Black Moon (4)
Azod believed everything was proceeding smoothly.
A cultist who had scouted the Deep Night Clan's compound returned with news that Ren was not there.
He had not originally intended to use a Relic from the start, but he decided it would be better to clear out the clan's forces quickly and concentrate his full strength on the fight against their leader and chief mage — just in case he also had to deal with troops from the Luen Order.
So Azod made no attempt to hide. He stepped into the open before the compound and drew out a first-grade Relic.
It was a jet-black bell. Palm-sized, ordinary enough to look at — yet cast from a fragment steeped in a god's power.
Like most Relics, its appearance told you nothing. It was not even an artifact that ran on mana.
When the bell was shaken and the clapper struck, no sound came out. But the space it touched began to lose its functions, one by one.
Movement. Voice. And finally, mana itself.
The truly terrifying part was that the ringer could exempt any target of his choosing from that influence.
While the Relic was active, the bell-ringer could not move, and the life force drained from his body at a terrifying rate. It put his life at risk — but the Black Moon Cult had no shortage of people willing to take that risk.
The people of Deep Night seemed to have no idea a Relic even existed. Of course they didn't. They had never so much as laid eyes on a god's power.
They stood there stupidly watching the situation unfold, unable to mount any response at all.
And the moment their control over mana finally slipped away, the cultists surged forward as one.
Everything was going according to plan.
This was a festival of blood-soaked worship, offered beneath His black name.
As Azod watched his cultists butcher the adventurers without mercy, one of the remaining followers at his side spoke up carefully.
"I know it's late to bring this up, but… will dealing with these people actually solve anything? We don't even know for certain that the ones who took the Relic will come back here with it."
"Hmm…"
Azod did not snap at him. Perhaps the sight of things going so well had cooled some of his rage. He stroked his chin for a moment, lost in thought.
"…If this really is the Luen Order's doing, it doesn't matter whether they've already recovered the Relic and left — and it doesn't matter if they came here with it either."
He surveyed the battlefield with what he considered a calm eye and went on.
"If they came with it, we take the Relic back. If they didn't, then they still pay the price for striking our hand and siding with heretics. With their lives."
"…"
He spoke as if he were being cold and rational, but anyone could see the truth. He had started this without thinking through the aftermath, without any real plan.
Even so, Azod was one of the Black Moon Cult's few priests.
He had not inherited the Black Moon's power directly, but he belonged to the tier that could wield objects imbued with it — a rank of authority and ability far beyond that of ordinary cultists.
The follower fell silent and turned his eyes back to the front.
The water was already spilled. The bell had already rung.
Fortunately, the scene before them was still a hymn to slaughter.
And then something fell from the sky.
It was a person.
Azod's brow furrowed.
Even allowing that the man had only just entered the space and so was not yet under the Relic's influence, the way he dropped out of the sky without a single trace of presence was, by itself, enough to make an extraordinary force of presence hit you on pure instinct.
But no matter how strong he was, this was a battlefield under a Relic's power. In the end, he would just be more meat for the slaughter.
The man walked unhurriedly into the heart of the fighting.
The cultists ringing him in all turned their eyes on him, but he showed not the slightest sign of being cowed. If anything, even with every advantage on their side, some unnameable pressure made the cultists flinch and edge back.
He closed the distance at a leisurely pace and raised a fist.
No sword. No mana. It was not even the point yet where mana should have slipped beyond control.
His whole manner said he had never intended to use mana in the first place.
And every time he swung his arm, cultists went down like scarecrows. Dull cracks of breaking bone rang out. Bodies tore open, and blood sprayed into the air.
…Up to that point, it was still fine.
No matter how strong he was, the Relic's power would soon lock down his movement, and then—
"Doesn't something feel off?"
"…Yeah."
It was wrong. Not a single trace of mana came off the man.
And yet under his fists, the cultists crumpled without resistance. Men with swords never even managed a reaction before their heads went flying. They never got as far as defending — they never even registered that he had reached them before death took them.
Even if they had tried to defend, it would not have made a difference.
What you felt was overwhelming strength.
