Graveyard Village Semek (1)
A tide of corpses had crashed over Semek — the village that had served as the great communal graveyard of the Infula Church Territory for as long as anyone could remember.
"Yona, how can you!"
Vigrind shot up from her seat, her face flushed scarlet. That red-hot flush — whether pure fury or some unnameable emotion — laid bare, without a shred of filtering, the storm raging inside her. Yona, at the receiving end of that glare, only looked back at her with the expression of someone wondering, what's gotten into her this time?
"Semek is a village of the dead! Any priest of the Heavenly God Church is duty-bound to help — this is not something you haggle over!"
"I am a priest, sure."
Yona sank back deep into her chair and casually crossed her legs. The moment the nun's habit slid smoothly down and bared her pale thigh, Alec lunged forward and yanked the fabric back down into proper place.
"I'm a priest, sure — but this meathead, that lizard over there, and good old James here aren't. The Heavenly God Church never taught us to drag innocent bystanders into mortal danger, did it?"
"Then shouldn't YOU be the one persuading them?!"
"Why should I?"
She genuinely, honestly could not see a single reason why she should. Was there anything that moved an adventurer beyond money? The natural thing was to lay out the terms — how much the pay was, whether expenses were covered, whether there was some kind of success bonus — and only then accept the commission. Wasn't that how adventurers operated?
"Vigr, you grew up inside a cathedral, so I guess you've got no grip on reality. What moves adventurers is money. Money. Not piddling little faith, not justice."
"H-how dare you call my faith piddling…!"
Vigrind trembled, her fists clenched tight.
And yet — wasn't Yona a priest herself, someone raised on religious instruction inside a cathedral just like her? And surely that curriculum had included the name Semek. For her to act like this despite all that was simply incomprehensible.
"Hero, sir — please, say something to her!"
Vigrind believed that dragging the argument out any further would do serious damage to her own image.
The Hero, Ludwig, was an adventurer himself by origin.
And yet he was the very man who would soon depart on the Hero's Pilgrimage alongside her, a newly minted Saint.
Then surely — surely he could deliver a grand, noble word to Yona and to those adventurers alike—
"Saintess, you mustn't treat adventurers that way. If anything, here's what you ought to do instead."
Ludwig gestured for Vigrind to sit. Once she had taken her seat with a sour, reluctant expression, he gave a light cough and began.
"The way I see it, that gentleman over there — the village chief? No, pardon, not the chief — well, regardless. Going by what he's told us, Semek sits closer to Carpatia than to Infula, correct? Which means if we move right now, we'd arrive faster than any relief force from the Holy See. And if an army is being dragged along behind this thing, then the undead will surely burst forth in full force, as though the night belongs to them. Which is to say, for the moment, the only ones who can plug the breach are us. Isn't that right, Regent?"
"That's right."
Ceres gave a small nod. Semek wasn't sitting at the exact center of things, after all.
"Then what's so difficult about it? We don't know how dire the situation actually is, so setting the pay now would be meaningless anyway. Better to go, see it with our own eyes, and settle the price then. In exchange, guarantee us two or three gold coins apiece at minimum."
Assess the danger on-site, decide the fee afterward, with two or three gold coins as the bare minimum guarantee.
It was, in truth, a perfectly reasonable judgment, and Yona and the rest of the party agreed.
Adventurers made their living risking their necks, after all.
The idea of turning down a big payday just because it was dangerous? Utterly unthinkable.
News that Semek had been swallowed by a wave of the dead reached the Infula Church Territory as well, and the urgency of the matter was reported all the way up to the Pope himself.
Though the full extent of the damage remained unknown, the bodies interred at Semek numbered no fewer than two thousand — and so it could be assumed that roughly that many of the dead had risen.
Thus, under the authority of Axell IV, it was decided to dispatch a full order of Crusade Knights.
Clad in silver plate and bearing armaments blessed with sacred grace, the Crusade Knights stood a rank above even the cathedral Holy Knights — the sharpest weapon forged by the Church itself to stand against demons and the risen dead alike.
Axell IV inspected their ranks, then issued an order to stand by.
Something about it all felt off. Ominous, even.
The descent of Berbaria's avatar at Carpatia Port, followed by its flight — its whereabouts since, unknown.
And now, the tide of the dead engulfing Semek.
It would be stranger to believe the two were not connected.
Undead monsters — zombies chief among them — were hardly rare.
Some died nursing grudges too bitter to let go; others were raised by the necromancy of the rare necromancer. But an outbreak on this scale? No — there had to be something behind it.
"…Summon the 13th Crusade Special Task Force."
At Axell IV's low murmur, the priest bowed his head hurriedly and withdrew.
The silver armor gleamed, drinking in the light.
The helm left only the eye slits exposed through grooves no thicker than a finger, concealing the face without a single gap.
Sharp spikes jutted in bristling rows from the shoulders, elbows, wrists, and backs of the hands, glinting with a keen edge. Not a dent, not so much as a scratch marred the armor — clean and immaculate, as if it spoke for the character of its wearer.
The holy knight approached with a clanking of joints at every step, then stopped before the carpet leading to Pope Axell IV and unslung the silver shield and dusky mace, handing them to the priest.
"Ugh—!"
