novelraw Chapter 154 : Chapter 154
Chapter 154 : Chapter 154
154
Simply drawing a sword did not mean a fight would begin immediately.
This was the center of the Holy Kingdom, and everyone who lived here was a member of the clergy.
They were people who had devoted their lives to God and were, by nature, morally upright.
Which meant that when they saw me holding a Holy Sword—
“Oh. A guest is holding the Holy Sword.”
—that was about as mild a reaction as it got.
At most, there were slightly more radical responses.
“Hm? The Holy Sword? Ho, did you steal it?”
Even then, after a brief moment of surprise, they noticed Yuria standing beside me.
“Ah. It must be that the next Saintess has allowed you to hold it for a moment!”
And they nodded.
Judging by their expressions, they did not truly accept it, but that was beside the point.
In any case, not a single one of them imagined that we were terrorists attempting to steal demonic artifacts confiscated by the Holy Knights in the very capital of the Holy Kingdom.
Which was only natural.
“Are you really sure it is okay to use this sword?”
Even if people did not recognize my face, every single one of them recognized the Holy Sword.
Causing chaos in a sacred place with a blade like this—that was sacrilege of the highest order.
“It is fine. This, too, must be God’s will.”
“……?”
“If God did not want to see this, He should not have sent me back through regression.”
God above, are you certain this child was meant to be your daughter?
From where I stand, it looks like you were briefly tempted by demons.
“That is the Confiscated Goods Warehouse of the Holy Knights.”
The place Yuria pointed to was sealed by a massive iron gate.
It looked to be roughly four meters wide and three meters tall, and two knights in Full Plate Mail stood guard before it, fully armed.
They were enormous.
Compared to the relatively lean Inquisitor Seris, each of them looked as though they could count for three men.
Their trapezius muscles were unnaturally developed, and their bodies were swollen with muscle, as if inflated.
“When Holy Power is injected into the muscles and excessive training is performed, they end up like that.”
“So it is not normal?”
“In the past, there were Holy Knights who lost their Holy Power. They suffered from chronic lethargy, reduced stamina, hair loss, and other symptoms.”
“Then those who have enlarged their bodies with Holy Power have no choice but to cling obsessively to faith.”
“Precisely. They are monsters obsessed with Holy Power, doctrines, and commandments. Reason will not work on them. You must take the Fantasy.”
I glanced at Yuria again.
Her eyes, calmly explaining the operation, looked faintly unhinged.
The subtle sense of discomfort I had felt throughout our conversation must have stemmed from this.
This was strange.
I had sent her here hoping she would become more normal, not less—
so why had things turned out like this……?
Still, I needed my sword back.
I trudged forward toward the two knights.
They turned only their heads to look at me, maintaining rigid postures.
“Good day.”
“……?”
“I have been told that my belongings are stored here. I have come to retrieve them.”
They stared at me as if asking what I meant.
They were clearly blocking the door, yet neither drew their swords nor attacked.
Confidence?
Or complacency, dulled by guarding a supposedly safe place?
Either way, they would regret it.
Ignoring their reaction, I continued walking toward the gate.
“Civilians are not permitted to approach this area.”
One of the knights raised a hand and stepped forward to block me.
I read the trajectory and slipped past it, brushing him aside with a light touch.
Thud.
I nudged him just enough to push him outside the flow of balance.
“Hrk?”
The initial response was clumsy, but the follow-up was quick.
The moment I passed him, the other knight drew his sword while drawing up his Holy Power.
A pale violet glow shimmered across his entire body, and his muscles began swelling to a visible degree.
The armor expanded as if it were elastic, matching the growth of his body.
With overwhelming force, the knight swung his sword.
That was all.
‘Hup.’
His ankles failed to keep up with the sudden surge of power.
His entire body leaned heavily to one side, barely holding itself together.
I slipped my leg between his feet and flicked one ankle aside.
His foot slid as if standing on oil, and his sword slammed into the gate and the floor with a deafening crash.
“Hup!”
An ordinary man would have been injured by the recoil, but the knight recovered almost instantly, reinforced by the Holy Power wrapped around his body.
He counterattacked.
The sword traced a grotesque arc that no human arm should have been able to produce.
Muscles and bones twisted unnaturally, flailing before snapping back into place again and again.
He was a monster.
Clang!
I struck the blade upward with the Holy Sword.
I was someone who had fought demons—the apex of monsters.
There was no reason to struggle against creatures that merely wore human shapes.
“The Holy Sword!”
“You wretch!”
The moment they recognized the Holy Sword, the knights’ eyes gleamed unnaturally.
In an instant, their gazes twisted into something akin to madness, as though they had fallen under an illusion.
Yuria, is this really right……?
I positioned myself with the Confiscated Goods Warehouse at my back and watched the two knights.
From both sides, they swung their massive greatswords up and down, intent on crushing me completely.
I observed their trajectories, flow, and positions, adjusting my stance.
I minimized my swings.
Saaah—
I could see the path the blades would take.
The moment my will settled, my sword flowed through the air without hesitation.
“Huh.”
The Holy Sword’s Holy Power rippled as it entwined with my Aura.
The two energies did not merge.
Rather, it felt as though Holy Power rejected Aura, and Aura rejected Holy Power.
As a result, gray Aura and violet Holy Power layered the air like oil and water, producing a strange effect.
“……Huh?”
My sword cut the two men standing before me.
Their bodies bore no wounds.
