Isabella slightly lowered her head, waiting for her sentence in silence.
Roland sounded calm. "You should thank your own ability, not because it's unique, but because it can't kill anyone. No matter how felonious an act you're involved in, such as assisting Zero in attacking me, you're just an accessory offender. I can spare your life, but you still have to atone for your sin, like the others who violate the law."
Roland's words somehow took a weight off her mind. She was not afraid of death, but not fond of it, either.
"As long as you can defeat demons, I'm willing to do everything for you."
Roland said slowly, "demons are enemies of the mankind. I'll certainly fight against them till death, but my way is different from that of the church. I won't try to win the Battle of Divine Will at the cost of destroying human beings' potential. Given that, you've got to change some of your habits. From now on, you're no longer a Pure Witch of the church. Instead, you're an atoning witch."
Zero, you were wrong. He knew about demons and the Union a long time ago and is even ready to fight the Battle of Divine Will. Indeed, he was a common man whose life and belief would come to the end after decades, but now, he gets your limitless lifespan. Given that, he must be the chosen one of the deities.
At this thought, Isabella knelt down with her shackles. She lowered her head, letting all her long hair spread over the floor, and said, "yes, my lord."
When she stood up again, Roland opened his mouth and said, "here's not the Holy City of Hermes, and you're not a servant to me. You're just an atoning person, but I won't send you to the mines to do hard labor for twenty years. All you have to do is to cooperate with Agatha in her research on the magic power.
Isabella was startled, wondering, "that's all I have to do for him?"
Roland continued to say, "your atoning period is five years. I'll ask Wendy to arrange a new place for you to live and during this period of time, you don't have to wear any shackles, but you only have limited freedom. That's to say, besides your living place and Agatha's Spellcaster Tower, if you want to go anywhere else, you'll have to act under the Witch Union's surveillance."
"Yes, I see."
"By the way, are you sure that there are no other witches in the Holy City?" asked Roland.
She had answered this question for many times since she had become a prisoner. She thought for a moment and still shook her head, saying, "for this decisive battle, Zero converted all the useless new witches into God's Punishment Warriors and took all the other witches to the battlefield. There're still many girls in cloisters, but awakenings of new witches seldom happen before Months of Demons. Vanilla, Margie and me are probably the only three remaining Pure Witches of the church."
Having heard what she said, Roland said nothing. He turned around and walked toward the door. The blonde witch came up and unlock her shackles.
Seeing herself get free hands again, Isabella could hardly believe what had happened. Is this my sentence? No jail time, no humiliation and no torture. Is he serious?
She suddenly spoke out, "Your Majesty, what about Vanilla and Margie..."
Roland looked back at her and said, "they're better than you. They were just influenced by the distorted ideas of the cloisters' education, far from being crazy. If they can give up those thoughts, they may even join the Witch Union."
Roland and the two witches left. The cell door creaked shut.
"So that's it," Isabella felt completely relieved. She lay on her plank bed in the sunshine coming through the window. Despite the glaring light, she squinted up at the blue sky behind the steel bars.
"What a lovely day," she thought.
Back in the office, Nightingale expressed her discontent, saying, "her punishment is too light. She almost killed you."
"It's Zero who almost killed me, not her." Roland handed her a piece of dried fish.
She took it with her mouth and mumbled, "she created such a chance for Zero. Otherwise, it was impossible for you to be dragged into Soul Battlefield.
Roland explained patiently, "but you can tell she really wants to fight against demons, can't you? She didn't commit an unforgivable crime, and I'm just alright. That's enough for her punishment. By doing so, we show all the people that we're willing to spend a thousand pieces of gold to buy outstanding talents."
"Spend a thousand gold royals...and what?"
"Uhm... I mean propaganda effects." Roland coughed twice and continued. "Seeing her example, more people will understand that as long as they don't break legal bottom line, they'll still get a chance by making atonement. After all, our enemy is demons. To increase our odds of winning the Battle of Divine Will, letting her redeem herself by good services is the best choice."
Nightingale twitched her lips and said, "well, I'll watch her for you."
Roland walked to the French window and recalled what Isabella had said.
The memories Zero absorbed could be divided into two kinds. One kind of memories was disorganized with a residual consciousness of the losers. They would affect Zero herself. The other kind of memories were complete and open to her. She could read them whenever she wanted. She said that it was harder to recall and easier to forget the first kind of memories...
Is this the reason why she repeatedly persuaded me to give in during the Battle of Souls?
She suffered no side-effects in absorbing the surrenders who willingly gave her all their memories. That's why she stopped at all the crucial moments.
She wanted me to give up fighting, in order to get my complete memories.
He found that this process seemed similar to the one in which he possessed Prince Roland's body.
As Prince Roland's memories were just like that, complete and always there in his head. He could easily recall the prince's memories anytime he wanted to and put them aside when he did not need them. They were like archived files. He did not have to memorize any detail of them, but even after a year when he opened them again they still remained the same as before.
Given that Prince Roland had been killed by Garcia's assassin and had no willpower to resist his death at that time, he thought he could be considered a loser who gave up in the Battle of Souls.
Now, he was wondering what the strong-willed losers would do?
Based on what Isabella had said, this kind of memories with the residual consciousness of the losers would affect Zero herself, including changing her thoughts, personality, and even beliefs. Absorbing thousands of souls had made her complex, technically, a very different person from who she had been before.
If she had wanted vengeance on him, she would have poured all those crazy memories into his mind.
When that happened, she would end up being shattered, but Roland would not be the same Roland as before.
In this chaotic storm of memories, each unyielding soul's willpower would strive for predominance in his mind. Zero would take this chance to come back again.
However, out of Zero's expectation, he was not a man of this era.
The amount of information a person living in the modern age absorbed in one day was equivalent to that of a person in ancient times did in months or even years. As a man from an era of information explosion, he read and memorized various kinds of information in every waking moment. His mind could keep the useful information and eliminate the meaningless ones by instinct.
As a result, all the memory fragments were swallowed up and reorganized, forming a strange new world, his Dream World.
Unfortunately, he could not ask Zero to confirm this speculation.
She had lost all she had including her memories and turned into an innocent child in Dream World.