The Shadow of Pandemonium
The Holy Kingdom did not fall to the demonic Madness. Far from it. The Main God Justia had made a magnificent return after thousands of years of slumber, personally unleashing her divine Authority to incinerate every trace of the Madness plaguing the Holy City. Of course, the very infiltration of the demonic Madness into the Holy Kingdom had stemmed from Justia's own error in judgment, but only a select few were privy to that embarrassing truth.
Meanwhile, tales of the exploits of Inquisitor Yohan and Holy KnightJudas spread like wildfire throughout the Holy City. Voices even began to rise from all corners, clamoring for the two to be canonized as saints. Just like the victory at Patermachi, a celebratory atmosphere naturally swept through the populace.
Yet, the situation had not fully settled. In the end, the Holy Kingdom had lost its precious Original Scriptures, and the apostate who had brought about this catastrophe had vanished before he could be held accountable for his sins. At the very least, the Original Scriptures could be said to have been put to an incredibly fitting and proper use. However, the whereabouts of the former Pope, Angelo III, remained an ongoing, pressing issue.
The sharp intuition Yohan had honed during his days as a grave robber was the driving force that had kept him alive through countless brush-with-death encounters. And right now, that very intuition was whispering that things were taking a turn for the worse. This damn gut feeling of his was often wrong when it came to good things, but it was never off the mark when trouble was brewing.
Accompanied by Justia and a cardinal acting as her attendant, Yohan marched straight into the headquarters of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
"Hey, out of the way!"
The interior of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was quiet compared to the Papal Palace. Nevertheless, people were still bustling through the corridors, and Yohan roughly shoved past them as he made a beeline for the basement. Truthfully, he didn't even need to use force. Justia and the cardinal were following close behind him with tense expressions, and while the onlookers might not have recognized Yohan, they immediately recognized the two behind him and scrambled out of the way.
"So, mister, why are you following me anyway?"
"To attend to the Main God, of course!"
The cardinal replied in a booming voice. Normally, a clergyman who had risen to the rank of cardinal was someone who led others, rarely following anyone else. At that level, the only superior left in the hierarchy of the Central Church was the Pope himself. But Justia was a being who transcended such mundane boundaries entirely, and ordinary priests didn't dare even dream of walking by her side. As a result, a high-ranking cardinal of the church had been relegated to the role of a mere attendant.
"Did anything happen while I was gone for a bit?"
Since the man was a high-ranking official of the Holy Kingdom, he had to know a lot. Since they were already walking together, Yohan decided to grill the cardinal on everything he was curious about.
"Cardinal Paulus, who served as the Director of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is currently missing. We can only hope he simply evacuated quickly and has not yet reestablished contact with the Holy City, but..."
"Tsk."
This doesn't sound good at all.Yohan clicked his tongue at the cardinal's explanation. As far as he knew, the Director of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was one of the very first figures in the Holy Kingdom to fall to corruption, alongside Pope Angelo III. Even putting aside the secret route the Papal Palace had established to suppress the Congregation in an emergency, the relationship between the two clergymen had been incredibly close. Thus, circumstantially, Cardinal Paulus had likely been the first casualty.
"We are still tracking the whereabouts of the former Pope, Angelo III... but we have yet to find even a trace of him."
"Well, he might have flown away to escape, just like I did. There wasn't any barrier covering the city walls for a while, after all."
Frankly, Yohan didn't care what happened to the Director of the Congregation. But he couldn't ignore the movements of the former Pope. When Yohan had infiltrated the Holy City with Annie, Angelo III had been the very first to denounce Justia—who was sleeping inside the Grand Cathedral—as an impostor, pulling a massive fast one on the citizens.
Before long, the trio arrived at their destination: the secret underground archive of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This was the very place where Yohan had previously smashed the door using his Apostle's Authority, which the Pope had then temporarily sealed with a barrier while restoration work was underway.
"The entrance is completely trashed."
"To be fair, the Congregation building itself has been damaged and collapsed in several places. Fortunately, the foundation is so sturdy that the structure itself didn't collapse entirely."
Yohan commented as he inspected the entrance of the secret archive. The unnamed cardinal nodded in agreement. They had somehow managed to repair the damaged entrance and reinforce the security, but there was nothing they could do against the sheer devastation of the Madness that had swept through the Holy Kingdom. The newly repaired door was shattered once again, and for some reason, there weren't even any guards stationed to protect the area. The entire Holy City was just engulfed in madness and only recently freed, so they probably completely forgot that they needed to secure the underground archive of the Congregation,Yohan reasoned.
"Ugh."
Stepping into the secret archive, Yohan shook his head at the absolute mess inside. When he had first visited to steal the Original Scriptures, the secret archive had felt almost like a museum. Of course, its contents were forbidden from being taken outside for various reasons, but it had maintained that clean, orderly atmosphere. But now, it was a completely different story. There wasn't a shred of order to be found. Ancient books and various artifacts that had once been neatly arranged along the long corridors were scattered everywhere as if an earthquake had struck. The writing desk where the Original Scriptures had once rested was overturned, partially buried under a pile of junk.
Thud!
"Ah, what the hell is with all these rocks tripping me up?"
"W-Wait, brother. You just kicked a forbidden book—"
"Does that really matter right now? And I'm not your brother."
With every step he took, ancient books and pieces of rubble caught under his feet, blocking his path. Yohan kicked them away irritably. The cardinal gasped in horror and tried to stop him, but it was a futile effort.
"Ha, I knew I had a bad feeling about this."
Stopping dead in his tracks, Yohan let out a heavy, lamenting sigh.
"When I came here last time, I could feel it right around here."
The foul, malicious energy that had been seeping from beyond the wall on the opposite side of the entrance was gone. No, it hadn't vanished completely. There was still a faint, lingering trace of it.
"Mister. Do you know what was being kept in there?"
The cardinal shook his head at Yohan's question. Since information regarding the items kept in the secret archive was restricted to the inquisitors and officials of the Congregation, it wasn't surprising that a cardinal from the outside was kept in the dark.
"The Demon King's Bones."
At that moment, Justia, who had remained silent the entire time, spoke up in a low, heavy voice.
"Son of a bitch."
A heartfelt curse slipped past Yohan's lips. He could see the whole picture now. He finally understood why that old demon had retreated so easily without putting up a proper fight. The bastard hadn't caused all this chaos to wage an all-out war against the Holy Kingdom in the first place. His sole objective had been to retrieve the Demon King's Bones sealed within the Holy City. At the same time, the ultimate goal of the bastards from Pandemonium became crystal clear.
"Those bastards... they're trying to resurrect the Demon King, aren't they?"
Even though he was obeying the voice of his deity, carrying the Sacred Relic barefoot had been an agonizing ordeal. Yet, as time passed, Angelo felt the throbbing pain slowly begin to fade. It was undoubtedly a phenomenon brought about by the divine power radiating from the relic he carried on his back. The overwhelming drowsiness that had weighed on him like a waterfall vanished without a trace, and the sharp pain in the soles of his feet melted away like snow. Not only that, but Angelo even shuddered at a sudden surge of pure ecstasy rising from the depths of his chest.
Previously, he had believed the impostor sealed in the Dormitory of Dormancy to be the Main God, bowing his head and swearing his loyalty before her. At the time, he had deemed it a truly glorious honor, but looking back now, there was no memory more humiliating. But now, even that shameful memory didn't matter. The Main God is with me. Though she was sealed beyond the Great Mountain Range in the north of the continent, the Goddess of Justice was guiding him with her mighty Authority. Angelo did not doubt this for a single second.
I will transcend being a mere Pope. I shall become the Apostle of the Goddess of Justice.
Crack—
Crunch—
Soon, having absorbed the power of the relic, Angelo's body began to mutate. His skin, caked in dirt and filth, twisted into a grotesque yet strangely beautiful form. Elongated bones burst through the flesh of his back, rapidly growing into a pair of magnificent wings. Next, sharp claws sprouted from his fingertips and toes, capable of easily slicing through the thick underbrush blocking his path, and a pair of pointed horns erupted from his forehead. With wings now protruding from his back, he could no longer carry the relic there. Reaching out with arms that had grown unnaturally long, he carefully cradled the chest containing the relic against his chest.
Creak—
Angelo slowly flexed the wings growing from his spine. As he did, a sound as beautiful as a choir's hymn echoed through the surrounding air from his wing joints.
"Things have gone completely sideways."
"Never mind that those two idiots died. The Main God breaking her seal and stepping out into the world is a massive problem."
Somewhere in the Great Mountain Range of the north, deep within the stronghold of Pandemonium. The demons gathered in the meeting chamber voiced their frustration over the failure of their plan to swallow the Holy Kingdom whole.
In just a short span of time, their numbers had dwindled once again. When they first heard of Hanar's death, they had merely laughed it off. But now that the fused form of Prokel and Balam had fallen to the very same enemy, the laughter had died out completely.
"I'm sick of just picking fights with those Holy Kingdom bastards."
"Exactly. They took heavy damage anyway, so they won't be able to react as quickly as before, no matter what we do."
"Damn it, let's just march on the Holy City right now! Gamigin! If you mobilize your army, it's entirely possible, isn't it?"
Dissatisfaction quickly escalated into anger, and the furious demons began shouting their opinions in heated voices.
"Silence, all of you."
Just as the chamber was descending into a chaotic din of demonic voices, Eligos, the demon in the guise of an old man who had remained silent until now, spoke in a low, commanding tone.
"It is true that our original plan to completely dismantle the Central Church has failed."
He continued in a dry, flat tone, and the bickering demons quickly shut their mouths to listen to him.
"However, the Pope is currently heading north with the bones of our predecessor. It is not as if we have gained nothing."
At his explanation, the demons who had been venting their anger quickly composed themselves. The "predecessor" they spoke of referred to only one entity: the Demon King who had been defeated in the distant past by the mortals united under the Main God Justia.
Although that previous Demon King had been utterly destroyed, his Demonic Energy was so potent that it existed on a completely different plane compared to ordinary high-level devils. Even in death, his corpse had continued to seep Demonic Energy into the world, forcing the Central Church to seal it away in a highly secure, secret location until now.
"As some of you may already know, while pushing this plan forward, I have sown the seeds of war throughout the nations of the northern continent."
"So we missed out on the Holy Kingdom, but you intend to use the northern humans as sacrifices instead?"
"Precisely."
The previous Demon King was dead, without a doubt. However, the remains he left behind could serve as the perfect catalyst to birth a new Demon King. And if they were to combine that with the negative emotions of mortals caught in the fires of war sweeping the north...
"Therefore, there is no need for us to force a direct confrontation."
At Eligos's reasoning, all the other demons nodded in unison. The birth of a new Demon King would bring endless terror and despair to mortals across the entire continent. Understanding this, the demons, who had been throwing tantrums just moments ago, stood up and left the meeting chamber with light, eager steps.