Terror at Caulose Square
It was only natural that the black mage never showed his face.
What kind of idiot would reveal himself just because someone told him to?
Look at them. The beggars with black light flickering in their eyes all burst into laughter at once.
Then, as if to put on a show, they even started attacking the nearby citizens.
I didn’t particularly dislike this textbook method so typical of black mages.
Of course, the cathedral dogs watching the square turn into complete chaos in an instant would probably disagree with me.
I pondered for a moment on what to do.
If I wanted to avoid drawing suspicion, I should act flustered here and show some human warmth… but why bother?
It wasn’t a bad approach, but it would clearly restrain the boldness of my future actions, so I had no desire to choose it.
Instead, I gripped my axe firmly and chose to dive into the chaos faster than anyone else, in a completely different manner from the rest.
I slammed the axe down on the head of one of the crazed bastards, grabbed the neck of the person being attacked, and hurled them backward while shouting.
“Anyone who can hear my voice! You see the holy knights over there, right? Go hide behind them.”
If you don’t hurry, I’ll kill you all.
I kept my inner thoughts to myself, seized the arm of one of the crazed lunatics, and swung it down like a club at another attacker.
Thud. Crunch. With those horrific sounds, I flung aside what used to be human beings, then extended my hand toward the citizen I had thrown to the ground earlier.
“Eek—hiiik!!”
Maybe because I had just used a person as a club to create two portions of ground meat, the citizen spasmed in terror. I shrugged and withdrew my hand.
“Now, now. Calm down. You see the holy knights over there, right?”
I gave the vigorously nodding citizen a light pat on the back to send them off, then threw myself back into the swarm of crazed lunatics.
“Anyone who can hear my voice! You see the holy knights over there, right? Go hide behind them.”
At Cardnios’s shout, the holy knights who had frozen for a moment regained their senses and began to move.
“Team One, Team Two! Defensive formation!”
The sixteen holy knights raised their shields and formed a circular line.
The number was small, so it was hard to feel completely reassured, but they were all User-rank holy knights. Against a mob controlled by demonic energy, they should be more than enough to protect the citizens.
At the head of the defensive formation stood Maria, holding her holy relic shield, Blind Devotion, which covered her entire body.
“Kyros, we’ll protect the citizens here.”
“Got it. I’m counting on you. Team Three, follow me! We’re rescuing the citizens.”
Kyros also charged toward the residents whose eyes leaked pitch-black demonic energy.
He hesitated for a brief moment at the sight of the residents, whose controlled state was obvious at a glance—
“Hero, what should we do?”
When a holy knight asked for his opinion, apparently sharing the same concern, Kyros closed his eyes tightly and sank into thought. That was when a horrific sound echoed from afar.
Crunch. Squish.
Kyros and the holy knights all turned their heads at once toward the source of the noise.
There stood Cardnios, slamming a resident to the ground, tearing them apart with his bare hands and turning them into chunks of meat.
“No matter how urgent the situation…”
One of the holy knights unconsciously muttered at the sheer brutality.
Kyros’s brow began to furrow at the thought that there was no need to go that far, even in an emergency.
That was when Cardnios lifted up a resident who didn’t have a single wound on them.
“Eek—hiiik!!”
“Now, now. Calm down. You see the holy knights over there, right?”
Cardnios pointed directly at Kyros and gave the citizen a gentle push on the back.
Kyros couldn’t grasp the exact intention, but he sensed some kind of purpose behind the action.
A strange, ominous feeling washed over him, but he couldn’t abandon someone who had run over in desperation. Kyros raised his fist and signaled the holy knights to hold position.
“For now, we’ll stand by here and rescue the nearest residents first. Suppress the controlled ones as much as possible to stop them from rampaging. Gather the unharmed residents in this spot and move them all at once toward Maria’s position.”
““Yes!””
Suppressing the controlled residents was not difficult.
User-rank holy knights possessed strength equal to upper-grade Red Scale mercenaries. Ordinary people who had never trained stood no chance.
“Please, stand up.”
“We’ll take you somewhere safe.”
They broke the limbs of the deranged ones to subdue them, and the rescues proceeded smoothly.
At this rate, cleaning up the situation wouldn’t be too hard.
Everyone thought so.
