Chapter 93
Chapter 93
Saint, You’re So Vulgar! – Chapter 93
The heart of the temple was shrouded in darkness.
It was a dank black, a cozy shadow to some.
Tehira flashed a bright smile.
"Oh my, you're covered in blood."
"Is that a problem?"
"Not in the slightest."
Grost appeared splattered in blood from head to toe. Tehira didn't pry into the reason. Just as she'd said, it posed no issue for what they were about to do.
The arrival of two pairs of Saintesses and Holy Knights from the Holy Church at a time like this was an unexpected variable, but not a major problem.
Of course. Preparations had been complete for years; all that remained was to set things in motion.
"Let's begin. Things are chaotic outside."
"Very well."
Grost sat upon the jade throne at the chamber's core.
Jade throne, though its form evoked instruments of torture.
Writhing tentacles everywhere, spikes jutting from the backrest, shackles dangling from the limb restraints.
"Humans evolve through suffering."
Tehira stroked Grost's back. He settled into the throne.
Squish. The tentacles and spikes pierced his flesh. He merely winced faintly, voicing no further pain.
"We must honor our promises."
"Naturally."
They had tofor each other's sake.
"I promised to make you superhuman, didn't I?"
Clank. Shackles bound his body. Tehira's dark divinity seeped into the throne.
In that instant, veins bulged across Grost's entire form.
Tehira's eyes narrowed.
"The world calls us heretics. But that's imprecise. We're not wrongjust different. Our god's existence is proven by this divinity and power."
"Urgh...!"
Crack, crack. Grost's body began to twist bit by bit.
"Just as the Holy Church has its Saintesses, so do we. They call them witches, but it means our god has the power to create proxies for the divine."
"Guh...!"
"Then surely we can create other things too. The sole reason they were our natural predators. A counter exists, without doubt."
1st Class Knights, predators who trampled Ashanta's divinity and doctrines.
Throughout long history, they had been the church's most formidable foes.
Ancestors had fled in terror, but Tehira was different.
Adaptation and evolution, research and fruition.
She was the sort who found answers after agonized deliberation.
It had been simple, really.
"All we had to do was make our own. Great knights to embody our doctrines."
Crunch, crunch, crunch!
"Gaaahhh!!!"
Grost finally couldn't endure the agony and screamed.
His body convulsed wildly, its shape shifting before their eyes.
It became a grotesque lump of meat. Then crunch, it began reshaping into a new form.
His skin gleamed like obsidian. All body hair fell away, his mouth orifice vanished leaving the area smooth, and beneath his eyelids dwelt only pure white.
Thus was born an incarnation no one could call human.
Tehira felt a faint thrill of ecstasy.
"Congratulations on your rebirth."
[Ah...!]
Even Grost's vibrational exclamation carried ecstasy.
He shuddered lightly, then effortlessly snapped the shackles that had bound him.
He rose unsteadily but stood firm thereafter.
He gazed down at his hands, clenching and unclenching fists repeatedly, then unleashed his power.
Black mist cloaked his naked form, morphing into armor. A horned helm, a mane-like crest. He was a Black Knight.
[Ha... haha...!]
Tehira regarded him with satisfaction.
Purely in terms of raw power, could she defeat him?
'Not a chance, at least not me.'
Which was why crafting a Black Knight required such profound deliberation. Creating an uncontrollable force with one's own hands was only natural.
Grost was ideal in that regard.
A man of bottomless greed, mired in self-loathing that gnawed at him.
Thus, he shunned no self-destructive choice.
A fragile soul that could crumble at a mere touch.
Yet a vessel fit to contain immense power.
"Fate provides the perfect stage to test that power."
At her whisper, Grost's gaze turned outward, to the battlefield engulfing the headquarters.
By now, a massive greatsword had formed in his hand.
[Ahh... yes. The ideal battlefield.]
Thud. He slammed the greatsword into the floor, shaking the earth. Dragging it behind him, he headed out. Screeech, screeechthe blade scraped unpleasantly against the ground.
Tehira watched his retreating figure a moment, then turned away humming cheerfully.
'Well then...'
Time to prepare for her own guests.
Joy surged within her.
* * *
They were drawing farther from the battlefield.
Following the path Big Ten had carved, they'd reached the headquarters' doorstep.
