Chapter 611: Time of Punishment
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 611: Time of Punishment
From the perspective of the Gray Divine Army, a pack of bastards had just charged straight through the heart of their ranks.
To make matters worse, they had watched those same men leisurely stroll into the monastery after slaughtering four of their crusaders. It was a heavy, humiliating blow—and that single strike served as the opening flare of the battle.
They dare strike first instead of quietly awaiting divine punishment?
Mull watched with narrowed eyes, wondering what kind of lunatics had just arrived. From her vantage point, she could see them peering out from within the monastery.
Nestled in a basin atop a steep slope, the monastery’s gates overlooked the incline. Looking up from below, the interior was partially visible. Although a wooden palisade had been erected and reinforced with briars, it wasn't enough to completely obstruct the view. If one stepped closer, the courtyard came into clear focus.
Naturally, the reverse was also true; those inside the monastery could see the army outside just as clearly.
Mull focused her gaze on the man standing at the center of the enemy line. He wore no helmet, leaving his dark hair to whip in the wind. He seemed to have no intention—nor any need—to hide. His blatant disregard grated on Mull’s nerves.
Simply put, she despised the very sight of him standing there so casually.
Though they were too far apart for her to read his eyes, his posture exuded a profound, maddening indifference.
Is he putting on a show of composure? What a joke.
Although Mull acknowledged that they had broken through her lines and slain four crusaders, she felt no real sense of danger. She recognized that the intruders possessed decent skill, but she knew it wouldn't change the ultimate outcome of this battle. Besides, they had likely exhausted themselves just to kill those four.
It was a foolish assumption, born of her absolute confidence that the tide of battle was entirely in her favor.
"Let's end this," Mull commanded.
It was a battle that required nothing more than a single word. What power did a measly monastery have to withstand an entire army?
The opening move belonged to the divine priests—those who specialized in combat spells. They channeled their divine power, drawing together a swirling mass of gray light to manifest their magic.
"The hour of retribution has arrived," Mull declared grandly.
She added the dramatic flair for effect. To ascend to the seat of the Pope, public perception was everything. Or so she believed. It was a fitting mindset for a thoroughly worldly priestess.
*
"Gray Explosion Spell!"
Four pairs of elongated wings sprouted from the sides of the gray mass, poised to launch it forward like a released spring.
The Unnamed Crusader gasped in shock at the sight of the spell, but everyone else remained perfectly calm.
"Everyone, get down!" the crusader yelled.
Yet, not a single person reacted to his warning. Instead, something else happened.
Glancing to his side, he realized a stranger had silently taken a position right next to him.
Wait, when did this woman get here?
She was a black-haired beauty with features so striking that no one could ever forget her face after a single glance. In the brief moment the Unnamed Crusader spent waving his arms and shouting for cover, the woman moved.
She spread her hands, her fingers dancing through the air as if striking invisible keys. As though she were playing a grand organ, the very atmosphere began to ripple.
Then—
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
The gray dragonflies—designed to seek out living targets and detonate—all exploded harmlessly in midair above the wall. Watching the display, the woman spoke, her voice and expression completely devoid of warmth.
"Trifling."
Having assumed her human form, Esther opened her Spell World and activated her spirit-seeing eyes, staring directly into the structure of the enemy's magic. The absolute intuition granted to the naturally gifted allowed her to instantly dissect the trick behind the spell.
They mixed sorcery with spellcraft.
The divine spell of the Gray God—fueled by what they called holy power, but was in truth nothing more than corrupted divinity—was dismantled in an instant. Intuition brought understanding, and with understanding came the solution. She simply infused vitality into an intangible force spell, causing the enemy's explosive magic to detonate prematurely.
Immediately after, a barrage of gray spheres—what the enemy called Holy Light Bombs—rained down from the ranks of the opposing army.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Had it been someone else's fight, it would have been a spectacular sight. Each gray sphere hurtling through the air was larger than a human head.
"Hmph."
"Demuiller's Wind Cliff."
Esther chanted under her breath. It was a borrowing spell. A chunk of mana condensed within her Spell World drained away, manifesting as a towering barrier of wind at her gesture to shield them.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
The Unnamed Crusader winced at the deafening impact, which sounded like iron cannonballs slamming into a stone wall. It was the sound of the Holy Light Bombs detonating harmlessly against the invisible barrier. With a series of sharp cracks, the gray spheres shattered and dissolved into harmless mist.