The situation flipped in an instant.
“Kyaaaak?!”
A scream erupted from Maria’s defensive line where the rescued residents had been gathered.
When everyone whipped their heads around, they saw the resident Cardnios had first saved biting into the neck of one Kyros had rescued.
The struggling resident thrashed while a holy knight from the formation hurriedly stepped back to pull him off.
As if they had been waiting for exactly that moment, the suppressed residents began rushing the breached defensive line with grotesque, unnatural movements.
“Ugh?! Hold them back!”
“Don’t let them through!”
As the holy knights roared at the sudden crisis, another catastrophe erupted on the rescue side.
The heads of the subdued residents swelled up and then exploded.
Holy knights caught in the blast were sent flying, and the citizens they had rescued turned into bloody chunks of flesh raining from the sky.
“Ugh…”
“Damn it, a trap like this…”
Even the rescue-team holy knights who had been neutralized in a single blow found corpses with missing heads and grotesquely moving residents latching onto them.
“Guh?!”
“Shit…”
The screams of both residents and holy knights echoed from every direction. Kyros’s body stiffened.
A sudden reversal. A chaotic battlefield where every single spot was critical.
Maria was using the intermediate holy spell Sacrifice Rite to physically plug the breach with her own body, but because she couldn’t harm the residents, she could do nothing but peel off those clinging to her.
The neutralized holy knights were being bitten while restrained or killed by daggers and axes.
A moment of hesitation.
It wasn’t even three seconds long.
“Ha, so this is the so-called hero.”
Yet even that seemed laughable.
In the midst of the pandemonium, the clear, unmistakable sneer rang out distinctly. Kyros’s head creaked as he turned.
There stood Cardnios, massive battle axe pulled back behind his waist, the corners of his mouth lifted in a smirk as he looked at Kyros.
“Everyone in this square who can hear my voice, bow your heads.”
If you don’t want to die.
The ferocious voice that had thrown away every trace of the politeness he had shown until now reached everyone’s ears despite not being loud.
A chill slammed into Kyros’s entire body, forcing him to bow.
The sensation was so intense that even the residents who had never trained a day in their lives felt it and bowed in unison.
The only one who could not bow was Maria, physically restrained by the controlled residents.
Everyone present witnessed it.
Behind the proudly standing Cardnios, a colossal mountain rising as if stretching its limbs.
Taishan Giant Strength Axe
Second Form: Horizontal Slash
CRRRRRACK!!
A single axe strike split the square apart.
The upper bodies of the residents attacking the neutralized holy knights were crushed by the shockwave.
The midsections of nearby buildings exploded outward.
The residents clinging to Maria were reduced to minced meat. Maria, who had poured every ounce of strength into the hand gripping Blind Devotion to endure, collided with a holy knight lying prone behind her yet still could not stop, tumbling across the ground for a long distance.
Fierce clouds of sand and dust poured over everyone’s faces belatedly. When they finally managed to open their eyes again—
The decadent beauty still carrying a colossal mountain on his back was smiling with the corners of his mouth raised.
So this is the so-called hero. His head really is just a flower garden. What a pathetic fool.
I walked through the crowd whose eyes were filled with either awe or terror and mocked the clumsy hero.
Someone who had scattered magic-controlled puppets all over the place like a game of minesweeper would never trigger an incident without any preparations.
Of course he had set up his little tricks.
The hero who, after I deliberately displayed excessive brutality, couldn’t even consider the possibility of traps and focused solely on suppression.
The saintess who, despite being the greatest firepower available, acted as bait and accomplished nothing while getting beaten.
They made a perfect pair.
“Ugh… ugh…”
“Saintess, are you all right?”
“Yes… somehow.”
“I’m sorry. I acted boldly because you possess the blessing of protection, but was it a nuisance?”
“Ah, no. Hoo… thanks to you, I was able to escape the crisis… ugh.”
The saintess lay slumped on the ground, both arms apparently broken and completely immobile.
Even so, her shield didn’t have a single scratch. So that’s the power of a holy relic?
Even though it was merely a tool, I felt the gap between the Goddess of Order, Victoria, and my current self. The taste in my mouth turned bitter.
Well, the current me may be lacking for an Immortal, but I’m still better than these idiots in front of me.
