In the Red Mist
At the heart of the Beastro Order.
The Holy Kingdom.
Scratch. Scratch.
Inside its vast conference chamber, the only sound that echoed was the quiet scratching of someone writing.
“Haa….”
The occasional sigh, the way she clutched at her head as if the walls themselves were closing in—everything pointed to the depth of her exhaustion.
The voice belonged to none other than the Saintess of the Holy Kingdom, Arcelia.
She was mired in a problem that refused to yield.
…No matter how thoroughly I search, nothing turns up.
Even after scouring every record she could reach, the information she needed remained stubbornly absent.
Having rushed back to the Holy Kingdom, Arcelia had already spent days barely leaving this chamber, buried under work that never seemed to end.
I can’t shake the feeling that someone deliberately erased it all—or smuggled it out.
Most of the records concerning the Great Catastrophe and the cult that served him had simply vanished.
Poor management, some might say. Or the complacency that settled over a world grown too peaceful.
But even so, there were lines that should never have been crossed.
I haven’t even managed to uncover the Bell’s detailed specifications or how it actually works.
At first she hadn’t worried. As long as no one interfered, the archives and records sealed deep in the Holy Kingdom’s vaults should have endured the centuries untouched.
Yet the records of the Great Catastrophe, the cult tied to him, and nearly everything else from a thousand years ago—from the age of the Hero Carius—had, for reasons she could not fathom, largely disappeared.
At the absolute latest, they were gone a hundred years ago.
In other words, long before Arcelia was born, someone had been quietly siphoning away every scrap of information related to the Great Catastrophe.
For a nation as vast and prosperous as the Holy Kingdom, the sheer clumsiness of the oversight—the holes left gaping open—defied understanding.
They noticed the losses and simply decided it wasn’t worth fretting over.
Haa—
In the end, there was almost nothing left for Arcelia to do.
Even the Record Plates of the End she had hurriedly distributed to the Executors—she still hadn’t fully grasped how to use them.
All I’ve managed to confirm is that they operate on principles similar to the Bell of Catastrophe.
Worse, the plates themselves were scarce. The inventories claimed more than fifty were stored in the vaults; when she actually went looking, fewer than ten remained.
And she could hardly divert the Holy Kingdom’s researchers to study metal plates when a mountain of other urgent investigations already waited.
Even so, something else kept grinding at her thoughts.
Executor Gradion and Executor Leos. Both of them vanished.
The disappearance of the two Executors she had sent to investigate had thrown the Holy Kingdom into open turmoil.
Before, a few voices had still insisted nothing truly catastrophic could happen. After the vanishings, every last person began treating the matter with deadly seriousness.
Some still argued for trust—that the Executors would return safe and sound before long….
I don’t believe that for a second.
Arcelia refused to be optimistic. Her unease only grew.
“…….”
Frustration. Helplessness. And, if she was honest, a thread of fear. She had never faced anything like this before.
Yet she could not show weakness. She had to remain unyielding—someone everyone else could lean on.
And somehow, while those heavy feelings pressed down on her, Arcelia found herself picturing one man’s face.
Juhan.
The man she had met in Anton Village.
He had arrived like a sudden wind, looked at her without a single preconception, and for the first time saw Arcelia exactly as she was.
Barely a month had passed since they parted, yet it already felt like more than a year.
I never even got to say a proper goodbye.
Perhaps the forced nature of that parting made the absence cut deeper.
Then there was the report Stigma Knight Velkras had submitted. It contained details about Juhan, and reading them had left Arcelia thoroughly dissatisfied.
No matter how I look at it, he never managed to persuade him.
Velkras had written that the persuasion had gone well and that Juhan’s reaction had not been bad.
If that were true, he wouldn’t be avoiding me now.
Since receiving that report, Arcelia had not laid eyes on Velkras once—almost as if the knight were deliberately staying out of her path.
Perhaps he simply could not bring himself to lie to her face. She did not know. Curiosity burned, yet she could not easily put the question into words.
“Haa….”
In the end only one course remained open to her.
“Juhan.”
