The Saintess of Slaughter
The Saintess of Slaughter
"Leave nothing behind. Eat it all."
At the man's command, the monsters converged on the corpses and plunged their hands into the bodies. The hands they pulled free were stained crimson, each fist brimming with meat and viscera.
With every thrust and scoop of those giant hands, the soldiers were reduced to fistfuls of flesh, vanishing bit by bit into the creatures' mouths. The corpses dwindled as the monsters fed.
The massive man stood watching, hands resting on his hips, as the creatures smacked their lips over the mouthfuls of meat they'd stuffed in.
A placid satisfaction rippled through him. He was unusually fond of the monsters under his command, and feeding them always lifted his spirits.
The monsters, for their part, liked him back and followed him willingly. So much so that one of them, even in the middle of its meal, brought him something it had found.
Grrruk.
The one-eyed giant let out a low, rumbling call. Clutched in its hand was a letter. The man smiled and accepted the offering.
"Thank you. Go on, finish your meal."
The monster dipped its head and resumed feeding, and the man—the Giant's Priest—unfolded the letter. He was just about to read it.
Rustle.
If only that sound hadn't reached his ears.
A woman emerged from the undergrowth.
She wore a black silk nun's habit. Her face held a benevolent cast, but beneath it ran a somber current. White hair and striking pink eyes—the sort of beauty one rarely encountered anywhere.
She was also someone he knew.
The Saintess of Slaughter, Ereta.
They had once been, in a sense, kin—serving under the same cult but different gods.
The man regarded her with a jeering smile.
"…Well, well. Isn't this the Spider's little whelp?"
Spider's whelp. At the nickname, Ereta flinched.
The priest's manner was that of an old acquaintance. Whether or not the woman herself had any memory of him.
"Will you help me?"
She cut straight to the point. He didn't seem to recognize her face, which meant he couldn't be a high-ranking priest, but none of that mattered to her right now.
"Ha. The Spider's whelp comes to me for help? Politely, no less? What happened to that insufferable air of knowing everything?"
The man sneered, and beneath her somber mien the woman let a flicker of discomfort show.
"None of that matters, does it? Helping a fellow believer—and a chance to capture one of the Ancient God's last remnants. Please, help me bring him down. All I ask is—"
"Not interested."
Her awkward plea was cut short by the Giant's Priest. The woman's face twisted, just for an instant, with displeasure at being interrupted.
But there was nothing she could do. She was no longer the Saintess of Slaughter.
She couldn't simply kill him as her nature would have dictated. She'd be lucky if she wasn't the one killed instead.
The priest seemed well aware of that fact, leering down at her with open contempt.
"Fellow believers, sure, lovely sentiment. But you're not one of us anymore, are you? You don't even hold the rank of high priest. Why exactly should I bother helping you?"
"…Capturing a last remnant of the Ancient God is the highest priority—"
"Sure, it's a priority. Doesn't mean I've got any reason to help you do it. And besides…"
The Giant's Priest wore robes sized to his enormous frame—thick, heavy garments whose hems dragged across the ground and raised dust with every step.
He advanced toward the woman, kicking up plumes of dry earth. Something ominous in his approach made her retreat a step.
The priest's grin turned lecherous.
"Seems you're laboring under a misunderstanding. The Fire-weaving Spider has been cast out completely. It's no longer one of the Three Evil Gods. Every last 'Spider' like you has been strangled to death or devoured."
Ereta's face registered shock, and the priest jabbed a finger at her.
"We received exactly one oracle concerning you. Kill you, eat you, and reclaim your divinity."
The woman's eyes went wide with horror. Into her mind sprang the words she'd heard just beyond the thicket.
Go talk to the Giant's Priest first.
…What?
Ask him for help if you like. Or let him betray you. Do whatever you want.
That was what Aslan had said before practically shoving her forward. She'd seen it as an opportunity and acted.
The result was failure.
He knew. He knew all along…
The realization struck just as the Giant's Priest and his monsters closed in on her.
The creatures were grunting at each other as though debating where to start eating her first.
"Don't take it too hard. It's not like we were ever close just because we shared a cult. If the positions were reversed, you'd have done the same to me, wouldn't you?"