Seeing their opening salvos fail, the priests of the Gray God began chanting in earnest.
"O God, strike down the enemy with Your lightning!"
"Manifest as a hammer and crush them to dust!"
"Burn them and let them know their sins!"
Gray flashes of light transformed into bolts of lightning and shot forward. Alongside them flew a massive, hammer-shaped mass of gray light, easily the size of a grown man.
The Unnamed Crusader realized these weren't the spells of low-ranking acolytes; they were the works of high priests who had made names for themselves. Even the spherical gray masses flickering like flames that followed were of the same formidable caliber.
Sensing the imminent danger, he cried out once more. "Get out of the—"
But he couldn't even finish his sentence.
To an ordinary observer, the onslaught might have seemed terrifying, but to Esther, the spells were riddled with glaring flaws. Before the Unnamed Crusader could finish his warning, Esther was already chanting, her voice cool.
"Demuiller's Scythe. Del Grecher's Sneeze. Bonehead, go wild."
A barrage of divine spells was hurtling toward them, but three of her own were more than enough. As she unleashed the mana stored within her Spell World, the wind coalesced into a massive scythe, slicing clean through the incoming lightning.
Crash! Roar!
The opposing spells collided, generating a violent vortex that neutralized both attacks. The lightning discharged harmlessly into the air, leaving behind nothing but a faint, static hum.
Next, a miniature blizzard whipped up in midair. The concentrated frost snuffed out the incoming flames before freezing the massive gray hammer solid and shattering it into pieces.
And she wasn't done yet.
Bonehead, the flesh puppet she had summoned in the blink of an eye, was already thrashing his arms in front of the gray crusaders.
Thud! Crack! Clang!
Though the puppet carried no weapon, Esther had spent a long time observing Encrid's training, drills, and sparring matches. She had accumulated a vast wealth of martial knowledge. And as a mage and a witch, it was her duty to put that knowledge to practical use.
Thanks to her guidance, Bonehead moved with a fluidity and precision that was incomparable to his past self. Normally, a Flesh Golem was used as a lumbering meat shield, relying on sheer bulk to absorb damage. But the Bonehead Esther summoned was a different beast entirely.
He snatched a spear from a soldier's hands and began wielding it with terrifying efficiency. He yanked the spear back, delivered a brutal kick to the soldier's stomach, and spun the weapon to slam the shaft against another soldier's shield.
His speed, power, and technique were remarkably refined. To make matters worse, he felt no pain and was virtually unkillable by normal means, making him an absolute nightmare.
What was more—
"Return to the dust, foul corpse!"
Even the holy spell Turn Undead proved utterly useless.
Normally classified as an exorcism spell, it was a magic forbidden to those who wielded the gray holy light. Thus, a priest who could still channel pure white holy light instead of gray chanted the spell, but it had no effect. While the dead were supposed to return to the earth, the force animating Bonehead was pure, active mana. Unless they severed his continuous supply of mana, a simple exorcism spell would never stop him.
"Hold him back!"
"How dare you!"
"Crush him to pieces!"
When magic failed, physical force was the only option left. They stabbed, slashed, and battered the flesh golem, desperately trying to bring Bonehead down. More gray light and lightning bolts rained down, but because their tactics were neither clever nor original, dealing with them felt like mere repetitive labor to Esther.
Standing entirely alone, Esther effortlessly neutralized every single spell cast by dozens of enemy priests.
"She... she blocked all of that?" the crusader muttered.
He was utterly dumbfounded, but this was only the beginning.
While Esther neutralized the spells and Bonehead drew the enemy's attention, a man who had been standing silently beside Encrid vanished. Despite the broad daylight, he slipped through the shadows and scaled the wall, completely undetected. He quickly identified the positions of the priests casting the divine spells and began systematically hunting them down.
Squelch. Thud.
The enemy only realized something was wrong after Noma, Mull's most cherished disciple, fell dead. Excluding Mull herself, Noma was the most skilled priest in the entire army.
"Lord Noma has been killed!" someone screamed.
"What?!"
"How?!"
As the escorting crusaders panicked, the one who had actually announced Noma's death was none other than Sachsen. Disguising his voice, Sachsen had thrown the shout to draw everyone's attention to a specific spot.
If you couldn't hide the body, the next best thing was to announce it loudly yourself, directing everyone's attention exactly where and when you wanted. It was a classic infiltration technique designed to sow chaos. While everyone's eyes rushed toward Noma's corpse, Sachsen slipped away and leisurely slit the throat of another priest.
