Chapter 224
Chapter 224
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 224
Chapter Title: The Reaper of the Silver Mirror Lake (3)
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In the chilly hall of Untana's Council Hall, discontented grumblings boiled over.
"What in the world? How much longer do we have to stay cooped up here? It's already been days!"
"That's exactly what I'm saying! At this point, we could just leave a skeleton crew behind and bail without any issue..."
There were many voices, but they all said the same thing. They wanted out—fast.
It wasn't anything out of the ordinary, really. Untana wasn't far from Delutana, but its brutal winters made it a posting everyone dreaded. The envoys and aides who'd spent years enduring here would always vent the same way every winter, whining about escaping this frozen hellhole. It had become an annual ritual.
But there was one difference this time...
"Hoo... Surely even the heavenly Elga wishes for His agents to press forward swiftly and bring glory to His name..."
...The ones venting their frustrations were Knights of Elga from the Elga Church.
Three High Paladins and six Paladins—a total of nine holy knights. That was the story of how they'd come to share common ground with the alliance politicians.
When the holy war had first broken out, the church's holy knights had all clamored to deploy to the central front leading toward Delutana. It was a land ripe with chances to rack up massive feats that could propel them straight to sainthood, or to plunder spoils beyond measure.
Of course, not everyone could go to their preferred battlefield, so these ten had been sent north. A barren land with no great dangers, but no great opportunities either.
Still, they clung to one hope.
Their commander was Decagram, the radiant 'star' of Elga.
If he unleashed his full power... sweeping through the northern cities like a storm and reaching Delutana ahead of the other units wasn't impossible at all.
That hope had been more than fulfilled in the early days of the campaign. In less than a week, they'd breached the border, conquered Untana, and taken the families of Delutana's elite as hostages. The holy knights had been in a frenzy of excitement, convinced they'd overrun Delutana and return as war heroes.
But after that, nothing but bitter disappointment. It had been a full two weeks since they'd taken Untana and hunkered down. For whatever inscrutable reason, the 'star' showed no signs of moving out.
Even so, they were better off than the man who had just entered the hall.
"...What are you lot mumbling about all huddled up like that? Is there a problem?"
A man in heavy plate topped with a surcoat growled ominously. The holy knights jumped to attention in perfect unison.
"'All for the light!'"
"'All for the light!' No, sir! Nothing's wrong at all, Vice Commander!"
"..."
The dour-faced man silently tossed what he held in his hand. Thud. A grotesque abomination landed at their feet.
A stunned middle-aged man, a terrified girl, a woman with eyes squeezed shut, a resigned elder... The heads of citizens, their flesh shriveled to the bone, blood frozen into a single mass.
As the man spread his hand, every head glowed and exploded.
Bzzz—pop, pop—!
"Then get out there and pass judgment on these heretics instead of huddling in here like a pack of ten idiots."
"..."
The sheer killing intent radiating from him made it impossible for the holy knights even to breathe properly.
And they had good reason. The man, Ferrant, was the expedition's sole Arch Paladin, a holy knight of saintly rank. Had he gone to the central front, he could've faced down armies alone and claimed massive glory. Being stuck in this backwater was enough to make anyone's blood boil.
One High Paladin mustered his courage.
"V-Vice Commander Ferrant? If I may... I believe there's no need to linger in Untana any longer. The city's forces and key figures have already been sealed away 'beneath the water' by the Commander, and the remaining heretics are just small fry..."
"So, what are you trying to say?"
"Well..."
"Are you daring to defy the 'star's' will?"
"..."
The objector's mouth snapped shut. To avoid provoking their enraged vice commander, the holy knights rushed out one after another, vowing to judge the heretics.
Left alone, Ferrant kicked aside the scattered head fragments. He slumped into a rickety chair and rubbed his hardened face with dry hands.
Truth be told, he was burning with the same urge to leave Untana. The thought of other Arch Paladins racking up dazzling feats while he wasted away here twisted his guts. Executing a dozen heretics wasn't enough to vent his rage.
Of course, he knew the 'star's' purpose in this, so he'd obeyed orders so far...
"...?"
...But then Ferrant sensed something off.
Three High Paladins, six Paladins. The holy knights who'd just left numbered nine in total. Yet when he'd entered, he'd distinctly sensed ten—not by presence, but by counting the breaths, the thinning air in the room.
As a chilling premonition gripped him and he reached for his sword hilt—
"H-Hold it, you bastard!"
"...Huh."
Vmmm—!
Before he could prepare, a dagger pierced the back of his neck.
Ferrant crumpled unconscious.
*
Duncan Wheeled was deep in thought.
Upon entering Untana, he'd first checked the prison area where captives might be held. But the cells held only frozen corpses of inmates—no sign of any prisoners.
Next, he'd chosen the Council Hall. As the city's core facility, the invaders' leaders were likely there. His plan was to grab one, interrogate him, learn how Untana fell, and track down his family's whereabouts.
The plan went smoothly. Sneaking into the hall, Duncan successfully knocked out and captured a holy knight addressed as "vice commander."
The problem was how to interrogate the man.
Duncan had no idea just how strong a holy knight was. But he knew that if this guy—who could make heads explode barehanded—woke up, his own skull wouldn't stay intact long.
Killing him would be easy. Stab his throat with the hellfire dagger while he slept, and he'd never recover. But interrogating him while conscious and unharmed? The more Duncan thought about it, the more impossible it seemed.
The solution came from an unexpected place.
"...Huh!"
His coin pouch, stuffed with gold picked up along the way, held a forgotten spoil of war. Staring at it intently, Duncan hatched a brilliant scheme and got to work.
An hour later, the interrogation subject finally stirred.
"Urk... What... is this..."
Arch Paladin Ferrant realized he was buried up to his neck in some basement floor, only his head protruding.