The corners of his lips curled upward. The face of the giant priest—standing nearly four meters tall—loomed over her, every inch of his malice laid bare.
"Still, you've got a decent face. Maybe I'll have a little fun with—"
Thwack!
The moment his arm, thick as a log, reached for her—something hurtled out of the undergrowth and buried itself in his forehead.
Dead center between the eyes. A two-handed axe.
The same two-handed axe Ereta had been wielding until not long ago.
The haft quivered faintly from the force of the throw. With the axe driven deep into his skull, the priest's eyes rolled back, and he collapsed.
Boom.
That heavy weight hit the ground, and the monsters cried out in confusion.
"…Don't take it too hard. You ambushed those soldiers yourselves, after all."
Through the din of the monsters' cries, a man stepped into view.
A figure in a cloak, leather cuirass, and quilted armor, surveying the creatures with cold teal eyes. In one hand he held a hand axe, in the other a war hammer.
His face, at a glance, looked worn—shadowed with fatigue and something like melancholy—yet an unmistakable presence hung about him.
The man's name was Aslan.
The Master of Combat.
And the Master of Combat had prepared for victory.
Watching the monsters lower their bodies and charge, Aslan brushed a hand across the corner of his vision.
[Angela Tail]
[Strength: 7] [Agility: 4] [Health: 7]
[Aslan]
[Mana: 6] [Luck: 5] [Fighting Spirit: 7]
First, Aslan added 3 points to Angie's Health. Then he raised his own Mana by 2 and Luck by 1.
[Mana: 560]
Reaching 6 Mana, his capacity now stood at 560—more than double the 240 he'd had at Mana 4.
Mana surged exponentially at certain stat thresholds. The increase gave Aslan more options, more tools to wield.
Savoring that overflowing mana, he stepped forward with the war hammer and hand axe gripped in either hand. As he moved, he murmured.
"Angie."
At his word, a girl burst from the undergrowth. In her hands was a six-foot staff.
Simple weapons without an edge suited Angie best.
The girl was too wild, too freakishly strong, to make precise cuts or execute technical movements. Even if her skills improved, they'd never keep pace with her raw power.
Hence the six-foot staff.
A cheap weapon that could be wielded like a greatsword, like a spear—and no matter where it landed, it dealt damage. If the girl's strength snapped it in half, replacing it was no hardship.
Aslan, for his part, was using weapons temporarily taken from Ereta. Arms forged by divine hands or seized from master craftsmen—they carried a luster beyond any mere masterwork.
Those two weapons, gleaming crimson, flew at the monsters.
Crunch!
The first to take a blow was the charging one-eyed giant. It wasn't agile enough to evade an attack aimed at its knee.
The axe split the kneecap and burst through the other side. The giant staggered.
Crack!
Aslan whipped his arm around and drove the war hammer into the staggering giant's temple. The head of the hammer shattered the creature's skull.
Amid the spray of bone fragments and brain matter, Aslan pivoted halfway—a rotation laced with wild magic.
Muscle strengthening. Bone strengthening. With two layers of enhancement accelerating his movements, he brought his weapons up into the arm of the next charging giant.
Clang!
More precisely: he gashed it with the axe, then hammered the wound to sever the limb. A clean two-strike combination, and the giant shrieked as its hand flew free.
"Hrraaap!"
Boom!
Clutching the stump of its wrist, the giant tried to straighten—and Angie was on it. Gripping the staff in both hands, she twisted her whole body into a massive swing.
The blow carried every ounce of her weight and strength, splitting the giant's skull like overripe fruit. The staff bit in at the jaw and carved upward, bursting out through an eye socket.
Smack!
"Gck."
But the wide arc of her swing left her no room to defend or evade. Angie took a double-handed clap from another giant—one coming to avenge its fallen companion—and was sent flying.
She tumbled across the ground, came to a stop, spat blood-flecked saliva onto the dirt, and rose.
"Ah, damn."
A blow that would have reduced an ordinary human to pulp. But for Angie, it had done nothing more than rattle her teeth. With her Health at 7, she had plainly surpassed the limits of human resilience.
She shook herself off and charged again, while Aslan worked to cripple the giant-type monsters' mobility so the girl could finish them more easily.
