Chapter 146

Carmen did not hesitate. The exact moment her future direction was loosely mapped out, she immediately began to move.

“You’re planning to gather the knight orders, right?”

“Yes. To swallow the domain, I must gather them first, whether it’s to receive their oaths of loyalty or to slaughter them all.”

“Is that so? Then you’ll have to summon the knight orders from Tabtimo—the ones currently fighting the territorial war—since they are the furthest away. Are you going to go yourself?”

“Yes. The knight captains stationed over there are the Count’s closest confidants. When I was forced to dance in that disgraceful outfit before the Count and his family, those bastards stood at the absolute front, clapping and jeering at me. If I call them through a communication tool and order them to return, they will find it highly suspicious.”

“Ah. So you’re going to go over there and take off their heads first.”

“Yes.”

I cast a brief glance at the wretches still writhing while entangled in the rose vines and nodded.

“Understood. I’ll keep an eye on these pests until you return.”

“Thank you.”

As she bowed her head in gratitude and prepared to leap away, I called out to her once more.

“Ah, and one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Your outfit. Are you seriously going to walk around dressed like that? Personally, it’s a feast for my eyes, so I don’t mind… but didn’t you say you hated it?”

“Ah….”

Only then did she seem to consciously register the leather tank top and hot-pants tightly gripping her body, and her face lightly flushed crimson.

“Ah… right.”

Looking around the room with a flustered expression, she suddenly seemed to recall something and walked over to the Master-pretender baldie. She violently kicked his faintly twitching head and then stomped heavily on his golden armor.

Click!

Astonishingly, the golden armor dismantled all at once, peeling away from the balding brute’s body.

“Oh…?”

When she picked up the detached armor pieces and brought them toward herself, the parts snapped onto her body like magnetic pieces of a model kit.

And within a fraction of a second, the armor reshaped its contour to perfectly fit her slender, statuesque silhouette.

“An artifact?”

“Yes. It’s an item I discovered in the labyrinth three years ago and presented to him. It’s far too good for a piece of trash like him. It isn’t exactly my style, but I suppose I’ll have to wear this for the time being.”

“It suits you well.”

At my compliment, she lifted her hands to cradle her cheeks and quickly ducked her head low.

“Th-Thank you. Well then, I shall be on my way.”

“Yeah. Safe travels.”

Unfurling her wings, Carmen leaped with a bound that was practically flight, throwing herself out through the very window she had entered from.

I watched her retreating back for a moment before tilting my head in confusion.

“Wait, is that how you say goodbye?”

Scanning my eyes over the few individuals wrapped tightly in the rose vines, including the lord’s direct lineage, my brow furrowed slightly.

The critical condition of a few did not sit well with me.

“Mm… since I promised to look after them, I suppose I should perform some quick maintenance.”

Stepping toward a few whose breaths were about to falter entirely due to their severe injuries, I cast a priestly miracle.

Lumina’s signature golden light instantly dragged the wretches—who had been about to cross the Styx—back into the mortal realm.

“Uh-uh. Who gave you permission to die? Our dear friends here need to remain perfectly healthy until they meet the kind Inquisitor uncles.”

“Mmph! Mmmph!! Mmmph!!”

Soaking their gags with saliva, the wretches thrashed violently against their bonds at my words.

Instead of telling them to quiet down, I simply drew my sword and sliced off one of Count Evas’s rolling arms.

Slash!

“Mmmmmmph!!”

“Shh.”

At that single action, the wretches fell completely silent in an instant.

Using a healing miracle to stop the bleeding from the Count’s stump, I offered them a gentle smile.

“Every time you annoy me, you lose a piece, alright? My dear friends, if you make too much noise assuming you have plenty of limbs to spare, you might spend the rest of your lives rolling around. Ah, but since the Inquisitors will care for you twenty-four hours a day on a rotational basis, I guess you won’t really need them anyway, right?”

“……!”

“……!!”

While I was enjoying their newly found compliance and smiling with satisfaction, the communication tool tucked into my shirt suddenly vibrated, signaling an incoming call.