A presence that could stand comparison with the power of a Relic itself.
No — what the eye saw hit harder than that.
He was ignoring the rules.
Under the Relic's power, under the laws of a battlefield ruled by a god's influence, he was moving as if the whole thing were a joke.
One. Two. Before long, dozens. Every last person who had stormed the Deep Night Clan went down to that one man's hands.
You could not even call it a fight. It was like crushing ants crawling on the floor. Every single strike brought death with it.
A massacre.
The same brutal slaughter they had inflicted on the Deep Night Clan was now being returned to them from the opposite position. No — in a form more hopeless still.
Even free of the Relic's influence, not one of the cultists managed a scream.
They had watched with the complacent thought that the restrictions would kick in if they just waited a little longer — and they were dead before that little longer had even passed.
All of them.
Azod stood with his eyebrows raised, unable to tear his eyes from the scene.
Fear or shock were not enough to name the feeling.
The point where the Relic's constraints should have appeared had clearly come and gone, and the man's movements had not changed in the slightest.
In the middle of a blood-soaked massacre, standing alone among the collapsed corpses — that man.
With blood still dripping from his lowered fists, he turned his head.
And looked at Azod.
The instant that gaze landed on him, Azod's body locked up on pure instinct. His whole frame froze the way prey freezes when it meets a predator.
His heart began to hammer like mad, and cold sweat poured out of him.
The man's movements, by contrast, were utterly quiet.
His form vanished for a moment in a pool of blood, then reappeared in the blink of an eye right in front of Azod's face.
From that short remaining distance, the man walked toward him with unhurried steps.
Even then, Azod could not move a single foot.
Neither could the cultist standing beside him.
Of all the forces Azod had brought, only three were left alive. Himself, the one cultist at his side, and one more some distance away — still holding the bell, staring blankly into space as if his soul had left him.
The man with the ash-grey hair glanced once at the vacant-eyed figure off to the side, then came toward Azod again.
"W-wait…"
Azod forced the words out in a trembling voice, but the man acted as if he had not heard a thing. He reached out and took hold of the head of the cultist frozen beside Azod.
He squeezed. The cultist's head burst with a wet crunch, like a crushed piece of fruit. Bone and flesh spattered across Azod's cheek.
Then the man looked at Azod again and spoke. His finger pointed at the vacant-eyed man in the distance.
"That thing the man over there is holding. Can you explain it?"
"Are… are you with the Luen Order?"
"Luen?"
The man tilted his head as if he had never heard the name.
Azod already knew, of course. This man was not from the Luen Order.
Not even the Luen Order could raise a monster like this.
But Azod's mind, drowned in the terror of imminent death, was already half-paralyzed. He had blurted out whatever came to hand on pure instinct, just to buy a little time.
"W-was it you who took our Relic?"
"Relic… if you mean the necklace, then yes. So I'll ask again. That Relic you mentioned. Can you explain it?"
His tone was as calm as everyday conversation, and his face was completely unbothered. He did not look like the man who had just slaughtered dozens of people on this ground.
Which only made him more chilling.
Azod was certain that if he did not tell the truth, he would die on the spot.
"I'm not sure exactly what kind of explanation you want…"
"The black mana… is it even mana? Anyway, that black energy pouring out of the Relic. Do you know anything about what it actually is?"
"Th-that's…"
He had no intention of hiding it. He did not even have the room to decide whether to hide it.
The answer was simple.
A god's power.
The power of the Black Moon they served and worshipped.
Something alien that existed outside the rules of this world — something the ignorant, whose vision stopped at the borders of this continent, could never understand.
The sacred power of an Outer God.
The moment Azod opened his mouth to answer with whatever rose to mind—
Something painted his vision pure black.
And with a brutal impact that drove itself mercilessly into his skull, Azod lost consciousness.
Bell watched a living man's eyes go completely black right in front of him. The body went limp, and a moment later the breath left it.
Bell had not taken the life, so it had to be something external. A force Bell had not even been able to sense.
Death you could neither see nor feel…
Only then was Bell certain.
Beyond the presence inside the Forbidden Zone citadel, there was something new he would have to watch for.