13 (73)

Louis was looking around. The surroundings were still in the middle of battle. Louis had been imprinted upon the Demon Soldiers as a superior being, but that did not extend to the soldiers. This battle looked closer to a massacre than a battle. The Demon Soldiers had split among themselves, and compared to that, the cavalry were moving with even higher morale than before.

The Abyss writhed as if it were alive. It feared Louis. It shook intermittently, giving the impression of an earthquake. The only one who knew what it was was Nestor. He was connected to the Abyss. Louis looked at the enormous statue before his eyes. The Demon God sat upon a throne. He was holding a cup, and the inside was full of blood. A human who had clearly been squeezed dry was hanging over the cup. Louis frowned.

He remembered something that had happened not long ago. There must have been more sacrifices than that, not fewer. As before, the Demon God statue was not a simple statue. The Demon God was looking down at Louis through this statue. He was extremely excited. His mouth split wide, and his eyes were soaked with greed.

This phenomenon was extremely rare, so it startled Nestor. In all eighty years of his life, he had seen such a scene only once. Nestor felt deeply regretful. What blessing would he have received? It could have become an opportunity for him to step up not into something like a half-human, half-beast, but into a higher being. Nestor was gloomy.

Louis’s next action was so shocking that Nestor could only clear his throat. Louis threw a spear shaft. The spear shaft destroyed one of the Demon God statue’s eyeballs and stuck into it with a thunk. Louis was not satisfied with that and received another one, then threw it. Both eyeballs were pierced side by side, and surprisingly, blood was flowing from them. What shocked Nestor was not whether Louis threw a spear or not, but the fact that he had so easily pierced through the black magic hanging over the Demon God statue and succeeded in attacking it.

The neck cracked when the third spear shaft lodged into it. Fragments that had lost their support fell like they were scattering, and the neck came crashing down. Crunch. Blood gushed out from the shattered head. Just how much blood had it been absorbing? Louis knew that the old man Ian had mentioned was the being right in front of him.

“State your name.”

Nestor slowly looked up at Louis’s face and began laughing like a madman. Louis had no intention of leaving him be, so he grabbed him by the neck and lifted him up.

“……..State your name.”

Nestor’s face soon reddened, and while choking, he barely managed to spit out a single word.

“Ne… Nestor.”

Louis threw him down onto the ground. It was enough to break his arm. He did not know what to do from the pain of his broken arm, but because his whole body was tied with rope, all he could do was breathe roughly. Louis grabbed his blond hair and lifted him up. It seemed certain that he was the ringleader.

‘There was a quest on him.’

A quest had been placed on Nestor as well, just like Ian. Since Nestor was not of a lower position than him, the reward would certainly follow as a national-stage reward. It seemed that to release the Abyss, he had to kill Nestor. Euclid had advised him that the simplest method was to kill the caster. For now, Louis thought cleaning up the surroundings came first, so he dropped him back onto the ground. The execution would come afterward. Nestor somehow crawled across the ground, and even as his flesh tore, he stubbornly reached out and touched Louis’s body.

“Heh…. Hehehe. This body…! This flesh! With just a little more time…. it would have been mine….”

Louis looked down at him and said,

“Do you want to touch it? I permit it. In exchange, I will break your fingers afterward.”

He was half-insane, to the point that he could not properly hear Louis’s words, and as Louis had warned him in advance, Louis crushed his hand. Nestor rolled on the ground in agony. All the fingers on his left hand had been bent in random directions. Louis looked at that, paused briefly as if something had come to mind, then spoke.

“I heard the story from Christina. That what you wanted was me.”

That single sentence connected all the gaps Nestor had deduced until now at once. It was also the moment he first realized that Christina had deceived him. He was speechless. He fell into self-loathing. The mistake had plainly existed even before Ian’s case. What he had thought was easy and simple had been the most fatal thing.

“Ha…. Haha….”

A man appeared behind Louis. He looked very youthful, and he was Mitchell Kulin, whose life Louis had saved. He wore armor so different that he stood out noticeably among the cavalry. He bowed politely to Louis and said,

“What do you intend to do?”

Louis intended to kill him once the surroundings had been cleaned up, so he answered simply.

“Kill him.”

“Here, on the spot?”

“Yes.”

“He likely knows many things. If he is transported to the Papal Office, we can draw a larger picture. The pain he will suffer there will be greater than dying here.”

Of course that would be true. The problem was that if Louis sent him away like that, he could not obtain the reward. Louis had to kill him personally for the condition to be satisfied. Since the information window had told him to kill Nestor, it was only natural that he really had to do so for the quest to be completed.

“I refuse.”

