158. Hot Potato
158. Hot Potato
-Wajangchang!!!
The church door blew apart, and two figures shot out like cannonballs.
One was a Holy Knight dispatched from the Holy See, clad in a red cloak; the other was hard to make out.
That was because his entire body was smeared with soot, obscuring his features.
But at the very least, it was clear that his height was far shorter than the Holy Knight's.
The Holy Knight, who had flown out in a kicked posture and smashed into the ground, plowed up all the paving blocks laid out in front of the church, bounced, broke through three street trees, and only then finally came to a stop.
An ordinary person would have died without question, but he too had joined the ranks of superhumans.
Even though he was coughing up a great deal of blood that dripped down his chin, he gritted his teeth and got up.
And the moment he stood, he was kicked once more and sent flying through the air.
A person had flown, yet the scars left upon the earth looked as if a cannonball had carved them.
"Keu... Grand...."
Wreathed in holy power, the Holy Knight rose again and prepared a divine spell, but he could not finish it.
Because the one who had flown like a cannonball had always stuck right behind him.
He struck the Holy Knight's leg while the spell was being prepared, buckling his knee and disrupting the spell.
The soot-blackened person beat the Holy Knight, who was still trying to rise, with the clear intent of destroying him.
The Holy Knight somehow drew up his holy power and reinforced his defense to the absolute limit, but there was no mercy.
The Holy Knight eventually could no longer get up.
He struggled desperately to hold on, but his limit arrived.
Yet even so, the soot-blackened person did not stop.
No matter how you looked at it, the Holy Knight could no longer withstand his attacks.
If he kept beating him the same way, his life would surely be extinguished.
He didn't seem to care at all.
This time, he grabbed a leg.
He raised the blade of his hand high into the sky and brought it down like a straw cutter.
-Peok!!
"Keu... Aaaaagh!!!!"
The Knight Commander's right leg was severed.
Because he was tall, it wasn't his ankle but his shin that was cut off.
The Knight Commander writhed in agony from having his leg cut off, but he still didn't seem satisfied.
His hand rose high into the air again.
No one knew if he intended to cut off the other leg, or if he was going to cut off something else.
Just as the blade of his hand was about to descend upon the Knight Commander, who had already lost all combat capability, someone grabbed his arm.
It was Master Hulan, who had sprinted here the moment he saw the church being blown apart.
"Let go."
"Isn't that enough?"
"It's not enough yet."
The one destroying the Holy Knight was Atlas, his whole body smeared with soot from the Knight Commander's attack.
'Every time I see this guy, he's suffering fire-related damage,' Hulan thought.
"I have to cut off his legs. Those bastards looked down on me. They didn't listen to my demands at all and branded me a heretic. I have to instill fear. I'm going to make sure they can never look down on me again."
"Don't you think it's excessive? Look around you. No one is looking down on you; they're terrified of you."
"Fear is not excessive. It's something that must be done."
All the Holy Knights who had been in the church were now incapacitated.
But Atlas didn't even think about looking around.
His gaze didn't even turn toward Hulan.
He never took his eyes off the Knight Commander, who was still gasping for breath.
It was as if every nerve in his body was being poured solely into destroying the one person before his eyes.
"Move," he said.
"...Are you going to kill that Holy Knight?"
"If necessary."
"You're supposed to say 'no' at times like this, even if it's a lie. I can't just let that slide if you say it like that."
He didn't intend to kill him right away.
He planned to push him to the brink of death and cut off his leg as he always did, but it depended on how the Knight Commander reacted.
If he kept struggling even after that, there was no reason he couldn't kill him.
"I was the one who was attacked first, and I was making a justified retaliation, so this isn't an issue you should be interfering in."
"Even so, there's no need to kill him. I think you should cool your head first."
As a disagreement was about to break out, Atlas finally glared at Hulan.
Just the two of them glaring at each other made the air several times heavier.
He wanted to avoid clashing with a Master.
He was using the Polymorph's Authority to disguise his physical condition, but Atlas's body hadn't improved at all.
The very fact that he was talking to him like this right now was proof.
Originally, he would have ignored whoever it was and proceeded, but fighting him felt burdensome, so he tried to persuade him first.
But that didn't mean he had any intention of tucking tail when a clash was necessary.
It became a touch-and-go situation where, the moment anyone moved, a battle between Masters would break out regardless of who it was.
At that instant, the suffocatingly oppressive atmosphere suddenly vanished.
"Atlas!! Are you okay?!"
The moment he heard that voice, the mood of Atlas, who had been ready to tear apart anyone who touched him, rapidly deflated.
The moment he realized that Liber and Amy had come to the church, he seemed like a different person.
"What... you two were okay?"
"A Holy Knight did come looking for Amy... but he was suspicious, so we knocked him out and came to help you."
It seemed he had gone for Amy, just as the investigator had said.
But that meant the two of them, thinking it was suspicious, subdued the Holy Knight and were on their way to rescue Atlas, who had been taken to the church.
Seeing the two who had suddenly appeared, Atlas let out a sigh of relief and finally looked around.
His eyes took in the thoroughly destroyed church and the wreckage of the Holy Knights.
