Chapter 113: Chapter 113

In any war, from the moment deserters began to appear, that army could already be considered half-defeated.

Even if they were not actually losing, the moment they saw their comrades fleeing, they ended up mistakenly believing they were losing.

This was the reason why, during training, soldiers were forced to stand shoulder to shoulder to a harsh degree and never break formation.

In that sense, the remnant army of Ajun had practically lost from the very moment the soldiers who first saw Shan fell into a frenzy and began to flee.

Of course, even if they had dutifully stood shoulder to shoulder, formed a shield wall, and held out, it was not as though they would have had any way to turn the tide.

However, not everyone merely fled in terror like this.

A few among them even burned with determination as they watched Shan charging toward them on horseback.

“The green-eyed demon…!”

“If we just kill him, we can go to the Hall of the Goddess!”

That knight right before their eyes was an Altoan (a descendant of demons) and the minion of Cheryn, who had been a witch princess and was now the witch queen.

If they could only kill him, it was clear they would be able to atone for all the sins they had accumulated so far.

Mixing in among the group of defeated soldiers until now was not because they held their lives dear, but simply because they were looking for a proper opportunity to use them.

That time was right now!

“Kill him!”

Blades flew in from all directions.

Shan lightly inhaled, then grasped his spear with both hands and swung it.

The force originating from his two feet planted on the saddle transferred to the spear without the slightest loss, and the speed of the spearhead surpassed the limits of human perception.

“Ah…”

“Ug- Uaaaaah!”

“Monster!”

Among the screams echoing around Shan, none were caused by pain.

With every single swing, he thrust and slashed exclusively at vital spots that decisively ended their breath, one person at a time.

To the eyes of ordinary people, it appeared as though dozens of long, flexible tentacles repeatedly shot forth and retracted in an instant from something mounted on horseback, taking lives.

Thanks to Arwin kicking aside those in the way with her forelegs, Shan’s charge might have slowed slightly, but it did not stop.

Before long, the remnants of what had once been human poured down onto the river, dyeing the water crimson.

The result produced by those who had bravely rushed in ended up merely delaying Shan’s charge by a mere three seconds.

In the meantime, the other knights following closely behind also leaped in among the defeated soldiers and engaged in slaughter.

Although they lost the advantage of speed inherent to cavalry due to jumping into the river, knights each armed with powerful magic gear and holy relics were nonetheless never going to fall to defeated soldiers.

Striking among them was Lug, who used the holy relic left behind by the paladin Shan had previously killed.

“Hup!”

This axe, bearing the name Storm Pursuer, possessed the function of wrapping wind around its blade and shaft to reduce air resistance.

Though it was originally an axe so large it had to be used with both hands, held in Lug’s grip it looked like a suitably sized one-handed axe.

When he swung it, the surrounding soldiers tumbled away as if caught in a raging storm.

As the river water rising up to their waists was also swept up by it, spray splashed in all directions.

After a short while, the soldiers gave up on crossing the river and began scattering in all directions like swarms of ants.

What immediately blocked them were the soldiers who had spread out to the left and right in advance.

While the knights scattered the enemy formation, Roden had deployed soldiers to the left and right beforehand, cutting off their retreat routes.

“G-Get out of the way, you bastards!”

Though they did not wear Hydra leather armor like the royal guards, armed as they all were with magic gear, their combat power far surpassed that of the Ajun soldiers.

On top of that, thanks to being well-fed and faithfully trained, the soldiers wielding worn lances and swords merely collapsed helplessly.

“Spare me!”

“Surrender! Throw down your weapons and lie face down, and we will not kill you!”

Among those struggling desperately to break through the encirclement, people who finally threw everything away appeared one after another.

Some of them stood in places where the water was too deep, so lying face down meant they would be unable to breathe; fortunately, if they skillfully held their hands up, it was regarded as surrendering.

Seeing this scene, a priest could not contain himself and shouted, pointing from afar.

“You sacrilegious fools! Slaughtering Her children with arms granted by the Goddess, you shall be punished!”

Words that seemed to forget who had come to kill people first using arms granted by that very Goddess.

In any case, thanks to that, Shan succeeded in spotting the priests mixed among the fleeing small fry.

‘So they were over there?’

A group wearing priest robes (which must have originally been white, but were now filthy and worn out with grime) came into view.

To change Arwin’s direction, there was no need to even hold the reins.

By simply pulling his foot back slightly and lightly nudging the horse’s body with his knee, this clever steed realized how much Shan wanted to turn and responded accurately.