The priest staggered, unable to bear the weight.
The gear was heavy — far too heavy to receive with both hands — and as the priest swayed under it, the holy knight swiftly took shield and mace back.
Then, hanging the shield and mace personally upon the weapon rack beside the table, the knight stepped onto the carpet.
Each footfall rang out with a dull, ponderous boom — steps so heavy one half-wondered whether the floor would crack beneath them. Keeping a measured distance from the Pope, the holy knight lowered one knee to the ground and bowed deep and low.
"Scarlet, answering the summons of His Holiness the Pope."
Axell IV, greeted by that low, weighty voice, gave a slow nod.
"Semek has been swept away by a tide of the dead. So I hear, Scarlet."
"…Yes. I have heard."
"A order of Crusade Knights will be dispatched. You are to join them."
"It shall be done."
Not a flicker of hesitation. Without the slightest doubt in the Pope's command — without even being told she would go alone — Scarlet accepted the order without a word of protest, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, as though it had always been so.
"We do not yet know whose hand is behind this. But upon the wretch who so vilely defiled the bodies of the young lambs cradled in the Heavenly God's embrace — you shall pass judgment."
"Of course I shall."
"Upon those who have heaped insult upon the Heavenly God Church — you shall bring down the Heavenly God's hammer."
"Of course it shall be so."
"See to it that they never again bare their fangs at the Heavenly God Church — that they never even dare to conceive of it."
"Of course I shall."
"Go. Go, and show them the power of the Heavenly God Church."
At those words, the holy knight rose slowly.
Each time, a low mechanical hum sounded, and holy power — faint, but present — flowed forth.
Standing ramrod straight, the holy knight faced the Pope squarely, eyes lifted to meet his.
That gaze lay hidden behind the helm, invisible to anyone — but one thing, at least, was certain:
This knight moved alone.
And this knight was the 13th Crusade Special Task Force — the entire unit, embodied in a single soul bearing the number thirteen.
"So in other words, a knightly order will be coming from the cathedral side as well. You understand, don't you? The situation may not be nearly as dire as it seems. Perhaps—"
Ceres paused mid-sentence and turned to look at Vigrind with a smile.
Even now, Vigrind was locked in a fierce staring contest with Yona. Glaring at each other and growling, poised to spit venom at any moment — but the moment Ceres stopped speaking, Vigrind glanced over at her, realized she was being watched, gave a pointed ahem, and straightened her posture.
"Right. Our Saintess Vigrind provides support from the rear, the Hero holds the line — that alone may well be enough. Skeletons and zombies are, after all, among the lowliest of monsters. If the Hero and our cathedral knights hold the front while the holy knights converge from Infula in a pincer, then in one stroke—"
"KYAAH!"
Ceres suddenly let out a loud cry and whipped around toward Rubina.
Rubina, who had been listening to all this talk of zombies and ghouls, shrieked at the sudden outburst and dove behind Yona's arm, trembling like a leaf.
"Stop that, Regent. You're scaring Rubina."
"Scaring her was rather the point. Rubina, darling — did I frighten you terribly?"
At some point Ceres had begun speaking to Rubina informally, and as she smiled and stroked the girl's hair, Rubina finally let out a long, shuddering sigh.
"In any case, that's the plan. The Hero and Saintess Vigrind purge the undead, while Yona's group and the cathedral knights hold them back — the dead stopped on this side get crushed by the cathedral forces pushing in from the other. That's the whole design. It's really not that complicated."
"…And if ghouls show up?"
At Yona's question, Ceres faltered for just an instant.
Zombies — sluggish, shambling, with no means of attack beyond their bite.
Skeletons moved slowly too, and aside from a rusted iron sword or two they had nothing; smash the skull and it was over.
But ghouls were different.
A ghoul wielded its long claws as weapons and stole the lives of the living with blinding speed. Its rotting, sloughing flesh was lethal to the living on contact alone — and should anyone be so unfortunate as to swallow its fluids or a scrap of its flesh, they would become a thrall of the ghoul itself.
A monster that, once it appeared, wreaked catastrophic harm on ordinary folk — and posed a substantial contract even for seasoned adventurers.
"Well, if that happens… the Hero will deal with them, I should think. Or Saintess Vigrind."
"And yet. It seems you are quite certain a necromancer is behind this, Regent."
That was Kayak's question.
To him, the situation looked grave indeed. He had never heard the name Semek before, but from the explanations, it sounded like a critically important village — and for a necromancer to infiltrate a place like that was strange in itself. Weren't such villages usually shielded by the power of the cathedral?
That it had been breached so easily, so utterly, made no sense to him. At least in Kayak's eyes, the right suspect was not some two-bit necromancer — but the avatar of Berbaria they had let slip from their grasp at Carpatia Port.
"Well, thinking on the bright side simply puts my heart at ease. You're quite right, Kayak — one ought to always prepare for the worst — but if I did that, I'd wear myself down to nothing. It's far more comforting to believe that some wheezing necromancer with a swollen liver pulled this off. And to call it the work of another demon, well… *sigh*."
Ceres picked up a cookie from the table, dunked it in a generous pool of honey, and took a bite.
"Thinking pleasant thoughts is just easier. If I dwell on the worst all the time, my mood ends up the worst, too."