—Sword God.

“Huh? Shia? What’s up?”

—A problem has arisen.

“A problem? What kind of problem?”

I glanced out through a massive window on one side of the hall.

Outside, a magnificent display of fireworks was still going strong, filling the air with continuous explosions.

Mm. Everyone looks completely and needlessly joyous out there. Tsk, tsk, tsk… Seriously, they are all just destruction-mad fiends driven by blood and fury.

Honestly, excluding myself, everyone’s personality is a bit…

“Everything looks completely fine from here though?”

—Not over there. Somewhere else.

“Somewhere else? …Wait. Where are you right now?”

—This lady is currently at the location where those children called the Moonlight Wings are stationed.

“Moonlight Wings? You mean the Tabtimo Plains? Where the territorial war is happening? I only sent the guild members over there. Why on earth are you there?”

—Because this side looked far more entertaining.

“…Sigh. So? What’s the problem? All you have to do is protect the priests while keeping them reasonably calm until the job is wrapped up.”

—An unexpected incident has occurred.

“…What is it?”

—You see…

My brow furrowed deep as Shia’s explanation continued through the tool.

To put it simply, the Count’s knight order, which had been staying completely quiet, had suddenly abandoned the soldiers they were commanding and begun marching fully armed toward the treatment facility where the priests were stationed.

I instantly realized how the situation was unfolding.

‘Dammit… word of what happened here has already leaked over to that side. Come to think of it, she did mention there were still servants remaining in the upper floors of the castle… One of those servants must have possessed a direct line of communication to the knight order over there.’

For a brief moment, I began weighing the strength of the guild forces I had deployed against the knight order of Count Evas.

‘If Carmen arrives, things will be handled… but that will take at least ten to fifteen minutes.’

“The guild’s forces are formidable, but… holding out for that long against three knight orders is absolutely impossible…. I should go myself. I’ll call Sodin to teleport me. No, wait, would running there be faster at this point? Either way, just wait a bit. Right now….”

—Hmm? Is it merely a matter of holding out? How long must we hold out?

“Huh? Even if it drags on, about fifteen minutes should do it….”

—If it is only that long, it should be well within our capabilities on this side. I shall handle it.

“You? Are you going to use Hosik? No, even with Hosik, facing three knight orders is a bit….”

—Enough. Place your faith in your companion. Even without Hosik, that much is entirely possible.

I agonized over it for a brief moment before finally nodding my head.

“Fine. If you say so, then so be it. I’m leaving it to you, alright? In a worst-case scenario, just grab that Shadow Saintess and run. Don’t overdo it.”

A low chuckle from Shia vibrated through the communication tool.

—Mm. Leave it to me.

Meanwhile, turning back time slightly, to one hour ago.

The Tabtimo Plains, where the forces of Count Evas and Count Harpun were locked in a standoff.

And located at the very edge of those plains was the temporary temple and treatment facility of the Moonlight Wings—the Lumina priests’ version of Doctors Without Borders… no, the Moonlight Wings.

Arriving at the treatment facility after a midnight sprint, the Vice Guildmaster, Kate, and the other members of the Adventurer’s Guild met up with the guild members who had been dispatched ahead to secretly prepare alongside the priests.

Uslarn, the Vice Guildmaster, questioned them.

“What happened to the knights from both domains who were monitoring the priests?”

“Regrettably, we couldn’t gather them in a single place. Their relationship is just entirely too toxic… instead, we managed to set the tables for them separately. Their locations are here, and here.”

Uslarn engaged in conversation while examining the building’s bird’s-eye view presented by the guild member.

“They said they repurposed an old abandoned temple of the Earth Mother Kanan… but this treatment facility is actually quite large. We should split our group.”

Hyacinth, a birdkin mage who was acting as the second-in-command beneath the Vice Guildmaster, nodded.

“Then I’ll take one group and handle the left side. Vice Guildmaster, please take the right side with Kate.”

