Chapter 196
Chapter 196
The Holy Iron Inquisitors, the Holy Church’s sole military order, had their reputation spread across the entire continent. Ironically, the ones who knew their true nature best were none other than the members of the Evil Order.Their courtesy and kindness were nothing but a façade. To those who belonged to the “Light,” they were merciful beyond comparison. On the other hand, to those who dwelled in the shadows, they were merciless executioners who gave not an ounce of pity.
Once a heretic’s guilt was declared, they lost all rights to be treated as a person. They would instead become test subjects, dissected again and again by knights who had studied human anatomy in the Church’s halls.
Even Inquisitors who were not as well-versed in Holy Law as others could at least wield a basic healing rite. Ordinary priests used that gift to aid the sick and suffering, but its use differed a bit for the Holy Iron Inquisitors.
With them, any healing they knew was used more often to keep themselves standing and to keep half-dead heretics alive, just long enough to kill them a few more times. Their training even included special sessions on how best to apply that “skill.”
I’ll die...! No, worse! I’ll end up in a state where I can neither live nor die!
Rupert, the follower of Evil who had disguised himself as a mere steward, knew that terror well. He knew how many comrades had perished at the hands of this beautiful woman, and that if captured alive, he would be reduced to begging for death.
His body trembled, and his teeth chattered. Cold sweat trickled down his frigid skin. If he relaxed the muscles below his waist even for an instant, he would surely soil himself.
“Oh my, are you that cold?” Elahan asked, dragging the Holy Iron Breaker across the ground, its clattering scrape echoing like a beast’s growl.
That sound alone was enough to snap Rupert’s sanity. The voice urging him to kill himself, the instinct screaming to beg for mercy—all of it vanished.
From deep inside, madness welled up instead.
“Ke... Kehehehehehehe!”
Drool spilled from his laughing mouth as ten fingers writhed grotesquely. Rupert unleashed every exolaw he knew, holding nothing back, even life-draining taboos.
A syllable became six. What sounded like a single sentence eventually sounded like three. These bizarre words were the mark of the exolaw, knowledge tainted by another dimension. Unlike sorcery, exolaw wielders gained strength by increasing their corruption, and those who reached the level of the Nine Hells could no longer even be called living beings.
Compared to that, Rupert was but a minnow. Even so, his power was on par with the Priest of Evil Leon had once faced in Blaine during the City Swallowing incident.
Elahan’s face, watching all of this unfold, was expressionless as she gripped the Holy Iron Breaker.
“How vile. To commit sin even in your final moments,” she muttered.
Before her, space itself warped. Colors and shapes twisted into incomprehensible forms as creatures answered Rupert’s summons.
There was only one word that could describe this: Grotesque.
“Khihihihi! K-kill her! Kill the witch!”
At Rupert’s command, the horrors—things barely worthy of being called life—charged. A bull with countless centipede legs, all twitching in different directions. A wolf flailing ten writhing tentacles. A slime-like mass of wriggling ooze.
With a booming crash, a single horizontal swing of Elahan’s massive hammer sent those abominations scattering like ragdolls.
Not only those struck directly, but even those nearby were torn apart by the shockwave, their regenerative bodies unable to recover under the hammer’s Holy Power. Broken tiles from the street rained down moments later.
Each was a monster with regeneration rivaling the undead, but they were all neutralized in a single strike.
Rupert frantically formed more seals. Blood streamed from his eyes, nose, and ears, but it seemed that his fear of Elahan was so immense that it only made the exolaw accelerate faster.
And then, with an ominous rumble, the boundary of the dimension split open, and enormous tentacles pushed through. It screamed danger.
Elahan recognized at once that these belonged to something truly monstrous. From that twisted dimension where even the laws of physics warped, the tentacles might weigh no more than feathers yet unleash shockwaves stronger than an avalanche.
I guess I have no choice.
She had hoped to save this skill for truly desperate times, but she felt that the situation called for it. Elahan lifted her left hand from the Holy Iron Breaker and formed seals.
It was only a simplified version, but Holy Law was exolaw’s perfect counter. A punishment invoked by the greatest Saintess in history was sure to be effective.
“Divine Judgment!”
At that instant, a hole opened in the starry night sky, revealing a path connecting the material world to the heavenly realm. Only a Saintess chosen by the Goddess could invoke it, and its power cost was so great that every Saintess before her had only managed it once or twice in their entire life.
A pillar of judgmental light descended.
“―――――――!”
Rupert screamed as it engulfed him.
Eyes rolled back, limbs flailing in agony, his appearance was so pitiful that anyone who saw might think he was being burned at the stake. Like a salted worm, his body convulsed violently before collapsing. The tentacles reaching from beyond dissolved, their form fading as they retreated into the void.
When the light vanished, all that remained was Rupert’s corpse, eyes rolled back, and a street torn to ruin.
Elahan gazed down at him, sighed, and muttered, “Dead, huh. You must have risked your life to pull that off.”
She closed his eyes, then burned his body with sacred fire. Exolaw wielders, their souls and flesh corrupted by another dimension’s power, remained pollutants even in death. If not purified, they would taint the surrounding land.
“Well, then.”
She had not gained Rupert’s testimony, but she had not expected to. The Evil Order’s rank and file often killed themselves the instant they were caught off guard. As an overseer, Rupert would surely have had even stricter safeguards on his tongue.
Elahan turned away without regret, thinking, Hero Leon and Karen are still fighting... I should head to them.
Perhaps ten kilometers distant, she could feel the storm of power raging. Their enemy’s strength was formidable indeed.
