Escorting the Saintess (3)
"No way!"
"What you're supposed to bring back is... the holy relic and the Sword Master's relics... You've been betrayed, you idiot! You stupid sai—urk!"
Jaemujang, sprawled flat after taking a kick from Rune, dropped his head and went silent.
"He's dead."
"He'd already said everything worth hearing. Fine by me."
According to Jaemujang and the branch manager, the fortress on the front line had fallen three days ago. Of the five Sword Masters stationed there, two were dead and the remaining three had fled. The Cobalt Lord and Goblin Lord who'd been holding the place had already moved on, leaving only the garrison behind to defend the stronghold.
Realistically, this ragtag force had no chance of retaking it — but apparently there were some relics inside, nothing crucial, just the kind of thing you'd rather have than not. And so the Papacy had seized the opportunity: slap the saintess title on whatever priestess was convenient, send out the paladins they'd never liked anyway, and see the whole lot of them dealt with under the guise of a mission.
If they retrieved the relic? Pure profit. If they all died? No great loss — they were people the Papacy had never cared for anyway. That was the entire logic behind the dispatch.
"The... the Papacy... abandoned me..."
The saintess collapsed where she stood, murmuring the words over and over. The paladins, having heard all of it, wore the expressions of men staring down catastrophe.
But there was one thing they'd overlooked.
"And yet your god is still Aria. It seems she regards you as her true saintess."
"...Pardon?"
"Otherwise there's no reason she would have sent you here. If the goal was simply to be rid of you, you'd have been shipped off to the front line. Or ordered to guard the Pope himself."
"Ah... ah! I see, that must be it! Right?"
"Exactly."
Their morale could not be allowed to break now. If they simply gave up and lay down to die — and they would die, sooner or later — my quest would vanish with them.
I was about to gather the somewhat-recovered group and get moving again when a voice came from behind.
"Wh-what are we supposed to do...?"
The mercenaries had already taken Jaemujang's and the branch manager's heads, along with their written confessions, and gone to lodge a protest with the trading company. Of course, in exchange for handing those over, they'd pocketed the company's money — the funds that might have been useful here — as "compensation for their lives."
Which naturally meant the goods the company had been transporting were all mine now.
And that was why there were slaves standing beside me at this moment.
"Saintess. Could you take these people to the convent?"
"I'll look after them. Come this way, please."
At my gesture, the hesitant slaves began to move slowly forward. For their sake, we made a brief detour to a stream along the way so they could wash, then dressed them in clothes from the trading company's cargo.
And so several days passed.
"There it is. Although..."
"Hmm. That's quite a number."
An enormous number. Nothing but weak goblins and kobolds, admittedly, but the sheer quantity was staggering. There were multiple goblin shamans and great warriors on top of the chieftain, too.
The kobold pack had no shamans. Kobolds seemed a step dumber than goblins.
"Kihung? Kihiihihihi!"
Yep. Dumb.
"My plan is to encircle them first, then simply sweep them all away. What will you do with the saintess and the order?"
"...Even if the Papacy abandoned us, we follow not the Papacy but the god Himself. We will retrieve the holy relic."
"That's what I think too!"
"Understood. Then let's get moving."
I shifted some twenty thousand Raptors that had been waiting nearby and encircled the fortress. The moment the goblins and kobolds spotted the Raptors appearing out of nowhere, they began shrieking, and the ones holed up inside the various buildings came pouring out.
I waited until they were all in view, then gave the order.
"Fire."
Pew...
KWAAAAAAAAAANG!
Thousands of Heavy Weapons Units fired their RPGs in perfect unison. Thanks to Pitasha's improvements, the blasts unleashed staggering firepower over a wide area.
"Second volley. Fire."
Next came the compact missiles Pitasha had designed. Small and light, but with destructive power beyond imagination. Several lower-rank combat units latched them onto loaders, armed, and launched.
The missiles climbed high into the sky — then began their fall back to earth.
Ting.
KWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG!
Exactly as intended — everything except the building where the saintess was headed was scorched to ash. The secondary shockwaves from the explosions swept over us, ripping even the surrounding trees out of the ground.
"The saintess has deployed a barrier. Everyone on that side is safe."
"Hmm... they look rather frightened, though?"
The paladins had been shaken by power beyond anything they'd imagined. But the moment the saintess shouted the charge, they steeled themselves and began their advance. It was safe to assume every monster outside the central keep had already been dealt with.
"Raptors, mop up the rest."
Crunch!
The surrounding Raptors tore into the goblins flung at them by the shockwave and the kobolds fleeing for their lives, systematically wiping out every last survivor. Then the transport units, Gatherers, and swarms of other mechanical units fanned out to collect magic stones, while scout units roamed the wreckage, checking for stragglers and hunting down any stones left behind.
"Shall we head in as well?"
"Yes!"
We advanced slowly aboard a transport unit, and what we found was, quite literally, mostly powder. The power of modern weaponry really was something else.
"When did you say the railgun unlocks?"
