Chapter 91
Chapter 91
Saint, You’re So Vulgar! – Chapter 91
Extreme refined physical force warps space itself.
No, more precisely, it shakes the air layers so violently that it creates that illusion.
Halia's strike was exactly like that. When she swung her hammer with all her might, space buckled, and the sandworm's head along its path twisted at an unnatural angle.
The aftermath was gruesome.
Spluuurt!
Blood and flesh sprayed outward, painting the air.
The sandworm's body alone was a colossal thing spanning dozens of meters.
The blood and chunks from its head were more than enough to evoke the sight of building debris raining down like a squall.
Thud thud thud thud!
A squelching sound filled the air as space itself was dyed red.
Halia grinned through the bloody downpour.
She looked less like a holy warrior and more like a berserker.
An overwhelming savagery dwelled in her scarlet eyes, dominating all who beheld her.
The heretics felt utter bewilderment.
This was different.
Hearing about her in reports was worlds apart from seeing her in the flesh.
"This is it...?"
Their attitude was one of disbelief.
But the heretics were missing something crucial.
Her true power could never have been fully conveyed to them in the first place.
Of course not.
"You think this is the end? I haven't even started yet."
No heretic who had faced Halia head-on had ever survived.
How could the honest impressions of those who had endured her power firsthand ever leak out to the world?
Screeeeech
Halia dragged her hammer along as she advanced.
Her height barely reached an adult man's solar plexus. Her appearance was far too youthful.
Everything clashed, creating a profound sense of dissonance. Only Halia seemed to revel in it.
Saintess Halia Drokbel.
That name carried a weight unlike those of other saintesses lost to history.
She had started as a Holy Knight of the Holy Church.
In her past life, she was proclaimed the greatest knightly talent of her era, a woman all but guaranteed the rank of 1st Class Knight.
She received her oracle at age twenty-five.
That day turned the life of Holy Knight Halia Drokbel upside down.
You've been baptized.
Beyond issuing oracles, the Parent God bestowed blessings upon a select few cherished children.
In ancient times, they were called 'apostles'; now, they were known as baptized 'pilgrims.'
The baptism Halia received was the 'Baptism of Eternity,' a blessing that fixed her body in that of a child's for every living moment, granting immunity to aging until her final breath.
Her once two-meter-tall giant frame shrank to that of a diminutive child that day.
The power and stamina she had built were compressed into that tiny form, transforming into something even more formidable than before.
She received that baptism and her oracle simultaneously.
Though she became a saintess and was expected to take up a divine name, Halia always saw herself as a knight first.
Thus, she refused a divine name until she achieved 1st Class Knight status.
Only on that day did she finally claim her sword name.
"...Attack! Grab their ankle somehow!!!"
"Uahaha! That's the spirit! Not 'win,' but 'grab their ankle'that's the right phrase!"
She swung her hammer, flipping the earth.
Flesh chunks and ground erupted into the air, and with her leg muscles bulging, she used the floating debris as footholds to dart through the sky.
Boooom!
Only scraps of meat remained in her wake, adorning the air.
Arms, legs, and torsos that escaped being pulverized cluttered the heretics' vision.
Her destructive, brutally merciless strikes had changed little from her youth to now, and she hoped they would become the heretics' terror: quartering.
Quartering Knight Halia Drokbel.
The heretics paid for their carelessness with death.
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
It was a force of nature.
Hundreds of heretics and desert beasts steadily dwindled in number.
But they couldn't just flee in panic.
They had their aces up their sleeves, and if they could just snag these foes' ankles, even sacrificing their lives meant victory.
They usually met futile ends against the matchup of a 1st Class Knight, but that didn't make the heretics a mindless horde of meat shields.
They were a vast evil designated as the continent's scourge, always brewing calamity.
They knew how to pierce an enemy's blind spots.
They knew how to topple those who cloaked evil in the guise of justice.
This was street fighting now.
The outer district where the walls had crumbled still sheltered civilians.
