The Saintess Descends
The Blood Sky Cult forces that had formed the train pursuit squad had all returned to their headquarters. Simon, Lethe, and Prince hid behind a tree a short distance away, observing the state of the cult's main base.
The Blood Sky Cult headquarters was a massive cavern that had been converted into a building. From the outside, it looked like nothing more than an empty plain — but the moment Lethe pierced through the perception-interference magic, an enormous structure loomed into view.
Cultists scurried about in what looked like frantic war preparations, and zombies had been stationed in every corner of the building without a single gap.
[An organization fielding that many zombies? You'd be hard-pressed to find one even in the Dark Alliance.]
Prince said.
[And a good chunk of them are humanoid zombies, on top of that. What the hell is going on here?]
"……"
Lethe, standing beside him, heaved a deep sigh.
"What do you think it is? They dragged off our citizens and made them."
"That's what I want to know too,"
Simon picked up the thread.
"The Holy Federation persecutes and hunts down heretics as harshly as anyone could. So how did a heretical sect this massive come to exist?"
"The Blood Sky Cult isn't your average heresy. It's a very special case."
The history of the Deva Church, the state religion of the Holy Federation, had always gone hand in hand with the history of heresy. The larger the Deva Church's influence grew, the more exponentially heresies multiplied. The ignorant masses were far easier to sway with the sweet-talking of someone standing right in front of them than with the difficult words of scripture.
Lethe offered a simple example.
"Go to some dark little backwater village that only knows rumors, and show them you can wield divinity."
She raised her palm and summoned a soft glow of holy power.
"What would people who've farmed their whole lives know? They see divinity before their eyes, so they believe."
Typically, these heresies formed around expelled priests and natural awakeners who had never entered the Holy Coffin, twisting deviant doctrines in their hands.
But the Blood Sky Cult was different. It had swelled its numbers deliberately, and in a radical way.
"They began administering Cores to the residents."
At those words, Simon's mouth fell open.
"Cores, in the Holy Federation?"
"As you know, the Federation's media is under the strict control of central Efnel. To the public, all they know is that the Dark Alliance people are vile and wicked. There's no way they'd ever have heard of something like a Core."
Simon sank into thought.
"Now I understand why Efnel keeps the existence of Cores hidden."
"And why is that?"
"Because anyone could open one."
Lethe nodded, her face hard.
"Exactly that."
Jet-Black was more accessible than divinity. Assuming a caster was present, all it took was creating a Core in your body — that was it.
Even people whose low holy compatibility had doomed them to a life of farming would gain the chance to display a brand-new talent once they opened a Core.
But by doctrine, Efnel flatly denied the very existence of Jet-Black and necromancers themselves.
And what if necromancers who had opened Cores began sprouting up like bamboo shoots across the Holy Federation's land? What if they organized, gathered their strength, and rose up against the current powers that be?
Prince, who had been listening quietly, burst into a low chuckle.
[From Efnel's perspective, nothing could be worse than that.]
"That's exactly what the Blood Sky Cult is doing. They press fake scriptures on residents who know nothing, tricking them into believing it's the true doctrine of the Goddess Deva, and they spout honeyed nonsense about how they'll let anyone wield divinity. Efnel controls access to holy power — but they claim they'll open it to everyone."
"So they win people over like that, implant Cores in their bodies, and turn them into necromancers?"
"Yes."
Thoroughly brainwashed by heretical doctrine, the Blood Sky Cult faithful genuinely believed Jet-Black was 'the power of the true Goddess.' A grotesque hybrid had been born — necromancers who wielded Jet-Black while singing the praises of the Goddess Deva.
"That is the true face of the Blood Sky Cult."
Simon nodded gravely. It was a story that sent a faint chill down his spine.
[Hold on, woman. You've taken forever to get to the point.]
"What do you mean, forever?"
[I mean, why does the cult have so many humanoid zombies?]
"……What do you think."
She heaved another long sigh.
