Floor 24, Kokari Swamp (3)

The first possibility was that the heathen we'd crossed paths with earlier had sharper instincts than I'd given him credit for. Even without seeing us directly, he might have sensed something. And if he was a zealot, he might have taken that feeling for a revelation from his god.

The second possibility was that the heathens' god had actually issued a revelation. Comet himself had received one from the Blue Dawn Wind, so it wasn't beyond belief.

If it was the first, slipping away and coming back tomorrow night would be easier... but if it was the second, we were better off striking right now. A fresh revelation meant their guard wouldn't have fully reorganized yet. Rather than returning tomorrow, it would be simpler to slip in now and exploit the confusion. Since I couldn't rule out the second case, the best choice in our current situation was to keep pushing forward.

I turned to Comet. When I laid out my reasoning in a low voice, he nodded as though it matched his own thinking.

"I believe moving as you see fit is our best option, Kwon Suhyeok."

"Then let's head for the center."

"Yes. I don't know the layout inside either, but even I can tell at a glance which building is the heathens' temple."

Comet and I shifted our gazes at the same moment. At the heart of the stronghold stood a massive stone structure. Every other building in the settlement was timber—that alone was enough to be certain it was the heathens' most important facility.

That was where it would begin. We'd located the enemy's temple more easily than expected, and now it was time to move on the center.

With the main roads out of the question, we kept our bodies pressed to the buildings as we moved. Torch-bearing heathens hurried back and forth through the streets, but mercifully, the Shadow Curtain never dropped. Every time one of them passed close by, a thick scent of blood brushed the tip of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my nose—and the deeper we pressed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠toward the center, the heavier that scent became.

We were picking our way forward when a rough clamor of movement rose suddenly from the house right in front of us. The instant I raised a hand to signal Comet and Dobby to freeze, the door burst open.

"Damn it all—hey!"

The heathen spitting curses the moment he stepped outside was anything but ordinary. His black priest's robes were painted with a strange sigil. He looked to be a man of some standing within the heathens' ranks.

At the priest's call, one of the heathens passing by scurried over.

"Standing Terror is mighty. Archpriest, I am called Drizzle."

"Right, Drizzle. What is all this racket on the day of the rite?"

"Forgive me. I had no intention of breaking the doctrine of silence on the day of the rite, but—"

"Damn it! You think I'm asking because I don't know the doctrine? What in the world is causing all this commotion!"

When the priest erupted, the heathen ducked his head in a frantic bow. The hierarchy here was stricter than I'd imagined.

"F-forgive me! The Great Warrior of Terror has received a revelation."

"The Great Warrior has?"

"Yes. A revelation that heathen remnants would soon invade. The heathens' Great Warrior has vanished without a trace, so the Great Warrior of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Terror believes it is he who will come."

So the heathens called Comet a heathen, too. The irony struck me as faintly comical.

The priest shut his eyes at the lay believer's report and drew out a long, heavy sigh. Irritation laced the anger in it as it dispersed.

"Ha... like the rootless heretics they are, even their infiltration timing is the worst. Has the Great Warrior relayed the revelation to the central order?"

"Yes."

"Good. Off you go, then."

"Standing Terror is mighty. Archpriest, I shall withdraw."

The archpriest nodded, and the lay believer retreated at a scurrying pace. Immediately after, I turned my head and locked eyes with Comet, who had been quietly following the whole exchange. In the same instant, we both gave a small nod. We were thinking the exact same thing.

We have to kill the heathens' archpriest. Now.

The Great Warrior of Terror was waiting in that central courtyard. The archpriest joining him there would be very bad news for us.

We'd been lucky. Lucky that the house he'd emerged from happened to be his own, and that only now was he learning what was happening.

The band of lay believers drew back, and the priest set off toward the central building.

Not yet.

Lay believers were still drifting past on all sides, each pausing to offer a greeting the moment they crossed the archpriest's path. Standing Terror is mighty. I'd heard those words twenty times over by now. I was still weighing whether to kill him before he entered the central building when the opening came: perhaps to cut a corner, the archpriest slipped into an alley—and that alley held neither torches nor heathens.

An alley steeped in darkness. Fearing he might invoke his god's power, I used Flash Step. Within a world slowed as though frozen solid, the archpriest's nape sat right before my eyes.

My opponent was the archpriest himself. If I wanted to avoid any needless ugliness, I had to send him to the afterlife in a single stroke.

I swept the axe in a horizontal arc.

Crunch— the blade tore in through the left side of the archpriest's neck and punched out through the right. The snap of his spine came through the handle, vivid to my fingertips.

Then, before the blood could even fountain from the archpriest's severed throat, my vision inverted.

What the—?

A world dyed red from the earth to the heavens. Corpses filled every inch of my sight—hundreds, tens of millions, no, perhaps hundreds of millions of them. Even the ground beneath my feet was a mountain of the dead. If hell existed, I thought, it would look like this.

