The Heretic Cult
Not good.
What was unfolding before his eyes right now was genuinely, thoroughly not good.
That was what Sian thought.
I figured anyone who wanders into a shabby corner-shop at the crack of dawn must have their reasons, but really.
Turns out they weren't customers. They were assassins.
Well, no—since they'd walked right in through the front door, calling them assassins was probably a stretch.
Either way, in Sian's estimation, the current situation was the worst. The men had drawn daggers, and the killing intent radiating off them was anything but ordinary.
And…
The ones who would have to face these unsavory characters in a cramped little shop were a retired adventurer and an elderly alchemist.
However you looked at it, "favorable" was not a word that applied.
Doesn't seem like they'd be open to talking it out, either.
While Sian was busy fretting over all this, one of the men moved to guard the door while the other began closing in. And Berka, surveying the pair, gave a dismissive little snort—
Whoosh!
"?!"
—and hurled something at them.
The robed man, startled, batted the incoming object aside with his dagger—
Crash!
—and the sound of shattering glass rang out.
The very next instant—
"Get down, brat!"
The old woman yanked Sian behind the counter, and simultaneously—
KABOOOOM!!!!
"KYAAAAAH?!"
"GURK?!"
A shockwave rolled over them along with a wave of searing heat. His ears shrieked, and the stench of burning assailed his nose.
The liquid that had burst from the test tube the robed man shattered had been explosive. With the shop so cramped and not a proper piece of cover to be found, they would have been swallowed whole by the blast.
Had Berka's yank come even a moment later, Sian would have been caught dead in the middle of it.
When the explosion settled, Sian peeked his head out cautiously. The shop was, it went without saying, cleanly obliterated—even the front door had been blown clean off its hinges.
"……What on earth did you throw?"
"Explosive liquid."
"First I've ever heard such a thing existed."
"Made it out of boredom."
Sian seriously doubted boredom was a legitimate reason to stockpile something like that.
He laid a hand on the counter that had shielded him. It wasn't just some slapdash wooden structure—there was a stone wall built inside, which was why the blast hadn't punched through it and why it had protected the two of them.
I did wonder why this counter alone was weirdly sturdy…
So it had been a low stone wall with wood tacked on the front. Had she actually been preparing for a situation like this?
Berka brushed the explosion's dust off herself and clicked her tongue.
"Tch. Looks like I stepped on their tail after all."
"Now that you mention it, you did go on about interference and whatnot. Who are these people? Do you know them?"
"High probability they're the Heretic Cult bastards I told you about yesterday."
At her words, Sian stopped short and looked over the charred corpses that had once been men.
"The Heretic Cult? Why would they come after you…?"
"I told you, didn't I? I suspected you might be connected to them."
Right. She had been investigating whether Sian was the Heretic Cult's leader. Along the way she'd uncovered what their purpose was, and ever since, she hadn't just been investigating—she'd been running her own interference campaign against them. So they'd sent men to eliminate the woman obstructing them. Simple as that.
"Their purpose?"
"That's the one."
The cult's goal, as he'd heard it, was to become a god using the Blood of God. But if that were all, Sian couldn't see why she'd need to stick her nose in at all. When he made a face that plainly said he didn't follow—
"Did that Hohenheim fellow never tell you what goes into the Blood of God?"
"The ingredients… wait?!"
At her words, Sian's eyes went wide as he recalled what the Philosopher's Stone had been made from in that old manga. He stared at Berka in disbelief.
"So you did know."
She looked back at him with an expression that said she'd expected nothing less.
The ingredient that went into the Blood of God was, quite simply, human beings.
According to Berka, the cult's leader preached an absurd doctrine: that he would become a god, and his followers would become parts of that god—drops of its blood—living eternal lives. On that nonsense, the cult had been swelling its ranks.
"The myths say the gods used their own blood when they created humanity. Follow the story in reverse, and it's hardly strange to imagine humans becoming the blood of a god. I don't know who coined the term 'Blood of God,' but they saw straight to the heart of it."
Sian hadn't even known such a myth existed. Apparently it was something of a hidden mystery, recorded only in certain forbidden tomes.
How Berka had gotten her hands on them was another matter entirely.
"If that's the case, it's no different from the human sacrifices those evil-god worshippers pull."
"Close, but not quite. They don't worship some particular evil god—they're lunatics trying to become one themselves."
"Is that even possible?"
"I didn't think it was either. In any case, that's why they're called a heretic cult."
It wasn't that they were heretics for worshipping an evil god—they were heretics for attempting to become gods in mortal flesh.
"Setting right and wrong aside, you could even call it efficient. Better to become the god yourself than spend a lifetime offering sacrifices to one."
