The Greatness of Unity
The royal cemetery was built in three descending strata.
The first held knights and nobles who had distinguished themselves in service. The second housed the founding heroes of the kingdom. The third entombed the royal dead themselves.
Three whole tiers for a mere graveyard might have seemed extravagant — but the Halrot Kingdom was, by continental standards, almost modest. The empire of the Eastern Continent was said to bury its imperial dead across nine strata.
They descended the stairs with weapons ready, every man watching the shadows for an ambush. The enemy could have struck a dozen times. Strangely, they never did.
When the party at last reached the circular clearing prepared for the ceremony, the devotees of the God of Unity stepped into view.
"We welcome you."
One among them — a man of thoroughly ordinary face and ordinary build — spread both arms wide, showing that he carried no weapon.
"What is this?"
"A trap?"
The special unit had not expected anything so civil. They scanned the chamber, bracing for ambush or snare.
"There is no trap of any kind. We are here to clear up a misunderstanding."
"A misunderstanding?"
"You dare occupy the royal cemetery, subject it to Dimensional Warping, and call it a misunderstanding?!"
A knight barked the words in raw fury. The cultist bowed his head in apology.
"On that point I have nothing to say in our defense. Dimensional Warping sufficient to summon the great God of Unity requires many conditions. The lich who once held this place had already fulfilled them perfectly, and we simply seized the opportunity. We never intended any insult to the Halrot royal house."
The cultist bent at the waist as he spoke. Far from looking mad, he seemed rational — almost gentlemanly.
The conversation was going more smoothly than anyone had expected, yet the faces of those who served the gods did not ease.
"If this keeps up, we might settle the whole thing without a fight."
"Right. They don't even sound like fanatics."
The mercenaries muttered among themselves. The cultists' mild, courteous manner was already draining the fight from their blood.
"What is your doctrine?" the heavy-browed holy knight asked. "To go this far, you must hold some belief worth the cost."
Rather than attack at once, he meant to lay bare the gulf between their faiths — to make every man present understand that this battle was a struggle for survival itself.
"Do you not find this world painful and unjust?"
"Painful? In what sense?"
"Not long ago this kingdom tore itself apart in civil war — men slaughtering one another for power. The dead rose as undead, and for ordinary people simply remaining alive became torment. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, were cast into suffering for the sake of a handful of the highborn — without ever having chosen it."
"You dog! How dare you insult His Majesty the King, the rightful heir of the royal line!"
The knights spat their rage at the cultists for scorning the struggle that had secured the legitimate succession. But those with no stake in royal politics found themselves half agreeing.
Honestly, he isn't wrong.
If they'd just killed each other, fine — but the common folk always pay the price.
"So. You claim you can end that pain and injustice?"
"We can! That is precisely where the great God of Unity first revealed Himself to us!"
When the heavy-browed holy knight pressed again, the cultists' spokesman at last let the raw edge of his faith show through.
"When every one of us becomes one with the God of Unity, every problem is solved!"
"Becomes one?"
"Hunger! Cold! Pain! Everything that makes a person suffer — all of it vanishes the moment you become part of the God of Unity!"
The cultist spoke as if in rapture.
"When we merge with Him we cease to be mere mortals. We become the Ascended! And as fragments of a god, we receive eternal life itself!"
His passionate preaching left the air stone-cold.
"What kind of garbage is he spouting?"
"Become part of a god? Then I couldn't do a single thing of my own free will."
"You call that living?"
Mercenaries and knights alike muttered. The cult's doctrine made no sense to any of them.
"A cult is a cult after all. Live out your days as someone else's spare part? Without a will of your own?"
"I will grant that our doctrine sits outside ordinary sight — but it is still better than your false gods."
"What did you say?"
The heavy-browed holy knight was not a man easily provoked. Even so, hearing the gods he served called false drew real anger into his voice.
"Your gods are nothing but words. 'Serve me, and I shall grant you salvation.' But their gaze never reaches common folk like us! Miracles are reserved for nobles who can swell their congregations, or for men with money!"
Somewhere in his past, this cultist had prayed to the gods for deliverance and found his prayers unanswered. The despair of that silence still lived in him. The eyes that had been so fervent and so lucid a moment before now burned with unfiltered rage, contempt, and fanaticism toward the gods of this world.
