Chapter 36: 36. Blood Rose

"You think… you'll get what you want from Theo using me? You chose… the wrong hostage… to Theo… I was but a passing fancy—"

The sadness appeared behind Rose's laugh. She was shown the truth; it was not her he wanted. After he became the Saint and regained parts of his memories, Theo returned to his lover.

Ulis growled, hearing the mockery behind her words, "Watch your words. Do you know who you're talking to you bit—"

"Ulis!" Sneha's voice filled the virtually empty room, "Leave us."

"But Captain, what if she—"

"What, do you think I'll be defeated by her?"

"No! Of course not! The Undefeated Berserker is unchallenged!" Ulis responded with pride.

"Then, leave us. This is Rose Breakblade, the Blood Flower of the North. She may be one of our sworn enemies, but she deserves our respect. She's an important piece to us, after all."

Ulis was hesitant, but she followed Sneha's orders.

"I leave the questioning to you, Captain."

The Captain cannot be questioned; they only answer to the pillars and the Star; Ulis was lucky to still be breathing after disobeying Sneha more than once.

The doors closed behind Sneha, and she looked directly at Rose's eyes after the latter let out an amused laugh.

"It's laughable, isn't it? My epithet." Sneha didn't react. She just took the chair resting to her right and smiled, "What, are you surprised that I reacted differently from what you expected? You're not the first to laugh, and you won't be the last, so why bother?"

"At least… you're palatable than the rest." Rose weakly responded.

"I try to be more flexible," Sneha responded with a shrug.

"For a Demon Follower, that's cute."

"And for a dog of the Church, you're so weak."

The two ladies quipped, trying to rouse the other. Sparks flew despite their silence.

"But... don't get me wrong… I wasn't calling you cute because… of your epithet."

Sneha raised a brow at her words, "Oh? Did I perhaps misunderstand?"

"A little… what I'm laughing at is… how stupid… your plan is. What important piece? What nonsense."

Rose showed Sneha a smirk, but the other party simply shook her head.

"I see, I see...." Sneha gave Rose a sorry look and then snorted, "…and you might be misunderstanding something as well. I am not only calling you weak because I defeated you. No, I am calling you weak because for being a dog of the church, your faith is too weak."

"What did you just say?"

Almost immediately, the room was filled to the brim with oppressive bloodlust. Sneha whistled in admiration, "Woah, I stepped on a landmine, it seems. Well, can you blame me for saying that? The Blood Flower is known to be the fiercest of the Radiant Paladins. Being the weapon of the Fate Sect, I expected you to be… how do you say it? More faithful? Alas, even the Paladins have weak hearts, I guess. But don't you think it is laughable if you expect people to follow your if even you waver? If only you saw that bastard's reaction when I showed him your gloves, you would've been able to see the face of anger. It is simply thrilling to see what is underneath the smile of a Saint."

Sneha just shuddered at the thought, "I honestly wish I could have stayed longer. Despite what he let on over the weeks we've worked with him, he didn't show any signs of the capability to harbor such intensity."

Rose lifted her head; the darkness underneath her eyes swirled and slowly lifted. The tightening grip in her heart gradually loosened the moment she heard Sneha's words, "Re-really?"

She saw it herself. That Theo was with another woman, it was all so clear, yet, now, she wanted to acknowledge it wasn't so. Rose actually wanted to believe a Demonic Follower's words to be true.

She chose to doubt what she saw to comfort the heart that had been injured by betrayal, 'Is it possible that this was all a misunderstanding?'

Seeing this light, Sneha finally showed Rose a bright and brilliant smile, "He is coming, and in exchange for the Archduke Demon that was promised to us, we will give you to him."

Sneha could see that hope was starting to return in Rose's eyes. The despair and depression that settled earlier were now nowhere to be seen, 'Finally, I can begin.'

Sneha had another mission given to her just a few hours back, and that is to break Rose and extract valuable information.

Already, Rose was at a vulnerable state earlier, and she had been beaten and tortured to learn about the Artifact they've wanted to find. However, Rose did not break; no matter what they used, physical or mental, nothing worked.

But now, Sneha found a window, and though Rose saw that something was about to come, it was all but too late.

Without missing a beat, when Rose's mind had been the weakest when doubt surfaced,  Sneha pulled out a purple crystal gem and placed it on Rose's forehead.

