The Fourth Stigmata— Kaine Kaiwell

――It was the dead of night, the sun having long set.

――At the Grand Cathedral.

A lavish study allotted to a bishop-class cleric.

The Second Stigmata—Johanna Hohenzollern had various documents spread across an oak plank desk and traced their characters from right to left.

A Magic Crystal emitting light illuminated Johanna’s noble profile.

“……..”

The top priority assigned to the Knights of the Stigmata—to locate the lair of Sid Ranorus, who had awakened as a Shadow Necromancer and was marked for death—drove her to scour for clues late into the night, driving her aged body onward.

“It is unnatural, after all.”

Johanna was focused on a report procured from the Adventurer’s Guild.

“Regular requests come from farming villages near the royal capital to exterminate goblins inhabiting nearby forests — those requests abruptly stopped several months ago.”

Goblins are monsters with extremely prolific reproductive abilities.

Even if you think you’ve driven goblins from their territory, a few survivors will breed and within months grow into a threatening horde.

Therefore, villages near goblin-infested woods submitted extermination requests to the Adventurer’s Guild every few months.

“And the last to carry out a goblin extermination quest was Sid Ranorus, then a C-Rank Adventurer and now our target.”

Johanna adjusted the reading glasses she wore only for paperwork.

“If Sid Ranorus is hiding in those woods, he would hunt the monsters there to ensure his safety. As a result, the nearby villages would be protected from goblin depredations—it is perhaps a convenient inference, but the fact that Sid Ranorus was the last to complete the extermination quest is too perfect to be mere coincidence. This is—worth investigating.”

――By coincidence, Johanna’s deduction proved spot on.

＊＊＊

――About a month had passed since defeating the Fifth Stigmata Apothecary Selva Arturus.

I was, today as always, raising my level by clearing my daily dungeon run.

Rather than avoiding the Knights of the Stigmata’s attacks by changing my routine, my aim was to keep clearing dungeons conspicuously to lure them out.

It’s better to make them think they can meet me by ambushing a specific dungeon than have them clumsily find my hideout and put Rin in danger.

“One annoying point is that even in a low-level dungeon I have to be ready for an ambush by the Holy Church, so it wastes my focus—oh, already the final Boss. This dungeon’s about C-Rank.”

‘Still, it’s been a month with no word since then. A bit boring, it is.’

“One of their elite six was taken out so easily; of course they’ll be cautious.”

Thinking there would be no Holy Church ambush today either, I opened the inner chamber’s door.

――Squelch…

――Squelch…

――Squelch… squelch…

“…!?”

I entered with hopeful anticipation, wondering whether this Boss would be useful as a Shadow when converted.

There was a man wearing a leather coat.

Not a monster――a human.

‘(A solo adventurer like me—or not, I guess.)’

The monster that was probably the dungeon’s final boss had been slain by that man.

The corpse of what must have been the boss had been mangled beyond recognition by his weapon.

“… You’ve finally come. I’ve grown tired of waiting.”

“That’s my line. Finally, the next assassin makes an appearance.”

The man in the coat straightened from his crouch and faced me.

He was quite tall, around 190 centimeters, but his build was slender rather than bulky.

If anything, his height made him seem even leaner.

Clad in a leather coat, leather hat, and leather boots, his hands and face were tightly wrapped in bandages that likely covered his entire body.

His weapon appeared to be a large knife shaped like a cleaver, but the blade’s edge was jagged like a carnivore’s teeth, evoking the image of a saw.

‘More than cutting wood—it feels like a tool for scraping flesh and bone.’

And the insignia on his coat depicted a sword and a set of scales.

He looked nothing like a cleric, but he was undoubtedly one of the Knights of the Stigmata.

‘First, check his status.’

I compared his stats to mine.

His level and stat values were slightly higher.

But his class was 【Berserker】.

It’s an advanced class evolved from the base 【Swordsman】 class, not particularly rare.

His fighting style would likely be simple close-quarters combat.

In that case—with the swordsmanship I learned under Master Dullahan and my immortal regenerative ability, I had the advantage.

“You’re Sid Ranorus, aren’t you?”

A muffled voice came through the bandages as he asked.

“Correct—and you are?”

The man in the coat swung his saw-cleaver with a whoosh.

――Splat!

Blood from the creature that had stuck to it splattered.

“I am of the Knights of the Stigmata, the Fourth Stigmata——Kaine Kaiwell. Offering a rotten heart as a sacrifice to the sword, weighing incorruptible prayers on the scales—I shall massacre Shadow Necromancers.”