"Nonsense. The gods labor to seal the dimensional rifts that open onto other worlds! And whatever you prayed for, if every private wish were granted this world would collapse into pure chaos!"
"Shut your mouth! What do I care for any of that?! We will cast out your false gods who only talk of salvation, and we will bring the God of Unity down into this world! Once everyone is one, you will understand the greatness of Unity!"
Judging that further talk was useless, the cultist raised an arm in signal. The devotees around him rushed toward him at once.
Crrrk— crrrrrk—
They did not collide. They fused. Flesh swelled and ballooned as body after body poured into a single mass.
"Here they come!"
"Watch every approach!"
The cultist had claimed there was no trap — but only a fool took an enemy at his word.
"I will make you feel the greatness of Unity!"
The body ballooned in an instant into a bulk more than four meters tall, bristling with countless arms. The other cultists had been concealing weapons behind their backs; those weapons now filled the monster's many hands.
"Formation Pattern Two!"
The Knight-Captain — the strongest among the knights and their official commander — gave the order. Mages and clerics specialized in holy liturgy fell back under the escort of several knights and holy knights.
Given the cemetery's confined space, the strike force had already assumed the enemy's options would be limited, and had prepared three patterns in advance. Pattern One: the enemy forms a battle line. Pattern Two: a small number of powerful foes. Pattern Three: a free-for-all melee. Anything outside those three would be left to the Knight-Captain's judgment on the spot.
"That's Sir Braet's sword!"
"And Sir Raizi's spear!"
"They're using the weapons of knights who devoted their lives to the royal family!"
The knights sealed themselves into full-body magical plate — helm to greaves, every piece locking into a single shell — then closed from three sides on the flesh-mass the cultists had become. Full-body enchanted armor drained mana simply to maintain, so it was reserved for actual combat.
Then the arms plastered across the monster's hide lengthened and began to swing their weapons.
Kakakakang!
"Kh—?!"
"This is—!"
It was not wild flailing. The creature was reproducing the knights' own swordsmanship and spearmanship stroke for stroke. Martial arts used the whole body; arms alone should never have been enough. Yet the sockets where those arms were rooted shifted and slid, letting the techniques unfold as if a living swordsman stood behind each blade.
"That sword form—!"
"Impossible!"
The monstrous strength in every arm was shocking enough. What truly staggered the knights was watching the exact techniques of their dead comrades replayed before their eyes.
"Hahahahahaha! This is the greatness of Unity! Even a corpse, once absorbed, yields its skills as my own!"
The cultists fused into the mass had long since consumed the bodies of the knights interred on this stratum.
"Hwaaaaaah!"
A mercenary burst from the line with a bizarre battle-cry. Hair, eyes, and skin were all the color of marble; his body was a solid, muscleless mass of stone-like flesh — an unmistakably alien being.
"Go, Noritz! Smash it flat!"
True to his strange appearance, the demi-human Noritz had been a bare-handed fighter in his original world.
A bulk that size — cutting and stabbing won't mean a thing!
Cheered on by his fellow mercenaries, Noritz leapt high, concentrated power into his fist, and drove it down. The cult-mass counterattacked, weapons whipping toward him — only to strike his body with the sound of steel on stone and rebound. His skin was not merely marble-colored. It was as hard as rock.
Poooong!
"KRAAAAAAGH!!"
His fist punched into the swollen torso and detonated the energy he had poured inside it. The giant body burst open, vomiting blood.
"Now! Mages — pack explosive spells into that wound!"
At the Knight-Captain's command the mages in the rear began to cast. But the screaming cultist only smiled a foul little smile — and the ruptured torso regenerated in an instant.
"Wh— what?!"
Tentacles erupted, coiled around Noritz, and dragged him into the regenerated flesh. Everyone saw his face push out against the swollen surface, hands straining outward as if trying to claw free.
"Hahahaha! You idiots! Did you think we wouldn't know our own weakness? Before we took this cemetery we absorbed countless monsters! Their raw strength! Their regeneration! All of it is ours now!"
The power to claim an absorbed victim's attributes and traits as one's own. Whether to advertise the God of Unity's gift or simply for the pleasure of crushing the knights who had once oppressed them, the cultist deliberately explained his own ability.
"Recognize the greatness of the God of Unity — even now!"
"Arty!"
"?!"
While the bladesmen listened, wary of being swallowed the way Noritz had been, a soft voice cut through the brutal air — a voice that did not belong in a place like this. There, body wreathed entirely in flame, the killing machine from a future Earth was already charging the cultist.
