” hurry up! We have to get out before they catch our scent!”
“That damn prince…!”
“Ganagl-sama! Over here!”
With a faint vroom, men in black robes urgently burst out from the crack in the rocky hillside, hidden by some kind of magic.
The edges of their robes were filled with incomprehensible dark red patterns, and the masks on their faces resembled squids, draping long pieces of fabric beneath their chins.
Cultists of the Abyss Church. They looked exactly as described in the original novel.
‘…They just keep coming, like a horde of goblins?’
Just as you’d expect from a cult that carelessly bulked up. The line of cultists emerging one after another seemed endless.
At least forty of them were present.
Most of them were just low-level goons, but… a few of the cultists exuded an intimidating aura that indicated they were something more.
Though they’d still fall short of being the kingdom’s knights.
‘So… where’s Ganagl?’
I quietly pulled the spear from my back and carefully observed the cultists below.
As the number of cultists exceeded fifty and approached sixty…
“Guhhhh… Hero, you’re here again…?”
With an uncomfortably sluggish voice, a middle-aged man, looking at least double the size of the others, waddled out from the rocky hole.
It’s him.
Trying to hide his identity, he wore a hood and mask like the others, but it was clear at a glance who he was.
A nauseatingly unsettling aura enveloped him like a shroud. How could anyone not recognize him at that point?
The third finger of the Exorcism Society, Ganagl Peytan.
I silently rose from the hillside, aiming the spear I held at him.
– Crack.
Ice heart, 강완 (Kang-wan), manifestation of the ascension.
Glowing blue reflected in my wide-open eyes, and the frigid air expelled by my ice heart spread through my veins.
Concentration of power beyond the limits of muscles. The spearhead, strengthened through the manifestation of ascension, was aimed at the defenseless head of the Abyss Priest.
Eisenstein’s battle weapon, Valkyrie’s vision spear technique.
Tornado spear.
A whirling steel spear boom-ed through the air.
◆◆
Boom!
Unlike when I pierced through the bandit’s head with my fist, the thrown spear unleashed the pinnacle of 강완’s power.
Before the thunderous sound echoed away, the spear of the tornado sped toward the heart of the enemy encampment.
The ground flipped, spewing up dust, and shattered steel fragments swept through the air like a storm.
Blood and flesh spread like a wave. The sound of wrath striking down like a giant drowned out the screams and wails of the cultists.
It was more powerful than I could’ve imagined.
“…Could it be, one strike and it’s over?”
Even Edgar and Baneum, who were about to charge down the hill with their weapons drawn, looked back at me with wide eyes.
Of course, I didn’t care whether they were surprised or not.
It was no time to worry about that. The stakes of this battle were too high.
– Crack crack…!
I activated the recovery spell for my shoulders, recovering from the recoil of the thrown spear as I looked down at the devastation below.
I wondered, did Ganagl survive or die? It would be great if he died from this blow…
“Uuuuaaaah!”
…Of course. Nothing in my life ever went that smoothly.
Unfortunately, my spear didn’t seem to have taken Ganagl’s life.
The thick dust made it hard to see, but just hearing that furious roar was enough to let me know he was still standing.
“Ganagl-sama! Are you alright!”
“Bishop William has been hit!”
“Enemy ambush! Protect the High Priest!”
It seemed that about half of the Abyss cultists had survived. In other words, the other half had crossed over to the afterlife with one spear.
Well, given that the first ambush had partially failed, there was only one way left to go.
“Let’s go, Friede!”
“Yes!”
I jumped down the hill with Friede, stepping on various protrusions to slow my fall.
Unlike us, who charged straight down, Edgar and Baneum sneaked into the darkness to ambush the cultists in their own way.
The pure assassin Edgar crawled into a good position to snipe the enemies with a small crossbow, while Baneum, a member of the church, wrapped himself in shadows like a cloak.
「 Shadow Cloak. 」
A holy miracle classified as ‘outlaw’ within the Goddess Church, it allowed him to blend into the darkness with a shadowy covering.
Kind of like a downgraded version of the invisibility spell etched on the Valkyries’ helmets.
It could only activate in the dark and would be undone the moment he attacked, making it useless after the first ambush.
In other words, when facing multiple enemies like now, you had to kill one and then confront the rest head-on…
‘Well, he knows what he’s doing.’
If Baneum is more aware of the shadow cloak’s drawbacks than I am, there’s no point in me worrying about it.
“There! Those guys just used that spell…!”
“Curse that damn prince’s lapdog!”
…There wouldn’t even be time to think about that.
As the dust settled, those who had been flayed and torn apart lay scattered among the thirty-eight cultivators, now ready for combat, glaring at us.
Thirty standard cultists, seven bishops or whatever; and then,
“Graaaaah! What are you, aaah-!”
A hulking middle-aged Abyss Priest with one arm blown off, Ganagl Peytan.
Instead of answering, I drew my sword. The pale silver sword, infused with holy power, the blessed sword Edelmut, shimmered with a cold glow.
◆◆
The clouds that had shrouded the night sky drifted away with the wind, and the moonlight poured down, illuminating my enemy.
‘Ugh…!’
Disgusting. I grimaced and let out a soft groan in my mind.
Ganagl’s true form, hidden behind a mask and robe, was far more hideous than I’d imagined.
With a bloated body and a hairless head.
His skin was a sickly green, as if he were a fish, and his bulging eyes were grotesquely large. The pupils looked squished like crushed egg yolks.
But that was just the beginning. If that was all, he wouldn’t even be called a monster. He would just be mocked as a fish that got hanged.
The squished eyes weren’t a big deal at all. Compared to other parts of him, that was merely a quirk.
“Heh, Heid isn’t here? Then I’ll eat you…!”
He glared at us with his slick, shiny head. Actually, it wasn’t slick; it was more like pointed.
The top of Ganagl’s head jutted out like a crown. His skull opened wide like a raindrop on the surface.
Thanks to that, his darkened brain was clearly visible. You’d think it would spill out if he bowed down.
But that wasn’t all.
The nose was the only part that looked normal, but from his upper lip down to his neck, it was ripped apart, exposing thick tentacles instead of teeth or an esophagus, hanging down like a beard.
Those tentacles earned him the nickname ‘Devourer of Brains’.
Wriggling like an octopus leg and dripping oozy bodily fluids, his appearance was enough to make anyone shudder.
If his head looked like that, I couldn’t imagine his body being any better.
Dressed in ostentatious robes like a big shot, his chest and abdomen were oddly translucent, filled with black fluid and many brains.
According to his setup, that was likely where he kept the brains of his sacrificed victims, right?
Literally a container of brains. Aside from minor differences in whether they were stimulated with magic instead of electric shock.
‘…Ah, I want to go back.’
Focusing on such a grotesque sight made me long for the Ester family mansion.
Why on earth was I wrestling with such a monster in a place like this for some grand treasure?
Of course, that was just how I felt; my eyes glimmered with blue light as I stared at him.
“Come here!”
In the next moment, Ganagl let out a child-like scream, extending his last remaining arm toward us.
– Swish!
His arm stretched like rubber, becoming dozens of tentacles that whipped towards us.
Ganagl’s limbs weren’t human like; they were thick clusters of tentacles that took on human form.
As a result, they could stretch several meters and regenerate even if cut…
But knowing that much made it no big deal.
I dodged to the side, swinging my sword to slice off part of his arm. It was an expected attack, so dodging it was easy.
Of course, that didn’t mean I could let my guard down.
“No way in hell….”
If I let my guard down even for a moment, I had to stay alert from now on.
His weapons were spells granted by the power of the Abyss, not just some rubbery limbs.
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