"What is this, you bastard...? Who the hell are you...?"
"I-I'm Duncan Wheeled, the finest guide there is! S-Sorry to trouble you, but if you could just stay put there nice and quiet and answer my questions...?"
"..."
Absurdity spread across the gloomy man's face. Ferrant immediately tried to wrench free and smash this suspicious bearded intruder's skull.
But something was wrong.
"...Huh? What the—damn it..."
No matter how he struggled, he couldn't pull out.
It was inevitable. He wasn't truly buried; his neck was clamped in a perfectly fitted 'distortion hole.' His head was here, but his body was elsewhere entirely. No amount of thrashing would free him.
The ploy had worked perfectly. The dark holy arts learned in the Great Forest remained as useful as ever. Clutching Ilenia's 'ruined nation's silver coins' tightly, Duncan let out a relieved sigh.
Ferrant soon realized he'd fallen victim to some sinister sorcery. He bellowed in fury and refused to cooperate—but it was no big issue. A simple tightening of the distortion hole around his neck calmed him right down.
"Gack! Kek—urk, hek—this, loosen...!"
"P-Promise you won't yell and will answer quietly! O-Otherwise, I'll keep squeezing with this!"
"You little—gak—bastard...!"
...In the end, the Arch Paladin yielded to the threat and answered obediently.
The information was more shocking than expected. The garrisoned imperial forces numbered a thousand. This holy knight before him was an Arch Paladin. Untana had fallen in just three days. There had been imperial collaborators in the refugee column that included Duncan's family...
But the most stunning fact was that a Decagram was here.
"Whaaat!? D-Decagram? You mean one of the Elga Church's top holy knights, and there are only ten in total!?"
"...Yes."
"Why—why would someone of that caliber come here? This isn't some massive metropolis like Delutana, or any major strategic hub..."
"..."
Ferrant clammed up. Even choking him for ages yielded silence. Duncan reluctantly moved on to other questions.
He learned his family might be found at the 'Silver Mirror Lake.' All the highborn families from Delutana had been taken there as prisoners.
But upon hearing their names, the Arch Paladin's eyes suddenly bulged.
"...Yulia? Mrs. Wheeled? What... Don't tell me... You're that 'Duncan Wheeled'?"
"Uh... I told you my name right when we met?"
"..."
He stared for a long time at the pathetically unassuming man.
Ferrant growled as if reaching a grave decision.
"In that case, I must capture you at any cost."
Then he began slamming his head into the floor with all his might.
Bam—! Bam—! Bam—!
"Wh-what...?"
It wasn't suicide. An Arch Paladin's body, honed to the extreme, was tougher than rock. Instead of his skull splitting, cracks spiderwebbed across the stone floor, shards flying.
Distortion holes only held when surfaces remained intact. Duncan's face drained of color as he shouted.
"S-Stop! You can't do that! Y-You absolutely can't get out of there!"
Bam—! Boom—! Boom—!
His words didn't reach the Arch Paladin. If anything, the blows grew fiercer, crumbling the floor further. In the end, the hole widened enough for a man's waist to slip through.
Ferrant smirked darkly as he began pulling his upper body free.
"To think you'd try to bind me with parlor tricks like this... Aren't you underestimating Elga's agent a bit too much, heretic?"
"N-No, you can't! If you come out, you'll definitely regret—"
"Enough of your yapping. Now that I've found you, I can finally leave this wretched city..."
He ignored Duncan's final warning—and paid the price.
Shlick...
"...Huh?"
His head split in two, blood streaming down.
Ferrant collapsed with a clueless look on his face.
Silence blanketed the basement. Brain matter and blood seeped coldly into the web of cracks.
Duncan sighed deeply and shook his head. He walked over to the Arch Paladin's corpse, retrieving the invisible blade—the 'razor'—that had cleaved his head. He'd wedged it into a wall crack overhead and fixed it firmly, just in case. Unaware of it, the fool had rammed his unbreakable skull straight into a transparent blade enchanted with 'severance enhancement.' Even the toughest cranium couldn't withstand that.
"That's why I told you not to come out..."
The merchant's lament echoed softly through the Council Hall basement. He'd slain an Arch Paladin without lifting a finger.
*
Still, the Arch Paladin's thrashing hadn't been entirely in vain.
"What? You didn't find him there either?"
"Yes, sir. We've searched every inch of the Council Hall! The intruder's probably already slipped outside."
"Damn it! Then head to the east gate! Look for the Commander too..."
The head-slamming had been so loud that holy knights swarmed the source in no time. Ferrant's body was discovered before his blood even cooled. The vice commander's sudden death triggered a full alert; every soldier mobilized to hunt the killer.
And that killer was currently cloaked in a Shadow Mantle, slinking through dark alleys.
He kept his footsteps and breathing as quiet as possible. With search parties carrying torches everywhere, complacency was fatal. Just as Kadim had advised days ago, Duncan stuck faithfully to the mindset of a 'rat that dies if spotted.'
His mind swirled with questions and worries. How to evade the patrols and escape the city? Why were the prisoners at the Silver Mirror Lake instead of in the castle? Why had the Arch Paladin so desperately wanted to capture him? What were those massive fish in the moat...?
And what was this Decagram's goal here? What powers did he wield?
But the moment he rounded a corner, every thought evaporated.
"You... What are you doing wandering the streets alone in the dead of night?"
"N-No, I... My son suddenly went missing, so..."
"Save your excuses for the holy knights. Come along quietly, heretic."
"W-Wait! Kyaaaah!"
Imperial soldiers dragged a woman by the wrist. She screamed and tumbled to the ground under their rough handling.
The familiar figure and voice were unmistakable, even at midnight. Duncan's eyes bulged.
"...Yulia?"