Archbishop of Repose, Masiu, looked down at the girl trembling before him. Her utterly colorless face, frad by black hair, only emphasized her finely carved, doll-like features.
“Hm-m.”
“Is this what a father feels when he ets his lost daughter again?” He savored the feeling as he stared into her.
She had clearly grown since the Resia that remained in his mory. She was taller now, and the once bony body had put on a little flesh. A faint irritation flickered through Masiu’s eyes.
It was like returning to a house that had stood empty for a long ti, only to find the furniture and utensils arranged however soone pleased. The very thought that his property had been tampered with without permission made him nauseous. Masiu exhaled and said:
“Rem, once, I had enormous expectations for you.”
No, the word “expectations” was too weak. Her disposition for attaining Hierarchy had been unprecedented in the entire history of Repose. Not for a single second had he doubted that, with her help, he would be able to destroy Valloren from within and carve the na “Resia” into the mory of the entire continent.
And yet, at this mont...
“Do... don’t call by that na. I’m Rietta.”
Rietta’s trembling subsided. Instead of the obedient gaze full of love and reverence, a fierce, wild fire flared in her eyes.
“Ha-ha-ha.”
Masiu let out a dry laugh. In this damned infirmary, he was the only one who made a sound resembling laughter. In an instant, the eyes of the people around them turned toward him.
Rietta wanted only one thing with all her heart: for Yuria to notice them. Only Yuria knew Masiu by sight. If she could relay it to Cheonmae or Levain, they would be able to fight back.
But Yuria was nowhere to be seen. The other platoon fighters had been swallowed by the crowd of incoming wounded. Even Parco, whom she had laid down nearby, had vanished sowhere.
In the very center of the boiling infirmary, the two of them had been left alone, as if stranded on an isolated island. Rietta forced her lips apart and asked:
“W-was... was this your doing too?”
At the word “your,” Masiu’s gaze grew heavy for a mont. But soon mocking sparks began to dance in his eyes again.
“What are you talking about?”
He tilted his head to the side.
“That the disease throwing the capital into terror is my handiwork? Or that I’m to bla for the mountains of bodies from those who started cutting, burning, and trampling each other even though the contagion hadn’t even had ti to spread yet?”
Masiu’s slit-like eyes filled with genuine delight.
“If it’s the latter, then that isn’t my fault.”
“...Liar. This is the Cult’s doing!”
Rietta’s voice shook, but it rang with resolve. She had been certain of it from the very second she saw Masiu. The blockade of District Seven...
She knew it had to be him and the Cult of Repose behind it. If not for their power to twist human hearts however they pleased, the authorities would never have made such a radical and utterly unknightly decision. In the end, even the people of the slums were subjects of the kingdom. Using force against them had been far too sudden.
A faint smile played across Masiu’s lips.
“After living among the ‘ravens,’ have you started clinging to illusions about human nature?”
Then he frowned as if sothing moldy and foul-slling stood before him.
“Chivalry... What a noble virtue. Protect the weak, uphold justice... But the next sentence is always the sa: be loyal to your lord.”
Masiu slowly turned his gaze outside. Pillars of fla, smoke, and desperate screams were rising toward the sky from the direction of the slums. All it took was a slight turn of the head, and in sharp contrast, the peaceful part of the city ca into view. Streets drowned in silence, as though none of this chaos had anything to do with them.
“In the end, they stop thinking about what is right. The ones above decide that for them. Who to protect, and who to cut down.”
Rietta caught the hidden aning in his words.
“Could it be...”
Masiu burst into laughter.
“The rulers of Valloren felt fear before the disease had even manifested, and fear quickly beca a decision.”
His eyes flashed coldly.
“The mont a person gains power, they begin to rot, and above all, they fear losing what they have.”
As the Archbishop of Repose, he had peered into the deepest core of countless people. He had been able to predict the reaction of Valloren’s upper ranks to the news of “zombies” as easily as he could read the lines on his own palm. At the mont Night Raven headed into the slums, he had instead fed the rulers information about the existence of monsters.
And this was the result: the slums transford into a living hell, and chivalry brought to the final point of its decline.
“Under the pretext of protecting the weak, those people are turned into ‘criminals there’s no sin in mowing down,’ and in the na of loyalty to their lord’s order, knights cast aside their own judgnt with ease.”
The corners of his mouth curled.
“If a contradiction appears, well, it’s easy enough to justify.”
“I was only following orders.”
“I was only doing what was right.”
Masiu finished quietly:
“Not thinking—isn’t that the most peaceful choice of all?”
That was precisely why the Cult of Repose had chosen Valloren as its target for invasion several years ago. The hand that gripped the sword was already trained to cut, and the head already knew how to bow, even when doubt was born within it. A state perfectly suited for “Repose,” where neither will, nor questions, nor guilt were needed. ...Though the incident at Audrey House had spoiled those plans sowhat.
As Rietta listened to Masiu, chaos reigned inside her head. But then...
“Done with your filthy sophistry? Listening to it makes sick.”
Whoooosh—
Behind them, an enormous hamr ca crashing down, splitting the air. Masiu did not even turn around. He simply raised one finger.
BAM—!
A two-handed hamr into which a muscular giant had poured all his strength, and a single finger raised by a gaunt middle-aged man. Those two forces collided in midair and, absurdly enough, ford a perfect balance. No... the balance was not perfect.