Yesterday, tossed off in passing, it had sounded like small talk. As it turned out, these were people operating on a scale far beyond anything he'd imagined.
And—
"……"
"That's why I said what I did. There had to be a reason that Hohenheim character spoke to you about the Blood of God."
The method to become a god.The Philosopher's Stone equals the God's Stone. And even the ingredients needed to make it.
The minor details might differ, but the cores were nearly identical—which meant the more similarities piled up, the deeper Berka's misunderstanding was doomed to grow.
Sian was about to press her with more questions when he felt a commotion rising outside.
"…We've wasted too much time."
"Tell me about it."
The suspicious robed figures he'd seen hadn't been just two. Drawn by the commotion, more were running in.
"Let's save the long story for later."
Saying so, Berka opened a small hidden door beneath the counter and began pulling out potions.
"…Do those explode too?"
"Some of them do."
He wanted to ask what else they did, but this was hardly the time for a leisurely chat, so he let it go.
"Take these."
Berka shoved a couple of palm-sized glass bottles into Sian's arms. One held a murky black liquid; the other shimmered faintly red.
"The black one's a smoke screen. Throw it when I tell you to. The red one… well, you've seen it, so you know."
"…A healing potion?"
"It's a bomb."
"Then why on earth would you make it red?! Of course I'd get confused!"
"It came out that color when I brewed it, you little punk. And they're subtly different."
To Sian they looked absolutely identical no matter how he studied them.
Was he supposed to distinguish between them the way women could tell apart shades of cosmetics?
Just then, the sound of many footsteps came closing in from the shattered front of the shop.
"Use them later, not now—and just try to keep up."
As she moved to spirit him away somewhere—
"GUAAAAH!"
"What now?!"
"What's out there?!"
The commotion outside grew louder and more frenzied. But it didn't seem to be coming toward them—it was different somehow, off at a distance—
"GAKH!?"
Through the broken doorway, Sian saw a robed figure go flying through the air.
One at first, then two, then three—the numbers kept climbing, and before long it wasn't just bodies being hurled; some of the robed men had started fleeing outright.
At the sight, even Berka, who'd been about to run, stopped in her tracks to take stock of the situation.
He had no idea what was happening, but one thing was clear: something absolutely terrifying was headed this way.
"A monster, it's a mon—UGH!"
Shhk!
The words only reached them after the fleeing man collapsed just in front of the shop.
With that, Sian knew exactly who was approaching.
But he was the only one who recognized her.
Berka did not.
"Something monstrous is coming. We need to run. Now."
"No, granny, you don't need to run."
"What?"
The moment Berka's face twisted into what kind of nonsense is that—
Someone touched down outside the shop.
She naturally poked her head through the now doorless entrance, peered inside, and—catching Sian's eye—broke into a smile.
"Teacher!"
"……Teacher?"
Berka's bewildered voice beat Sian's reply by a mile—which was to say, the situation had exceeded her capacity to comprehend.
Sian decided the explanations could wait and stepped toward Tiana.
"You actually found me."
"When I heard the commotion outside, I investigated and found strange men searching for you, Teacher. I captured them one by one, and it led me here."
"They were searching for me?"
"I was waiting for you at the city gate when I overheard them talking."
"……"
She was camped out at the gate? Tenacious… no, wait, that's not the point.
From what Tiana told him, the cultists had apparently been discussing orders to eliminate Berka—and the person standing beside her. She'd meant to ignore it, but the moment Sian's name came up, she'd wrung every scrap of information out of them.
"They wouldn't have been able to lay a single fingertip on you, Teacher, but I judged it would be a nuisance, so I moved to deal with them first… There were more of them than I expected, so it took some time. My apologies."
"Ah—no, it's fine."
Even just the bodies sprawled across the alley made for quite a count.
If every last one of these men had been hunting him personally…
Chilling just to think about.
The first two had been bad enough, and one glance was enough to tell these people were anything but ordinary. Alone, Sian doubted he could have held even one of them down.
Just then, a hand tapped his shoulder.
"So. Who's this pretty young lady, then?"
Funny—she'd had no trouble cursing him out like a sailor when he was a total stranger.
Did she ration her insults by the person, too?
He was thinking exactly that and about to answer when Tiana spoke first.
"I am Tiana, disciple of Sian, Teacher!"
"……Disciple of whom?"
"Disciple of Sian, Teacher!"
Berka turned a flabbergasted gaze on Sian, and their eyes met.
"What. What is it."
"……Just who the hell are you, really?"
The old woman's misunderstanding seemed to be deepening right along with everything else—and all Sian could do was sigh.