"They're all going to die anyway. Accept me before that happens. That's enough. Turn away from the pain. Be the one who devours, not the one devoured."
The soldier knew it was the whisper of an evil spirit—but it was so sweet. Like a lover's whisper tickling his ear. Hard to ignore. No matter how much one clung to duty, there were always those whose resolve broke. Even if the knightly order stepped forward to slay the drowned and hunt down the monsters rampaging outside, gaps would still appear. From those gaps, the hands of evil spirits reached out to clutch the soldier's throat. He was on the verge of possession.
"Corruption."
Bang!
The black soot hovering above the head of the soldier—who had just collapsed in exhaustion—burst apart and ripped open. It was because a bear-like man's fist had brushed over it. The soldier jolted awake in shock.
"Uh, wh—what?"
Startled, he couldn't string a sentence together.
"Do not be afraid. If you're devoured by an evil spirit, I'll personally crush your skull and send you to God."
What the hell was that supposed to mean? Was he saying he'd save him or kill him?
The soldier blinked. His mind was hazy. His drifting consciousness was returning to its place—the effect of the sacred light brushing over his head.
"Hahahahaha!"
The man who had swung the white-glowing fist laughed heartily and straightened his body. Because he stood in front of the torch pole set before the tent, his shadow completely covered the soldier's body.
"If you're back to normal, get up."
Then a familiar face appeared from behind that large frame—a head popping out suddenly.
"Lapild?"
It was a face the soldier knew. Lapild spoke with eyes clearer than ever before.
"We're going to restore the Holy Relic. No—rather, to raise a new one."
When the Apostle called Audin had said he was a little late, it was because the priests who had been ill would need months of recovery before their sanctity returned.
"Restoring the Holy Relic will be difficult."
After saving them, he had said so again.
"Instead, it would be good to establish a new symbol."
"Anything."
Lapild bowed his head in respect and followed them. Audin and Teresa crossed through the encampment. Wherever something could be seen or felt to be impure, they stopped by, and if a soldier seemed to be slipping into peril, they took action before heading toward the relic.
The Holy Relic marked with the symbol of the balance, faint as it was, still protected this camp. If not for that relic standing before Audin's eyes now, hundreds of drowned would have erupted from the middle of the encampment.
Instead, all the creatures that smelled human had gathered around the perimeter. Thanks to that, Sir Cypress and part of the Red Cloak Order had gone outside to cut, crush, and shred through the drowned hordes.
Crack.
Audin broke the pole. He carefully set the symbol down into the rain-soaked mud. The Holy Relic that had stood tall among the tents was gone now. The ominous rain seemed to pour down even harder.
Some of the soldiers hastily clasped their hands together in prayer, murmuring for forgiveness of their irreverence.
"...What are you doing?"
One young soldier's eyes widened. His tone was cautious, but this was something that should never be done—especially since the presence of the relic was what protected this part of the camp.
"Be still."
Lapild stopped him. His eyes were clearer than ever. The rain still fell, heavy with ill omen, and the camp was filled with ash-gray. Dozens of eyes, dulled with disbelief and anxiety, stared out. No matter how much courage they clung to, no matter how much they used duty as a shield, they were reaching their limit.
Audin saw this as the perfect place to preach his God's teaching. Among those ravaged by plague and stripped of hope, his voice rang out.
"Will you hear the words of the Lord who rebukes the battlefield?"
With those words, Teresa began to sing. The hymn spread, and sanctity rippled outward from the camp's center.
Audin, too, poured out his sanctity without restraint. The drowned that had begun to emerge, their heads poking up from the ground, had their skulls crushed and were forced back down by the blessing of the God of War. From between the tent shadows came the screams of evil spirits lying in wait.
Teresa's song reached every ear.
"When you walk through wind and storm, when you try to tread a dark road with not a speck of light, know this—I will never let you walk alone."
The hymn's title was "Never Let You Walk Alone."
As the song echoed, serenity settled over the soldiers' hearts. But it wasn't only peace that filled them. The God of War's teaching was not so gentle.
"By raising this Holy Symbol, all servants of the Lord shall convert and receive His strength!"
"O God of War!"
Lapild cried out with veins bulging in his neck, shouting with fervent faith. The soldiers who had been saved along the way, those who had witnessed the miracle, followed his voice. Soon a group of soldiers upheld the power of fanatic devotion.
"Now, are you ready to crush the skulls of the ones charging in and send them to the Lord's side?"
