Chapter 99

A family that has faced demons with a single whip for generations.

The last heir of the Western Family blankly stared at the changes happening to her in a space that felt detached from reality.

Silver fur, matching her hair color, sprouted on her limbs. Probably on her face too.

Her long hair shortened, and her nails grew longer. The transformation, an unstoppable change, continued even as she teleported. Unknowingly, the woman shed a tear.

‘I don’t want this.’

For a human to be forcibly turned into something non-human is a horrifying ordeal. At the end of the transformation, even her intellect would vanish, leaving only a pure beast. Like her family and relatives, the human would disappear, and only the animal would remain.

‘No…’

Now, even her voice was gone. A guttural cry escaped her mouth. Though life was merely changing into another form, for a person, it was death.

Facing her death as a human, Lucia’s life flashed before her eyes. From her childhood to the moment she found herself in this situation. Her entire life passed by like flipping through a book.

‘Father, mother. And my sister, brother…’

The Western Family, though cold to demons, was warm to their own. Parents, relatives, and siblings. To Lucia, they were always a loving family, the most trustworthy people.

Until the day Grimudo came for them.

That’s how it should have been.

‘I wanted to save them, no matter what.’

Her siblings and family turned into beasts, her sister, now a weasel, tried to eat her mother, who had become a chicken. Those who were once family no longer recognized each other, reverting to a wild state.

After Grimudo left, Lucia, who had been away from home and thus spared, faced this despairing reality. The Demon King hadn’t touched their wealth, so she could at least hire someone to care for the animals.

But what then? Most animals don’t live as long as humans.

Even her mother, now a chicken, would live at most ten years. Maybe only five. Facing this bleak reality, she pleaded with the Pope of the Elysia Church, closely tied to the Western Family, but they had no answers.

– We don’t even understand how this curse works.

Even after the Pope himself infused divine power, the transformed animals didn’t revert. They just became healthy animals.

The Three God Faith was shaken by the Demon King’s terror. Even if they brought an elixir, it would be meaningless.

– Child, if there’s any way to lift this curse, the Primal Demon King might know. I’m sorry. The Elysia Church has no way to break this curse.

To live a lifetime without communication, to send them off like that?

If her family had died, she might have been able to give up. But no. They’re alive. They’re all alive! If only she could find a way to revert them!

For that purpose, she volunteered to join the Hero Party. To confront Grimudo, subdue him, and find a way to restore her family. A journey to avenge her family and restore her transformed loved ones.

But what was the result?

Just one more beast added. What was the point of all that traveling?

What was she trying to achieve? All she could do was cry.

Perhaps she knew. From the day she fled in disgrace from the Arctic, she might have been avoiding the truth.

She didn’t want to face the sad reality that she couldn’t achieve revenge on Grimudo or restore her family.

Blink.

The woman, who had closed her eyes, didn’t see the bluebird feather on her chest trembling.

The Polymorph Curse is an attack, not an environmental change. The bluebird feather couldn’t block it, so it disintegrated itself into pure divine power.

The power used to manifest a miracle turned back into pure power. The blue divine power seeped into Lucia’s chest.

Opening her eyes to the warmth, she saw her limbs, smooth and free of fur. Frantically, her purple eyes scanned her body.

“The Polymorph Curse…”

She bolted upright, eyes wide. Where is this? Coming to her senses, she found herself lying in the yard of a crumbling, filthy shack in a deserted forest, the sound of larks noisy in her ears.

Though the teleportation had completed, moving her to an unknown place, she didn’t care. She was too busy checking her body. She even stripped her top to inspect herself closely. It was certain. The transformation hadn’t happened.

“Ah, ah… What, what happened…”

Parnell stretched, easing her still-aching back. She had almost turned into a snake but returned to human form.

Though her body still creaked, it was better to remain human, even if she rolled in dung, than to become a beast.

“Grimudo… He definitely did something to us at the end.”

Yurinel frowned, looking at her hands, which had almost turned into lion paws.

If the transformation had succeeded, she would have killed snakes with her paws and eaten cats right after arriving here. The bluebird feather seemed to have blocked something, but she had no idea what.

“Anyway, it’s good it ended safely. What does it matter? As long as we’re safe. But where’s the Saint? No matter how rushed I was, I wouldn’t have left her behind.”

Parnell looked around. She, Yurinel, and Lucia were here, relatively intact, but Araidel was nowhere to be seen.

