Chapter 42

“Your Highness! You do not turn away from injustice and evil, and you bleed to protect the faithful children of the Church; truly, you deserve to be revered by all.”

Lady Trentia, clad in full plate armor, ran down the stairs, making a loud sound.

“I don’t want to be revered by all! If that happens, His Majesty will eat me alive!”

As she ripped the fabric of my trousers, she took out a glass vial filled with a red liquid from her waist, opened the cork, and slowly poured it over the wound.

It was a highly effective recovery potion that only Lady Trentia could bring, given her stable job among us.

Smoke and bubbles rose from the wound, creating an itchy sensation, and then it closed cleanly, as if it had never been injured.

“You have been affected by foreign matter, so you must go to the Church for purification.”

“I’m fine. The seminarian Matheos here has already purified me nicely.”

Rudi, dressed as a maid, glanced at Matheos.

I wanted to question why she had dangerously followed me here, but seeing her gaze, I kept my mouth shut.

Her green eyes glowed like a ghost in the darkness.

“Is it you who stubbornly stayed here and caused Lord Valen to be injured? I will collect the price of that blood with your life.”

She spoke with the cheerful voice that had read me fairy tales in my childhood, delivering what sounded like a death sentence.

The chilling sound of a six-shot magic rifle being cocked echoed ominously.

Matheos instinctively felt danger and stepped back, his brown eyes trembling, while I flinched and stopped her.

“Rudi, hold on!”

“Lord Valen. Perhaps it could be someone pretending to ask for your help while plotting to kill you, yes?”

“No! I just saved him! Don’t make my efforts useless!”

Rudi smiled brightly as she withdrew the magic rifle.

“Understood.”

Sererassie leaned on her staff and finally descended the stairs.

Clack, clack, clack!

With each thud of her staff, a fist-sized yellow sapphire on the black-painted jujube wood made blue sparks fly.

The deep blue of her long hair glided gracefully towards us, accentuated by gold.

“His Majesty has sent the Black Iron Knights to investigate the underground waterways. Seeing you’ve caused quite a mess, I suggest you prepare to extend your neck when you return.”

I smiled bitterly and nodded.

Jeilliris was thinking of revealing her presence and strengthening her power while diverting the threats against the capital’s impoverished population onto the high nobles by letting the infiltrators wreak havoc.

At the same time, I had allowed her to search for the remnants of the infiltrators beforehand.

Did I really believe I would find a pile of infiltrator sacrifices?

Or was I hoping for an incident to occur, waiting for the justification to take action while neglecting efficiency for effective power enhancement?

I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head.

People believe what they want to believe.

I want to believe her wickedness.

“Let’s go. Let’s show those old ones who dares to step in; this world belongs to whom.”

“Right. I was dazed earlier, but I wanted to test my new magic too. Ah, I don’t intend to use it on you, so feel free to charge ahead. I mean it.”

I turned to Matheos.

The kind-faced young seminarian looked half-dazed with relief.

“Matheos. I’ll confirm once more. We are going to tear your friend apart, burn him, and leave no traces. Can you forgive us?”

There are things that are hard to accept emotionally, even if understood logically.

I didn’t want to harbor ill feelings towards the future Saint.

Yet Matheos resolutely nodded, as if severing any lingering attachments.

I could see cold sweat running through his curly brown hair as his eyes regained their focus.

“Heretics must be punished by burning at the stake.”

His voice was far chillier than when we first met.

It brought back memories of the Black Saint before my reincarnation.

I smiled with satisfaction and pointed my sword forward.

Perhaps my awakening might come a few years earlier.

* * *

Sererassie let out a fiery laugh and cast her magic.

“O tide of lightning, go to my enemies!”

Crackling!

Every time she struck her staff to the ground, the man-faced hounds rolled around.

“Yelp! Woof!”

“Why do you bark like a dog when you have a human face? If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be better to have a dog’s head and a human body? I’d love to dissect your vocal cords for research.”

The blue bolts of lightning spread like a child’s drawing, and the man-faced hounds were efficiently quelled by the sequential attacks at intervals.

“What on earth are those terrible monsters? They look like something out of a nightmare!”

The vomit-colored slimes swarmed, blocking the underground waterways and the paths ahead and behind.

Their squishy bodies could eject or extract thorn-like spines, posing a significant threat.

Yet Rudi’s movements were as swift as the wind, and her green eyes behind her bifocal glasses precisely targeted the cores of the mutated slimes, even under the faint glow of phosphorescent moss.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Every time the magic rifle fired, the mutated slimes lost their cores, exploding like overturned pots.