And then he spoke as if in dismay.
"You guys should know you're lucky."
————————————————————
The steam had gone out of him.
His anger had boiled up to the very top of his head, and he'd thought he'd have to kill at least one person for it to end, but seeing that Liber and Amy were perfectly fine, he lost all concern for whatever else happened.
Though he had said he was stopping, he had only stopped the act of cutting off the Knight Commander's remaining leg; nothing else had changed.
Inside the church, Holy Knights beaten so badly they couldn't even use holy power properly, their legs shattered, still lay collapsed like corpses,
and the Knight Commander himself, though his legs were still intact, had been beaten to the point where he couldn't summon the holy power he could normally use as easily as breathing.
He didn't think it was wrong to have smashed the Holy Knight order and cut off one leg each.
They should be grateful.
Not cutting off their necks and only stopping at their legs was proof of his mercy.
Leaving the ruined church behind, the three of them quietly slipped away.
Hulan did not pursue them as they quietly left the scene.
After traveling for a long time, when they returned near the hospital and confirmed there was no one else around, the Polymorph's Authority was immediately released.
"Heo... eok...!!"
"I knew you weren't okay!!"
"Just... put on a bit of... a bluff...."
What he had pushed aside surged back in like a tidal wave.
He couldn't put any strength into his legs, and when he crumpled down, Liber helped support him.
"...To Professor Praha's lab..."
"I'll move you, so don't die on the way."
"It's not bad enough to die...."
—————————————————-
The Saintess, who was doing paperwork in the Holy See, left her work behind and brewed a pot of tea.
It was afternoon tea time.
After finishing all the paperwork, she would brew tea alone and enjoy it with the refreshments prepared separately.
It was a good break time that reduced the fatigue of her arduous work.
That was, until the uninvited guest appeared.
"Sa... Saintess-nim, we have a huge problem!!"
"...It is tea time."
The Saintess, having her break disturbed, was a little displeased.
"I'm sorry! But it's an extremely critical matter...!!!"
She wondered just how urgent it must be for them to come, but she intended to get angry if it wasn't an issue serious enough to justify interrupting her precious break time after she had just barely finished work.
"Well, if you insist, I suppose there's no helping it... What is the matter?"
"An attack!! The Holy Knight order we dispatched has been completely smashed!!!"
"The Holy Knight order...? It is indeed a critical matter."
Regrettably, it really was a critical matter, so she could no longer enjoy tea time.
She decided to receive the report while sipping from a teacup that was still steaming.
She could not allow the tea she had gone out of her way to brew to go cold.
The Holy Knight order was one of the Holy See's core military forces, and if they had suffered great damage, that meant it could become a major threat to the Holy See itself.
It was disappointing to waste her precious break time, but for now, she decided to quietly listen to the report.
"Explain in detail."
"This case is an urgent support request from the 5th Seat Bishop dispatched to the academy.
The Red Flag Holy Knight order that was conducting an inquisition was annihilated by a single heretic disguised as a student; all members have suffered critical injuries and are said to be incapable of even moving."
The Red Flag Holy Knight order dispatched to the academy was the Holy See's direct elite.
If the elite of the elite, who could easily achieve victory even against top-tier demons, had all sustained critical injuries, it meant that the forces of the Demon Church infiltrating the academy were beyond expectation.
But around then, a single person came to the Saintess's mind.
'If there had been a demon-touched that strong... there's no way he would have stayed still...?'
The Empire's Master infiltrating the academy, Atlas Titan, was an incredibly powerful Master.
If there had been an opponent strong enough to take down all the Holy Knights, he would have noticed and dealt with them first, so the lack of any mention of him bothered her.
If that was the case, there were two possibilities.
For some reason, the Holy Knights were attacked without Atlas's knowledge... or Atlas had been attacked as well.
She didn't even want to imagine the latter.
If an enemy powerful enough to defeat a Master had appeared, the academy would already be a sea of fire.
"The academy, you say... it's already a place that frequently suffers demonic terror attacks, so this is a very serious matter. Is there any information about the suspect?"
"Yes! The suspect stands at about 150 centimeters, has vivid blond hair, and was already a student of special concern even within the academy.
He was a student who had been cautioned for various violent acts from before, including assaulting numerous students, and it seems he finally revealed his true colors this time."
"Hmm, I see. About 150 centimeters... blond hair...."
The Saintess's hand stopped.
The characteristics of the suspect he was describing matched so naturally with an image in her head.
Someone she knew very well came to mind.
'Could that person possibly have... a reason to clash with Holy Knights?'
But she wanted to believe otherwise.
Why would he, who quietly hunted demons in places unseen, be misunderstood by Holy Knights?
"Is his name, by any chance, four letters long?"
"Yes! I've also obtained the name. He is registered as Atlas Nemea, but since no such person is actually listed in the Nemea family registry, it appears he has impersonated a noble and forged documents...! He is a truly heinous criminal!"
The Saintess said nothing and quietly pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose.
'How on earth am I supposed to handle this...?'
She had sent them to hunt demons, and they ended up in a quarrel with a Master.
She tried not to show it, but ripples kept spreading across the surface of the teacup she was holding.