He kicked the wrist of an advancing giant, leaped, and raked his axe across its eye.
Grrak!
He sprang off the creature's shoulder, drove his heel down onto its foot, then struck its planting leg simultaneously with both weapons to topple it. And every monster that fell, blinded, or staggered—Angie's crushing blow came hammering down on it.
Ereta stared blankly at the battle, watching the monster's head cave in like overripe fruit bursting apart.
"Angie!"
Nine giant-type monsters in total.
Aslan carved through the wrist of the eighth, shattered its knee with his hammer, sliced the ankle with his axe, then pivoted and drove a blow into its groin. At his shout, Angie rammed her six-foot staff deep into the one-eyed giant's eye socket.
A wet, gurgling rattle.
The creature died vomiting bloody foam. The last surviving monster, panicked and mindless, ripped a great tree from the earth.
It tore the tree up by instinct alone, as if it no longer mattered what became of its master or companions.
The uprooted trunk rose high, scattering dirt and pebbles, and came crashing down in a wild swing.
Gruaagh!
Hwooooosh!
Aslan tracked the incoming mass of wood and shifted his grip on his weapons, readying them to throw.
Knight Slayer.
The hand axe darkened to black first. He hurled it.
Thunder Call.
Half a beat later, the warhammer left his hand in a pale blur.
The axe arrived first. It punched clean through the trunk and flew on, burying itself in the giant's eye.
GRUAAAAAGH!
Blinded and terrified, the giant flailed.
KWA-RUUUUMBLE!
Thunder split the air. The tree rebounded, reversing along its own trajectory, and—
CRUNCH.
—smashed the monster's skull to pulp.
The giant's body, pinned beneath the trunk, collided with another fallen tree and toppled like a domino.
A rolling log crashed into yet another trunk, sending a grinding shiver through the forest.
When the sounds finally died, silence returned to the woods.
A scattered handful of soldiers, the giant-type creatures, and the corpse of the Giant's Priest—only these lay scattered across the cold ground.
At the center of the carnage, Aslan steadied his breathing and assessed his condition.
Mana reserves: 310, well over half. Fighting Spirit expended: only 2 points.
He had brought down a priest and a pack of high-grade monsters with that little. It was a substantial improvement.
More mana really does open up more options.
In the narrow sense, body enhancement for defense and evasion had become reliable. In the broader sense, he no longer had to burn stamina on wasteful effort.
Every fight grew more efficient, which meant he tired less and conserved more strength.
Satisfied with the result, Aslan retrieved his thrown weapons. He gathered the two short arms in his left hand while his right pulled his two-handed axe free from the priest's skull.
"Aslan, what about her?"
He turned, resting the greataxe on his shoulder. Angie had her staff leveled at Ereta, the six-foot length of it still wet with giant's blood and brain matter.
"She's a traitor. Should I kill her?"
The question came out casual. The content was chilling. Aslan shook his head and walked toward Ereta. Angie stepped aside without a word.
Ereta remained slumped on the ground, barely reacting even as Aslan approached.
He stopped in front of her, leaning on the haft of his axe.
"...Do you still refuse to believe that you've been abandoned?"
Ereta didn't answer. Her expression was vacant. Aslan looked down at her with something close to pity.
"Is it that you've spent your whole life taking, and now you can't process being the one who was taken from for once?"
The sardonic remark finally made Ereta lift her eyes.
Her soft pink irises held nothing but raw terror.
The terror of someone whose familiar world had been destroyed, who had everything stripped away.
Aslan read the emotion in her gaze and murmured,
"That's what it means to be a god's tool. Gods don't have human feelings. Every living thing is equally worthless before them."
Ereta's face remained masklike. She seemed not to be listening. Aslan kept speaking anyway.
"Priests think they're special... but that's just a delusion measured by human standards. That's what gods are."
Something like hatred seeped through the words—bone-chilling hatred. Ereta's lips parted.
"Wh... why...?"
"Why am I telling you this? Why am I not just killing you?"
Foot still resting on the axe, Aslan bent down and met her eyes. Cold fury churned in his teal gaze.
"What do you think?"
The hatred in his eyes, his expression, his voice.
Ereta suddenly remembered the moment of her death.
