The Yellow-Haired Villain in Soaring Phoenix's Novels Also Desires Happiness

“Everyone... please pray to the Black Sun!”

Afrella’s voice echoed throughout the entire city, like a breeze, and also like a tsunami.

Time still flowed onward. The pause in the disaster was only temporary. The city looked as though it had not changed at all... yet something truly had changed, invisibly.

“Black Sun? What Black Sun?”

Behind the magically reinforced fortress, Tyron’s trusted subordinate stuck his head out and searched the cloud-covered sky for a long while, but he could not find this Black Sun Afrella had spoken of.

Of course. How could there be any black sun in this world? And besides, that princess had come out of nowhere and immediately told him to pray. It was simply baffling.

“Just like Boss, I’m a devout believer of the Goddess. How could I so easily betray the Goddess’s faith and go believe in some inexplicable thing?”

The trusted subordinate sneered and shook his head, inwardly thinking that his and Boss’s faith were both indestructible. How could they convert so easily? It was not like he was...

Then he saw the boss he was talking about swiftly pull out incense, holy oil, and set up an altar. He even used a water magic scroll on the spot to wash the blood and filth from his body, preparing to pray with great solemnity and devotion.

“Boss, what are you doing, Boss?!”

The trusted subordinate was dumbfounded. “This is apostasy!”

“What apostasy? I’m not fucking part of the Church.”

Tyron glared at him and said righteously, “I believed in the Goddess to get help from the Goddess. Now the Goddess is useless as shit, so I’m switching to something else for a bit. Is there anything wrong with that?”

“This... doesn’t seem wrong.”

The trusted subordinate scratched his head. He kept feeling like there was something wrong with what Boss said, but with his not particularly clever brain, he really could not say exactly what was wrong.

“But Boss, you really believe what that Princess Afrella or whatever said?” the trusted subordinate asked curiously.

“No...”

Tyron shook his head. “I don’t believe that little girl.”

“Then you...”

“But the fool she spoke of, the one trying to save this country... I believe in him.”

A familiar and mysterious figure surfaced before his eyes. Tyron let out a long sigh... the thigh he had latched onto was thick. Really thick.

“Cut the crap. Hurry up and pray!”

“Eh? Me too?”

“Not just you. Go tell everyone in the gang, and all the people under our protection, to pray together!”

“But... we’re still fighting a war.”

The trusted subordinate did not understand. If everyone went to pray, who would fight the enemy?

“It’s fine.”

Tyron poked his head out from behind the fortress and looked across the ruined battlefield toward the other side.

“We’re not the only ones who need to pray.”

At this very moment, the soldiers attacking them had also stopped moving.

Their bodies were twitching all over. Their bodies intended to advance, but they were being influenced by some force. As soon as they took one step forward, they staggered back again.

It seemed as if two powers were fighting over their bodies.

And under these circumstances, those pitiful people squeezed their eyes shut, tears streaming down their faces, muttering under their breath, begging the Black Sun with more devotion and humility than anyone else.

Even if, to them, He was a strange god.

He was also their life-saving straw.

After countless prayers to the Goddess had proven useless, they could only grasp tightly onto this life-saving straw!

...

“The royal family’s name, a desperate reality, and an all-in possibility. Under these circumstances, there will definitely be many people who abandon their original faith and turn toward this unfamiliar Black Sun.”

The graveyard.

In an open space, Aviva had found neat stones and was stacking them into a simple prayer altar.

Candles dotted the surroundings. The children stood quietly nearby. The nuns’ expressions were complicated. They wanted to spit upon this “Evil God” who had suddenly appeared, but unfortunately, they did not even have the standing to spit.

Because in this matter, the Goddess they believed in had not helped at all.

“Is this really all right?”

The only calm one was the orphanage matron. She was even helping Aviva build the altar. Only her faintly trembling hands showed that her heart was not as calm as she looked. “I remember you were also a very devout believer of the Goddess.”

The premise of faith was devotion.

And the premise of devotion was unconditional belief.

But now, they had to erase that belief themselves and turn instead to unconditionally believing in another deity.

This was equivalent to denying their past selves.

The more devout they had once been, the more painful this was now.

“It’s all right, I suppose.”

Aviva looked into the distance and said softly, “Someone has already helped us take the most painful step.”