Disorientation at the sudden shift was the least of it; the revulsion and wrongness loomed far larger. The world held nothing but corpses, and yet it clawed at something primal in the human soul—fear itself.

And then, against that crimson sky, a pair of blood-red eyes bloomed open as if suddenly set alight.

"So it was you."

The grotesque voice rolled through the red world as though speaking from the bottom of a cavern. A violent pulse of mana bored through my body—and my vision inverted once more.

The scene was exactly as it had been before I was dragged into that twisted world. The archpriest's head, flung skyward, hung a hair's breadth from the ground, and blood geysered from his headless neck. But something had changed. I could see the world in its full colors—not the washed-out black and white of the Shadow Curtain.

Which meant the Shadow Curtain had been dispelled.

A notification window surfaced, belated.

Only after reading the message did I fully grasp what had happened. I had killed the archpriest—and encountered Standing Terror. Under any normal circumstance, it should have been impossible for a Divine Seat to harm a climber. But he had offered up his own archpriest and the lives harvested through human sacrifice as tribute to lay a restriction on me.

A mercy, then.

Thankfully, the restriction covered only skills imbued with the Divine Seat's power. My primary skill, the Essence of Lightning, worked without a hitch. And in truth, my real weapon had never been a skill at all—it was close combat.

So even restrictions have their restrictions? I couldn't say whether the thing realized it, but skills carrying a god's power had never mattered much to me. What bothered me was why it had sealed Shadow Monarch of all things. Three possibilities came to mind.

First: the Tower of Trials protected its climbers, and that much was all it could restrict. Second: it didn't know me well and assumed that limiting divinely-imbued skills would be enough. Third: it was so confident that sealing Shadow Monarch alone would let it beat me.

This just got annoying. It was a blessing, yes—but not knowing the reason left a bitter taste.

Comet's voice cut through my thoughts.

"Kwon Suhyeok?"

"Ah—yes."

"You were staring blankly for a moment there. It appears the Curtain has been dispelled."

Comet had spoken carefully, wary of giving offense.

"After I killed the archpriest, I met the heathens' god, just for a moment. That's probably why it dropped."

"...What?"

Comet's eyes went wide with shock. I shook my head.

"The details can wait. We need to pick up the pace."

The heathens' god knew I had killed the archpriest—which meant the heathens' Great Warrior would have heard the news as well. On top of that, the Shadow Monarch skill was sealed. There was no time left to be leisurely about it. The infiltration was over. What remained was a frontal breakthrough. The trouble was the sheer number of heathens swarming the main streets.

Just then, the rooftops caught my eye. None of the buildings were very steeply pitched. If I made use of those...

"Comet, Dobby. Over here."

"Kkiik?"

"Yes?"

"Quickly."

There wasn't a second to waste explaining the small stuff. Comet and Dobby wore puzzled looks, but came over without a word. I hooked my left arm around Comet and my right around Dobby and drove my foot into the earth. I didn't even need Kashatum's Sky Shoes—a single leap set us down atop the roof.

The buildings stood packed shoulder to shoulder. The gaps between them were narrow enough that even Dobby alone could have crossed.

"We ride the rooftops all the way to the central order."

"Seize the heathens!"

"They're making for the central temple!"

Beneath our sprinting feet, a sea of torches poured after us in pursuit. Some heathens were clambering up the walls of houses that had nothing to do with anything, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠every so often a spear or arrow came whistling our way. At a dead run, few of them posed any real threat—I knocked the arrows and spears flying at us out of the air with my axe.

"Huff! Huff!"

Dobby's breath came in ragged gulps. I'd known we'd be discovered... but they'd caught on faster than I'd anticipated. The buildings weren't tall, and there were far too many torches bathing the surroundings in light. At least running the rooftops kept our speed from flagging—that much was a mercy.

Good thing I'd played out every scenario in advance. I'd planned around the Shadow Curtain dropping, so the shock was limited. A few worries remained, though.

There are more heathens than I bargained for. Worse, with all this uproar, the odds were high that the Great Warrior would reach us before we made it to the central temple. Which meant Dobby and Comet would have to hold the line while I dealt with him...

Even if it means pushing past a few honest wounds, I have to bring him down fast. With Dobby's holy incantations to fall back on, minor injuries weren't worth losing sleep over.

And as if the thought had summoned him, a black figure soared onto a distant rooftop.

"Enough! Heathens, halt your steps!"

"Ignore him—keep running!"

I had zero intention of listening to him, so I led Comet and Dobby onward. If a fight was coming, it had to happen as close to the central temple as possible. Even as we raced across the rooftops, I sized up the Great Warrior. A black spear that looked a solid three meters long. Beneath a black robe etched with the same eerie sigil as the archpriest's, his scale armor caught the torchlight and gleamed.

Going by appearance alone, his strength seemed a notch below the Administrator we'd faced at the factory. But I had to keep in mind that this one wielded the power of a god.

As the distance between us shrank, I tightened my grip on the axe.