Wait until that man walked into the Holy Kingdom of his own free will. Hope that he would accept the title of Pilgrimage Knight she had offered, and come.
“…….”
And yet, strangely, her mood had lightened—just a little.
A faint smile tugged at her lips.
Thinking of him seemed to clear away the tangled noise that had filled her head only moments before.
That fragile happiness did not last.
Knock. Knock.
“Saintess, may I enter?”
“…Come in.”
Someone was at the door of the conference chamber, requesting permission.
The voice was familiar. High Priest Roberon.
“…….”
Arcelia’s expression darkened the moment she recognized it.
“Has something happened?”
“…Yes. Unfortunately.”
Whenever Roberon sought her out here, it was always to deliver bad news.
In the present climate, no other kind of report would be worth bringing.
He drew a sheaf of documents and approached.
“A report has arrived from Urutun Village.”
“Urutun Village…? Ah.”
Urutun Village—the one that vanished overnight.
She remembered it well. Not far from the Anton Baronry, and among the recent string of anomalies it had drawn the sharpest attention.
That was why, unusually, an Executor had been dispatched there.
“Executor Antara should already be on site. What kind of trouble could possibly—”
“…Ahem.”
Roberon cleared his throat as though the words themselves tasted bitter.
“Executor Antara… has gone missing.”
“…What?”
Even hearing it with both ears, she struggled to accept it.
Antara as well?
But Roberon was not finished.
“And regarding the man you mentioned, Saintess—Juhan.”
The unexpected name dropped from his lips without warning.
“…Juhan?”
What possible connection could he have to this?
Curiosity pulled her forward before she could stop herself.
“It appears that man has caused an incident capable of shaking the entire Holy Kingdom.”
Thud.
The quill slipped from Arcelia’s fingers and clattered onto the desk.
Juhan’s question hung in the air: Did you come alone?
“…What?”
Executor Antara’s brow furrowed. The look on his face made it plain he was thinking, Has this man lost his mind?
Shiiing—
The blade he had drawn at some point gleamed with a cold, hungry light.
Perhaps Juhan’s absurd remark had convinced him that further conversation was a waste of time.
“I won’t kill you.”
Antara spoke the words while staring straight at Juhan. To Juhan’s ears, of course, it sounded far closer to I just won’t kill you.
Planning to hack off my arms and legs and drag me back, then?
Juhan eyed the tip of the sword and muttered the thought to himself. Given that the man was an Executor, the threat was hardly surprising. Right now Juhan looked, to any outsider, like a dangerous cultist. Better to take him alive and wring information out of him than cut him down in a fit of rage.
“…….”
While Antara prepared himself, Juhan quietly unfurled his senses, checking the surroundings for any other presence.
A sharp prickle of power answered.
“So you’ve given up on hiding it.”
Antara must have felt the shift. He looked at Juhan with open disgust, as though regarding something filthy.
Saaa—
Satisfied that no one else was near, Juhan let out a quiet breath of relief and brushed a hand across his chest.
“That’s a relief.”
Fwoosh!
In that same instant Antara launched himself forward.
The speed was on an entirely different level from Hadley’s. It was the kind of speed that justified the title of Executor—so fast that if Juhan had not already reinforced his body with power, his head would have left his shoulders before he even registered the motion.
Slaaash—
The sword tip stopped a hair’s breadth from Juhan’s throat. A few centimeters more and it would have punched clean through.
But—
Wooong—
Crunch!
“…….”
The blade could go no farther. It simply could not advance.
Because beneath Juhan’s hand a small rift in space had opened without warning.
Grrr….
A massive shadow tore its way out of that rift.
At first glance it resembled a dog. The difference lay in scale: the creature was so enormous that even the single head it had thrust into the open world completely filled Juhan’s vision.
Its true identity was one of Juhan’s own creations—the three-headed mad hound known as No. 6.
When Juhan’s view cleared again after that sudden appearance—
Thud.
“…….”
Antara lay crumpled at his feet, upper body torn away in a single, brutal bite.
“…I almost lost the transformation there.”