Only her saintly robes lay crumpled on the ground.

“Chirp, chirp…”

Well, strictly speaking, the robes weren’t alone.

A bird, making sounds Yurinel had often heard in her rural childhood, was trapped in the robes, flapping its wings. The robes fluttered as if dancing on their own.

“No way…?”

Yurinel’s face turned pale. Parnell was speechless.

They really hoped it wasn’t true, but they had just witnessed their own bodies transforming into something non-human. And come to think of it, Araidel didn’t have a bluebird feather.

“Tell me that bird isn’t the Saint. Quickly.”

“I, I don’t know. How can I say? That’s blasphemy…”

“Chirp?”

Then, a lark poked its head out from the collar of the robes. Its feather color oddly resembled Araidel’s hair. Parnell staggered.

She saw it. She saw it. That bird’s eyes weren’t black like a normal lark’s. They were blue. Incidentally, Saint Araidel’s eyes were blue.

“Oh, my god.”

“Chirp. Bibibebe…”

The bird, wary of the people, spread its wings to fly away. Parnell, collapsing from exhaustion, casually cast a spell. Even with her magic depleted, she could manage this low-level spell.

“Bind.”

“Chirp?!”

“Grab it. I… I can’t do it myself. I’m going to hell…”

The woman who had blasphemously bound the Saint covered her head with her hands and closed her eyes. She looked like she was praying to Nemi, the goddess.

Yurinel safely caught the bird that couldn’t fly and fell. She almost dropped it.

Her spine chilled. The revered Saint almost died from a fall…

‘Grimudo’s magic is too potent. It doesn’t budge or break.’

Yurinel’s current state was similar to what Geher and Leyman had experienced. Grimudo’s dark energy had corroded her magic circuits, claiming them as its own.

Thus, magic didn’t flow properly in her body, and even drawing magic from outside was restricted.

‘Damn it, the magic is too strong. Was the dark energy always this vicious?’

It was suffocating. Like a blocked nose, it felt like she was choking. With so much magic around, but unable to draw it due to blocked circuits, it was terrifying.

During the battle in the Arctic, the divine power of the God of Hope had melted the dark energy in her body, so this hadn’t happened. Only then did Yurinel sigh.

She truly regretted it. She hadn’t meant to send him away like that. But no matter how much she regretted, Lucia was the same.

“Lucia. It must be a shock, but pull yourself together… Lucia?”

Like someone who had lost her mind, the woman was gnawing on her nails. This unexpected appearance of the once-mighty demon hunter was something neither Parnell nor Yurinel had seen before.

“What’s wrong? Are you scared? Still, we’ve escaped from him twice. We should be grateful for that.”

Parnell tried to console her. But there was no response.

Actually, Lucia was muttering something. But it wasn’t directed at them.

“Why, why? Why… If you could lift the Polymorph Curse… Why didn’t you tell me?”

The answer she had spent her life searching for was right beside her, without needing to go to the Arctic.

No, to be more precise, it had been there.

“Why… If you could…”

“The Polymorph Curse? The one that turned the Saint into a bird? Was that what we almost got hit by?”

Parnell, finally catching her breath, responded.

“I don’t know how you know about it, but did you ever ask Kyle if he could lift the curse? You never did. So of course he wouldn’t know.”

“…Lucia? Lucia? Hey, what’s wrong all of a sudden? Snap out of it!”

Parnell, grabbing Lucia’s shoulder as she fainted, screamed internally. She wanted to cry too. But crying here wouldn’t solve anything.

‘Wherever this is, it’s far from the nearest Magic Tower branch.’

In this remote area, even magic communication was unreliable. They could use telepathy or message magic to report their situation and call for help, but the problem was that such long-distance magic required a lot of power.

The only commoner she acknowledged, yet found annoying. Nominally, her teacher. Thinking of the Oldman Tower Master, Parnell sighed.

She and her teacher were nominally in a master-disciple relationship, but in reality, they barely exchanged a letter a year. It wasn’t that they were on bad terms; they were just indifferent to each other.

Since they rarely contacted each other, there was no way he would notice if their communication stopped.

“First, let’s all rest here. Then… we’ll have to find a way to take the Saint back to the Empire. If we can just get back to the Empire, we can contact the Temple or the Magic Tower…”

No sacred sword, no whip, and no magic either. But they were still alive.

If they weren’t going to give up and commit suicide, they needed to think about what to do next.