Chapter 426: Welcome to the Land of Struggle.
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 426: Welcome to the Land of Struggle.
After making it outside, Mark began to gasp for breath.
“Hah... Hah...”
His vision swam as fresh air flooded his lungs. His head was a little fuzzy from the constant bleeding from his shoulder, but when he saw the priests approaching, he knew he had made it out alive.
“I... I brought it. Th-thank you.”
He turned his head toward the voice and saw an unfamiliar female warrior holding his severed arm.
“It seems I’ve been spared becoming a one-armed man. Thank you.”
“Oh, no. I should be thanking you. I survived because of you.”
Despite the perfunctory exchange of thanks, his mind was consumed by a single question: why had that Orc spared him?
‘Why.’
He thought it over, but no answer came to mind. He wondered if the Orc had spared him after seeing him save his comrade, but then his eyes fell on the spire built of corpses, and he knew such a guess was absurd.
More important was the number of wounded and dead.
Roughly seventy. That was how many warriors had died in that single clash. Including the wounded who had lost limbs and could no longer fight, it was no exaggeration to say the raiding party had lost the strength to go back inside.
‘Jane... What about Jane?’
The thought that an enemy of similar strength might be in the prayer room naturally made him worry for Jane’s safety. Just then, a horde of humans began to pour out from another passage.
“Ugh... Aaaaaah... H-help... me... Gasp... Gasp...”
“S-survived... We survived...”
“Bleeeaaargh!”
Each of the survivors was a wreck. Like those from the storage room, some had lost limbs, while some priests simply collapsed to the ground and vomited. The one thing they all had in common was a face pale with terror.
“We have to run!”
“We... we have to get further away from here! I-if we don't, that crazy woman... that crazy woman!!”
“We have to get out of the mountain range. Qu-quickly!”
It was enough to send a chill down his spine to see them acting as if possessed, but Mark quickly approached them and spoke.
“Wh-what about Jane?”
“The... the Saintess is inside. I don't know. Sh-she's going to die. We'll all die if we stay here, hurry, hurry!”
“You fucking bastards, you just ran out when there were still troops inside? You fucking sons of bitches!”
“She's probably already dead. Already...”
He was furious. Curses flew from his mouth before he could stop them, but these people were clearly not in their right minds. Mark shoved away a man who was clinging to him and frantically looked toward the passage.
‘Fuck... Fuck...’
He couldn't begin to imagine what had happened in there. Looking into their terrified eyes, Mark swallowed hard.
*
“Lady Jane. We're almost there.”
“It's strangely quiet. After we've secured this area, let's go support the storage room team immediately.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The surroundings were eerily silent. Jane sighed, thinking there might not be any enemies here. It wasn't that she had no combat experience, but she was still not used to places like this. She couldn't help but realize her nerves were on edge, perhaps because it was a little hard to breathe or because of the foul stench of the corpses scattered around.
“How much further?”
“We're almost there.”
‘I wonder if Mark is doing okay?’
They probably hadn't reached their objective yet, either. The prayer room was a bit closer to the entrance.
“We will proceed inside immediately.”
“Understood.”
Unlike the storage room, this area was deeper inside. Thinking there was a chance of enemy reinforcements, she felt it was best to advance as slowly as possible. Just then, a voice came from the front.
“Entering in sequence.”
“Yes, sir.”
Having determined there were no enemies nearby, the troops picked up their pace and reached the entrance in no time. They immediately opened the door and slowly entered the room, and a rather large cavern came into view.
“Wh-what... Are you survivors?”
What stood out more were the worshipers in strange priestly robes. The figures she saw were human, not Green Skins. The sight of them praying to a strange statue with horns and a tail in the center was a bit unsettling, but the fact that they were human prompted Jane to speak again.
“Wh-what is this place? And that is...”
“Please be quiet. We are in the middle of prayer.”
“What?”
As a confused sound escaped Jane's lips, a loud noise echoed through the chamber.
Creeeeak.
The door they had just come through began to slowly close.
SLAM.
As the door slammed shut with a tremendous noise, she was sure she wasn't the only one who felt that something was terribly wrong.
“P-prepare for battle!” a warrior at the front shouted in a rough voice.
At his cry, it was the praying worshipers who rose to their feet. The small woman who had her back to them also slowly stood up.
‘What...’
For a moment, Jane shuddered. The eyes of the woman who was now standing didn't look normal. And it wasn't just her. The others were the same. In her confusion, Jane looked at the woman before her again, and a strange voice emerged from her grinning lips.
“I am so very happy. To be able to purify these filthy fiends with the Savior's permission... I am overjoyed.”
“Y-you...”
“This is a holy war, everyone. Die for the Savior.”
“For the Savior!”
“F-fire! Open fire! Fire!!”
“For the Savior!”
In an instant, the cultists, holding strange daggers, descended upon them. From a space deeper inside, more figures in the same attire poured out. Their numbers surpassed those of Jane's own forces.
A loud roar erupted as bullets and magic struck the cultists, making them flinch, but they immediately resumed their charge as if nothing had happened.
‘Holy power?’
It was only natural that she looked to the front as their wounds began to heal instantly. A torrent of holy power, equal to or greater than her own, was constantly pouring out from the small woman.