“Your aim is quite exceptional for a maid. Actually, for someone like you, it’s not just exceptional for a maid; it’s just exceptional.”

“Indeed, our greatest masterpiece and worst mistake.”

As Lady Trentia and Sererassie praised her, Rudi embarrassedly smiled and blew away the faint residual mana smoke that rose from the muzzle.

Burly lower infiltrators, muscular and exposing their upper bodies, rushed toward Lady Trentia.

“A knight, a knight!”

“I envy. I envy. I envy. I envy.”

“If I eat you, will I become like you?”

They wore spiked iron masks and had massive exoskeleton pincers resembling crabs or scorpions for arms.

Even though Lady Trentia was tall enough to not appear different standing next to Valenciaunos, she looked like a child before those monsters.

“If you wanted to be a knight, you shouldn’t have thought it would be easy to become stronger!”

Lady Trentia shouted boldly and drew her longsword.

Slash! Slice! Splat!

The limbs, torsos, and heads of the lower infiltrators burst apart like thin fried potatoes.

“Uh, uh?”

“Why!”

“Are you saying my offerings were lacking?”

They were those who had hoped for strength and had offered themselves as windows for the old ones to poke their heads through.

They wielded an otherworldly strength incomparable to ordinary humans, but they were no match for a knight freely using mana blades.

“Step aside before the honorable Duke Valencius!”

Lady Trentia struck down an abomination that had just emerged with her steel-gloved fist.

Smash!

Every time she swung her fist, smiling like a red wolf hunting its prey, shockwaves erupted from the abomination’s body.

The smile on her gallant face was knightly enough to captivate both men and women.

“Enough with the so-called honor! It’s cowardice if you win and report that you achieved something while escaping alive!”

Valenciaunos replied, twisting the blade that pierced the lower part of an infiltrator, causing spasms.

Protected within their midst, Matheos advanced once more without a scratch on his fingers, reaching the front of his old friend.

* * *

In front of the intersection of the underground waterways, lower infiltrators were swarming.

Matheos squinted and looked beyond them at his old friend.

“Your Highness. Can you tell what they are doing right now?”

Valenciaunos kicked one of the rushing lower infiltrators into the waterway and gazed at the ceiling of the intersection.

A massive vomit-colored slime draped its tentacles and mucus like a complex polyhedron.

Dismas hung from the tentacles like a spider, suspended in the middle while placing captured individuals in various spots.

“What do you think they’re doing? They’re the kind who will conspire even with just a breath—strike now!”

There were a few more infiltrators dressed in black and wearing steel masks on the opposite waterway.

Valenciaunos realized they were proper infiltrators with reason still intact.

In fact, they were either chanting incomprehensible spells or making motions akin to slashing their wrists to sprinkle blood on Dismas to aid in the ceremony.

“Valenciaunos. Do you hear me?”

“No. I can’t make sense of it either.”

Sererassie’s face turned ashen.

“They’re performing a summoning ritual right now. The fewer offerings they have, the weaker the old ones will be when summoned, but it will be enough to kill us all and escape.”

“How do we stop it?”

Matheos asked urgently.

Sererassie alternated her gaze between the infiltrators and Dismas.

“The ritual can activate even without Dismas.”

“Excuse me?”

“That polyhedron is a magic circle. However, the summoned creatures are not bound to the caster. It means the other infiltrators behind can take them as well. Just killing Dismas won’t be sufficient.”

“Sister, can you quickly tell us how we should stop it?”

Sererassie squeezed her eyes shut and spat it out.

“There is indeed a way to neutralize the ritual.”

“What is it?”

“Kill the offerings.”

The looks of Lady Trentia, Rudi, Matheos, and Valenciaunos converged on Sererassie.

The mage pursuing the truth calmly stated only the facts.

“That polyhedron has 60 vertices, and each vertex requires one person. It seems there are enough offerings, but considering the need to add more in between or the sacrificed offerings to open the door at the beginning, it’s quite tight. Just killing ten will disrupt the ritual.”

Value judgments about the facts were not the mage’s business.

The attention naturally shifted back to Valenciaunos.

Zoom—!

At that moment, a strange red light began to rise within the vomit-colored slime forming the polyhedron.

“Ah, ah.”

A child hanging from one of the vertices twisted his body while sweating coldly.

Valenciaunos turned to Rudi, who held the magic rifle.

