Cultists vs. the Committee
A single thrust that fused the weight of a lance charge with the speed of a fencer’s strike.
She closed the distance with her footwork, accelerated, then drove her arm forward for a second surge of speed, packing the blow with crushing internal force. The thrust cut a flawlessly clean line straight ahead, free of the slightest excess motion.
And at the tip of the rapier was a body.
A cultist of the so-called Zealous Martial Theists.
She had taken the blade meant for the Swordsmanship Specialist.
“Gahk…!”
The Zealous Martial Theist.
She had once been an ordinary office worker. Just the sort of person people call a history nerd.
She loved the history of humankind. The grand saga of how creatures that had once been nothing more than powerless apes came to conquer the galaxy.
What she loved most of all was the era from Terra’s Middle Ages—when Namgung Hwe still walked the world—through the early age of galactic expansion. The golden age when a living god had led humanity.
That grandeur. That brilliance. Those overwhelming achievements.
Gazing upon that magnificent trail of footprints, she felt as if she herself grew greater for belonging to it. What people call national pride, pure and simple.
One day she wanted to become part of history too. For a wage worker living the same day over and over, it was nothing more than a dream within a dream.
Still, carrying a childish wish in your heart isn’t a bad thing.
That was what she believed.
And then, one day, she met some strange people in purple robes.
“Martial Theist!”
The Swordsmanship Specialist cried out in panic.
The attack had been meant for her.
The Swordsmanship Specialist’s innate talent for martial arts was low. She lacked that so-called born “sense,” and so she would never have even registered the rapier strike before it landed clean.
That was why the Martial Theist had intercepted it.
She was no prodigy of instinct either. But as someone who studied history, she knew roughly what kind of martial art Karina used.
Karina “Normandy” Rothschild.
Normandy was a surname from the Frankish region of Terra’s Western world—the nation that first fused swordsmanship with the heavy-cavalry lance charge.
The moment she saw Karina’s stance, she stepped forward.
Surely she was sturdier than an aging Swordsmanship Specialist.
“Gahk…!!!”
The Zealous Martial Theist spat blood-flecked air. A hole had been punched through her side.
The instant the rapier touched her body, she seized the blade with both hands, trying to bleed off its speed. She reinforced her lower body and core, bracing with everything she had.
Even so, she could not fully absorb the impact. Her body was driven hard backward—toward the Swordsmanship Specialist behind her.
The rapier was still buried in her side.
“Kh…!!!!!”
The rapier did not stop.
The Martial Theist and the Swordsmanship Specialist collided.
And still the rapier remained lodged. The blade that had pierced the Martial Theist slammed into the Swordsmanship Specialist’s side as well.
—Thuk!!!!!
It stabbed through. Blood ran.
Like a skewer made of two human beings, a single sword had run them both through.
And even then, residual force remained in the rapier.
From the tip that had just barely punched out of the Swordsmanship Specialist’s back, a shockwave erupted.
—KWAANG!!!!!!
The shockwave scattered into empty air and vanished. The canyon’s atmosphere trembled faintly. Clods of earth crumbled from the nearby cliffs.
Even after taking two people as offerings, that much power still remained.
But the cultists were not finished.
“Sister!!! Attack!!!!”
The Zealous Martial Theist, body pierced, coughed blood as she screamed. Both palms clamped down on the rapier, sealing the blade in place.
Behind her, the Swordsmanship Specialist, driven by pure desperation, prepared her counter.
First she wrenched her body backward, sliding free of the rapier-skewer. Blood gushed from the hole the blade left in her side. Then her tentacle-arms began to paint a sword form—the very sword style she had always only ever swung inside her own head.
The form she could finally draw with actual arms.
Now. At last. It took shape.
And in that instant, Karina did something astonishing.
—Click.
She worked the rapier and separated the blade from the hilt. The weapon had been designed that way from the start.
The blade remained gripped in the Martial Theist’s hands. The hilt was free.
The… hilt…?
The Martial Theist froze in confusion.
Karina poured internal force into the hilt. The energy that spilled from it took shape in an instant—a slender sword, the form of a rapier. A blade made of pure internal force.
A blade forged of pure internal force, shaped in the image of a rapier.
“Heart Sword!!!!!!”
The Swordsmanship Specialist’s cry of shock rang out.
“Impossible!!! At her age!!!!!”
—Shuuuk!!
The Heart Sword swept left and right in a great arc. In a single motion, the Swordsmanship Specialist’s form was mercilessly dismantled. Before the tentacle-arms could even complete the sequence, it brushed the sword path and shattered its structure.
The master of the broken technique wore a look of pure disbelief. Her eyes trembled violently.
And the Heart Sword swung once more.
—Chwaak!!!!!
It cut a long diagonal across the Swordsmanship Specialist’s torso. Not deep enough to kill—but more than enough to end the fight.
“Kraaaagh!!!!”
The Swordsmanship Specialist screamed in agony.
—Thud!
She dropped to her knees. Combat-incapable.
“I held back.”
Karina dismissed the Heart Sword as she spoke.
The Martial Theist with the hole in her belly could not continue fighting either.
