"It seems you really were too hasty after coming here, and you know far too little about the Land of Shadow."
Nolan spoke slowly, his gaze fixed on the woman gradually drawing closer.
"She is one of your kind. More precisely, she belongs to your mother's clan... Numen. In the Lands Between, people usually call them Rare Ones."
"The Hornsent believe Numen can purify sin, so they use long whips to leave wounds on their bodies, chop sinners into minced flesh, and stuff them into jars together with the Numen, letting their flesh and blood merge to complete their so-called ritual of sin purification."
As Nolan watched the woman approach step by step, everyone could not help feeling a chill.
Perhaps, in the Hornsent's view, this practice was a great and sacred mission. But to anyone with a normal mind, it was undoubtedly sickening and impossible to accept.
And that was exactly what left people speechless, with no idea what else to say. So what should be done? Simple. Slaughter them all.
"Is that why you went against your usual way and destroyed Enir-Ilim and Belurat without leaving any room for mercy?" Trina asked softly.
"That's right. I'm not some great saint, and I have no interest in dressing myself up with claims of justice or evil. But I wanted to do it, so I did. That's all." Nolan's expression was calm.
"I knew it..."
Trina paused for a moment. Then her eyes slowly lowered, and she gently rested against Nolan's broad shoulder. After sitting quietly for a while, she smiled.
"Nolan is still the same as before. I'm so glad."
Miquella, who had been standing to the side listening quietly to their conversation, shook his head and sighed softly.
"No wonder Mother regarded the Omen as a curse." Miquella listened to the twisted, sorrowful voices constantly echoing around them, as though countless vengeful spirits were howling in pain.
"Hatred had long since taken root in her heart. The blazing fire of revenge burned forever, never once going out."
Once, he had loathed the blood flowing through his own veins, believing it to be an inescapable sin.
But at this moment, faced with everything before him, he found himself understanding that mad mother of his a little more.
Ranni frowned tightly and asked in confusion, "Are you saying all these jars are filled with Numen?"
As far as she understood it, she was only related to Marika by marriage. Strictly speaking, these Numen could not truly be considered her own people.
But as far as this matter was concerned, what the Hornsent had done was utterly appalling. Any sane person would find it impossible to approve of it.
"Maybe." Watching the Numen lunge toward him, Nolan dodged calmly, showing no hurry to finish her off.
"What do you plan to do with them?" Trina asked, looking at her kinswoman as she climbed up from the ground. The goddess seemed to have entrusted everything to her Lord. "Will you end their suffering?"
"That's right. It is time to let this pain end."
Nolan spoke calmly as warm flames rose from his hand. The instant the Numen lunged at him, he pressed that hand against the top of her head.
In a flash, the flames spread along the Numen's body and swallowed her entire form.
But something unexpected happened. The Numen, wrapped in flame, neither let out a heart-rending scream nor showed the slightest sign of struggling in pain.
As the flames burned, chunks of broken muscle tissue fell away one after another. New skin began growing quickly, gradually covering the exposed wounds.
"What did you do?" Miquella, standing nearby, widened his eyes in shock and blinked again and again, as if he could not accept what he was seeing.
"I healed 'life.' That's all." Nolan glanced at the white-haired woman lying amid the scattered flesh, then turned to look at the many more enormous jars standing in the distance.
"This... This is nothing short of a miracle!" Even Miquella, who had always been calm and composed, could no longer suppress the shock in his heart or maintain his composure.
His eyes widened as he stared fixedly at everything happening before him, utterly certain that this was not something ordinary medicine or any mortal technique could accomplish.
What Nolan had done was beyond imagination. It was not simple healing at all.
The Numen's body had already fused with those scraps of flesh, and there had been no wounds to treat. It was almost as if he had rebuilt the Numen from the ground up.
Even knowing how extraordinary the power Nolan controlled was, Miquella still could not help exclaiming in awe. This was a true miracle.
At that moment, Nolan took a brand-new set of clothes from his spirit ring.
The white-haired woman, who had been wrapped in countless scraps of flesh, lay against a ground soaked in blood, with only a few patches of snow-white skin faintly visible.
When she struggled to open her eyes, the first thing she saw was the man standing before her. She froze.
Seeing this, Nolan crouched down. A warm flame instantly poured from his fingertips and gently settled on the woman's body.
In the blink of an eye, the bits of flesh and residue clinging to her skin were burned completely away. Then Nolan gently draped the robe over her.
"Ah..." The woman finally came back to herself. She slowly raised her head and stared at Nolan, who was close at hand. Her lips trembled slightly, as if she wanted to say something.
But all that came from her hoarse throat was a low, indistinct sound. She could not even form a single clear word.
"Has it been so long that you've forgotten how to speak?"
Nolan was not impatient. After standing there and waiting a moment, he reached out, helped her up from the ground, and handed her over to Melina so she could support her.
"It's all right. Take your time getting used to it. Use that time to tell me whether you want to say farewell to suffering, or remain in this world."
Nolan's voice was not loud, yet it seemed to carry clearly and powerfully to every corner of the dungeon.
The chaotic sobs and cries that had filled the dungeon stopped at once, as if pressed down by some invisible force.
Melina, who had passively taken on this heavy responsibility, looked utterly bewildered.
She stared blankly at the face before her, a face that seemed sorrowful, afraid, and yet somehow hopeful, and for a moment she had no idea how to respond.
But after only a short while, all kinds of voices rose again.
Only this time, they were no longer the heart-rending wails from before. They had become cries filled with pleading and yearning.
Melina seemed somewhat restless. She frowned, then suddenly came back to herself. "What is this feeling?"
Beside her, Nolan scratched his hair and muttered, "Judging by the number of them, this is going to be a huge undertaking."
Miquella could not help stepping forward. "You're going to help all of them?"
"We're already here. We can't exactly do nothing, can we?" Nolan asked back with a smile, clearly needing no answer from Miquella.