Matheos and Lady Trentia gasped as they obstructed him.

“Your Highness! That would be unbecoming of a knight. I shall pierce through and behead the infiltrator, saving the offerings. Just command me!”

“Your Highness. Please do not betray humanity. What nonsensical act would it be to kill people to save people?”

At that moment, Matheos fleetingly thought all the cruel rumors he had heard were correct.

The light platinum hair giving off a lively yet indifferent impression, the inhuman aura of his bright yellow eyes, and the white uniform that felt like it slapped against the wall.

It had a bizarre air of a wyvern-like being that had passed down those golden eyes.

Having no idea what lay beneath, it felt too precarious and dangerous to take my eyes off of him.

Valenciaunos hesitated for a very brief moment and truly felt ashamed of having hesitated.

‘Damn it.’

It had been like that even in my previous life.

Just a bit more blood to shed, just one more time pulling out the sword, and things could have been so much easier.

Living a life where, by crossing the line, I lost everything I wanted to protect was the consequence of that choice.

If I had to cross the line, I had no choice but to do so, but at the very least, I had to try to solve it without crossing it.

To achieve a different outcome from before, I had to take different actions.

“Lady Trentia and I will create a path. Rudi and my sister will provide rear support, and Matheos, stay close behind. We will tear that damn infiltrator apart and save the people.”

* * *

A red light ominously illuminated the underground waterways.

I swung my sword, beheading a lower infiltrator, stretching my hook-like fingers to gouge out an eye and rummage through the brain of another.

“Your Highness! The ultimate!”

“I know!”

Imperial swordsmanship, second level, Unforgotten.

The counterattack technique that activates even while unconscious.

The mana within me tightened my muscles as I moved my sword against the incoming blades, claws, and mutated tentacles from all directions.

“You filthy, wretched beings! The platinum sword of the Imperial Court is here!”

Lady Trentia advanced, deflecting all attacks with her plate armor.

Crackle!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Behind me, Sererassie and Rudi cast spells and pulled triggers.

The throng of lower infiltrators and abominations trembled and fell, their heads bursting into two or three pieces.

The red light surrounding Dismas was growing more intense.

“Your Highness!”

“I know! Matheos!”

Thus, Lady Trentia and I succeeded in standing at the end of the waterway.

Matheos revealed himself between us.

The seminarian who would become the Saint in the future prepared to unleash the light of purification.

“Lord! Grant me the strength to save them!”

With a heart-wrenching expression, Matheos shouted.

With slightly curly, light brown hair and deep, kind brown eyes.

A tall boy whose appearance was reminiscent of a pious and gentle dove, almost like mine.

From the outstretched hands of that boy, a light like sunlight was about to burst forth.

I let out a sigh of relief.

With the light of purification hitting him, we could tear Dismas apart with magic, the magic rifle, and swords.

But this world was cruel.

Aaaarrh—!

A hellish scream like a banshee’s shriek shook the underground waterways.

For a moment, I froze in horror as my body stiffened.

Red light gathered before Dismas.

Crack, crackle, crackle!

A sound of something twisting echoed.

From my past life experience, I could tell that the very space was twisting.

From that light emerged a small, heart-like horn that looked like a red gemstone, carried on the backs of bizarre creatures that made my legs tremble just to see them.

Before that overwhelming presence, Lady Trentia’s face contorted, and I also lowered my sword, while Rudi and Sererassie halted their hands.

“Huh-!”

I couldn’t breathe.

It felt like I had submerged in deep water.

Facing those unfathomable old ones, I felt an overwhelming sense of being a mere pawn in a cruel game.

If that kind of magic tool could unleash its power, it could easily face an army of ten thousand soldiers.

Yet I did not close my eyes or pull away.

With trembling hands that had dropped my sword, I pushed Matheos forward.

“Your Highness?”

He too was trembling with fear.

I remembered the chilling aura that had lingered in those gentle brown eyes.

It wasn’t just them wielding incomprehensible power.

“Didn’t you have something you wanted to say?”

Matheos looked ahead again, his expression struck as if he’d been hit from behind.

I blocked a tentacle from the infiltrator aiming at him with my body while seeing the youthful remnant of a boy mingling with the strength of youth.

“Lord! Grant me the strength to burn that sinner!”

Hearing that voice exploding from his chest, I laughed even as blood flowed profusely.

The prayer the light wanted to hear was surely that.

Bang!

As a pillar of light descended from the heavens, shattering the road above, it struck with unyielding force.