Yet both collapsed to the ground, completely immobilized, regardless of their will.
“Why? Why, why is this happening?!”
They strained desperately, faces reddening as if about to burst, trying to move their bodies.
But below the neck, they could not move a single finger.
‘Did I cut something abstract again?’
It was more than that.
It felt as though I had cut their bodies once, and Holy Power had forcibly restored them—
yet something fundamental had been severed.
I did not fully understand the principle, but one thing was clear.
They could not move.
“That should count as causing a scene.”
A spar and a fight were different things, after all.
With that thought, I opened the door to the Confiscated Goods Warehouse.
The moment I did, a pungent, vile stench assaulted my nose.
The smell was so overpowering that it made my head spin.
“Be careful.”
Yuria, who had approached at some point, placed her hand atop mine.
A faint flow of Holy Power steadied my mind, and the dizziness gradually subsided.
The Holy Sword reacted to her power, forming a thin violet barrier around me.
Breathing became much easier.
“That is foul.”
“This is where items confiscated over hundreds of years are stored. Many of them are likely related to demons.”
“But the demon invasion was not that long ago.”
“The invasion is recent. The exercise of demonic power is not. It has a history spanning thousands of years.”
Each item bore its own seal.
Armor bound in grotesque iron chains.
Masks encased in translucent glass.
Unidentifiable objects pounding violently inside iron boxes.
Yuria’s eyes swept over the area without emotion.
“When Sacer appeared, the Holy Kingdom did not fall solely because of demonic power.”
“These items fell into the demon’s hands.”
“Sacer is both god and demon. Demon and god at once. Using demonic power, it devastated the entire Holy Kingdom.”
The Holy Knights and the Archbishops believed they were the ones best suited to handle demonic power.
That was wrong.
The ones who handled demonic power best were demons themselves.
They had failed to control it.
“That is why demonic power must belong to those capable of defeating demons.”
After moving a little farther among the cursed items, I found my sword resting upon an Altar.
They had not separated the Fantasy from it, and judging by how haphazardly everything was arranged, they clearly did not yet understand how to handle Fantasies.
I retrieved both Ocean Hall’s Fantasy and my sword.
“Let us go.”
“Not yet.”
“Hm?”
“Opportunities to come here are rare. You should take one more thing.”
Yuria looked around as though searching for something.
What could possibly be worth taking from a place like this?
“Here it is.”
She produced a small glass vial and a short wooden rod.
Inside the vial was a strange gray powder, suspended sluggishly within sticky, viscous fluid.
The wooden rod radiated misfortune at a glance, and even as she held it, sparks of electricity crackled against her hand as if resisting her.
“Berlis saved my life once. This is repayment.”
“An item for a Necromancer?”
“Berlis would know how to use it better than I.”
Berlis had seemed dispirited lately after losing her assistant.
It would make a fine gift, but—
“Is it really fine to take this much?”
Reclaiming my own belongings was one thing.
Stealing additional artifacts felt like openly declaring myself a demon worshiper to the Holy Kingdom.
Do not tell me she was trying to eliminate me by proxy for sending her here……?
“It is fine. I am a Saintess candidate.”
“You are not a Saintess.”
“If I were a Saintess, it would be a problem. A fallen Saintess would be a grave matter. But a Saintess candidate is a body meant to become a Saintess. All my sins will disappear the moment I ascend, and all my stains are merely trials arranged by God.”
I suddenly felt pity for God.
Are you truly certain you chose this child?
At that moment, voices and footsteps echoed from outside.
It seemed people had noticed the disturbance and were rushing over.
“Quickly. Escape before you are caught.”
“You say that as if it has nothing to do with you.”
I took my sword and ran down a passage different from the one we had come through.
After about five minutes, we emerged into a garden—
where Ganemia was standing, as though she had anticipated our arrival.
“My. I asked you to wait until the meeting was over, and yet here we are.”
Behind her stood a griffon.
It was Seris’s griffon.
“I was ‘coincidentally’ calming Seris’s griffon while preparing for the meeting.”
—Kiiik!
The griffon spread its wings and approached me enthusiastically, like a parrot showing affection to its owner.
“Having inherited Seris’s will, the griffon was ‘unavoidably’ compelled to follow your orders—even though you are a criminal.”
Its feathers gleamed, its condition clearly restored by Holy Power.
A bag hung at its side, containing what looked like two bottles of Elixir.
“Should I put up more resistance?”
“No. Thank you for the half-hearted performance.”
A Saintess would be corruption, but a Saintess candidate was acceptable.
That must have been why Ganemia had kept her distance and pretended ignorance.
In truth, this entire plan must have originated from those two.
“Thank you.”
“I hear the demons are appearing faster. That means our true adversary will show itself soon.”
Sacer.
In my previous life, the demon who would appear in a year, destroy the Holy Kingdom, and kill her.
“When that time comes, will you save me? As repayment for today.”
“I will. A debt must be repaid.”
I climbed onto the griffon’s back, and it immediately took to the sky.
Dozens of knights poured into the garden I had just left, scattering once they spotted me airborne.
“Let us go. To Namress.”
The students would be waiting there.
***
Rozalin was halfway to madness.
“TeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacherTeacher……”
There was no sign of the Teacher who should have departed first to fight Ocean Hall.
The Inquisitor who had accompanied him lay dead, his body cold.
There was no griffon corpse.
Ocean Hall had clearly been dealt with.
Then where was the Teacher?
Rozalin’s eyes wavered darkly.