I couldn’t break it? That’s not it, Sister… That’s not it.”

The buzzing voice was so unpleasant and uncomfortable that it seemed like it might be Rowe’s temptation itself.

Anne didn’t want to listen anymore. They say they’re trying to protect her. Perhaps those words weren’t wrong, but there was one big difference between them and herself.

Unlike herself who would protect Louis unconditionally in any situation,
The Church would try to kill her with the hands of her brothers if betrayal and corruption were confirmed.

“His spirit was already broken before I even touched him.”

Whack!

“For a very… long time.”

Anne’s full-force blow struck Berdo’s forehead, finally silencing him as he mumbled.

Though she had protected it with her hands, in the end it couldn’t withstand it, and the wooden sword finally broke into two pieces inside her clasped hands. Her fine hands that had absorbed the impact were already covered in wounds without her even realizing it.

Anne tossed the broken wooden sword roughly onto the unconscious Berdo and turned around. Surely, it was nonsense not worth listening to, but-
-for some reason, the last words he left clung stubbornly to her ears and wouldn’t fall away.