The axe in his hand, the flash of the blade, the instant she was hacked apart and her throat split.
Her hand moved unconsciously to her neck. The palm came away slick with cold sweat.
Ereta trembled with fear.
Trembling, she replayed that moment again and again.
And each time she did, a tight, coiling sensation gripped her lower abdomen.
It was an inexplicable reaction.
All her life, killing people or hearing their agonized screams had flooded Ereta with deep satisfaction and excitement.
She had always believed that was simply her nature.
Yet now, the excitement she felt surpassed anything she had ever known—as if everything before had been counterfeit, as if it had never been her true nature at all.
She knew exactly where this excitement came from.
The memory of Aslan killing her.
And now, the cold, hateful look and voice he was sending her way.
Heat gathered in her lower belly. Two opposing emotions warred inside her, and cold sweat ran down her skin.
Confusion spread across her face as it flushed red.
Looking down at that deepening blush, Aslan spoke in a low, rumbling growl.
"You are no longer a priest. You are Ereta. Master of Blunt Weapons, Ereta."
It was true. She was no priest, but she was still a Master.
"Cosmic Inevitability will try to devour you. And every priest and god will see you as no different from any other human—equal prey."
That was also true. If anything, being treated more harshly would be the lucky outcome.
"You, who stood in such lofty heights... now you're here."
Aslan's hand rose, then his finger slowly pointed at the ground—the very ground where Ereta sat slumped. When he spoke again, the hatred from moments before had thinned. His voice was drained, weary.
A voice steeped in exhaustion and fatigue.
"Down here with the likes of us. Just like every other equally worthless living thing."
The change in his tone made Ereta lift her head. Her eyes met Aslan's.
Not a trace of hatred remained in those teal irises.
The man with teal eyes said,
"Follow me."
Ereta opened her mouth without thinking.
"...And if I refuse?"
Aslan let his gaze drop, impassive.
"Then you die."
Did he mean he would kill her? As the thought crossed Ereta's mind, Aslan corrected the implication.
"Of course, following me doesn't guarantee you'll live. If a fight goes wrong, if you make a mistake, you could still die. But."
He bent down again. His face drew close. Ereta felt warmth flooding her cheeks and swallowed.
"If you don't follow me, you will certainly die. Someone who hates you—a priest, a god, a wild mage hungry for power. Someone will kill you."
As he straightened, a faint scent of sweat drifted from him. Ereta's fingers curled and uncurled at the smell.
"What I'm offering isn't some pretty illusion of hope. It's a trail of blood you'll have to fight and claw your way through."
What will you choose? With those short words, Aslan dropped the two short weapons he had been carrying onto the ground in front of Ereta. The metallic clatter jarred her back to full awareness.
"A path that definitely ends in death, or a path where you might survive. The choice is yours. If you've chosen... pick up the weapons."
Ereta stared up at Aslan, then looked down at the two blades lying before her, torn.
Those weapons—she had carried them since her days as a priest.
They had always blazed with divinity, wreathed in fire.
But now, no matter how desperately she stroked the blades, not a single flame rose. Nothing reflected back at her but her own face in the blood-soaked axe-head.
...I really have... been abandoned.
Only then did Ereta truly understand her situation.
She was a discarded priest.
That she hadn't died was sheer fortune. Priests always died the moment their power was revoked.
She closed her eyes and swallowed the surging regret.
Regret was meaningless.
She lifted the two short weapons carefully into her hands. They were heavy. She could no longer swing them as lightly as she had when she was a priest.
Ereta laid the weapons across her knees and raised her head.
Aslan was looking down at her in silence.
There was no killing intent in his eyes. They were clear—clear as a pristine sky on a cloudless day.
He killed priests and monsters without hesitation. He killed humans without mercy if they came at him.
That was the Aslan Ereta knew.
The Aslan who had killed her.
She had to ask.
"Why won't you kill me?"
Aslan answered without a moment's pause.
"Because right now, you're human."
At that definitive reply, the woman lowered her head. In the silence that followed, the forest sighed softly. And within that sigh, she gave her answer.
"I will follow you. Teach me the path I must fight."
Aslan said nothing, but Ereta believed she had already heard his reply.