While the priests screamed and fell backward at the sight of the approaching Shan, Shan confirmed that there was no figure looking like a cardinal among the people staring at him.

Turning his gaze a bit further, he saw an old man wrapped in red cloth being swept away by the river water.

“Oh.”

Quickly mounting his spear on the saddle, Shan leaned his body to the side using a technique he had learned from Horais’s horse archers.

Hanging from the horse’s flank as he reached out his arm, his hand caught the collar of the old man flailing in the river water.

“Keuheok, keok!”

“Found you. Are you the cardinal?”

Instead of the old man, who was too busy coughing up inhaled water to answer, the priests beside him urgently shouted.

“Put down His Eminence the Cardinal, you arrogant wretch!”

“Just touching the hem of His Eminence’s robe will make you defiled for the rest of your life!”

Unless all those horrified reactions were an act, it seemed this old man was indeed the cardinal.

If the prey he had been eagerly pursuing had drowned in the water, Cheryn would have been quite disappointed.

*

A short while later, Shan’s army captured six hundred out of the thousand-odd defeated soldiers as prisoners.

Since so many had been swept away by the river, it was not certain, but there appeared to be around two hundred corpses.

Despite fighting against an enemy of roughly similar numbers, Shan’s side suffered not a single casualty.

This was natural, as it could hardly even be called a fight in the first place.

The commander, Count Glusa, was caught while fleeing clad in shabby clothes like the common soldiers, and his appearance grabbed in Lug’s hand looked like a child caught by an adult, bringing forth involuntary laughter.

As the sun had set by then, they set up a campsite on the far side of the river.

Drying themselves by a lit campfire, the knights reviewed the battle from earlier.

“I expected as much, but we were an excessive force.”

“Indeed. Honestly, it feels like having just me come would have been sufficient…”

That was how pathetic the remnant troops of Ajun were.

To the point of rendering moot rumors that several thousand had gathered with quite a grand momentum to devastate nearby fiefs.

All of this was Cheryn’s scheme of false rumors, but there was no way for the knights to know that.

“In fact, I have something to tell you because of that.”

“Pardon?”

“It is Her Majesty the Queen’s special order that after the subjugation ends, only one or two leaders take the soldiers and return, while the rest carry out a special mission as we are.”

Roden cleared his throat lightly to draw everyone’s attention before speaking.

“Wait, I’ve never heard of such a thing…”

“Here is the order.”

When he even held out the written order stamped with the Queen’s seal, the knights showed signs of accepting it despite their surprise.

After all, Roden was also someone heavily favored by Cheryn second only to Shan among the royal knights.

Of course, because he always concentrated on command from behind, he sometimes heard sarcastic remarks like ‘Knight of Non-Killing’ or ‘Brave Sir Roden’, but those who had fought alongside him since old times knew full well that Roden was not incapable of fighting.

Was it not he who had brought down two of the Hydra’s legs?

“First, we will move northeast like this to the Treba Territory, join High Priest Asha, and enter the Demonic Realm.”

“I see…”

Some showed reactions implying it was absurd, but unexpectedly, many accepted it.

They had anticipated this ever since several mages, who would be of little use to a subjugation force, were included in the unit.

Lug asked Roden with a serious expression.

“Does His Grace the Duke also know about this?”

“Of course.”

“Speaking of which, where did His Grace go…?”

They had been together when washing up a moment ago; as one knight looked puzzled, Roden smiled and spoke.

“He said he had something to ask the cardinal for a moment. Let us all wait here until he finishes.”

At that moment, Shan was having a private meeting inside a tent with the cardinal, who was bound in ropes.

Since Roden was keeping the other knights occupied and had issued a stern warning that anyone merely loitering nearby would be considered a spy and punished, there was no fear of anyone eavesdropping.

“Did you catch a cold? You’re at an age where your bones ache to begin with, so falling into a river in late autumn makes me worry.”

“How dare a devil wretch like you worry about whom? The Goddess protects this body, so illness would not even dare to take hold.”

The stern-looking cardinal displayed a haughty attitude toward Shan, just as his appearance suggested.

Of course, Shan had not expected a gentle attitude in the first place.

“Well, that’s a relief then. I’ve wanted to ask for a while, does the Holy See happen to have any proof that Altoans are descendants of demons?”

“No matter how fake you may be, claiming to be a paladin, have you not even read the scriptures?”

