Those words left the Sin Lord rooted to the spot, unable to speak for a long time.
Looking at the smile on his face, she could see clearly in that moment that he was not angry. Nor had he said those words merely to comfort her. They seemed to reflect exactly what he felt at that moment. He showed no contempt for her cowardice on the battlefield. It was as though he were telling her...
It was enough that you survived.
Simply knowing she was alive brought him comfort.
Nothing else mattered.
Memories that seemed to have been buried away for ages suddenly surfaced in her mind. When Hell's punishment descended, she had watched her people fall and seen the sorrowful relief in her mother's eyes.
They could stand unbowed. They could fight back. But no matter how fiercely they resisted, her mother did not want her daughter to meet the same end in death-demise.
She had deserted.
She had not died alongside her people on that doomed march against Hell. She could still remember what her mother had told her before she died.
"You did nothing wrong, my daughter. Everyone has their own choices to make. No one can demand that you follow in their footsteps. You did nothing wrong."
"Because you only wanted to live."
She stood there in a daze.
At some point, tears had filled her eyes.
But her body suddenly began to shake violently. She clenched her teeth, her terrified eyes darting everywhere, as though she were trying to evade those words she wanted to forget, to hide in some corner where no one would notice her and never remember them again.
She clutched her head tightly, staring at the ground beneath her feet with vacant, frightened eyes.
Lynn stroked her head and said softly: