Chapter 92
Chapter: 92
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>Translator: penny
>Chapter: 92
>Chapter Title: Otherworldly Apocalypse (7)
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Sir Paris, the vice-captain of the Saint Marthias Knight Order, was quick to assess any situation.
Though buildings had suddenly collapsed and hordes of unidentified abominations poured out from who-knows-where, he did not panic. Instead, he rallied as many troops as he could muster.
Screams erupted incessantly from various parts of the Heresy Tribunal, but he had no time to concern himself with each one. To him, the real problem lay beneath the building.
And so, Paris dashed toward the epicenter alongside his fellow holy knights. But midway through the underground prison corridors, the floor abruptly gave way beneath them, sending them plummeting into the depths below.
“Urgh…….”
When he finally regained his senses, he found himself in a vast underground gallery.
Amid the scattered debris of the collapsed structure lay prisoners who had either broken bones or perished from the impact of the fall.
The guards who had fallen with him were in poor shape as well. The drop had been far too great.
Aside from a few holy knights who wielded auras and divine power, scarcely anyone could even stand.
Paris staggered to his feet and surveyed his surroundings. Though he had long served in the Saint Marthias Knight Order, he had never heard of such an enormous gallery existing beneath the Heresy Tribunal building.
And there, on the gallery floor, yawned a massive black hole of indeterminable depth.
From that eerie vortex, swirling like black sludge, monsters emerged ceaselessly.
Most of the monsters resembled ants or hornets—bugs of varying sizes, from that of large dogs to full-grown horses.
The creatures paid no heed to Paris and his companions who had fallen into the gallery. They flew straight upward, as if drawn to some clear objective.
Only the wingless ants tore into the prisoners sprawled here and there on the floor.
“……?”
And standing before that hole was a middle-aged priest whom even Paris knew well.
It was Priest Hayes, a good man with whom he had worked in the Heresy Tribunal for many years.
Paris approached him slowly, his voice trembling as he asked,
“…This… Priest Hayes, brother… was it all your doing? Why in the world…….”
“…….”
“What is this underground place? How long have you known about it?”
Priest Hayes did not even turn to look at him. His calm voice merely echoed emptily through the vast gallery.
“Long before the imperial palace stood at Delcross’s heart, the continent’s grandest cathedral had already been erected here. Even before the Heresy Tribunal building rose, this place was the lair of the Cult of Repose.”
“The Cult of Repose?”
“…You’re still young, it seems. You’ve never heard of the four underground cults.”
He gazed for a moment at the gallery’s holed ceiling with clear eyes.
“Now branded as the Dark Cults and slated for extermination, we were once a peaceful order that had served the Lord since before the theocracy’s founding.”
The Dark Cults.
Heretical groups within the Church, supposedly purged entirely in the early days of the current Holy Emperor’s reign.
“Our archbishop proclaimed that through repose, all the Lord’s faithful would receive eternal salvation. Thus, we are called the Cult of Repose.”
His words could mean only one thing.
“Heresy…. Priest Hayes, you’re a heretic!”
As Paris reeled in shock, Hayes let out a scoffing chuckle.
“Sir Paris. On what grounds do you judge heresy? Do you truly know anything of the true teachings the Lord bestowed before the millennium-spanning empire was founded?”
“What…?”
“Do you think the current Unified Church is normal? Doesn’t its dogmatic twisting of the Lord’s teachings and extermination of all dissent make it the true heresy, contrary to His will!”
Paris was momentarily at a loss for words. The priest, whom he had always seen as the epitome of a serene cleric, spoke with such unwavering conviction. Could it really be that he himself had been mistaken all along?
A calm voice from behind snapped him out of his daze.
“At the very least, the current Unified Church doesn’t commit mass murder like you lot.”
Paris and Hayes turned simultaneously.
An unexpected figure approached them slowly—someone Paris had never imagined seeing here.
Dressed in his usual formal attire for council meetings, a long white robe draped loosely over him, swaying gently with his steps.
“Holy Emperor… Your Majesty?”
The Holy Emperor scanned the surrounding pandemonium with his usual expressionless face. His gaze lingered briefly on the massive hole behind Hayes, then one corner of his mouth twitched faintly upward.
In that instant, both men felt a chill crawl up their spines.
“You’ve hidden well from my sight all this time, worshipper of the old cults’ demons.”
* * *
Hell.
The underground prison of the Heresy Tribunal had become a scene straight out of the scriptures’ depictions of the underworld.
Monsters resembling giant hornets burst forth from the collapsed prison floors.
Prisoners tumbled into the holes below or had their torsos ripped open by the beasts that flew into their cells. Already weakened by brutal interrogations, most succumbed on the spot.
“Wh-what in the world is…….”
As the dazed old priest turned his head, he saw beside him the mangled corpse of a young man, his torso completely crushed. It was a brother from Propagation with whom he had recently shared duties in the underground prison.
One of the massive monsters that had erupted from the depths below had crawled up to the surface and happened to crush him underfoot.
“Bethel…….”
As he weakly traced the holy sign, a voice calling him came from afar.
“…Brother! Brother, are you all right?”
Clemens pushed through the chaos, staggering as he supported the unsteady old priest. He still clutched a long syringe for propagation in one hand.
“Brother Clemens, what’s happening?”
At the question, Clemens glared at the collapsed floor for a moment before biting his lip.
“It seems the work of brothers from a forgotten cult. They must have tampered with the Legacy of Repose.”
“…The Legacy of Repose? Why now, of all times?”
“How should I know!”
Clemens’s voice rose in agitation.
How could he have foreseen this disaster?
Priest Hayes. He had even invited the pitiful man, who clung to life, to join their cause out of sympathy—never imagining he would ruin everything like this.
“Ahh…….”
The Legacy of Repose, which he had believed would hasten their great task.
Yet now, the monsters pouring from it devoured everything they had built.
The seeds they had diligently sown, the buds they had struggled to nurture.
Tears streamed from the old priest’s eyes as he watched the scene in despair.
“Our task… the day of the great harvest…….”
“Don’t you see? It’s all over!”
Shouting, Clemens forcibly hauled the old priest to his feet.
“Forget the task for now! Push everything aside—we need to escape this place immediately!”
The Heresy Tribunal was finished. There was nothing more they could do.
In that case, they had to meet the Bishop without delay and discuss their next steps.
Clemens dragged his still-shocked brother toward the surface.
* * *
Before the Delcross Empire was proclaimed, four offshoot cults had already taken root in the capital alongside the Orthodox Church.
They were known as Ardor, Propagation, Penance, and Repose.
After the first Holy Emperor tacitly permitted their activities in part, these underground cults grew in power alongside Delcross.
Beneath the major imperial palace buildings, vast underground galleries served as their strongholds, just like the Heresy Tribunal’s.
They were also interconnected by subterranean passages—another imperial palace of sorts, hidden underground.
The Holy Emperor appeared to have crossed via the passage linking the main palace and the Heresy Tribunal.
Nathaniel Klein.
The 17th Holy Emperor, who had eradicated every last one of the millennium-old underground cults from the capital.
The very man who had forced Hayes to endure long years of suffering now gazed upon the hellish scene he had unleashed, his face devoid of emotion.
As if it were nothing at all.
“You’ve hidden well from my sight all this time, worshipper of the old cults’ demons.”
At those words, Hayes—for the first time—glared at the Holy Emperor with raw fury in his eyes, his previous detachment shattered.
“Demon worshipper? Such baseless slander……!”
“Didn’t you venerate the Demon King as another god, with your archbishop personally conducting mass human sacrifices in his name?”
The Holy Emperor tilted his head slightly, continuing in an explanatory tone.
“That’s what people commonly call demon worshippers.”
Paris, listening, was appalled. Hayes did not refute a single word.
Silence fell over his face as the anger slowly drained away. His composure seemed to return.
“Human sacrifice… a misunderstanding. It was a rite of repose.”
“Were the victims’ wills reflected in that?”
“No one in this painful world rejects repose.”
“So you bestowed repose even on pregnant women and newborn infants.”
“They were all saved!”
“Indeed.”
The Holy Emperor nodded impassively at Hayes’s outburst.
“And so I granted you and yours salvation through repose as well. What is there to resent?”
“After butchering our brothers so one-sidedly, you call that salvation……!”
But Hayes’s protesting voice gradually faded.
He knew full well that the repose bestowed even on infants was no different from his brothers’ deaths in outcome.
Paris swallowed hard, staring at his face.
“Such dogmatism and self-contradiction make you the very model of heresy.”
With a faint sneer, the Holy Emperor slowly drew the sword at his waist. A white blade with a short, streamlined edge but an unusually long hilt.
“By now, they should have rounded up everything he scattered. No need to wait any longer.”
“…You… knew everything?”
Hayes murmured weakly. His eyes were hollow, as if he had abandoned both his life’s purpose and will.
The Holy Emperor met his gaze for a moment before asking quietly,
“You hid so flawlessly that you evaded my sight for so long. Why then, knowing failure was certain, did you suddenly unleash this?”
The Holy Emperor seemed genuinely curious.
Hayes had survived the great purge solely because he had not yet received the baptism of Repose. Lacking that soul-mark, he alone endured.
But living by the doctrines of Repose without baptism was like walking through death while alive. No ordinary mind could withstand it.
So why throw away those hard years of endurance so futilely?
“I had no choice. I… I couldn’t defy His command…….”
Hayes clutched his face with both hands, staggering as if on the verge of collapse.
After trembling violently for a moment, he lifted his head, eyes brimming with tears, to face the Holy Emperor.
“What do you intend to do with Him?”
“…….”
The Holy Emperor offered no answer. He merely raised his sword slowly toward Hayes.
“…I see.”
As if understanding something, Hayes smiled sadly through his tears.
“Everything is already under His plan. His preparations are not yet complete…….”
*Slash.* The Holy Emperor’s arm swung soundlessly.
A dazzlingly white, elongated aura blade had manifested along the sword.
Thud. Hayes’s body, neatly bisected, crumpled limply to the floor. Compared to the chaos he had wrought, it was an anticlimactically pathetic end—one that might draw a sigh.
Paris had watched the entire scene without even breathing.
“Were you Sir Durand’s vice-captain?”
After glancing at the corpse, the Holy Emperor turned to Paris.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The Holy Emperor looked up at the gaping hole in the ceiling. In the dim gallery, his eyes seemed to flicker with an eerie silver glow for an instant.
“Go above and rally the knights. From this moment, you are the captain of the Saint Marthias Knight Order.”
“Pardon? What do you…….”
But the Holy Emperor ignored his question and strode toward the massive hole in the gallery floor. The black pit from which monsters still poured endlessly.
Slowly, he raised his hand toward the infernal abyss. A faint light enveloped his body.
In that moment, Paris could have sworn he glimpsed a golden halo shining above the Holy Emperor’s head.