Karina’s victory.
“Get them first aid.”
Her declaration of victory was matter-of-fact and spare.
Meanwhile, the Leader and Hyukryeon Wiseol were locked in a battle of pure strategy.
Hyukryeon Wiseol was not as strong as Karina. He was closer to an administrative officer than a front-line fighter. For that reason, he had developed his martial arts not toward high-firepower techniques that ended a fight in one blow, but toward defense.
Perhaps that was why he was struggling now.
“Remarkable internal energy. Like a spring that never runs dry.”
The cultist Leader before him—a man who practiced energy absorption. For some time now he had been steadily draining Hyukryeon Wiseol’s internal force.
The longer the standoff dragged on, the more he lost. Hyukryeon Wiseol had consumed a great many spiritual medicines and possessed a vast total reserve—but that vast reserve was still flowing, little by little, into the cultist.
Even so, Hyukryeon Wiseol made no attempt to change the shape of the fight. He left the mutual probing and the drawn-out stalemate exactly as they were. If the man used energy absorption, he simply allowed it.
At this rate the Leader’s total internal force would eventually surpass his own. He accounted for that too.
The reason was simple.
The match would be decided soon enough.
Sure enough, victory reports came from his colleagues.
“I won. Subdued.”
Karina’s triumphant report.
And then…
“I… I subdued them too…”
Bernoulli.
He had won as well.
Two cultists lay collapsed before him. One was the Conch Shell Custodian; the other, the Public Relations Envoy. Both were coughing blood at the corners of their mouths. Their clothes and skin were torn in places, as if they had been riddled with hidden weapons. There was no sign of poison arts. Between poison masters, there was an unspoken etiquette about never deploying one’s primary lethal toxins to the end. Those led to actual murder.
So the injuries were not fatal—only combat-incapacitating. He, too, had held back.
“Ahh… my people…”
The Leader’s grief was genuine.
They had known the opponents were strong enough to stake their lives against—but to lose so utterly…
“Even so, you fought well… I am proud of you all…”
He offered his condolences. Hyukryeon Wiseol, however, had no intention of indulging him.
“Enough talk. Surrender quietly and submit to binding. We will remand you to the planetary government authorities.”
“You would arrest us for finding a fortuitous encounter…”
“If that fortuitous encounter threatens the peace of the galaxy—yes.”
“Fair enough. That is the Committee for you. People who take the peace and continuity of the galaxy as their highest value.”
“Wishing for peace and continuity is a virtue everyone ought to hold. Even the Cult Master who leads the Demonic Cult desires the same. Your order is a disgrace to the Demonic Cult. Extremists always destroy the groups they claim to serve.”
“A disgrace to the Demonic Cult, you say. On the contrary—we are its foundation. What do you think the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult was for in the first place?”
“Nonsense. This galaxy must stand as one. Only then can we answer common threats—”
“And those threats are gone now, are they not?”
“What did you say…?”
“There was a time when the Orthodox, the Unorthodox, and the Demonic Cult joined hands to fight the Space Locusts. But that war is over.”
“The Communists remain.”
“Those people sealed every dimensional gate into their own territory and cut themselves off. Their technology and their population already lag behind ours. They are no longer a target for war.”
“That does not mean desiring war for its own sake is anything but madness.”
“No. Only conflict brings progress. Stagnant water rots. It decays, it corrupts, it grows incompetent. And then one cannot ascend.”
“That kind of thinking violates the code of chivalry!”
“Precisely. That is why we are extremists. Even so, we will not stop. Ascension—that is the essence of the Heavenly Demon Divine Cult.”
“Do you truly mean that? That the galaxy must be plunged into a furnace of fire!?”
“…”
The Leader fell silent, thinking.
In truth, he did not particularly want a grand war. What he had just spoken was the official position of the Hernesh Order—nothing more.
He agreed with it to a certain extent, yes… but he was neither a psychopath nor a warmonger.
He was simply a father. A father who wanted to raise his child well.
Even if he died or something went wrong, the Order would take responsibility for the child and raise them. They would spare no support for the offspring of a martyr. That much was certain. He had seen it with his own eyes—how carefully the Order cared for the children left behind when parents in the faith were killed.
He worked only for his child.
And so, now, there was no more hesitation.
“I will make one final struggle.”
The Leader spoke quietly.
“What struggle? The situation is already over.”
“I do have a trump card.”
“What do you—”
Before Hyukryeon Wiseol could finish his rebuttal, the Leader launched himself forward.
Light-body arts and footwork of terrifying speed and refinement. His destination: Tang Bernoulli.
“Mutual destruction?! Bernoulli! Dodge!”
Bernoulli had already vaulted backward before the warning was fully out. The Leader would never reach him.
But Bernoulli had never been the target.
What the Leader went for was the fallen Conch Shell Custodian—more precisely, the magical conch the Custodian had been holding.
The Leader snatched up the conch. Then he poured internal force into it. All of his own, and every drop he had stolen from Hyukryeon Wiseol through energy absorption.
—Grrrrrrrrrrr.
At once the conch began to vibrate, emitting an ominous sound.