"War!"
"What is our task?"
"To send them to the Lord's side!"
"Who passes judgment?"
"The Lord!"
Watching from one side, Enkrid briefly doubted Audin.
'Has the number of believers dropped lately?'
Was that why he was seizing the opportunity and stirring things up like this?
Teresa kept singing from the other side. The sanctity of the two of them spread through the entire camp in an instant.
'Well.'
Whatever the reason, the demonic air that had stagnated within the camp dissipated. For a short time, this land had become one watched over by the God of War. The damp, sticky rain now felt almost like a crisp autumn drizzle.
***
"Hey, if you fall behind, I'm leaving you."
"Do I look like an idiot who can't even find his way? If you ditch me, I'll make my own way back."
"That's true."
Rem and Dunbakel chatted idly, as if they were out on a casual stroll. It was an ease that didn't suit the situation. Outside the perimeter fence, it was hell. To ordinary soldiers' eyes, that was what it looked like.
Everywhere, monsters. Many of them beasts that had drunk monster blood. Overhead, a vulture flew by, a pair of eyeballs dangling from its beak. Then a harpy swooped down, speared its head, and chewed it apart with wet crunches. The harpy itself was flying with half-rotted entrails hanging from its claws.
"Reminds me of the old days."
Once, when the western Demon Realm's silence stirred, they had seen the same sight. The day all eight generals stepped forward to defend the West.
"All we have to do is cut down whatever we see, right?"
Dunbakel was used to such environments too. Deep in the East it was always like this—a place where monsters and beasts slaughtered each other day after day in endless frenzy.
Kyaaaak!
Four wailing spirits suddenly dropped onto Rem's back. Dunbakel kicked off the ground with a heavy stomp to dodge aside, and Rem swung his axe with a weary sigh.
In a half-twisting motion, his axe caught all four of them.
Sssssshhhhk—
The sound of the blade slicing through air was chilling. The rainwater gathered on the axe edge and splattered off in one direction.
The shrieking spirits, banshees, dissolved and vanished. Their cries could shake human minds, and the older ones could even summon draugr, but these four had no such chance. The western warrior's axe stroke killed them outright, leaving no trace of their existence anywhere on this land.
"Feels good to cut like that."
Rem muttered with one corner of his mouth lifted. He handled spells, which was why he could feel the satisfaction even when cleaving shapeless monsters instead of solid bodies.
"Yeah, yeah, felt good? Then let's keep cutting to our hearts' content."
Rem brushed the back of his axe with his free hand and turned his body. Dunbakel wasn't idling either. She stepped lightly, slicing the heads of drowned crawling near her one by one, as if tapping them apart.
Was this the real battle? No. It was just a light warm-up.
"Hey, found it yet?"
Fighting with about ten paces between them, Rem asked. Beastfolk had keen senses of smell, and Dunbakel was born with an especially rare nose even among them.
"Yeah."
The white-haired beastwoman nodded.
"Then what are you waiting for? Want me to kick your ass to get moving?"
"I'm going."
The two knew how monsters moved. Enkrid had said he needed Rem the hunter—not Rem the vice-captain, but Rem the hunter. For once, commanding the knightly order could wait.
'Monsters without a colony scatter easily.'
When they gathered in packs, it was called a colony. This place, at the edge of the Demon Realm and in the South, was no exception to that rule. The fact that monsters were all gathering here—there had to be a reason.
Sir Cypress must have more or less known that too.
'The captain probably noticed as well—that's why he sent us.'
He had told Rem to go find and destroy the leader of the colony. If he were alone, tracking down the main creature would have been a hassle, but he had with him a beastwoman who couldn't smell her own scent yet could track any other.
"Over there."
They kicked aside rotten drowned heads that shot up from the ground to grab their ankles, hurled away plague ghouls that burst their bodies to spread disease, and pushed forward.
There were many kinds of monsters appearing, but all of them were decayed in some way. The two found a small pool of muddy water—big enough for three or four people to fill.
In the middle of it stood a monster with a pale skull. The monster's hide hung from its body like a robe, and in its hand was a crooked staff bristling with jagged thorns.
"A lich."
Rem said it.
"A magic-using monster? First time I've seen one."
"Me too. Only heard of them."
Born between ghoul and drowned, it was a monster that raised the dead. It was what people called by name—a wizard born in the rain, never dying, known by the nickname "the bastard who dreams of immortality." Of course, humans had given it that name.