If you approached a target from behind and sliced clean through the windpipe, no sound could escape. There was only a wet, wheezing gasp of air, and even that was quickly choked off by a torrent of hot blood.
He stabbed his next target through the lung from behind. Without air pressure, screaming was physically impossible. Two more died without so much as a death rattle. To top it off, a Silence Dagger plunged into the throat of a priest who was in the middle of channeling a high-tier spell.
Thud.
The divine energy swelling within the priest's body shattered and dispersed like a cloud of dust.
"Urgh!"
Several priests who had been transferring their power suffered a violent backlash and coughed up blood. Only then did one of the crusaders finally pinpoint Sachsen's location.
"Over there!"
Even among this helpless crowd, there were a few capable fighters. A handful of them lunged forward, eyes burning with rage. But such a reaction only worked against an ordinary opponent. The crusader had pointed his finger a split second before shouting, but by the time his voice carried, Sachsen had already vanished, leaving the man pointing uselessly at empty air.
Sachsen blended back into the ranks of the soldiers, feigning panic and asking what was happening, before casually slipping away from the front lines. Seeing Sachsen slip out of formation right beside him, a thin-browed soldier asked blankly, "Hey, where are you going?"
"Taking a leak," Sachsen gave a casual shrug.
The soldier blinked in confusion, then nodded dumbly. Oh, right. A man's gotta go.
While the bewildered soldier stood there, Sachsen lightly tapped his heels against the ground and accelerated away.
In an absurdly short span of time, the core of their spellcasting force had been decimated. The sudden deaths of Noma and several key priests sent a ripple of unease through the Gray Divine Army.
What is happening? Why are they dying? Who did this? We didn't see anyone!
Humans naturally feared the unseen far more than the visible. That was exactly the psychological effect Sachsen had intended. After all, when holding off an entire army with a handful of people, psychological pressure was a vital weapon.
It was a routine task he had performed countless times, but the enemy's leadership reacted quickly.
"This is the work of an evil spirit!"
It was Mull's voice. Realizing her disciple was dead, she quickly spun the situation to brand the enemy as demons' minions. It was a highly effective tactic.
"Of course! They are the children of the devil!"
The ignorant soldiers who had blindly followed were easily deceived. Even those who knew Noah's Monastery had absolutely nothing to do with demons nodded along. It was the perfect excuse for those with a shred of conscience to rationalize their actions.
Meanwhile, Encrid was still standing there, casually spectating the entire affair.
*
"There are plenty of interesting characters here."
Among the followers of the Gray God, there were those who possessed supreme confidence in their martial prowess. Some had not yet been officially ordained as paladins but possessed skills that easily rivaled them. Others had already far surpassed the level of ordinary paladins. They represented the hidden, trump-card forces of the Theocracy.
While the past few decades could hardly be called an era of peace, it had been a period during which every military faction on the continent kept their true strength concealed. If Azpen had done so, it was only natural that other nations had done the same. Naturally, the Theocracy was no exception.
From a bird's-eye view of the continent, it was as if a mad knight order from the Border Guard was poking at these hidden hornets' nests, dragging their secret forces out into the light one by one.
"Bring me my spear."
One of them took up his weapon, a halberd. A biting chill radiated from the blade—a magic weapon imbued with a freezing spell. Though his name remained unknown, his mastery over divine power was more than enough to earn him the title of a knight.
"Hmm. Good, very good," muttered the paladin beside him, Azratic. He wrapped a long cord tightly around his wrist as he spoke.
Even so, neither of them made the first move. The opening move belonged to the army. Like a rising tide, the ranks of soldiers began to surge forward in unison. The march had begun.
*
Just as the massive wave of the army began its slow, crushing advance—
"I almost arrived late."
Another ally arrived at the monastery.
"Captain. Brother."
It was Audin Pumrei, a member of the Order of Madness who possessed the massive, hulking build of a bear.
"Oh? You're here?" Rem greeted him first.
Naturally, there was no warm welcome. His tone merely suggested that the person who was supposed to show up had finally arrived.
"Yes, my leave was rather long," Audin replied, his tone equally flat.
After all, there was no need to make a fuss over someone simply returning to where he belonged. Everyone present shared the same sentiment.
Encrid gave a brief nod of acknowledgment before speaking.
"Ropode, Pel, Teresa. Go out and hold them back."
It was his answer to the enemy's opening wave.