No matter how lacking I am, an Immortal is still an Immortal—a god of one world, a being with immense power.
In that case, instead of wallowing in self-pity over my shortcomings, I should fulfill my duty as a being of great power and take care of these lacking idiots.
For the hero, I just need to make him understand his place.
As for the saintess, since I can cherish her more sweetly than that moron, I should help her throw away that piece of trash.
Then it was time to start working.
I supported the saintess’s back to help her sit up while activating Charm.
She twisted her body slightly, perhaps sensing a faint discomfort, but because of her injuries she showed no particular reaction.
True to her title as saintess, she seemed to be unconsciously resisting.
I had used it forcefully because she was injured, but once she recovered I should restrain myself.
For now, since it had taken hold, I would make good use of it.
“Oh dear, your injuries are quite severe.”
Clack, clack.
I gently removed her gauntlets and stroked her back.
Charm hadn’t taken perfectly, but it was clearly having an effect; the saintess did not reject my touch.
“Thanks to you holding out like this, the citizens behind us suffered fewer casualties. As expected of the saintess.”
“Hoo… no, I…”
“No, you did more than enough.”
I was deliberately engaging in excessive skinship to piss off the hero, but what was that bastard doing?
When I glanced at him, he was trembling with clenched fists and hanging his head low.
I thought the brainless fool would rush me, but it seems his brain isn’t purely decorative after all.
Should I push my hand a little further then?
“If you hadn’t held back so many of them, the sacrifice would have been far greater.”
I slowly licked my index finger.
The saintess would deny it here, of course.
“That’s… not…”
As expected.
“Shh.”
I cut off her self-deprecating words by pressing my index finger to her lips.
“It’s not a good habit to speak of yourself that way.”
“Mmph… mmph.”
“Ah, excuse my rudeness.”
“Hoo… hoo… let go.”
Her voice carried a faint trace of displeasure, yet—
The slightly heated breath, the flushed cheeks, and the way Charm seemed to have taken proper effect made me withdraw my hand.
I looked around, deliberately ignoring the hero, and called over a nearby holy knight.
The holy knight who scrambled forward on all fours like a startled animal received the saintess from me. I gripped my axe and stood up.
“It looks like both of the saintess’s arms are broken. Could I ask you to treat her?”
“Y-yes! This Samson will take full responsibility and heal the saintess!”
“Good. I’ll leave her to you.”
When I stood up with my axe once more, the holy knight Samson looked at me with a puzzled expression.
“Lord Cardnios, where are you planning to go?”
It was a good question.
This Samson fellow had been doing nothing but likable things since earlier. If he weren’t a middle-aged uncle, I would have kept him by my side and cherished him.
What a shame.
“The holy knights and the saintess are in no condition to fight. I intend to hunt down the black mage alone.”
“Wouldn’t… that be dangerous?”
At the likable holy knight’s perfectly timed question, I suppressed the smile threatening to rise to my lips and shrugged as if I had no choice.
“Well… it can’t be helped. A black mage capable of causing an incident on this scale must be eliminated the moment we catch his tail.”
“O-ohhh… What heroic spirit. To think someone like you exists among the Incubus race.”
“I… will go as well.”
Into the warm atmosphere between me and Samson came the hero’s strained voice.
He had endured so well, yet now he was kicking the ball into his own goal. In that case, I would gladly accept it.
I glanced briefly toward the saintess, then twisted my face into an expression of disdain.
“Hoo…”
I even let out a sigh as if I found the situation stifling.
“Hero, look around you. You and I are the greatest fighting power available. If both of us leave, who will protect the citizens here?”
“Then you should stay here—!”
“It is obvious that this terror attack was aimed at both you and the saintess. Naturally, the black mage would have prepared countermeasures. You want to go alone into such a place? Are you out of your mind…”
“Card…nios. Your words… ugh.”
“Saintess, you mustn’t move.”
The trembling hero.
The saintess who currently felt displeasure toward me.
This much was fine.
What mattered was accumulating the hero’s mistakes like this. Feeling satisfied, I obediently lowered my head.
“I spoke too harshly. I apologize.”
I turned away without further conversation. As I passed him, I heard the sound of grinding teeth and leather twisting.