A Moon Against the Moon
In the eyes of the world, a priest's personal strength has never been rated as particularly formidable. These are people who reinforce their bodies with holy power and heal any wound in an instant — superhuman, by almost any reasonable measure.
It is mostly the naive, those who know little of what the clergy actually entails, who harbor such fantasies and set foot on the priest's path — and most of them promptly give up, abandoning their vows or transferring to the paladins instead.
The poor reputation, it turns out, rests on a very simple reason: the power priests wield is borrowed from a god. No matter how magnificent the lender, if borrowed might outweighed what a human could forge through a lifetime of training, there would be no reason to train at all.
Besides, the gods' power is not destruction but blessing. In accordance with the name of the god they serve, fitting graces descend upon the faithful — everything from the ability to heal wounds to the power to enrich barren land or raise up sanctuaries.
Restrictions exist as well, of course. Should power received from a god be turned to a purpose that god judges unworthy, backlash convulses the believer's body and the ability is lost forever. This much was common to the worshippers of every god. And so violence is forbidden to most priests — which is precisely why their personal strength is held in such low regard.
But none of that applies to a believer of the Pope's caliber. His holy power differed from that of ordinary worshippers in quantity and quality by an entire dimension, and his mastery in wielding it was exceptional in its own right.
His trait, too, shines brightest in this very field — the Pope's trait, Saint Walking a Path of Thorns. All of his mana could be converted into holy power, or wielded separately, but the longer the conversion endured, the more agony and strain piled up inside his body. In terms of endurance it was far from ideal; yet his reserves were deep, and so long as he did not overdraw his holy power, the pain remained something he could bear.
And now? The Pope had burned through a considerable store of holy power with his attack moments ago, and he had been certain that strike had ended the matter. Yet they still stood unscathed. And by some means he could not fathom, they had stolen his holy power — worse, they had turned even his own faith against him, reproducing his techniques with it. The situation only grew heavier on the Pope's shoulders.
Once more he batted aside the great black arm lunging for him, then spat holy power back down the path the attack had come. A golden hammer, thick as a grown man's thigh, tore through the air — only for Hercal, who had drifted forward unnoticed, to simply raise an open palm. As though an invisible wall stood there, the hammer never so much as grazed the old man's wrinkled skin; it halted midair and dropped.
Above him, the massive arm bore down to crush him; ahead, Antonio — until that moment lurking behind the old man — burst out and came running.
"My deepest apologies, Your Holiness."
"Hold your tongue. I've no words left for an apostate."
Blade and fist — weapons wholly unbecoming of priests — rang out against each other in resonance. A sword sheathed in black aura like Greed's own clashed again and again with the Pope's wrinkled hands, which gleamed like hammered gold beneath a coat of translucent light.
The man whose diligence had won the affection of most of the faithful — whispered of, even, as the next Bishop — against the old man revered by all beneath the mantle of Pope. On an ordinary day the Pope would have towered over him outright, but he had already spent a vast reserve of holy power, and locked in combat with Antonio, he was forced to hold the remaining two in check at the same time; the fight refused to go as cleanly as he intended.
And one figure watched the whole spectacle with delight.
"Hmm... is there no livelier reaction to be had? I had at least expected you to ask why we betrayed you..."
The man who had introduced himself as Greed sat at ease in a black chair conjured from who knew where, chin propped on his hand, spectating with evident amusement — all while never forgetting, of course, to keep the Pope pinned under a third arm.
"Antonio... just when do you mean to land a blow...? Even I am nearing the end of what I can shield you from..."
Where Greed lounged, Hercal was locked in a grinding fight at Antonio's side. Every time those scarred, weathered hands darted back and forth, the Pope's holy power rebounded with a dull, heavy thud. To deflect the Pope's holy power at all was feat enough, but Hercal did not stop there — he tracked each surge of divine force hurtling toward himself while casting glances at Antonio.
Antonio was straining every nerve to evade, but his opponent was the Pope — a cunning old beast, seasoned by long years of war. The old man deliberately steered where each dodge could go, herding Antonio into the path of the next strike. Had he taken one head-on, a precious asset would have been wasted, and so Hercal had kept covering him — but he, too, was now approaching his limit.
The Pope's concentration never wavered by a hair; he was plainly healing even his own mind, over and over without pause. They, by contrast, possessed no means of mending themselves. In a contest where a single flicker of focus could cost a man his life, the endurance of a body his age simply did not last.
At last a lance of holy power slipped past his hand and streaked for his face. Instinct slammed his eyes shut — and yet, somehow, no pain came.
"Mm. Just as I thought — this sort of power holds no allure for me."
"G-Greed, sir?"
"Delay any longer, and reinforcements become likely. The rest, I shall handle myself."
"Th-there's no need for that, we can hold him—!"
Perhaps he had meant to prove their worth; whatever the intent, Antonio's brave objection died the moment he met Greed's feral gaze, and his legs buckled beneath him. It was the look of eyes that would drag a man down into a bottomless abyss if he held their gaze a moment longer — for one heartbeat, Antonio felt a blade resting against his throat.