What pain was more terrifying than this disaster sweeping through the entire city, more terrifying than death?

Before disaster and death, something as minor as changing one’s faith no longer seemed quite so difficult to accept.

“You’ll feel guilty,” the orphanage matron said.

“No.”

Aviva turned back and smiled.

“I don’t owe the Goddess anything. After all, the one who saved me... saved us, has always been that lord, hasn’t it?”

“...”

The orphanage matron’s expression froze slightly, and the scenes from before could not help surfacing in her mind.

That was right.

The one who saved them was not the Goddess.

It was him.

She did not know what relationship he had with Him. She only knew that he seemed to represent Him.

So in a certain sense, it was Him, that unfamiliar god, who had saved these “children” of the Goddess.

“Then let us begin.”

Aviva clasped her hands together, and the ritual vessel for prayer before her gave off a faint glow.

This ritual vessel, the surrounding tools, and even the holy water used to wash away filth were actually all Church items. After all, this was an orphanage under the Church’s name, and the Church issued these things every month for the orphanage children’s prayer lessons.

But now, all these things were being used to pray to that unfamiliar deity.

There was no helping it. Conditions were limited, so they could only make do.

Beside her, the orphanage matron smiled bitterly. She could only hope this behavior, which was cuckolding in a certain sense, would not draw the Goddess’s wrath afterward.

Mm... they were only some tools. The Goddess probably would not be that petty...

“Huh?”

Just as she was thinking this, the orphanage matron suddenly looked dumbfounded.

Because she saw the children beside her... those children who had received Church education since childhood and prayed to the Goddess every morning, one by one going to Aviva’s side and kneeling to pray.

“Lord Black Sun... please bless Pero and keep her safe...”

“Lord Black Sun... please let our orphanage return to how it used to be...”

“Lord Black Sun...”

One wish after another was lit by candlelight and drifted into the sky.

And among the children, the orphanage matron even saw the young nun Nina secretly following along and praying like a thief.

“They’re... they’re only children, and one young nun who doesn’t know any better...”

The orphanage matron hurriedly clasped her hands together.

“The Goddess is broad-minded. She definitely won’t blame them. Definitely...”

...

...

“Black Sun? With such a strange name, how could it not be an Evil God?”

At a temporary refugee shelter, Bishop Kore, who had just finished a simple bandage for an injured person, raised his head with a strange expression.

Although he did not know the Black Sun’s full sacred name, a name like Black Sun sounded unlucky the moment one heard it. Its true body certainly could not be anything good!

However...

“Whether a righteous god or an Evil God, the one who can save this city and save the people here is the good god.”

Kore sighed. He finally understood why, no matter how hard the Church worked, it could never eliminate all heretical believers from this world.

Because even the Goddess could not distribute Her grace equally to every person.

Where there was suffering, where there was despair, then when faced with the only hope, there would be... disregard for the consequences.

Even if one knew doing so would make them a so-called “sinner.”

“Still, to the Goddess, after all the wrongs I have committed, I was already a sinner to begin with.”

Bishop Kore murmured in a low voice.

“Then this time, committing just a little more sin should not be much of a problem.”

Kore tucked away the holy cross pendant on his chest and removed the clerical robe from his body.

At this moment, he was no longer a bishop of the Church.

He was only an ordinary person. The ordinary person Kore.

And so, the brilliant Holy Light dispersed, and Kore guided everyone in the shelter to offer his faith to that unknown deity who could bring down salvation.

...

...

“Cough... cough, cough. Black Sun? That kid really came up with something incredible.”

The Limping Priest narrowed his eyes and looked toward the sky.

Unfortunately, his eyes were already dyed red by blood. His vision was blurred, and he could not see anything clearly.

“Ha. Speaking of which, you really did make a huge mess. If you had killed that kid earlier, I’m afraid none of this pile of trouble afterward would have happened. Don’t you agree, Olive... no, I should call you the Witch of Repentance now.”

The priest tilted his head slightly. Although he could not see clearly, he knew that woman was standing there.

Blood flowed. Some terrifying attack had almost cut the priest in half at the waist, but he still did not let go of the chance to mock that woman.

“...”

The Witch of Repentance remained silent, but regret and anger were indeed brewing in her eyes.