“Wh-what?”
The warriors tried to block the front, but the tide of cultists, clad in simple cloth, were grabbing and pulling at them.
“D-don't come any closer! You sons of bitches!”
“These fucking crazy bastards!!”
“Die, you fucking crazy sons of bitches!!”
The swarming cultists surrounded the warriors in an instant. Eventually, one warrior was dragged into their midst. His body was lifted into the air against his will by the sheer number of people, and then a sharp spear pierced through his back.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!”
“This is the ritual of purification.”
The sight of a human being lifted into the air by spears and daggers, being torn to shreds, was by no means pleasant. Jane swallowed back the bile rising in her throat.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaargh! H-help!”
‘H-how.’
She couldn't understand how anyone could cultivate that much holy power. She was pouring in as much of her own as she could, but she couldn't stop her comrades from being swallowed by the cultists.
“M-magic!”
The raiding party was being pushed back toward the door they had come through. More and more of her comrades were being lifted by the crowd, their entrails spilling out.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!”
“Fuck... Fuck!! St-stay calm! Stay calm!”
A warrior in front of her cut down a cultist who was pulling at him, but the cultist’s body, even as it collapsed, still clung to the warrior. Another cultist immediately took its place, pulling the warrior into their embrace. A priest from behind grabbed the warrior's arm to pull him back, but then a cultist's arm grabbed the priest's.
Their forces were being completely entangled.
“N-n-no!”
She heard the scream of a priest who had been dragged into the crowd along with a warrior.
“Unni! Un... Unni! Help me! Unni!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!! Pl-please stop... Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!! H-help!!”
It was over before she could react. Everything was happening in the blink of an eye. She looked around, trying to decide where to direct her holy power, but she saw that the same power was pouring down on the heavily wounded warriors of her party.
‘What...’
It was then that she realized the strange figures weren't trying to kill them. She looked around with a bewildered expression, and several things came into view. One group had surrounded a single mage and was driving nails into his eyes and mouth. The battle wasn't even over yet, but they continued their work as if they didn't care about the other enemies.
A soldier with a firearm unloaded a volley of bullets at them, but they continued their task with indifferent expressions.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!”
A captured warrior was hanging somewhere, his face a ruin, smashed by a bizarrely shaped blunt weapon. A cultist with a grotesque smile was searing the warrior's body with a spear heated in the fire.
There were people cutting off the fingers of their bound captives one by one; people using a strange tool to pull out a tongue and slice it off; people trying to force a red-hot club into a body's orifices. There were also those bleeding from every orifice, the cause of which was unclear.
“Ah... ahh...”
“H-help...”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!”
“H-healing...”
“Help me... Help me! Gariel!!!! H-help me!!!”
“Stop... Please stop. Please, just stop... Sob...”
“F-fuck, run!”
In this incomprehensible situation, some had even started pounding on the locked door, trying to flee.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaah!! Run!!!”
The shouts of those wailing and pounding on the locked door mixed with the screams of those captured by the cultists. The fight had barely even begun, yet her comrades were already losing their will to fight.
‘W-we can win this.’
The troops captured by those things were definitely still alive. If the mages unleashed a volley of spells, they could recover the troops, heal them, and then reorganize their lines. That would be enough to defend against the haphazard attacks of these humans. Given the holy power emanating from the small woman, there was a chance that those hit by magic wouldn't die, but they could rescue the others while she was busy healing them.
Someone else must have had the same idea, as the mages began to chant. Jane naturally turned her head toward the sound.
‘Carrie!’
She was a mage dispatched from the same guild.
“After the spells hit, warriors will advance again and reform the lines!”
Just as Jane shouted, a massive explosion rocked the room.
It wasn't from the front. She instinctively looked back and saw people clutching their bodies, writhing in pain from the magic.
“Wh-what?”
Through the large hole blasted in the door by the spell's aftershock, their own troops began to flee.
“H-help! Run!!”
“Run!! Fucking run!!!!”
“Ah... ah... please help me. Please don't go...”
“Don't go. C-come back... S-save me.”
The crowd of people was scrambling to escape through the narrow opening. Pushed by the sudden surge of her own allies, Jane was knocked into a warrior, lost her balance, and fell. The cultists at the back began to grab those who hadn't yet escaped, while those trying to get out pushed others aside to be first.
Those who lost their balance were dragged into the crowd by the cultists' hands, and now new screams began to echo amidst the indistinguishable cries of pain.
“I-I'm getting out first, you fucking bitch!”
“Shut up!”
“Help... H-help me...”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!”
An agonizing pain shot through her entire body. The feet of those trying to escape were trampling her. When the pain suddenly subsided, what Jane saw were the crazed faces of the cultists pulling at her body.
“Ah...”
“So you are the leader of these wicked fiends.”
“Ah... ugh... ah...”
As the small woman's face drew closer and closer, Jane's mouth opened and closed as if she had lost the ability to speak.
“You've been believing in a false god all this time. This is your chance to serve a true one. You are a lucky woman.”
A grinning face.
Small hands holding bizarre instruments.
Jane looked at the sight and screamed.