novelraw Chapter 49 : City of Fanatics (10)
Chapter 49 : City of Fanatics (10)
Chapter 49: City of Fanatics (10)
Vigo hauled Rowen on his back and ran hard.
Splash, splash.
Filthy water soaked his trouser legs. He didn’t care. When you hunt monsters, getting drenched in muck, guts, and blood is just another day.
No matter how fast he ran, there was no trace of the woman. She moved like a ghost.
“What is that crazy bitch, a fly? Can she fly or something?”
Even so, he could feel it. Magis would be at the end of this path, he was sure of it.
The prey wasn’t bolting in a panic to save her skin. She was broadcasting a presence, as if she were waiting for the hunters.
It was a trap, nine times out of ten.
A fight was close.
A bad feeling kept needling him.
Nike’s words wouldn’t stop echoing in his head.
Was there really a powerful witch beyond that darkness?
Vigo ran while reining in the heat rising in his veins, ready to spend even his hidden trump if it came to that.
Tap, tap...
They finally reached another cavern.
For a sewage cavern choked with filth, it was impossibly clean.
The place suggested a sacred chapel. Softly glowing candles lent it a solemn hush.
Vigo set Rowen down and drew a breath, eyes combing the chamber.
“...Master.”
“Ahh, yes.”
Rowen pointed into the dark. As she saw something there, Vigo was just then marking a shape standing in the shadows.
The silhouette of a slender woman.
“Bold of you, waiting for us.”
The woman answered his voice.
“So you followed me all the way. I don’t like clingy men, you know?”
Mockery laced her tone. She looked down on them completely.
“I don’t know how to quit once I’m hooked.”
“Your grit at least gets a passing grade.”
With that lush, fragrant voice, the candles lining the cavern walls roared up, all at once.
There were hundreds, more than enough to flood this wide space with light.
With the chamber lit, Vigo and Rowen could finally take it in.
Words didn’t come right away.
They had been sure the Golden Dawn Society was plotting something down here, but what they saw surpassed anything they’d imagined.
Rowen’s head tilted slowly.
‘A magic circle...?’
The floor was covered edge to edge with a ritual drawn in blood, big enough to fill the entire chamber. That wasn’t enough, and the bloody script climbed the walls and ceiling.
No gaps in the sigils.
The cavern itself was one vast magical workshop.
“What scheme needs a production this big?”
“Hmm~ who knows?”
Thump—
It hit then.
A killing intent heavy enough to make a heart drop washed over them.
Thud!
Rowen couldn’t hold herself up and dropped to one knee.
“...Huh?”
“What kind of nonsense is—”
Vigo’s expression clenched hard. Sweat crawled down his spine.
“How would mere humans like you and me fathom the will of the Ascendant?”
“What...?”
Magis smiled, and it was lethal. For the briefest instant, that lovely face crumpled into the mask of a vicious crone.
“Kgh.”
“Ugh...”
Just looking at her made their heads swim and their vision blur, as if her august visage forbade mortal eyes.
There was no doubt.
This was the dangerous presence Nike had warned of.
The Seventh Seat of the Third Order was a witch in and of herself.
But something was wrong.
...
...
...
“This feeling... no way...?”
Vigo muttered, face twisted in disbelief.
“Sin...?”
He voiced the grim suspicion, and Magis answered with a faint smile.
Vigo whirled, putting his back to Rowen, and shouted.
“Rowen! Get out now! Grab Nike and run without looking back!”
“Huh? Master, what are you...”
“Damn it— Sin. It’s Sin’s presence. That woman reeks of the Witch of Sin! How, just how—”
Rowen swallowed.
What her master was saying wouldn’t land.
‘What is he talking about? If it’s Sin... then surely…’
The worst enemy the Church ever named.
The root of all evil.
The first to be bathed in the Malefic Star.
One of the first three witches.
But the long-vanished Witch of Sin was the head of the Golden Dawn Society?
“Hurry!”
Thump!
Vigo shoved Rowen, rough. She toppled and landed hard on her backside. Dazed, she couldn’t gather her thoughts.
“Hoho, after I went to the trouble of inviting you to dine, you’d leave already?”
Magis flicked a finger as she spoke. Every exit connecting to the cavern sealed shut.
She wouldn’t allow escape.
Just like that, she worked sorcery as if it were nothing.
“...”
“How can she...”
The magic workshop became an airtight chamber.
“I worked very hard on this. Wouldn’t it be polite to enjoy it, ladies and gentlemen?”
Magis smiled, sweet and deadly. The presence she gave off belonged to a monster who’d lived five hundred years.
Silence settled over the workshop.
They faced each other, no one moving.
Magis wore a gentle smile.
Rowen’s mind slipped, unable to make sense of any of this.
Vigo fell into troubled thought.
‘Why didn’t I sense it at once.’
This marrow-freezing aura was the same overwhelming might he had felt decades ago, the fear that branded itself on him the day his comrades were slaughtered, scores of them, in less than five seconds before the killer vanished.
Thinking wouldn’t yield answers.
He needed words, anything, to pry open a way through this.
“Who… are you. Why do you carry the stink of Sin? Why are you after Nike? What are you doing in this city. Answer all of it, now!”
“...”
Magis only smiled, then began to walk. Her heels clicked, echoing, tock tock.
“Fine. Since you followed me all the way down here, I suppose showing some good faith is only right.”
She paused, picking her words. Then her eyes gleamed and she spoke.