This creature was one of the South's main headaches. More precisely, a thorn in the side of the Red Cloak Order. Along with the Thornwood Wall, it had been one of the unresolved problems. But this time, its opponent was not a good one. From the monster's standpoint, that is.
The skeletal monster born of rainwater raised its hand. Its bones clattered and echoed. At the same time, rain gathered and shaped itself into spears that flew toward them. Rem, holding his axe on his shoulder, swung his arm once and split the spears head-on, while Dunbakel swung her scimitar from right to left, slicing through the middle of the watery spears.
The spears of water dispersed in midair, mingled with rain, and turned into serpents lunging for their necks. From the ground, the hands of the dead burst up to seize their ankles.
"Annoying."
Dunbakel muttered as she kicked away the pale hands and swung her scimitar, cutting the water serpents into six pieces. Meanwhile, Rem quietly invoked the name of the divine beast he carried within.
'Descend—Sapsal.'
The name of the sacred beast that proved itself by biting and tearing away all that was impure.
Just as the serpents wrapped around his thick neck, just as pale hands with a bluish glow seized his ankles, Rem swung his axe imbued with Sapsal's power. Toward the serpents at his throat, he struck then withdrew; toward the ones clutching his legs, he stirred lightly, as though ladling stew with a spoon.
The motion was light, but the result was not.
Gyaaaah—
With a strange sound, the water serpents shriveled dry and vanished, and so did the draugr.
"What the hell?"
Dunbakel widened her eyes.
"Don't talk to me. I need to focus."
Sapsal, when irritated, bit anything nearby. Savage, rough, feral—it bared its fangs at anything unfamiliar, enemy or not.
"And don't look at me either. My axe doesn't like you right now. Whoa, no. No, that's not it, I said no! You can tell just by the smell that eating her would make you sick, can't you?"
Dunbakel wasn't the brightest, but she understood he was mocking her.
"You're making fun of me, aren't you?"
Rem chuckled and strode toward the lich, swinging his axe.
Did the dying monster feel the foreboding at the end?
Who knows. Not that he cared. In the West there were eight generals, and among them, the one called Sapsal—the divine general whose power dwelled in Rem's axe—split the monster that dreamed of immortality in two. The lich tried to resist, layering its bony hands in a few feeble spells, but to block an axe imbued with Sapsal's power required a solid physical barrier.
The axe flew without hesitation, heedless of decency, and split open the skull of the thing that had dared to show its bones.
Crash—bone fragments mixed with rainwater scattered across the ground. The vanguard of the Demon Realm born from the puddles of rain was dead.
Ghhhhhhaaa—
With a scream, black smoke rose into the air. The soot that had been running backward through the rain tore and scattered. The cleaning was done. And following that, the ones who called themselves the cleaners of this land appeared.
If Dunbakel had found the enemy's position by scent, the ones who originally fought on this land found it through experience.
"A curious skill indeed."
The man standing at their center spoke. He wore light armor, and the sword in his hand looked a little longer than an ordinary longsword when he extended it fully.
"You're a step late."
Rem answered as he looked at them.
They wore red cloaks. No need to ask who they were.
Well, at least Rem thought so—but Dunbakel didn't. She bared her teeth and raised her scimitar, letting out a low growl. To her, they were powerful foes. That was how she saw it.
"What? Who are you?"
Her stance was one meant for dealing with unfamiliar enemies. She didn't even know why she had come here, nor did she care about the knightly order that guarded the South.
"They're allies, idiot."
Rem kicked her calf as he spoke.
Usually it was him starting trouble and Enkrid stopping him; somehow the roles felt reversed now.
"The Mad Knight Order, huh?"
Someone on the other side asked.
"That's right."
"So you're Enkrid? You look a bit more worn-out than I heard."
The middle-aged knight in the red cloak said it.
"Wow, starting off with a sharp tongue, aren't we?"
Rem replied in his usual tone.
"Do you know who you're talking to, to speak so rudely?"
Then another man beside him stepped forward. Just by looking, Rem could tell this one's neck would be perfect for a clean chop. There was killing intent in the air—a tone that invited a fight.
"Yeah, go ahead and stick your neck out a bit more. I'll take it and put it in my trophy case."
Between the two groups, a savage tension rippled. The few surviving ghouls nearby froze. They wanted to charge, but instinct held them back. The murderous energy that filled the air crushed even the monsters' primal drive.