“Very well. I’ll leave it to you.”

“Yes, sir. Well then, see you inside in a bit.”

“Let’s go.”

Five minutes later.

Uslarn and Kate, appearing with their gauntlets and swords thoroughly drenched in blood, offered faint smiles upon seeing Hyacinth already waiting for them.

“You’re fast. And here I thought we were quite swift ourselves….”

“Mages have their own ways of handling things, after all. It was taken care of cleanly.”

“…What about that friend who went to Count Evas’s domain?”

At that, Hyacinth closed her eyes and connected with her familiar, which was currently flying over the count’s domain.

“It’s absolute chaos over there. They are literally turning the domain upside down. Such monstrous destructive power… where on earth did people like that even spring from…?”

“They are a person wrapped in many mysteries. What are they doing right now?”

“Hold on a moment…. Uh… uh-uh….”

When Hyacinth remained utterly silent for nearly three minutes while focusing on her familiar, Uslarn cautiously called out to her.

“What are you doing?”

“N-No… I don’t even know how to explain this…. Just now, within the span of a few brief blinks of an eye, they completely obliterated a whole knight order.”

“…Are you joking with me right now?”

“Do I look like I’d be joking in a situation like this? It’s literal. Judging by their armor, it was likely the Silver Sword Knights… they completely shattered close to seventy people using a single blade… gasp….”

“What is it now?”

Once again, she froze in place like a broken robot.

Knowing full well that one shouldn’t disturb a mage while they were operating a familiar, Uslarn nevertheless exhausted his patience entirely when the silence stretched past the five-minute mark.

“Hyacinth. Hyacinth!”

“A-Ah… my apologies….”

“What happened?”

“…W-Well… I followed that friend and sent my familiar inside the castle, and….”

“And?”

“Just now, Organt Duncan Evas—the Sword Master—showed up, and….”

“Mm… they finally clashed. So? How did it go?”

“H-He got utterly destroyed.”

At those words, Uslarn’s complexion turned completely pale.

“G-Good grief… why didn’t that friend run away? Why did they force themselves into a reckless match against a Sword Master….”

“No, it’s the exact opposite.”

“…What?”

“Organt’s skull got cracked. He didn’t even get to exchange a few proper strikes… oh my god….”

“…Holy shit. Did you manage to record it?”

“I actually saved it as an artifact replay, so let’s look at it later.”

“…Mmm.”

“…Vice Guildmaster. Who on earth is that person?”

“I don’t know either. Kate just introduced them to me as someone with usable skills, likely around the Blaster rank, so I simply hired them.”

“A Blaster takes down a Sword Master in a few strikes?!”

“I told you I don’t know!!!”

“Ah! Why are you snapping at me?! Ack! I’ve been caught!!”

Suddenly, Hyacinth stumbled, sinking heavily to the floor.

“Ah, motherfucker…! I got caught because of you!!”

“Hey, you crazy girl, to the Vice Guildmaster just now….”

“Ah, shut up! Dammit… my familiar… it took me three whole years to tame it….”

“Th-Three years…? I-I’ll compensate you.”

“That goes without saying! There’s no way it’ll happen, but if that friend ever suspects me and demands answers, you have to take responsibility for it!”

“Dammit. Fine, I get it. Ah, make absolutely sure you don’t show any sign that you were spying on him either.”

“Do I look insane? I value my life too, you know!”

“…….”

“…….”

“Sigh… If that’s how things stand, we must make sure this operation is a complete success.”

“Agreed. We can’t have him trying to take off our heads because we didn’t do our jobs properly.”

For a brief moment, the two recalled the command disguised as a request that he had given during their last meeting.

‘If you’re going to handle everything on your own, are we just supposed to lounge around?’

‘No way. Did you really think you’d get away with securing a reward without lifting a single finger?’

‘Khem….’

‘Since we don’t know what might happen, I need you all to go and protect the priests.’

‘Protect them?’

‘Yes. I don’t think anything major will happen… but after all, things in this world rarely go exactly according to plan.’