"The people who died from the Core procedure. The ones who couldn't manage shape-shifting their Jet-Black. The ones who refused to join the faith. And everyone else they abducted or captured, used as test subjects until they dropped dead — then turned into zombies, every last one of them."
The Blood Sky Cult administered a 'special Core' of their own design to the people they took in.
Once the Core was opened, the year or two normally required to progress from simple Jet-Black release to shape-shifting was drastically shortened. The recipients gained holy resistance higher than that of an ordinary necromancer, and could wield a unique blood-flow magic — but of course, the side effects were severe.
"Every one of these atrocities,"
Simon summarized,
"gets pinned not on a heresy spawned from the Holy Federation, but on the necromancers of Kizen and the Dark Alliance. That's the Chief Inquisitor's goal, isn't it?"
"Exactly that. It's the goal of the Blood Sky Cult's upper echelon, too. I'm sure they've hidden piles of fake orders at the headquarters — documents 'proving' they've been taking commands from Kizen."
The scale of the incident was ballooning far beyond anything he had imagined.
Saving Anna's life mattered, of course — but if things went on like this, the moment Anna was cured, Leshill would be dragged straight into a war.
"We have to stop it. No matter what."
Simon said quietly, lacing his fingers together. Lethe nodded.
"For what it's worth, we already averted the true worst-case when we stopped the holy train hijacking. All that's left is to prevent the Chief Inquisitor and the cult from manipulating the information."
Simon looked down at the briefcase in his hand.
This evidence, carried by the Blood Sky Cult's bishop, was the key to stopping the war. But releasing it to the media as things stood was impossible — information was tightly controlled, and there was a risk the Chief Inquisitor would interfere first.
Going straight to the Pope was out of the question, so the fallback plan was to deliver the evidence to a priest whom Lethe, an opponent of the war, trusted.
That was the skeleton of the plan.
"Well then, it's about time. I'll set up the teleport-guiding magic circle now."
Lethe crouched down where she stood, coated her fingertips with divinity, and began smoothly drawing the magic circle on the ground. Simon and Prince watched quietly.
"What's wrong?"
While Lethe was focused on drawing her equations, one section of the formulas kept vanishing. When she filled that part in, a different part disappeared, over and over.
Prince smirked at the sight of her struggling.
[Hey, woman. Weren't you supposed to be Efnel's finest?]
"Agh! Quit calling me woman, woman! I'll crack your skull open!"
[And you keep calling me undead, so don't start!]
After reining in the two as they picked yet another pointless fight, Simon crouched down as well and studied the circle.
"What's the problem?"
"It's not that I miscalculated — the teleport equations keep being artificially erased. Something's off here."
She lifted her fingers from the ground, flared her divinity all at once, and stamped the magic circle onto the earth in a single stroke. But this time, with a sharp crack, the teleport equations were torn apart.
"Teleport nullification? When did they even—"
Her gaze lifted toward the sky. Snow-white shells of divinity were streaking down from above.
"Oh, dammit—! MOVE!"
All three kicked off the ground instantly. The dozens of holy shells hanging in the air plummeted onto the very spot where they had been standing, erupting in explosions.
"Ugh!"
The sheer force of it sent Simon tumbling across the ground. Lethe and Prince had thrown themselves flat, apparently having dodged by a hair.
[Wh-what the hell is this?]
"There's a teleport-nullification barrier set up around here! They destroyed my equations and read my coordinates at the same time — that's how they targeted us!"
[The Blood Sky Cult's doing?]
"A pack of heretics couldn't possibly pull off such sophisticated work!"
Lethe ground her teeth and continued.
"This is definitely the Heresy Inquisition's people! How are they here already?"
Simon raised his head and shifted his gaze to the front.
Just as she'd said, a body of troops emerging from the forest to the north was marching toward the Blood Sky Cult headquarters.
"N-no way! They shouldn't arrive for another two or three days at the earliest!"
"That is strange."
Simon racked his brain.