At the sight of the cardinal making an incredulous face, Shan chuckled and shook his head.

“Of course I read them. From quite a young age. Well, I didn’t read them directly, but the priest read them to me… Anyway, even there, the reason why magic is the power of demons and why Altoans are descendants of demons didn’t appear. It just ends with saying the Goddess declared it so.”

“That is the very proof! Where on earth could there be a proof greater than what the Goddess has spoken?”

“I was asking if there is proof that what’s written in the scriptures is actually real. Anyone can just write text, even me. Like saying, ‘Westerners actually killed the Goddess and pinned that sin on the Altoans,’ something like that.”

At Shan’s words, the cardinal’s face turned bright red as if it would explode right away.

He shouted in a voice filled with rage.

“You, filthy, devil wretch! The Goddess is One who transcends the cycle of life and death to exist eternally! I did not believe a lowly scum like you would understand even a single line of scriptural phrasing, but you are foolish beyond imagination!”

At the pouring accusations, Shan nodded instead of getting angry.

“As expected, I’m not getting a proper answer. Well, I can just ask again in a little bit.”

As he said that and brought out a potion, the cardinal’s eyes widened upon detecting the ominous aura emanating from it.

“You… could that be…”

“You’ll find out once you drink it.”

Instinctively sensing danger, the cardinal tried to bite his tongue quickly, but Shan noticed this and swiftly grabbed his jaw tight, forcing it open.

His grip strength was not something an old man losing his teeth could withstand.

“Ugahhh…!”

Thinking it was disgusting to hear babbling from that wrinkled face, Shan poured the truth serum down into the gaping mouth.

Before a few seconds had passed, the old man’s eyes went unfocused, and a gruesome squelching sound resounded.

“Ah…”

At the wafting stench, Shan let out an involuntary groan.

To think that the saying about losing control of one’s bowels and bladder was not a metaphor.

Of course, since he could not care less about the dignity of this stubborn old man, Shan immediately moved on to questioning.

“What is your name?”

“Cargo Gelarian…”

“Good, looks like the drug is working.”

It seemed there would be no need to break his spirit by killing or torturing the captured priests together as Cheryn had mentioned.

“Tell me all the secret arts of the Holy See that you know. Including how to master and use them.”

Shan, who did not trust his memory all that much, wrote down the old man’s testimony using writing tools he had prepared in advance.

The crafting method to create the ‘Flames of Purification’, the secret technique of training the ‘Chorus’ and its side effects, the crafting methods of holy relics…

The cardinal knew far more than Shan and Cheryn had expected.

The fact that nearly half of those were disgusting torture techniques stripped away even the slightest lingering shred of pity.

After making him repeat the stories a couple of times and taking down every detail, Shan asked the question from earlier once again.

Unexpectedly, the answer that returned this time was slightly different.

“Magic and Altoans… must be rejected. In the scriptures… it is so written. But, among the contents, there are parts that do not add up. Likely parts that were altered. The original might be in the Book of Truth, which only the Pope may view.”

Though surprised by the cryptic words, Shan quickly transcribed them.

After writing it down, he voiced a thought that suddenly occurred to him.

“Then, do you mean you believe in the Goddess even while knowing that the scriptures might be wrong?”

“My faith in Her… has never been clouded even once…”

“I see.”

Indeed, having such faith must have been what enabled him to wield miracles powerful enough to rise to the position of cardinal.

Shan nodded and struck the cardinal’s face with all his might.

*

“The cardinal is dead.”

A short while later, at Shan’s words upon returning to the campfire, the knights showed flustered expressions.

Though he was an old man who would not have been strange to die at any moment, had he not been quite healthy until he was dragged away?

“He kept acting arrogantly while I was interrogating him, so I hit him once and he died.”

“Ah…”

At the nonchalant answer, several of the knights present looked at Shan with bewildered expressions.

Of course, since they were loyal to Cheryn, a mage, they were all Reformists, or even if they belonged to the Old Faith believers, they were not particularly devout.

Even so, however, hearing that he had beaten a captured clergyman to death sounded disconcerting.

Was that Altoan not even afraid of the Goddess’s punishment?

“Putting that aside, did everyone hear the story from Roden?”

“Ah, yes. We heard. That we are exploring the Demonic Realm…”

“That is how it turned out. If anyone finds it difficult to join due to personal circumstances, please let me know in advance.”

Of course, even if he said that, there was no one who would step out here.

Doing so would make it look as though they were afraid of exploring the Demonic Realm.