Crack—
Tiny fractures began to appear on the hamrhead. Ryan’s lips trembled as he rasped:
“Fuck , every bastard in this place is a monster.”
But Ryan was not the only one stunned. Masiu’s eyes slowly narrowed.
“...How?”
He knew for a fact that he had deployed the “Curtain of Repose” in advance so he could speak with Rietta alone. Within the radius of that spell, the caster’s presence was naturally erased, the consciousness of those around them relaxed, and in the end everyone began moving in the direction he wanted without even realizing it... It was high-order ntal magic.
And for such a technique to be dispelled not by “Cheonmae,” the only one he had been wary of, but by so insignificant nobody...
“I asked how you did it.”
Ryan burst out laughing at Masiu’s baffled face.
“But I’m not telling.”
anwhile, Parco, having co back to himself, quickly evacuated the wounded. Behind him appeared Blanc, Levain, and Yuria.
Uuuuun—
“Hm, well, that much I can tell you.”
Blanc popped out from behind the vibrating Seren Gless.
“It’s all thanks to the gifts our captain left us.”
An old bracelet on her wrist was shining brightly. The others had the sa. Their personal equipnt. Relics of ancient gods, retrieved from the Treasury of the King of Fla.
The divinity of those who had once fought against the Seven Evil Gods flowed through those items. They would never allow the power of “Repose” to swallow their owner.
Shhhk—
Yuria stepped forward. The trembling in her body subsided within just a few steps. The blade of her axe ca to a halt, aid directly at Masiu.
At the villain who had once forced upon her the horrific fate of the “Child of the Month of Repose.” At the one who had sent countless children before her to the altar, children whose nas had not even survived.
“Seems like the captain said he did this when he fought the Perfurs...”
Bang-bang!
Yuria raised her axe as if imitating a pistol shot. At that very instant...
---------!
Masiu felt the space around him suddenly brighten. A massive source of light flew in through the window and devoured all sight. The deaf night beca as bright as day in an instant, and the thunderous roar that followed bore down on the entire space.
“Oh...”
In that brief mont when every sound froze, Rietta also stepped forward and whispered softly:
“Suppression of the Archbishop of Repose...”
Her gaze pierced Masiu as he vanished into the radiance.
“Begin!”
***
A fighting style is like a fingerprint. It is a habit hamred into the body through decades of training.
“There’s no way I wouldn’t recognize him.”
Even if it was a reanimated corpse. The necromancy of the Cult of Healing, developed through countless test subjects, had reached the point where the dead returned to life along with all their habits and senses.
Whoooosh—
Gunther watched the single arm flying at him like a projectile. The body he had once personally inhabited. The body tempered to its limit and covered in countless scars flashed through Gunther’s mind for an instant.
Clang—
Instead of the holy sword, of which only the hilt remained, Gunther t the blow with Straight Line of Despair. From the instantaneous collision, his knees buckled and his body was thrown backward. But as if he felt no pain, Gunther imdiately raised his head and stared straight ahead.
“......”
Yes, in a way, he had expected this. He had simply hoped it would not co to this.
Shhhk—
Raymond’s enormous shadow covered Gunther again. And sowhere deep in his heart, sothing he had long suppressed began to boil.
Raymond. A man who could rightly be called a hero. A man willing to place all of himself upon the altar of justice.
In this tiline, Gunther had taken that burden upon himself, but in the original world, Raymond had been the sa. A good man who fought to restore freedom to innocent children and died in a place where no one would rember him.
And now he had beco a stinking corpse... a puppet in the hands of a profane bastard.
“Why do these bastards always...”
Whoooosh—
...give good people such a rotten ending?
Gunther’s cold, frozen gaze was no longer fixed on the flying fist. It settled on the small priest who kept shouting spells tirelessly behind the dead man.
“...I’ll make him.”
He would make him pay for this desecration.
BAM—! BAM—!
Fist and sword collided again. This ti, the forces were equal. The priest’s shoulders jerked. Gunther instinctively understood:
“There won’t be many chances.”
The enemy already knew who he was. After he killed Albino in Border City, Gunther had been placed on the list of especially dangerous individuals. But there was one thing they did not know.
That he had grown by crossing ti and worldlines. They were still laughably underestimating the limits of his growth.
“I must not die now.”
There was sothing he needed to do before the Hierarch of Justice arrived. In this regression, Gunther had learned astonishing information: the holy sword had self-destructed.
“In the previous life... the holy sword was definitely intact.”
A regressor had to be exquisitely sensitive to spans of ti. Right now, it was only the first day of his arrival in the capital. Which ant that in the previous iteration, at this exact sa ti, the sword had still been whole.
“......”
Gunther slowly touched the hilt of the holy sword. What had changed for a whole sword to suddenly break?
[I can’t... endure it any longer.]
The answer lay in the dying whisper of the holy sword, which possessed a soul.
Gunther lowered his gaze to his feet. To the city. More precisely—to the slums engulfed in flas. The hypothesis that the sword, having absorbed the glory of the kingdom and the ideals of chivalry for centuries, could not endure the sight of fallen chivalry and had ended its own existence was not without sense.
He had to find out what had happened down there below. Only then, in the next life, would he be able to [N O V E L I G H T] prevent this entire tragedy.
Whistle—!
And for that—
Shhhk—
He would have to strike down the fallen hero before him.
[Activating skill “Knight Swordsmanship” (Lv. 5)]
Gunther raised his sword.
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