There, a foul stench assaulted the nose.
The heretics' divinity, detectable only by those bearing the Parent God's own.
Asher pinched his nose. Versia did the same.
Unable to delay further, he quickened his pace.
At the entrance loomed a translucent black barrier.
"Access control."
"You can enter, but not exit."
Divine power might shatter it outright.
But as always, the backlash would prove the greater issue.
Asher pondered briefly, then decided to plunge through.
The barrier would vanish once the witch was slain, after all.
"Let's go. We need to deal with the witch first."
Asher entered the barrier ahead.
A revolting foreign sensation brushed pastfleetingly.
He turned and extended a hand.
"Come, Saintess..."
It was then.
Kaboom!
"Gaaahhh!!!"
Something rocketed from within the barrier, slamming into the battlefield's center.
Asher startled. Then his eyes widened massively.
He had no choice.
"What in the...?"
A knight clad head to toe in black armor stood there.
His mere appearance shifted the battlefield's atmosphere.
It went beyond mere presence.
The anomaly arose as he raised his hand.
[Uuuoooh...!]
Corpses strewn across the field creaked as they rose.
Pale, blood-drained skin; unfocused eyes. Fallen soldiers became undead.
Big Ten fell into chaos.
"What the hell...!"
Right after.
[Sweep them.]
With a gloomy resonance, the undead screamed and charged every which way.
No friend or foe mattered to them. Sandstorm mercenaries and Big Ten alike fell to the undead, only to rise as undead themselves upon death.
Like a plague, the horde swelled, devouring the living.
Asher pounded the barrierbang!but having entered, escape was impossible.
'Gester!'
Asher spotted Gester, piggybacking his father, grinding his teeth as he cleaved through undead. Jern beside him, Big Ten captains guarding themall mired in peril.
The Black Knight who'd wrought this scene removed his helm.
Asher's face twisted.
'Grost...?'
His skin dyed black and glossy. No mouth orifice, all hair gone.
Yet unmistakably Grost. Impossible to mistake.
He'd forged some vile pact with heretics after all.
Asher ground his teeth; rage threatened to shatter reason.
The interior was trouble enough, but left unchecked, Baern's pillars might all perish.
He had to stop Grostyet here he was, barred by the barrier.
Frustration roiled within Asher.
That's when it happened.
"This is bad."
Versia murmured.
She hadn't entered the barrier yet; her gaze fixed on Grost.
Asher sensed foreboding and spoke.
"No!"
Versia couldn't face that thing.
Grost had yielded only to Terbion in swordsmanship, Baern's elite. Now a monstrous aberration, likely deadlier than before.
No matter her host body, Versia lacked secret techniquesher swordplay merely prodigious. Odds of victory neared zero.
Thus he tried to stop hera shallow judgment.
"I'm not going."
Versia smiled bitterly.
Asher didn't grasp her reason at once.
But what followed, he witnessed clearly with his own eyes.
Shing.
"You don't want someone else ending this, do you?"
"Saintess...?"
"I've thought about it a long time. No matter how I look, this matters hugely to you, Knight."
She pressed the blade to her own throat.
What was she? Anxiety spiked, and
Slash!
With the sound, her head spun!
His vision whited out; Asher felt a prick at his nape.
Warmth trickled down his neck; he clutched it.
Regaining sight, the scene unfolded.
"Wha...?"
His body had returned.
Before his eyes, Versia laughed lowly in her original body.
"It actually worked."
"What..."
"First rule: bodies swap in response to my crisis. Wondered if this'd trigger it. It did."
Versia was inside the barrier.
Asher stood outside in his original body.
She said,
"It's not deep. Heal it quick."
Asher unwittingly invoked a healing prayer.
The neck wound mended.
Dazedness lingered.
Then Versia placed a hand on her lower belly and said,
"The curse has grown this much. Seeing you, Knight, turns me on."
"Saintess...?"
"How'd you endure? All I can think is sex."
"Ah...! The curse!"
"Lucky there's a barrier. Otherwise I'd pounce right now."
Even as Asher's heart skipped, she played it playful.
Deliberately, visibly forcing it. Her furrowed smile proved it.
Then she nodded toward the battlefield.
"Quit turning me on and go. I'll handle inside."
Only then did Asher understand her intent.