“...The moment draws near when the Ascendant will descend.”
Shivering in rapture, she trembled.
Vigo watched her and narrowed his eyes.
“Ascendant? Descend? What are you talking about?”
“Ahh— a grand design prepared for centuries, and at last it has ripened in my time. Truly, truly, it’s almost here. The day of glory!”
Vigo frowned. It was hard to parse, and he had seen too much to dismiss the ravings as a madwoman’s babble.
She was telling the truth.
Whatever it was, their unprecedented plan tied to this Ascendant was nearing completion.
“Everything is in place. Everything, save one, the offering.”
“The offering you speak of is—”
“Yes. The ashen boy fighting over there right now. The heart of the star you stole...”
What bullshit. Rowen, who’d been holding back, swallowed the words that surged up her throat. Now wasn’t the time to butt in.
“Stolen?”
“The offering was growing up quietly in the village of Sinain. Then one day, you people came, found the child, and took him.”
“So...”
Vigo pulled a cigarette to settle his nerves.
“So you were the one who burned Sinain?”
“That’s right.”
“You butchered innocent people without a blink huh.”
“Doesn’t that make it that you killed them?”
“What a load of bullshit.”
“An inconvenient truth, actually.”
You can’t reason with fanatics. Their belief is all that’s right, and they are justice itself.
The only difference is what they serve. Hunters are no better, believing they alone are right. They felt a kinship and a revulsion all at once.
The two couldn’t coexist.
‘We have to take her head here, no matter what.’
Magis thought the same. That old hunter had to die here, or her future troubles would multiply.
Their like minds collided in midair.
Vigo’s killing intent was savage. The lady’s answering aura was no less.
“In any case, you’ll return the offering we raised. And you two will feed the pyre for the altar.”
“So that’s why you sent Sestria to reclaim Nike.”
Magis’s lips curved in that aristocratic smile again.
“Thanks to you, I had quite the headache. Who’d have thought the Lord of the Void would fall. I’m sure I separated you, yet... who did it? That accursed traitor, was it her?”
“Not sure. But you’ve dodged the only question that matters.”
“I thought I’d answered enough.”
It wasn’t enough.
If anything, there were more questions than before, and not one was clarified.
Offerings, the Ascendant, vague handwaving, all of it.
Vigo swallowed the urge to explode and asked, tight-voiced.
“Why… I asked why you reek of Sin.”
That was the burning question now.
His voice rose.
Vigo was on the brink of unleashing his killing aura.
Magis folded her arms, then lifted one hand and poked her cheek with a finger. Girlish, out of place for her age, a witch teasing a hunter with a provocative little bait.
“Hm? A man who only begs isn’t very attractive.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I told you, didn't I? A trade. Hand over the offering.”
Vigo flicked his cigarette to the floor and ground it out with his heel.
‘So it’s as Nike said.’
They wanted Nike.
She couldn’t hide it, no matter how she fronted.
They were desperate to get him back.
In a setup like this, if he killed Nike before her eyes, her reaction would be priceless. In that wild instant, he’d stab the opening she’d show.
‘From the look of it, they don’t even seem to know who killed Sestria.’
For some reason the Golden Dawn Society saw Nike only as an offering. They clearly didn’t know the details of his powers.
Which meant the leverage at this table was theirs, regardless of what she intended.
Vigo reached his rough conclusion and declared the talks over.
“I’m the kind of bastard who only takes.”
Magis shrugged, as if she’d expected nothing less.
“Shame. Men like that don’t do well with women.”
“How unfortunate.”
The bloody script of the workshop began to glow. An ominous red. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
“Oh my. I’d have loved to chat more, but the main dish is ready.”
She gathered a pinch of her skirt and dipped at the knee.
“Ladies and gentlemen.”
Click! With a sweet smile, Magis snapped her fingers, elegantly.
A gust blew through, and every candle went out at once, then flared back to life.
“Master.”
When the light returned, the walls of the cavern were lined with Golden Dawn believers in masks, arrayed in ranks like a fortress of flesh. Raw killing aura rolled like waves.
Hundreds of fanatics appeared like ghosts and ringed them.
Talk time was over.
“Please— enjoy the banquet.”
Whoom—
Overwhelming even that collective bloodlust, Vigo summoned his great scythe.
“Your arrogance pierces the heavens.”
* * *
“Hyah!”
Nike split a charging monster’s head from its body and flung it, then lifted his gaze.
“That's it?!”
No answer.
No more howls, no fresh motion.
Nike had slaughtered them all.
Chunks of ruptured monster flesh littered the ground. Blood pooled in slicks.
Newly gestating beasts couldn’t match Nike’s kill rate.
At last the magic feeding the web of blood-membrane ran dry, and no more monsters were born.
Nike had won, completely.
“Egh...”
A wave of dizziness made him stagger.
They were only low-tier monsters, but they’d come by the hundreds.
He’d fought like a berserker, skin flayed, deep wounds everywhere. He’d healed it all with mana, but it had cost him.
He’d already blown away an entire castle with magic, then fought a brutal battle on top of that. Nike had to be near his limits.
But there was no time to rest.
Far off, past the dark runs of the sewer, a perilous aura made the fine hairs stand up.
“Boss, vice boss are in danger.”
Nike pushed his waterlogged, cotton-heavy body upright.
Squish, squish.
Out of the dark.
Someone stepped through a pool of blood.
“...”
Nike’s eyes quietly burned red.