Chapter 471

Chapter 94 The “Innocent” One Enveloped by the Flames of Vocation (Part 2)

The third floor of the entire castle was empty, with all the rooms looted, leaving only some books, documents, tables, and wooden frames. There were no valuables or food, nor any heretics.

As Isaac and I searched halfway through, the knights downstairs came up.

“Lord Isaac, we found a few straggling rats.”

“Are they heretics?”

Isaac asked. The knight shook his head immediately: “They’re just cowards who fled into the inner keep when we attacked. They claim to be descendants of the original nobility of this castle, the Alastair family. Their clothes look quite fine, but once discovered, they became submissive and did not dare to resist. We cannot confirm if they are heretics, but I have sent them to the square.”

“The first and second floors have mostly been ransacked. The rooms inside and out are covered with straw mats, filthy and chaotic, filled with the stench of excrement. It seems that the castle has long been occupied, and those heretics and outsiders have been here for days.”

“Mmm.”

The bald man nodded and gave further instructions to the knight, handing over the remaining rooms on the third floor, as well as the fourth and fifth floors, to be searched. He then went down with me.

Back in the hall on the first floor, it had become noisy. Knights were escorting people out, a young man in his twenties shouting, “I am a descendant of the Alastair family. My father sacrificed himself to resist the heretics. He was a hero of the Republic. You cannot treat me like this! You cannot treat me like this!”

The knight escorting him sneered and questioned, “Your father has sacrificed himself, yet you hide in your room like a coward? What else can you do? You can’t even wield a sword. Do you want to die too?”

The young man’s voice broke with tears.

I watched them walk out of the castle and glanced at Captain Gray’s blade still in my hand, smeared with dark red, sticky blood—the blood of a soldier I had killed with one blow to the head.

They called him the captain; he should have been a guard here.

This truly…

was an indescribable emotion.

I walked to the entrance of the inner keep, holding the blade out into the rain. The heavy rain quickly washed away the dark red stains on the black blade. Then, I folded the scythe back up and put it in the leather case, strapping it on my back.

Over there, Isaac exchanged a few words with someone and walked over to me.

“Little one, you…”

He seemed about to say something, but noticing my grim expression, he rubbed his head and asked, “What’s wrong? Are you feeling bad?”

I looked at him without speaking, pulled up my hood, and stepped into the rain. Following the path paved with large stones, I arrived at the square, where people were kneeling in rows under the rain. Around them lay bodies, blood, and entrails.

The knights riding beasts ran back and forth through the puddles, shouting orders. Some pulled out neatly dressed middle-aged men from the captives and pushed them with gun barrels towards Saifiroth for questioning.

“…We are not heretics. I am the servant of this castle, serving the master for over twenty years… A fortnight ago, those demons and their followers attacked. The master and the guards fought back but were chopped into pieces… They took people and grain, leaving only part of the food… I wanted to resist, but what could I do… They forced me to drink blood and join the demons… I had no choice… I just wanted to live… Please…”

The middle-aged servant pleaded, his voice breaking with sobs.

The grim-faced knight commander waved his hand, and the man was dragged away. Soon after, another ragged, emaciated man was pushed out from the crowd and made to kneel before Saifiroth.

“Most… most respected knight sir… I am a citizen of York Town…”

The man, trembling with fear, spoke haltingly, his tongue almost failing him from terror.

“I am a tenant farmer, diligently working the land for the lord… But, but the floods came, drowning our fields… My family and I escaped, but we had no food left on the road… Mother, wife, and my two children…

“A child, all of them starved to death, and I was the only one left…”

“I didn’t know they were demons; they gave me food… They said there was plenty of grain in the Silence Fortress… but when we arrived, the lord of the fortress refused to open the gates, wanting to starve us outside. We fought… I didn’t think about anything else; I was just hungry… I wanted to find something to eat…”

The humble person lay in the rain, their humble words drowned out by the heavy downpour. The emaciated figure curled up on the ground like a shrimp, the image already blurry by the time it reached me.

Suddenly, footsteps sounded behind me.

Without turning back, I knew who it was.

“Isaac.”

I called his name softly, feeling the large man stop beside me. He tilted his head, thinking for a moment, and asked the question he had been wanting to ask since before.

“What sins did they commit?”

I actually understood.

After all, to the church, those people had already been baptized by the flames of sin, becoming part of the Truth’s Gate, fighting for the devil. Just like Angel repeatedly warned me not to expose the power of the inferno, once one possessed the power of a demon, there was no turning back. It was the antithesis of the foundation of faith.

Moreover, they aided the Truth’s Gate in attacking us.

These people had become the pawns of evil, and it was impossible to release them without guilt.

But…

I was just thinking, if I were one of them—if I were just an ordinary person living here for generations. Without power or influence, half-dead from hunger in this flood… And if someone offered me some food?

If I chose not to eat, would I die?

Just some ordinary people.

When a knife is at your throat, you kneel.

Whether facing the Truth’s Gate earlier or now facing the knights of the church, these people would undoubtedly make the same choice—surrender and then kneel.

Would that…

be considered a crime?

I didn’t know, so I threw the question to Isaac. Hoping he might say something that could calm my restless heart and ease my sense of guilt…

I turned to look at him.

The large man pondered for a moment before speaking.

“Do you understand the jester?”

He didn’t directly answer my question but instead asked me another.

For a moment, I didn’t understand what he meant, so I gently shook my head.

The man looked toward the square and continued, “I know him well.”

“Over twenty years ago, the church leadership viewed the jester as an extremely dangerous existence, even more dangerous than a great demon. Not only because of his strength, but because of the dark nature of his heart… The jester is a collection of all ‘malice’ in the world. Someone once described him this way.”

“That inhumane villain was most skilled at stirring up evil within human nature. He enjoyed tearing away the facade that people wear, turning the innocent, kind, and foolish into villains. The jester was very enthusiastic about such things, with a nearly perverted obsession.”

“Only those who follow him, only those whom the jester has deemed to have committed irredeemable evil, can survive in the twisted hands of that pervert… Greed, desire, fear hovering between life and death. No matter the reason, wherever the jester appears, the events you see now will happen, these ‘seemingly innocent’ people will appear. That is his style, and I know it well…”

“They weren’t originally sinners; it was the jester who made them sinners… I’ve already guessed what these survivors did in the Silence Fortress.”

“…What?”

I pressed further, but Isaac merely shook his head and remained silent.

“Let me go—”

Suddenly, someone shouted in the crowd.

I looked up and saw the young man who had been escorted out from the inner fortress earlier, now being held by two knights and led towards Safiros. The knights insisted he kneel, but he refused, struggling fiercely: “Let me go! My father is Viscount Alenster! He’s dead now, and I am the master of this castle. I am a noble! You cannot treat me this way—”