The crystal gem emitted lightning and struck Rose, entering the deepest recesses of her mind. Rose gritted her teeth as the pain became harder and harder to bear.

"…that worked? The Mind Void Crystal is working?" Sneha could not believe what she saw, "A Radiant Paladin is subjected to a Mind Void Crystal? Ha… haha… Gahahahaha, and they say you are the Blood Rose, the best of the Fate Paladins ever produced this last five hundred years, and yet here you are, suffering because of a slight. In the end, you are nothing but just an ordinary woman, slave to her emotions! HAHAHA! But at least prove me wrong, survive until I can get what I want out of you!"

The curse of the Mind Void Crystal is a powerful curse that invades the mind, but it cannot be used by those without any cracks in their minds.

Rose has a strong will, but because of her God's Senses, she's the most sensitive to changes in her emotions. She might have been able to hold out before because of the pain of being betrayed by Theo, and the conviction she held to her role was like steel, but now, when her doubt and guilt appeared when Sneha's words left entered her ears, Rose became vulnerable.

“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!”

Every second, Rose felt her body being ripped to pieces. But the Mind Void Crystal was not going to let off in just a few seconds. It would take time to invade a person's mind, especially the mind of a person like Rose, and every second, as it burrows deeper, the pain grows.

From seconds to minutes, the unrelenting torture never stopped. Rose's mind was besieged, searched, and warped, and her past was slowly revealed and recounted.

"You've been in some difficult times at a young age, Blood Rose; it's a wonder how you serve the Fate Sect so faithfully even now." Sneha let out a curious remark, and Rose only struggled to get out of her binds even further.

But, the more she fought back, the stronger the backlash of the Crystal emitted.

More and more, they went deeper into the past, "No! Stop it! STOOOOOP!" Rose pleaded, but all to no avail.

"If you want it to stop, then refrain from fighting back. The more you fight back, the more it gets harder for me to find the correct memories, the longer it would take."

Memories she didn't want to remember surfaced, and the more she fought back to protect the memory they wanted from her, the slower time seemed to move. The more she saw the past, experienced them as if she was there.

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It was as clear as day; a woman with runes drawn with blood on her face smiled at Rose. The woman held Rose's hand, leading her to an altar surrounded by others who wore the same robe as the woman.

'Mama?' the young Rose looked at the woman's twisted and horrific smile, and then a blade entered her young body, and the pain spiraled into reality.

"AAAAAAAAhhhhh!" it was painful, oh, so excruciating.

Rose wanted not to wallow in despair. Her mind was cursed, but her heart wasn't.

Thus, the girl started to search for a way to calm herself and give her strength. In her most profound sense of despair, when her God's Senses amplified the pain twenty times, she snuck a look over at her pinky that glowed with the red string of fate.

Weakly, she smiled and found the closest memory and the farthest away from the past. A person who reminded her not of the pain, only the beauty of the future.

Rose forced a smile as she fantasized that she'd be able to be with Theo tomorrow. That he would hold her after apologizing, that he would reassure her that she was the only one for him.

'If her claims… were true… then, Theo got angry for me… someone… finally cares for me… someone… treasures me.'

Rose smiled.

'Theo, my fated one… I want to see you… I want you to see me… only me… look at me… not at what I have, but me….'

That finally… someone who genuinely loved her for who she was, 'You are my fated… you are my beloved… please… look at me… and only me.'

But Rose's decision to retreat meant that Sneha's job only got easier. She winded across the memories of the broken Paladin and arrived at the memory she had been trying to extract.

She found the glimpse of the old and forgotten map, "I found it!"

Sneha isolated the memory using the Crystal and copied it using the Mind Void Crystal. But at that instance, to Sneha's dismay, all of Rose's memories suddenly warped, and the memory she was trying to isolate memory forcefully changed to Rose's first meeting with the "real" Theo when he stepped out of the light of the Goddess of Fate.

"No, no, no, no, what's happening!? No, this is impossible!" Sneha was in disbelief, but the Mind Void Crystal dropped onto the floor, its luster was gone, and the memories kept were the emergence of the Saint from the Divine Light.

