Defeated. Completely defeated.

But is it really a defeat?

"No!" the arrogant Emilia shouted her disbelief, and her short body leaped to her feet, picking up the rusty kitchen knife with both hands and slashing at Sophia's waist.

However, even in her prime, Emilia was unable to defeat the Valkyrie's soul, not to mention that her strength had greatly diminished now? Sophia swung her knife away from Amelia's kitchen knife, grabbed her wrist, and twisted it back hard.

In this way, Amilia, who was arrogant and domineering just now, was easily suppressed to the ground by Sophia and couldn't move.

"Oh, damn it......" Emilia let out a humiliating curse.

At this time, Sophia noticed that Emilia was still holding the kitchen knife in her other hand.

"Why don't you throw away your weapons?" Sophia asked coldly, "Do you still think you can win in such a situation?"

"Ah!" Emilia thought to herself.

This was exactly what she had said to Sophia a few minutes ago, and now Sophia had returned it to herself.

Emilia, who was noisy, fell silent in an instant. She froze, but it wasn't that she had accepted her defeat, but that deep down, something had been turned out.

"I ...... I'm not going to go away. Emilia whispered to herself.

"What did you say?" the thoughtless sentence made Sophia hesitate slightly.

"I'm not going away!"

Just a few days ago, the Island of the Dead. Emilia also shouted the same thing to her sworn allegiance to her master, "The Lich King" Carloving.

......

More than 2,000 years ago, the beautiful boy who had always maintained a kind smile did not become the "Lich King" Callowe, but was still honored as the "Successor of the Pope" Howard. An event that seemed to happen by accident changed his fate again.

Encouraged by his childhood friends, Howard escapes from the Papal Palace to visit the colorful world of flowers, and out of curiosity, he even infiltrates a prison with his two old friends, Dulos and Faria, who should not have entered him. In a laxly guarded prison, the three boys and girls encounter someone who shouldn't exist: the necromancer who has been told to have been completely eliminated and destroyed their hometown: the "Soul Burial Coachman" Callowe.

Howard wasn't ready to face the enemy in person, but Howard soon discovered that all preparation was unnecessary, because the moment he saw Carlovin, his right shoulder, the part of which he had been attacked by Carlovin five years earlier, suddenly developed a sharp pain that cut through the bone. Although the two friends tried their best to treat Howard in their own ways, it was always to no avail.

"You are nothing more than a pathetic victim to some frivolous lie. Before losing consciousness, Howard heard the necromancer utter this puzzling phrase.

When I woke up, it was four months later. The first person Howard saw when he opened his eyes was his mentor, Grand Cardinal Gregory.

Howard later learns that the day after the incident, the two companions, Dulos and Faria, have been taken back by their respective mentors. Howard didn't know how the two of them would be punished, but to his surprise, Gregory, who was usually extremely harsh on him, didn't punish him for this.

But this was not something that made Howard breathe a sigh of relief, as Gregory then revealed a secret that surprised him.

It turned out that the damage and destruction caused by Karlovin did not stop because of the arrival of the Holy Army. When Howard was impaled in the shoulder with a long whip by Carlovin, he had left a hidden and terrible curse in his body, which is why Howard often felt a dull pain in his shoulder. This curse was specifically aimed at the power of Howard's stigma, and in order to lift the curse, Gregory could only temporarily seal Howard's stigmata.

As the heir to the Pope of the "Stigmata", he was cursed by the necromancer, and once the news of this matter spread, it would inevitably cause great confusion in the lower churches, so Gregory and a very small number of high-ranking people who knew the truth blocked the news, and even Howard himself did not know about it.

On the other hand, because the caster's raw mana is required to make antibodies, Gregory did not kill the "soul burial coachman" Karlovin, but hid him in an underground prison not far from the Holy City, so that he could extract his magic at any time, only pretending that Karlowen had been destroyed.

According to Gregory's original plan, as long as the antibody was injected into Howard's body regularly, it would only take 6 or 7 years to completely remove the curse from Howard's body, and then Gregory only needed to quietly unseal Howard's "stigma".

However, Gregory never expected that Howard, who had always been extremely in awe of himself and did not dare to cross the thunder pool by half a step, would sneak outside under the instigation of his childhood friends, and even more unexpectedly, the three little children actually found a place to hold Carlovin.