The natural order of cause and effect was for the Inquisitors to arrive after the cult leaked its information. But the cult's followers hadn't fled yet — and the Inquisitors had even deployed a teleport-nullification barrier, as if to seal off every possible escape route.
Which left only one explanation.
"It seems the Inquisition Bureau's intelligence network was one step ahead after all."
At Simon's words, Lethe finally seemed to grasp the situation herself, and gave a small nod.
"Setting that aside — what do we do now? None of this was in the plan."
"……"
Simon deliberated for a moment, then spoke quickly.
"Prince! Into the subspace, now!"
[Huh? Wha—]
The instant Prince vanished into subspace, a pure-white lance of light came screaming in. The two of them twisted their bodies aside just in time.
"That's—!"
Da-da-da-da-da!
Two men in Heresy Inquisitor garb, mounted on horses, were charging toward them. The pair immediately spun around and fled.
"We are Inquisitors of the Heresy Inquisition!"
one of the mounted men shouted.
"Surrender at once and submit to questioning! Refuse the order and you will be shot dead!"
Thorough, to the very end. Reading the coordinates and shelling them with holy fire, then dispatching troops to finish the kill and confirm it.
"We don't have to listen to a word they say."
Lethe growled low in her throat as she fled over the branches.
"They just shelled us with every intent to kill, and now they want to 'question' us? Like hell. They crossed the line first — so we cross it right back."
Simon nodded. It was obvious that obeying them would mean losing the evidence in an instant.
The two sprang from tree to tree as they fled, while the Inquisitors rode them down, hacking through the surrounding trunks with ringing blows.
"HALT!"
"Run, and you only deepen your own guilt!"
They were preaching the logic of interrogation, but the look in their eyes was that of textbook fanatics.
Simon turned his head.
"No way around it. I'll take them down."
"Agreed."
The two, mid-stride between trees, immediately veered and dropped down to the bare earth. The Inquisitors yanked their reins and pulled up short.
Catching sight of Lethe's Efnel uniform, the pair looked briefly flustered — but as direct subordinates of the Heresy Inquisition Bureau, they showed no sign of backing down.
"On your knees, hands on your heads."
"Any resistance means immediate execution."
Simon and Lethe lowered their stances, ready to fight. One Inquisitor curled his lips into a sneer and drew the war hammer slung across his back.
"Oh? Planning to put up a fight? Even bett—"
Floom.
That was the moment. The bodies of the two mounted Inquisitors rose into the air as if trapped inside droplets of water.
"Wh-what is this?!"
Then, with a piercing whistle, they went soaring off into the distance. Simon blinked.
"What just happened?"
"Ah! She's here!"
Lethe broke into a radiant smile and pointed upward. Even the Inquisitors who had been marching on the Blood Sky Cult headquarters had frozen in their tracks.
Shaaaahhh—
From thousands of meters overhead, a woman with sea-colored hair descended in a flood of radiance. Holding a white flute in her hands, she played it slowly — what flowed from the instrument was less music than the sound of nature itself.
Simon swallowed hard.
"That person is……"
"Yes. She'd be Teacher Anna's direct junior."
Lethe clasped her hands together, her face flushed with reverence.
"Saintess Israfil."
Israfil's appearance was so sudden that both sides were thrown into disarray — the Blood Sky Cult preparing to defend their headquarters, and the Inquisitors in the middle of their assault alike.
Raite's face, in particular, flushed crimson with fury. He gripped his cross-blade and ground his teeth.
"We were so close, and now an interloper—!"
No one in the Holy Federation was exempt from heretical interrogation. Even if an archbishop-level figure stepped forward on paper, Raite's investigative authority ran stronger.
But the seven Saintesses — already regarded as demigods, transcending mortal authority — were a different matter entirely. They wielded a supra-legal power bound by no regulation whatsoever.
And Israfil was the leading figure of the Moderate Faction that opposed the war.
'What do you do now, Chief Inquisitor?'
As her music played on, the sky itself began to undulate.
Raite felt, with sinking certainty, the worst-case scenario unfolding right before his eyes.