Mitchell Kulin looked at Louis at the unexpected answer.

“Lord Louis. The benefits you could obtain from the Papal Office by taking him alive would be greater than killing him like this.”

The Papal Court was sure to repay its debts. In Kulin’s view, transporting him would clearly help Louis. Louis shook his head. If it gave him points, he would have transported him even at some loss, but Louis had absolutely no reason to do that. Kulin was in a position where he had to respect Louis’s opinion. The oath he had sworn to Louis involved a life debt, but aside from that, it was also related to the honor of his house, so that was even more so.

When Kulin stepped back, Louis ordered the cavalrymen to bind Nestor. The cavalrymen dismounted, raised Nestor to his feet, and tied him to the leg of the Demon God statue. Since measures had been taken, Louis helped finish off the Demon Soldiers. About ten more minutes passed. It was a short time, but the cavalrymen, who had ended the massacre with surprising speed, gathered in the center one after another.

The atmosphere was not merely solemn; it overflowed with anger. Nestor had his head bowed deeply. Inside his mind, he was thinking about how he could survive. If Christina was involved, tricks would not work. If Louis had been an easy opponent, he might have tried something called negotiation.

Nestor had attempted to speak to Louis earlier. Louis listened to him once, then gagged Nestor’s mouth just like that. The only one he could trust was the Demon God he served, but what Ian had wrapped around Nestor was interfering with the connection between him and his god. Nestor made up his mind.

It was black magic that had to be used only as a last resort, yet had saved him many times. He had exactly five lives remaining. He had been granted a total of nine lives. It was his own secret that no one knew. Even Christina could not know this. Among his fellow apostles, only one person knew it. The method he decided on was to deceive Louis’s attention by pretending to be dead.

Humans usually regarded someone as dead when their head was cut off, so attention would waver, and the rope bound around his body was precious, so they would try to take it. That would be his chance to come back to life. Once his magical power returned, there were two black magic spells that would let him escape this situation. He had failed, but as long as he was alive, he could target Louis again. He made up his mind to get out in that way.

Louis walked toward him. Thousands of cavalrymen raised their spear shafts, dismounted, and stood in one long line like infantry. The space between them looked like a triumphal procession. Louis walked through it at a pace neither fast nor slow. Louis looked coldly at Nestor, then gestured to the chiliarch beside him. The chiliarch quickly ran forward and removed Nestor’s gag. As if his breathing had eased a little, Nestor breathed heavily.

“Before I kill you, I will ask a few things.”

“……….”

“Were you the one who created this space?”

Nestor thought this was rather fortunate. Because of that, he decided to act as though all his answers were purely honest.

“That is right.”

“The reason you targeted me was to summon a Demon God. Is that correct?”

“………..”

“I passed through several villages on my way here. Not a single village had anyone alive. Where did all of them go?”

“They are beneath this place. And I killed the rest. They are the opponents you killed as well.”

“Don’t tell me….”

“Each and every Demon Soldier was once human.”

“…… Is there a way to reverse it?”

Nestor smiled.

“There is not.”

Louis wanted to drive a dagger into his face, but decided to endure it. He was going to kill him anyway.

“What about Duke Christopher?”

“He can be restored. But you will have to keep me alive.”

“Then I refuse. You die here. Wouldn’t it be best to pray to your god?”

“…….”

“Isn’t it funny? Your god is shattered over there, and you will soon become the same.”

“Kill me.”

“One last question. Aside from you, is there anyone else targeting me?”

“It pains me to tell you the truth, but there is absolutely no one. I was the first among the apostles to recognize your value, and even if they knew, there are only a few among us who can perform a resurrection ritual.”

“I would like to ask about the cult, but you would not tell me easily. Then die.”

Louis cut his neck with his sword. A red line was drawn across it, and soon blood began gushing out. Mitchell Kulin and several holy knights recited sacred prayers nearby. As Nestor’s consciousness was about to fade, he activated his trump-card spell. Louis watched him slowly dying, then cut off his head with his sword.

“It would be best to make certain.”

The head rolled across the ground, spraying blood. Louis lifted up that face. The cavalrymen shouted in triumph. The cheers were loud enough to make the hollow space feel as though it would fall apart. Nestor, whose pupils had rolled back and whose tongue was hanging out, looked dead, but he was still alive. The black magic had activated faintly. Once his body fully executed it, he would gain extreme regenerative power.

Since the timing was not now, he was in the middle of acting. He took great pride in the completeness of this spell. He was confident he could deceive even a god. At that moment, Louis, who was holding his head, brought Nestor’s head in front of himself and said,

“You…. are alive, aren’t you?”

The quest that should have rung out had not given a signal.