Grigory said that due to close contact with Karlovin, the curse, which was already dormant, was activated. The curse of the awakening quickly spread throughout the body, forming a malignant tumor of magical energy, and the antibodies were no longer effective. In order to save Howard's life, Gregory had to do one very risky thing: he dissected Howard's body and forcibly removed the malignant magical tumor from his body, which is why Howard was in a coma for eight months.

The tumor was not destroyed, as it contained a part of Howard's soul, and Gregor used a special glass bottle to pack the tumor and try to figure out how to purify the tumor separately, remove the curse, and then put it back into Howard's body to fill in the missing part of his soul.

But things took a turn for the unexpected. As time passed, the magic tumor that was contained in the glass bottle, and the small part of the soul fragment contained in it, actually slowly replenished itself, and unknowingly, became an independent soul. Although this soul is not yet self-conscious, it fully possesses all the conditions to become a "person".

No one knows what kind of individual this soul hidden in the tumor will become after it is perfectly combined with a certain body, because after a few years, there was a war against the invasion of the Poseidon Clan, followed by a war against the demon slayer. In both wars, the Holy Papal Island was extremely badly damaged, and when the demon legions besieged the Holy City, the whereabouts of the glass bottle containing the tumor, along with many treasures originally stored in the Papal Palace, were destroyed or stolen.

......

"You're trying to say that I'm the tumor that was cut off from you?" Listening to "Lich King" Karlovan finish his own business, Emilia finally grasped the subject he had to say.

"To be precise, a soul born from a tumor. To Emilia's disappointment, Karlovan did not deny anything, only modified some of the contents.

"Who are you fooling?I'm a woman, you're a man!I'm a split soul with you, and that's a foolish lie!" Emilia still couldn't accept it, she no longer had any respect for her master.

"There is no gender distinction between primitive souls, and if you put it into a male fetus, you will be a man, and if you put it into a female womb, you will be a daughter. In the end, you were born into the royal family of the Shumiro Empire and came into the world in the body of a princess, I don't know if it was deliberately manipulated by someone or the installation of fate. ”

Hearing her master's explanation, Emilia did not make any more noise, but quieted down. Because she knew that it was no longer a question of whether she admitted it or not, but what she should do next.

"So, you've decided to devour me and make me a part of you again?" Emilia unreservedly pointed out the Lich King's purpose. Because she knows that she doesn't have many cards in her hand, she must know her opponent's hole cards as soon as possible.

"You are the key to unlock the seal of my stigma, and if I am without you, I will never be able to manifest my stigma. ”

"Then why are you saying these things to me now when you haven't done anything for more than a hundred years?"

"Because it was not a last resort before, and now, the decisive battle with the Truth Society is imminent, and this war, I need the power of 'Stigmata'. ”

"I won't let you get away with it!" Amelia roared through gritted teeth.

She knew she was no match for the Lich King, but in order to preserve her "existence", Emilia would do anything, including taking refuge in the Society of Truth that she didn't even know about.

That's why I said I would only consider doing it as a last resort. What I need is the power of Stigmata, but it doesn't have to be deprived of your existence, because there is still one person in the world today. ”

After Carlovin said this, the pool in front of him suddenly rippled, and then in the reflection of the pool, the appearance of a beautiful blonde girl appeared.

"Is that her?" asked Amelia.

"She is the princess of the kingdom of Pole, Sophia Madan. If you can bring her back......"

"No, I'm going to get her back!" said Emilia categorically, "I'm not going to let myself disappear!"

"Absolutely...... I'm not going to go away!" Emilia hissed and screamed.

She suddenly twisted her body and slashed at her kitchen knife.

Sophia immediately swung her sword to block. However, instead of slashing at Sophia, the kitchen knife is Emilia's own hand.

"Click" ......

Emilia chopped off her hand, but at the same time broke free of Sophia's grip and quickly slid back a few meters. After retreating out of the saber's range, Emilia suddenly reversed the blade and slashed from the bottom to the top.

What happened at this time stunned Sophia, because Emilia actually used her kitchen knife to slit open her stomach.