Next, unlike when he had held a private meeting with the cardinal earlier, Shan brought Count Glusa over to the campfire and interrogated him.

In truth, since there were no secrets worth extracting from him anyway, it was closer to calling him over simply to give a notification.

“Count Glusa.”

“…Yes, Your Grace Duke Velakar.”

Compared to the cardinal who had run wild despite being taken prisoner, he seemed to be a person who grasped the situation well.

Shan gave him a simple ‘recommendation’.

“Testify that the cardinal was weakened during his escape and on the verge of death.”

“Pardon? But he was healthy until just a moment ago… Ah.”

Seeing the gazes of Shan and the surrounding knights, he gained enlightenment and nodded.

“Yes. Cardinal Cargo was already in a state of debility right before death. In that state, falling into the river appears to have drained the rest of his strength.”

“I like that you’re quick to understand.”

If he too had failed to understand properly and tried to act as he pleased, Shan would have fed him the drug, extracted necessary information, and killed him just like the cardinal.

Of course, no satisfying secrets would have come out of him anyway.

Still, just in case, Shan decided to lightly interrogate him to see if there was any usable information.

Receiving an order akin to ‘Give me food I like’, namely, ‘Anything is fine, so talk about information that might be helpful’, Count Glusa wore a flustered expression.

“Well…”

Could it be that if he failed to give a proper answer here, he would die like the cardinal?

In truth, Shan had no particular intention of killing him, but knowing that these evil Reformists had easily beaten a faithful servant of the Goddess to death, the count desperately wracked his brains.

As a result, a few thoughts fortunately came to mind.

“Um, first of all… it is regarding Princess Cassia.”

“Tell me.”

“Her married life is probably not very happy. From what I know, the princess’s husband, Prince Meleo, is a person who enjoys tormenting women. When I occasionally saw her face at banquets, her expression was not very bright.”

To be honest, he was putting it mildly; Prince Meleo was a sexual pervert to the degree that even patriarchal Ajun men recoiled in disgust.

To the point where rumors that he had beaten several women to death unable to hold back were public knowledge.

Had he not been an outstanding warrior and ruler, the king likely would have considered another successor.

At Count Glusa’s words, the Pendia knights frowned.

Although she was Conrad’s full sibling, Princess Cassia was once called the jewel of Pendia, popular for her outstanding beauty and gentle disposition.

Hearing that such a woman was being mistreated could hardly be pleasant.

Above all, this did not seem particularly useful.

Since Pendia did not immediately need a pretext to invade Ajun.

“Other than that, is there nothing else?”

“Umm, well then… how about information regarding Libert?”

“We likely know better than you about that.”

Rather than Count Glusa, who had been isolated for months in the mountain region of northwestern Pendia, it was natural that they, able to collect information through traveling merchants coming and going from Libert, were better off.

Afterward, a few more stories were brought up, but every single one was underwhelming.

Just things like the internal political structure of the Ajun Kingdom.

Having joined the holy war purely as an ornament in the first place, there was no way he possessed useful information.

Feeling that at this rate they would end up killing him, Count Glusa fiercely wracked his brain, and then suddenly hit upon a good idea.

Rather than it being a truly good idea, he personally believed that it must be a good idea.

“…Ah, right! It is not information, but I have a proposal!”

“A proposal?”

“Please convey this to Princess Cheryn… no, Her Majesty the Queen. That if she does not have a suitable husband candidate, she may consider me!”

Though they had fought and won once, having suffered a long civil war, it would naturally take time for the kingdom to stabilize.

In such a situation, becoming an intermediary himself to prevent a second holy war and achieve peace: that was his notion of a plausible plan.

Besides, he was not a piece of human scum like Meleo.

If there was no suitable marriage candidate within the kingdom, it was sure to be quite a decent alternative.

“On top of that, if I, a royal of Ajun, convert to the Reformist faith, it will also help the authority of the Eastern Holy See… keok.”

Count Glusa was grabbed by the nape of his neck by Shan’s hand and lifted into the air as he was, unable to continue speaking.

Though Shan was not particularly a massive giant, the monstrous strength of lifting an adult man with one hand was marvel-worthy.

In the darkness not fully illuminated even by the campfire and the lamp magic tools installed all around, green eyes burned brightly as they glared at him.

“If you utter that kind of crap one more time, know that you won’t leave here alive.”

At the voice steeped in dense murderous intent, Count Glusa desperately nodded.