"Around stage 100, probably? After that I can build railguns and turrets that use them too."
"Good to know."
"We're almost there, Master. The paladins are fighting up ahead."
Wanting to see how they fought, I paused for a moment and observed the battle through a hologram projected by a drone.
First, the paladins moved forward in a tight square formation, and one of them cut down a goblin that lunged from ambush with a single clean stroke of his blade. Scrambling trash like these goblins were no match for them at all.
The real problem would be the goblin great warriors. Naturally, the ones outside were nothing special — the true guardians were the ones inside the keep, defending the relic and the like. The chieftains had all died barking orders, but the shamans were here.
As the shamans muttered and began weaving their spell, the saintess immediately began chanting in reply.
"O God, my Mother. Cast out all that would do us harm..."
CRACK!
The shamans' gathered power shattered mid-incantation. Thud... They collapsed, retching up blood. At the sight of it, the panicked great warriors hefted their weapons and hurled themselves at the paladins.
"Glory to God!"
"Glory to the Saintess!"
"Glory to the Order!"
"Uwaaaaaaaaaaah!"
The paladins surged forward, and the melee began. In the chaos, as great warriors hunted the saintess and paladins shielded her, the saintess raised her voice in prayer.
"O God. Make us all the stronger, that we may not tremble before fear."
FWAAAAASH!
Radiant light bloomed across the saintess's body, and the wounds on the paladins fighting before her began healing in real time. The blessed bodies of paladins already possessed remarkable natural regeneration — but with the saintess's blessing layered on top, wounds vanished the instant they appeared. Even poison did nothing; when one of them was envenomed, black toxin instead of blood simply drained out of him and dripped into the dirt.
"The Saintess fights beside us! Strike them down!"
"Guh...! Die!"
"Kraaaaaaagh!"
The goblin great warriors and the paladins clashed, and when the battle finally ended, the paladins stood victorious without a single wound among them.
Grrrgle...
"Ha... haha..."
"Can't be helped. God's grace is not infinite, after all. Shall we all get something to eat?"
They had finished clearing the keep's first floor, so they hurriedly broke out their rations — which turned out to be none other than rye bread and water.
"While we're eating this, the Papacy's probably dining on wine and roast meat..."
"Hey!"
"I-I'm just saying, that's all I meant... just saying..."
Their words drifted over to us as we came in slowly behind them, the battle concluded.
"Hmmm... should we share with them?"
"Wouldn't that be nice? We're comrades now, after all!"
What we'd been about to eat was jjapaguri stir-fried noodles and pork belly.
"Eating together would be good for morale."
"Obviously, right? We're loaded, aren't we?"
"Of course we are!"
Buying in bulk with coins inside the shop was fine, but real food bought in the real world was better, so Pitasha had built a special refrigerator for exactly this. We'd stocked it with enormous quantities of food with an absurdly long shelf life — ramyeon and canned goods included, naturally.
"Then let's just eat together. Saintess! Care to join us for a meal?"
"Oh? Ah... I don't have much to offer, but if this would do..."
Misunderstanding me, Saintess Raman moved to share out her bread — which looked marginally more edible than the paladins' rations. Deciding action would serve better than words, I summoned a transport unit and opened the food warehouse behind us. Then I gathered up the fallen trees scattered around, lit a fire, and hauled out a giant stockpot.
There were roughly a hundred paladins here, after all.
"How much do you all eat, roughly?"
"I only need a little."
"Same here..."
Everyone answered while stealing glances at one another. In the end, Rune judged that two hundred packets would do, and that's what we went with. Two hundred packets of noodles first, with meat to follow. We didn't have a proper grill plate, so Pitasha knocked one together on the spot from materials lying around.
Set on its stand with kindling beneath and fire lit, the plate heated through in moments. When dozens of servings of pork belly hit the sizzling surface, an incredible aroma began drifting across the courtyard.
"Pitasha. Barrier, please."
"Yes, Master!"
She'd modified the barrier stone we'd taken from Jaemujang and the branch manager, expanding it temporarily so it could pen in a wide area — all thanks to her genius, of course.
Vrrmmm.
Leaving the kobolds and great warriors trapped inside the keep behind us, we sat down to the finished meal.
"Th-this is... I've never tasted anything like it..."
"In-incredible..."
"Is this what they call the food of the gods...?"
"The meat's so fresh!"
Nom nom nom.
The knights practically inhaled it. The paladins ate separately, while a smaller table was set aside for me, Rune, Pitasha — and, joining us, the saintess.
Siiiizzzle...
Glug glug.
"Oh, pardon me!"
"It's fine! But that's really big — how many cups would that be, exactly?"
"C-cups...?"
"Enough. Eat."
"Oh! Thank you!"
Small as her frame was, she'd already polished off a full kilogram of pork belly on her own — plus two packets of noodles. When the saintess was finally full and the after-meal drowsiness began to pull at her eyelids, I spoke up.
"Saintess Raman. There's something I'd like to propose."