Chapter 115

The saw drips blood as it hacks through the enemies.

Men with torn arms and pierced thighs scream and collapse.

“AAAAAAAH!”

A man unlucky enough to catch the saw blade with his face clutches his half-gone face and wails.

As a man reaches the basement entrance, Freide hurls a chain axe with all her might.

The axe, shot like lightning, embeds itself in the man’s back.

His spine shattered, the man collapses forward.

The chain follows the axe, clattering as it unfurls.

As Freide grabs the chain, her body is yanked toward the axe.

In one leap, Freide lands at the basement entrance.

Men rushing toward the entrance stop in shock.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Freide smirks coldly, stepping on the man writhing on the ground, and pulls the axe from his back.

Blood-soaked bone fragments and nerve bundles cling to the axe blade.

“There’s a knight here too!”

“D-damn it…!”

The hesitant men glance back.

There’s no escape.

A swirling greatsword reaps through legs as it approaches.

They grit their teeth and raise their weapons.

Compared to the knight who sliced people apart and killed Eric in an instant, Freide, a seemingly slender woman, seemed easier to handle.

Their experience of only oppressing unresisting women must have led to this stereotype.

“AAAAAH!”

A forced battle cry. Shaking spears and swords point at Freide.

Freide, holding the saw and axe, smiles coldly and welcomes the trash.

—-

Dismembered limbs fly like marbles.

Silver hair dances in the air.

The black coat flutters behind.

The saw, baring its teeth, cuts through flesh like paper and severs bones.

The axe smashes shoulders.

With each swing of Freide’s arm, men’s limbs part from their bodies.

The men’s weapons don’t even graze her clothes.

Dodging the swinging spears and swords with ease, Freide cuts the men to pieces.

On the other side, Damien continues to advance, creating a red whirlwind.

Damien doesn’t even dodge the men’s weapons.

Swinging his greatsword, he shatters them like twigs.

Horrified screams fill the chapel.

A dagger thrown at a man trying to break a window and escape pierces his spine.

His legs give out, and he collapses, fainting.

A trembling middle-aged man is dragged out by the collar from a corner.

Screaming like a pig.

Freide’s saw blade bites into the man’s legs.

He screams like a castrated pig.

A reckless youth who tried to block the greatsword with a shield is slammed into the wall along with the shattered wood.

An old man crawling to escape has his arm crushed under Freide’s boot.

The withered arm shatters like dry wood.

Three consecutive kicks. The old man can no longer crawl.

No one could resist.

Fountain-like sprays of crimson paint the chapel walls anew.

The dust is washed away.

Even the goddess Ceres would rejoice.

The first feast in her chapel in decades.

Such an abundance of offerings is truly rare.

A few minutes later.

In the red chapel filled with screams and moans.

Only two people remain standing.

Men still clinging to life writhe, tears and blood streaming down.

Freide brushes back her blood-soaked hair.

A sticky clot of blood pours out.

“Washing this off will be a pain.”

That was Freide’s only thought.

To her, it was just another routine slaughter.

“There’s a well in the village, so we can wash there.”

“Who knows if there’s any water left.”

Freide mutters skeptically.

With the village burned to ashes, it wouldn’t be surprising if the well had dried up.

“Let’s hope there is. Shall we head down?”

Damien swings his greatsword, shaking off the blood.

The clinging blood and fat scatter over the men’s bodies.

The pristine black blade reappears.

Damien looks down at his greatsword with satisfaction.

The new weapon’s performance was impressive, enough to earn his admiration.

“Should we head down…?”

Freide ponders for a moment.

‘Is it right to take Damien down…?’

It was a natural concern for Freide. She could roughly guess the state of the basement.

It wouldn’t be good for Damien’s emotions, and she wasn’t sure how the women below would react to him.

‘No, it’s better if I go down alone.’

Having made her decision, Freide turns to Damien. A suitable task for him comes to mind.

Damien blinks calmly, as if asking what’s going on.

“Damien, you stay here and keep watch. I’ll go down and bring the women up.”

“Keep watch…?”

Damien looks around the chapel floor, a bit puzzled.

It looks more like they need nursing than watching.

If anyone could escape in that state, they’d deserve applause for their determination.

Freide nods and tosses Damien a bottle of recovery potion.

“Yeah, keep watch. Use this to keep them from dying. When Hashalleur and Milia arrive, wait with them.”