Kaisent had cast an enchantment meant for weapons across the whole of Arty's frame.
Lillian told me to spare the knights' pride — but—!
Until now Kaisent had held back for a political reason: if he discarded the knights and stole the glory alone, their wounded pride would brand him with a lasting bad name. He had been warned not to step forward unless he had to. This, he was certain, was the moment he had to.
Kujik!
"KRAAAAGH!"
Arty ignored every blow that landed on her and drove the edge of her hand into the cultist's swollen body, ripping it open. Flesh tore; fire bit. The cultist screamed. Arty paid no attention, tearing and digging deeper, burrowing into the mass.
The cultist tried to regenerate the way he had before — but inside the space Arty had carved open, a rectangular wall of pure energy took shape.
"Wh-what is this?!"
Neither mana nor the inner energy of the Murim. A strange power of its own. Kaisent had raised a barrier through his mechanical gauntlet, sealing the wound so the cultist could not close it.
In that interval Arty clawed through the meat to where Noritz was being absorbed, seized his arm, and hurled him free.
"Ghk—! Cough!"
Noritz's clothes had melted away, but the absorption had not yet gone deep; only the surface of his skin was lightly dissolved.
"Now!"
"Even its regeneration has limits!"
Flame-wrapped Arty shredded flesh without mercy, searing every wound she opened. The cultist's body could no longer knit itself shut. Watching, the knights finally understood: the thing was not invincible.
"Mages — hit it with fire magic!"
"Keep cutting! Outpace the regeneration!"
Arty tore the cultist apart from within while the knights struck from without. The mass began to come apart.
"Our turn."
"O Glun of Decay, grant us the power of the cycle!"
Among the holy knights of the dark gods, those who served Glun, god of decay, stepped forward and struck with weapons steeped in corruption.
"Ghhhk… you… fools…! Unity… is the last chance… to end all suffering…!"
Burned by the mages, rotting under the holy knights of decay, the cultist's regeneration finally failed. His body collapsed as if melting.
"Brothers… please… us…"
In the end the cultist, fully burned and fully corrupted, slumped into a jelly of heat-melted flesh. Every trace of life was gone.
"Tougher than I expected."
"To steal even another man's knowledge and technique…"
The fight against the devotees of the God of Unity had been full of shocks — and they had only just broken through the first stratum.
"There will be more enemies below! Stay sharp, all of you!"
The cultists of the first stratum had been strong, but few. The archer who had shot down the airship had still not shown himself. The real fight would begin on the second stratum.
"Lucky for us. Without that golem, reclaiming the momentum would have been hard."
Knights who could read a battlefield had no choice but to admit that Arty had been the decisive force in the engagement.
"I heard you're the golem's master. Thank you, mage."
Aside from the lightly melted skin, Noritz was unharmed. The moment he recovered his senses he turned to Kaisent with open gratitude.
"I-I only did what anyone would have done."
"And thanking the one who saved you is also what anyone would do."
"Noritz is someone our company can't afford to lose. Thanks for pulling him out, little mage."
As Noritz and his fellow mercenary thanked Kaisent, the others acknowledged that the boy had sent the golem in at exactly the right moment.
Tch. If I'd had a golem like that, I'd have finished the thing without dithering.
Noriyoshi, however, was not pleased. Kaisent had outshone him — the one who considered himself the true protagonist of this story — and the fact sat badly. In his own mind, he would have deployed a golem before Noritz was ever absorbed and ended it cleanly.
In any case, the knights now knew that fire, decay, or curse-force was needed to poison the enemy's regeneration. They accepted enchantments from the mages and from the clerics of the dark gods. The power of the dark gods was the strongest counter to monstrous regeneration — but those knights who could not bring themselves to accept it took fire-attribute weapon enchantments from the mages instead.
Why give us the time and the means to figure out a countermeasure? They should have forced us to retreat… it almost felt like they lost control.
Lillian turned the enemy's behavior over in her mind. If they had simply pressed with numbers from the start and given nothing away, the fight would have been far harder. Something felt off — but there was no leisure for debate.
Waaaaah!
Boom! Boom-boom!
Outside the cemetery, allies were still fighting to keep the rear from being overrun.
Once the enchantments were complete, the special unit regrouped and descended toward the second stratum.