A forced choice

It had healed.

It had actually healed.

Even a fatal wound that had pierced her heart completely could heal in the space of a breath?

Shanks's pupils trembled wildly, his expression grim. He felt as though everything he knew about the world was crumbling before his eyes.

"You find it unbelievable, don't you..."

Makino looked at Shanks's expression, as though he had seen a ghost, and gave a self-mocking smile.

She raised the hand that had only just healed and pointed to her unblemished chest, then her slender neck. Finally, she pointed to her lower body.

"Did you know, Shanks? It isn't just my heart."

Makino's voice was calm, yet her words chilled everyone who heard them to the bone.

"Whether my neck is severed completely, my body is cut in half at the waist, or my eyes are gouged out and a burning-hot rod is thrust around inside my brain..."

"No matter how cruel or fatal the injury, before long, I recover completely, just like this. I may not have the combat skills to match you right now, but you can't kill me either."

During her few days in the Holy Land, Ross had personally tried every one of those things on her with great enthusiasm.

It was then, amid the torment of being torn apart and put back together again and again, that she finally understood why the God-Chosen Princesses selected to serve the gods had such an outrageously high mortality rate.

Some might have sought their own deaths, but the overwhelming majority must have been unable to withstand that collapse of both body and mind.

Even with her modified physique, those endlessly inventive, grotesque practices had brought her to the brink of utter madness several times.

Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately... Ross's interest in her had not lasted all