There's only one way to reverse the Mind Void Crystal's effect: to close the gap between the mind and heart. But, this powerful curse, across its many uses, had never been countered, "That's impossible, no one can find peace while subjected to such pain. No one! Especially you! Those memories should've eaten you!"

Sneha roared at Rose, but the Blood Rose of the North responded with nothing but a twisted smile.

"What are you smiling at!?" shouted Sneha in anger and frustration, "Do you think this is funny!? Do you know how rare that thing is!? Dammit, I didn't want to use it because it's so rare, but I'll have to use another one and try again."

"Try… again? No… that was the last chance you had in obtaining information about the Ancient Weapon. You can't break into my mind again." Weak, bleeding, and breathing heavily, Rose's threat carried no real weight, or so others would believe.

"You say these things so passionately that it makes me want to think you'll be able to pull it off. Sadly, you're all air. With you how you look right now, do you think I'll get scared of you? I defeated you when you were at your best, don't act like I didn't. Don't worry, I will have more chances to break you… seeing how you're so infatuated with that Saint, I wonder how you'd react when I present to you his severed head? I'll take it from his shoulders the moment he arrives here trying to save you—"

The chains violently clang, and immediately Sneha jumped backward. She felt something had gone wrong, and with the wall behind her, Sneha got a clear view of Rose's expressionless face.

The pike on the ceiling then lost its bite. The chains holding Rose came undone, and she landed on the cold floor with unusual grace, "You said... Theo is coming here?"

A feral beauty stood before Sneha. Her eyes revolved with misty darkness, lunacy, and obsession, 'This looks bad.'

Rose looked at Sneha, her expression unamused by her words, "Then… I must hurry and stop playing. I'll clean this place as soon as possible… I need to prepare to meet my fated."

In that instance, when Sneha heard Rose's voice echo with malice, did she remember a story passed around by the Demonic Followers.

It was a story about the North from three years ago.

'...did the Mind Void Crystal break her?'

Thus, Rose decided to live up to her namesake.

***

Sigurd Manor — Top of the Overgrown Tree

Alba and Levia overlooked the horizon watching a Blue Pegasus soar to the skies with haste.

Alba shot his daughter a glance and remarked, "You don't seem too worried, Levia. Considering how much you love your brother, I thought you'd be making a fuss now."

"Wha-Wha-What!? Me? Love that snotnosed brat!? I…um… actually dislike, haven't you seen me interact with him, Father? Like… grrrr… right?"

Alba didn't know how to respond to his daughter's pitiful action.

Levia's face only became redder than before after realizing the ridiculousness of her actions, "Please forget about that."

"No." Alba sternly responded.

With a sigh, she sat on the tree and sighed, "Anyway, Father was asking about why I'm not worried about Theo? Well, you're not exactly right about that. I am worried for him, yes, but more about if he'll fall from the Pegasus or not. As for combat, I know for a fact, that he won't be fighting anyone."

"Why is that?" Alba questioned.

"Seeing how Father doesn't know, should I assume, what you know about the Northern Subjugation of one of the Bandit King is because of the joint effort of the Fate Sect Knight Order, led by the Pope so they can clear the Mountains?"

Alba grunted in agreement, and Levia shot her father a cheeky smile, "Well, that's to be expected; we're so far off from the North, so we can't gather enough information over there. Anyway, the truth is not exactly how it had been said.

"It wasn't the Knight Order who brought down the Bandit King; it wasn't the Pope who led this heroic fight. No, the truth is that the Pope actually lost, and an entire Knight's Order was defeated by the Bandit King.

"The Pope was actually defeated and held for ransom, and the Knight Order was fed to beasts while their armors and rations were seized by the Bandits, making the enemies stronger. It may sound crazy, but amongst these Knights, some were spared, all of them female. They were supposed to be tortured and "used" to relieve stress. Amongst this group of Knights was Rose. Before she could be touched, she killed her captor and killed every single Bandit in their camp. Does Father know where I'm getting at?"

Alba nodded, but he couldn't believe it even after hearing it from his daughter.

Levia believes this story, for she had witnessed the magnificence of this individual.

"Sister Rose can never be captured for no reason. Because if she's captured, the only reason it happened is that she allowed them to, and she wants to know where their base is to eradicate them all. There is a reason why of her many epithets, Blood Rose sticks out to her enemies."

Levia spoke with confidence.