“Please wait a little longer, Hero Leon!”
Leaping once more, Elahan raced across the city.
***
With the heavy crash of steel, the two men were thrown back. One held a spear. That was Dayton. The other held a sword. It was, naturally, Leon.
From probing strikes to full-on exchanges, they had already crossed a thousand blows, yet Dayton still endured against both opponents.
A veteran of a hundred battles. There was no better way to describe the old knight.
Even if his younger self stood here, he would not have held out longer than the man before them now. Countless battles fought, years weathered, and the composure of old age had opened his eyes to a new realm.
He was neither faster nor stronger than in his prime, but he controlled his body perfectly, restraining its eagerness and wielding it with flawless efficiency. And still, he could not change the fact that the battle was against him.
“Hm,” he mused.
His two opponents were both Aura Masters. Opponents whom one could not guarantee victory against, even one-on-one. Yet, he had to face them both.
Had they rushed recklessly, I could have found an opening...
Dayton’s battered eyes sank low. Youth’s strength lay in boldness, but boldness led so often to missteps.
If he gambled here, it would amount to nothing in a two-on-one. He had dragged the fight out instead, waiting for one of them to unleash a decisive art or technique.
Whipping his spear to shove Leon and Karen back, Dayton caught a single breath and muttered, “Phew... no use.”
He asked himself, How is there not a single flaw in these so-called prodigies?
“You are both far too calm for your age. I thought surely, you’d overextend once if I kept holding out.”
“We can’t afford to give a seasoned veteran like you any windows.”
“That’s true. You understand well. You both have faces that look as if they’ve never seen war, but you are already ahead of the man I was way back.”
Clashing with warriors of this caliber, regret flickered across Dayton’s face. He let his spear lower with a weary sigh.
“It seems I’ve lost. The one who asked me to stall you hasn’t sent a word... loyalty was never in him. He must have lied just to save his own hide.”
He glanced between the two and only then realized why Elahan had not joined this battle. A hollow laugh echoed along the lakeshore.
He added, “So, the other girl, is it? Then he won’t be escaping either.”
At his serene tone, Leon said, “It isn’t too late, even now.”
However, Dayton’s voice was resolute. He extended a trembling hand.
“No. It is too late.”
The moment he let go of his spear, his fingers shook violently. Dark streaks had already crept up his arm. The poison Karen had slipped into his veins was now burrowing through his blood.
“In less than five minutes, I will collapse. I won’t raise a white flag with a corpse. If I must die, I want it to be blazing.”
“I fear some of that blaze may spill on us,” Leon said.
“Haha
... I’m sorry about that, but please, do try to bear with me. Even in this old body, my pride won’t let me go without a final strike.” He was stubborn to the end. He was right. Even if left alone, Dayton would be dead within minutes. Having been forced to consort with the Evil Order, there was no need to humor his last wish. And yet, Leon did what only Leon would do.
“Very well. I’ll indulge you.”
“My thanks.”
Leon nodded and gestured to Karen.
One on one. As the old warrior and the young hero raised their spear and sword, even the breeze passing between them stopped.
Silence fell, and time warped. A second stretched into a minute as their senses overlapped in the zone they shared.
Dayton leveled his spear.
Here I come, young man.
Leon drew back his hilt.
Be my guest.
Then, the Aura pouring from Dayton’s body turned to searing blue lightning, racing down his weapon until arcs leaped from the spearhead.
In the state where his senses were stretched to their utmost limit and perception was slowed, the sound itself took ten full seconds to reach Leon’s ears. The current that flowed at the speed of light became one with the spear, turning into a streak of lightning.
El-Cid stirred in shock. What Dayton was manifesting was an instinctive weaponization of natural law itself, something even the scholars of the ancient era had only theorized.
—That’s...!
However, there was no time for advice. In that compressed eternity, Dayton’s hands locked the current’s direction, shaping the storm into one strike. A thunder-spear wreathed in devastating power was leveled at Leon. In a world where science was advanced, this would be called a railgun.
In less than a tenth of a second, a spear seven times faster than sound tore through the night.
Leon knew at that moment. It was too late.
If he had known it would be this fast, he should have struck first. A thousand regrets flashed in that single heartbeat. However, despite his regret, an impossible sound rang in his ears like a hallucination.
Dayton’s eyes widened in disbelief. The thunder-spear that should have pierced Leon’s heart had been stopped—delayed by three-tenths of a second—against the shield in his left hand.
It was the Sun Shield, the hundredth Jugend Steel.
It had intercepted the spear at the cost of half its circuits burned out, but in that brief reprieve, Leon gained his opening.
The Holy Sword flared. Its light roared skyward, devouring Leon’s will and power, blazing as a sword of starlight to banish the dark.
Four Stars of Vast heavens wasn’t an option here. It was far too destructive, likely to not only completely incinerate Dayton but also the nearby homes.
So, he had three strokes. Three and no more.
He carved once, as if to bridge sky and earth.
“Heavenly Core, First Form: Dubhe.”
Then, he swept wide, etching the line of the horizon.
“Heavenly Jade, Second Form: Merak.”
Finally, he thrust, the axis on which all the others turned.
“Wavering Light, Seventh Form: Alkaid.”
From Leon’s blade, brilliant starlight exploded.
“Grand Chariot, Chained Secret Technique: Three Stars in Heaven’s Jar.”
The two devastating powers of the two Aura Masters, the lightning spear tearing through the shield and the three stars born of the Holy Sword, met head-on.