Because in a certain sense, he was right. If she had been able to kill Muen Campbell in advance, there would not have been this entire string of troublesome matters afterward, and the Salvation Society’s plan would have been executed very easily.

But no one could have expected that in this whole meticulously arranged plan, such a tiny oversight alone would lead to such headache-inducing consequences.

Let alone the fact that this oversight was that she, a dignified Crowned, had failed to kill a mere fifth-rank brat.

It was truly... humiliating beyond measure.

“Are those your last words?”

The Witch of Repentance walked closer.

If she could not kill that fifth-rank brat, killing this Crowned priest was still possible.

“We’ve already fast-forwarded to the last-words stage? Cough, cough...”

The priest’s face was pale. After holding the Witch of Repentance back for so long, he had long since reached his limit. Under these severe injuries, the life in his entire body had already begun to drain away.

“All right, then. But as for last words... I do want to ask you one question.”

“A question?”

The Witch of Repentance raised a brow. “Ask, then. We are old friends. I can at least give you the chance to ask one question.”

“My question is very simple...”

The priest stared into the Witch of Repentance’s eyes.

“Was that kind Olive from back then real?”

Time flowed on, and decades passed.

Aside from those sins, that pain, and that self-reproach, what the priest still cared about most was the smiling face he had seen in that dark prison.

Like a ray of sunlight, shining upon the executioner’s cold heart back then.

“Real? Heh heh. Perhaps.”

The Witch of Repentance’s expression was disgusted. “That Olive’s kindness was actually a self-disguise created by an Evil God’s scion to protect itself. After all, that one is different from the other Evil Gods. His scion is unique, so it needed something like this to let it safely hide among humans.

“From a cognitive perspective, it was real, because even Olive herself did not know that she was a fabricated personality. Every action she took came from the heart. But she was also fake, because that personality came from an Evil God.”

“And the current me is my true nature!”

As she spoke, the Witch of Repentance revealed a mocking expression toward the priest, as if laughing at his attempt to receive comfort before death. “In a certain sense, her disguise was very successful, was it not? She deceived you, and she deceived Archbishop Ision as well. The Archbishop does not even know that the sweet, charming innocence of his current daughter is also nothing more than the result of that kind of disguise.”

This was precisely why she hated her biological daughter. She knew very well that such a beautiful personality, one that so easily made people feel the desire to protect it, was nothing more than a beautiful dream forged by an Evil God.

Just as she hated her former self.

“So... that’s how it is...”

The priest smiled bitterly.

Disguise.

Reality.

An Evil God’s dream.

He had long since guessed many things, but after actually hearing the Witch of Repentance say those words... the waves in his heart were far smaller than he had imagined.

After all, he had already been bound by sin for decades. Now that things had come to this, how could he still care about such things?

Truly, as he had just said, he merely wanted an answer.

One had to know that what he had tempered over these decades was not only the endurance and persistence gained through constant self-mutilation.

More important was... the kind of shamelessness that let him know he had committed such sins, yet still refuse to die and continue clinging to life here.

“Forgive me, Goddess.”

Thinking this, the priest casually tossed aside the scripture that had accompanied him for decades.

“My faith in You is devout... but at a time like this, please forgive my sins just a little more.”

“You dare!”

The Witch of Repentance’s killing move arrived immediately, but the priest had already closed his eyes.

“Black Sun... burn everything, including all these sins.”

In his heart, he prayed with even greater devotion.

...

...

“Black Sun...”

“Lord Black Sun...”

“Great Black Sun...”

Voices of prayer rang out from every corner of this city, gradually covering the sound of the bleak wind.

Before this, in the city called Saint Blancfazesiya, more than ninety percent of the people believed in the Life Goddess.

But tonight, neither the Goddess nor the Church had saved them.

And so, at this moment of despair, they chanted that sacred name together.

[▌▌▌▌, ▌▌▌▌, ▌▌▌▌▌—▌▌▌▌]

The syllables were blurred, as if covered by some force, or perhaps as if they had never taken form at all.

It merely flowed naturally from the mouths of countless believers, as though they were blurting it out subconsciously, yet not a single person could understand its true meaning.

Only the words Black Sun were incomparably clear.

And so, everyone raised their heads and saw it.

A black sun hung in the sky, overlooking all things.