Those who hadn't escaped in time hid under buildings; the wounded groaned in the streets. Even as Halia tore up the ground, she left those spots untouched.
Justice was a constraint.
Halia's code let the heretics realize exactly where to strike.
They reached straight for the civilians.
Black unholy magic, beast fangs, and blades lashed out in all directions.
It was to halt Halia's onslaught.
But
"Let us begin."
...The heretics had forgotten something, overshadowed by her presence.
Boom!
Javelins flew in, blocking the heretics' attacks.
The spears, laden with destructive energy, didn't end their flight upon launch.
Heretics who barely dodged felt a chill crawl up their spines.
By the time they turned to the anomaly, it was too late.
Crunch!
The javelins twisted midair, looping back to impale their heads.
Brains traced lines through the sky. At the center stood Diego, silver threads wrapped around his wrists, retrieving his javelins to launch again.
The heretics belatedly noticed him and panicked.
But to Diego, this was nothing special.
Dozens of years, after all.
Even before Halia became a saintess, back when they were both cadets, the two had always fought in sync.
Halia was always at the center of it all, and Diegoas her vice-captain before he was her guardhad always supported her.
One might expect resentment at always being second, but Diego never felt the slightest inferiority.
If anything, his feelings toward Halia bordered on admiration.
As a devout believer, Diego held that everyone had their role to play.
That bond eventually shaped his entire life.
He volunteered for the pointless role of her guard simply to help her.
His honed skills specialized in support to cover Halia's weaknesses.
Whiiir
Silver threads laced with divine power wove through the air. Javelins dangling from each end danced like serpents.
They intercepted attacks aimed at Halia's blind spots and those targeting civilians alike.
Overwhelming perception, precise divine power control, and training focused on pinpoint breakthroughs over wide destructionall converged into his signature weapon: silver-threaded javelins.
And so, fighting alongside Halia to scourge the continent, Diego earned his own title.
Knight of the Celestial Track, Diego.
He was a knight with far more hidden depths than what the world saw.
"Gaaahhh!!!"
The heretics' hope of drawing attention failed.
Those targeting civilians met ends even more gruesome than those Halia handled personally.
Painful death or less painful death.
Those were the grim choices looming before them.
Halia, in the midst of her rampage, glanced back and whistled.
Headless corpses rolled across the ground.
"Nice! Perfect for cleanup!"
"Yes, time to wrap it up."
The church's strongest duo.
That was the assessment that had begun trailing them at some point.
The situation was fizzling out rather anticlimactically.
Diego furrowed his brow.
Then he sighed.
"...No, there's more."
Enemies surged in like a tide.
The fight would drag on a bit longer.
* * *
Asher raced north with Versia.
He'd realized something the moment they left the walls.
"This is the worst spot."
"...Yes."
Reaching the sandstorm's base wouldn't be easy.
This area was chaotic for reasons beyond the outer walls.
"Ugh... urgh..."
"Guhk...!"
The ground was stained black.
Black mist clutched at people's ankles, draining their life force.
Those fleeing the wall's anomalies lay collapsed, gasping for breath.
There was a witch, sure, but they couldn't ignore these people.
"She's over there, beyond them."
Versia said.
Her gaze fixed on the sandstorm's base.
Asher nodded.
Thick rage boiled within him at the witch's ploy of laying civilians like ankle traps everywhere.
"What now?"
At her question, Asher curled his lips into a smirk.
"Saintess, mind if I'm rude just this once?"
"Rude... oh."
Versia's expression mirrored his.
Her smile was affirmative.
Asher sprang into action.
The witch had surely chosen the best option available to her lowly self.
But she couldn't have known.
Whoooosh!
That the one now in Versia's body was Asher, who until now had struggled with output control due to his prayers' excessive perfection.
That this emergency, with patients scattered everywhere, was the ideal setup for him to unleash a healing prayer.
Kiiiiing!!!
A halo materialized.
Golden divine power flared into wing-like shapes, enveloping Asher.
The moment he raised his hand high
Craaaaack!
The entire northern city bathed in dazzling golden radiance.