Freide’s intention is firm.

With no reason to object, Damien eventually nods.

Freide heads to the basement.

—-

The basement air is thick and damp, as always.

If not for the candlelight along the walls, it would be dark.

Freide takes out a handkerchief as she descends the stairs, covering her nose and mouth.

He covered his eyes.

He already had an idea of what this rotten, fishy smell was. He didn’t even want to smell it.

When he reached the end of the stairs, the scene of the basement came into view.

A typical underground space, dug out and sealed with plastered bricks, with pillars placed here and there.

Along the long central corridor, three wooden doors with latches stood in a row.

The space at the end of the corridor seemed to be used as a lounge.

The wooden table was filled with bottles of alcohol, and the chairs around it were scattered on the floor.

Freide stepped into the corridor.

If you listened closely, you could hear the voices of women.

The sound of crying in despair, voices cursing through gritted teeth, drunken moans.

Even murmurs that didn’t sound like human language.

Freide sighed and walked toward the doors.

“There are three rooms, right?”

A classroom, a breeding pen, and a playroom.

The simple naming clearly revealed the crude purposes.

The largest room was probably the breeding pen.

Freide opened the first door.

Even with her nose and mouth covered, a thick stench hit her.

“Eek!”

One of the trapped people let out a shrill scream in surprise.

It was understandable. A woman drenched in blood had just burst through the door.

Freide quickly assessed the room’s purpose.

“A classroom.”

A space divided by bars running across the room.

Outside the bars were all sorts of perverse torture tools.

The traces of recent use were evident.

Inside the barred cell, eight women were trapped.

Their wrists chained and fixed to the wall.

Their ages varied. Four young women, two who looked over thirty.

Two children around Milia’s age…

Their exposed skin was covered in disgusting marks and wounds.

Scars from severed tendons remained on their wrists and ankles.

It wasn’t something those trash would have known to do, but it was effective.

The wounds, long since healed, would be difficult to recover from even with a priest’s healing.

Three women and the children seemed to have already lost their minds, showing no reaction except for faint moans.

Another woman, drugged, was laughing weakly.

In other words, only two of them were still sane.

A gaunt woman with sunken cheeks and a mature woman who resembled one of the children.

Freide gritted her teeth. It was always an unpleasant sight.

“Uh…? A knight? Are you a knight…?!”

The woman’s eyes lit up with desperate hope.

“…Yeah. I’m here to save you.”

It was probably too late for them, but Freide had nothing else to say.

“Ahhhhh…”

The woman cried in relief at the finally arrived salvation.

“…Now, of all times?”

The gaunt woman let out a bitter laugh.

Someone might have gotten angry at her ingratitude, but Freide didn’t react.

It was a common response.

Out of ten people saved, two or three would react like this.

Rescue always came a step too late.

It wasn’t that they weren’t grateful for being saved.

It was just that what they had gone through was that horrific.

Enough to leave scars that would never fade.

And as an adventurer, she probably knew well.

Even if she was saved, she would never walk properly or hold anything again for the rest of her life.

In the end, it was just a cry of pain, both physical and mental.

Freide wasn’t the type to get angry at a patient screaming in pain.

“Yeah, better late than never. What can you do? That’s just how it is.”

“……”

Freide casually replied and swung her axe, smashing the lock on the iron bars.

Sparks flew as the lock shattered into pieces.

Freide stepped inside the cell and used her axe to break the shackles on the women.

They were tougher than the lock.

As the chains holding their arms broke, the women collapsed to the ground.

“Guess standing is out of the question.”

Freide sighed inwardly.

The adventurer woman stared at her ankles for a while, then gritted her teeth, her head bowed.

“Those bastards…! Those damn bastards……!”

Tears fell, wetting the floor of the cell.

“If you can’t get up, wait here. I’ll bring people to help you in a bit. I need to check the other rooms too.”

Freide looked down at her and scanned the others.

The women who had lost their minds lay helplessly on the floor.

They were barely breathing, looking no different from corpses.

Freide wasn’t even sure if they would ever regain their senses.

A woman crawled toward her child, hugging her unresponsive daughter as she cried endlessly.

Freide watched the scene with pity for a while, then headed to the next room.

—

The second room was called the breeding pen.

A space about twice the size of the previous room.

The floor was covered in straw, and the stench was overwhelming.