In that instant, Greed's saw-like teeth seemed to grind together, ever so faintly — then, as though nothing had happened, his eyes curved back into a smiling crescent as he faced Antonio.
"It's quite all right. Watching quietly is how you help me."
"U-understood..."
"And who said you could sit this out?"
At the collapsed Antonio, the Pope's fist drove forward once more. A heartbeat earlier, the old man had been certain he had taken Hercal out of the equation — only to give ground at Greed's sudden interposition, for he had yet to fully map what the man was capable of. But with a chance to thin their numbers staring him in the face, he was not so great a fool as to waste it.
A fist more than capable of punching clean through a man's skull arrived at Antonio.
"Carelessness is fatal, Antonio."
"Th-thank you..."
And yet once again, the strike was stopped dead — turned aside by the black aura that erupted directly in front of him. It was the same energy Greed had earlier shaped into his chair. The instant the two forces touched, they repelled one another, and with it his holy power began to flake away, layer by layer. It did not take long for the killing fist cloaked in divine light to dwindle into an ordinary old man's fist — and in the same breath, the black aura, too, began to fade.
"Now then, Your Holiness — shall we not pause to catch our bre—"
"Hah!"
"Ghhk—!"
…
Greed had meant it as a suggestion to pause the fight for breath; the Pope answered by throwing the punch anyway — and at the end of it lay Antonio, sprawled on the ground with both hands clamped over his nose. Perhaps blood had soiled it; the Pope shook his fist clean with a few flicks and wrapped himself in holy power once more.
"Spare me the nonsense. I did not come this far to talk."
"...So it would seem."
"And I have no intention of letting a single one of you leave alive..!"
"That resolve of yours... I find it rather tempting."
The moment the words died, black and gold collided head-on. Lines of black and golden light flared bright and were gone; the instant the two lines met, a detonation cracked the air. The Pope drove forward, holy power gushing relentlessly from both palms, while Greed slipped through the onslaught, black aura spilling from every corner of the space around him. The exchange between the two superhumans stretched on without end.
Neither Hercal, watching in silence, nor Antonio, still clutching his nose, dared force their way into that fight — it was a battle waged on a plane they could not reach. The mere gale whipping around the two sent pebbles skittering into the air, and wherever a strike touched, all it found vanished without a trace.
It was not that blows failed to land at all. The Pope's body was spent to its last fiber, and even Greed was growing weary of the old man's ceaseless, headlong charges. Blood spattered; small groans passed between them — yet somehow no wounds remained to be seen, for the Pope healed the instant flesh parted, and Greed buried his own injuries beneath black aura. Before anyone marked it, the battle had curdled into a war of attrition — and in such a war, the one who would break first was never in doubt.
"Haah... haah... hff..."
"...Haha. So you have finally poured out the last of it."
"Bullshit... khh...!"
"Honestly, had this dragged on a while longer, I would have lost. I concede it, Pope — you are a remarkable man."
…
"Which is why I must kill you now. You have become, frankly, far too great a threat to us."
He longed to defy him, even with a single gesture — but the strength to twitch one finger had already abandoned him. Deep inside, the Pope's nerves were enduring the sensation of a white-hot iron pressing into each one, delicate and deliberate, and whether from the holy power he had overdrawn, the blood would not stop running from his nose. Every muscle in his aged body was screaming, and each joint felt a breath away from bursting apart.
But he did not run. To a man who had lived every day of his life unbending, it was a word that did not exist — and least of all before the enemies of the Holy Church. His heart stood steadfast, already made ready for death; his face was as serene as a saint's who had grasped the truth of all things, touched with the faintest of smiles. It was a sight so beautiful that had any soul who witnessed it been asked to point out a saint, they would have pointed at him.
And that swelling emotion brought rapture — naturally, not only to Hercal and Antonio, who had watched the fight in stillness, but to Greed as well. Greed — his greatest hunger, and the oldest instinct of humankind. And now it had been roused, fixed upon that Pope.
'...You truly know how to make a man covet. To wear such a face with certain death staring you down...!'
He wanted him. He wanted to preserve him exactly as he was, that expression and all. If the whole body proved too much to keep, then the head alone — sever it, carry it away, treasure it forever. The desire coiled around him like something alive.
And the instant the thought ended, a black spear hurtled for the Pope — aimed with perfect precision at the base of his throat. The spearhead closed the final distance to the old man's face.
'...Grant, I beg you, your final grace and your mercy upon those who remain in this land.'
So he prayed — and never once closed his eyes, even at the very end. And at the sight of it, Greed's smile climbed higher still.
Then every expression there changed in real time, as a shockwave tore past the Pope's side. The spear glanced aside. Like flowing water. As though it had always been the most natural thing in the world. Like moonlight streaming across a river.
Before anyone could blink, the spear had swept past the Pope's right side and buried itself deep in the wall — and standing where its point should have been, proud and unflinching, was a man in black, with black hair and black eyes.