…Captain.
“……Captain.”
O Hui-jin muttered as he spotted Han Dae-ho approaching. The eyes that had been steadily turning red, gradually morphing into those of a demon species, now flickered with the pure, clear light of his human self.
The tentacles sprouting from his body halted their assault, hovering motionless in the air.
Han Dae-ho stepped toward O Hui-jin. He was already badly injured. Any attack from O Hui-jin now could end his life in an instant.
Yet he didn't stop walking toward him.
Kill him.
A woman's voice whispered in O Hui-jin's ear. The woman's face, which had always worn a leisurely smile, now twisted in clear panic.
Because O Hui-jin wasn't listening to her.
Even as she commanded him to kill Han Dae-ho, O Hui-jin stood still. Neither his tentacles nor his arms moved; he simply stared at the approaching man.
If you don't kill him, you'll die. Kill him now.
The woman issued the order again.
Right now. Immediately.
Slash!
O Hui-jin's tentacles lashed out. They coiled around Han Dae-ho's arm and tore it clean off. Blood sprayed wildly from the stump.
Despair clouded O Hui-jin's face. He hadn't willed the tentacles to attack. He had been forced to obey the woman's command.
“C-Captain. I'm sorry. C-Captain… Captain……”
“It's okay. I'm fine.”
O Hui-jin called out to his captain in a monstrous voice, his tone desperate. Even as pain contorted his face, Han Dae-ho forced a steadfast smile and insisted he was all right.
Then he drew closer to O Hui-jin again.
The once proud, vigorous stride of Han Dae-ho was now feeble. His trembling legs bore witness to the severity of his wounds.
Yet he pressed on—stumbling, collapsing, his consciousness fading—toward O Hui-jin.
When he finally reached him, standing right before his nose, Han Dae-ho's lips quivered as he spoke.
“Are you okay?”
Han Dae-ho placed a hand on O Hui-jin's shoulder. A shoulder grotesquely warped from repeated battles, covered in jagged scales that could lacerate skin on contact.
But Han Dae-ho paid it no mind. With his remaining arm, he kept patting that vicious shoulder.
Wounds multiplied on Han Dae-ho's palm.
“Is that the power you truly wanted?”
Han Dae-ho knew the inferiority complex O Hui-jin harbored. No matter how rigorously he trained, his body could never grow strong enough. Born with a slight frame and scant muscle, no amount of effort could overcome those with natural talent.
So he yearned for strength and despised his own frailty.
Instead, he amassed knowledge. That became his power.
Han Dae-ho had always seen such an O Hui-jin as a reliable, capable subordinate.
Han Dae-ho possessed a powerful physique but no thirst for scholarly pursuits. Problems brute force couldn't solve were often resolved thanks to O Hui-jin's wisdom.
“……You were always far stronger than me. I've always thought that.”
Han Dae-ho said. O Hui-jin's eyes wavered.
The woman's face contorted grotesquely.
Kill that bastard! Now!
“Let's stop this. Before you grow any weaker.”
Han Dae-ho said. Blood continued pouring from his severed right arm.
Yet he made no attempt to staunch it. He simply let it flow.
O Hui-jin's body shook violently as tears streamed down his face. They were black tears. Pure, clear human tears.
Thud!
Then, a wooden shard flew over Han Dae-ho's shoulder and pierced O Hui-jin's chest. The sharply spinning fragment tore a massive hole in him.
Blood gushed from the wound in violent spurts.
O Hui-jin touched the gaping hole in his chest with a tentacle. His body could heal any injury in an instant, but even it couldn't close this one.
“Ahh……”
Thump.
O Hui-jin collapsed to his knees right there.
His eyes turned beyond Han Dae-ho's shoulder, to the one who had thrown the shard: Do Seon-woo.
O Hui-jin had lost his will to fight because of Han Dae-ho's words—and his life because of Do Seon-woo's attack.
“……I'm glad.”
O Hui-jin felt relief at meeting his end at the hands of his Seoul East Knight Command comrades, where it had all begun.
He had fallen for the temptations of the Satan Cult executive Lust, becoming neither demon nor human. But he died without killing anyone. That was a mercy.
“Tha…nk……”
O Hui-jin's words cut off there. The eyes that had boiled with the bloodlust and desires of a Satan Cult executive's thrall, alongside the faith and resolve of a Romanica cleric, now stared empty.
He died on his knees. The wooden shard through his chest wasn't the cause. A hole like that he could have healed with willpower alone.
What couldn't heal was his own desire for death. His final conviction as a cleric—that he didn't want to harm anyone anymore—still lingered.
His death came because he willed it so.
The man who had chased strength his whole life was, in his final moment, truly strong.
“Ah, aaah, aaaaaaah—!”
Then, the shrill scream of the woman standing behind O Hui-jin echoed through the cathedral. She shrieked madly at his corpse.
Mun Yo-seop, Seong Yu-da, Han Dae-ho, and the other clerics hurriedly covered their ears. Blood trickled from them.
“……Using trash like him as a thrall was the problem!”
The woman raged. Her leisurely smile twisted into grotesque curses; gentle eye crinkles warped into hideous wrinkles. Her neat white teeth sharpened into beastly fangs.
This was no longer her seductive guise—it was the true form of the Satan Cult executive Lust.
“I should have handled everything myself from the start!”
She raised her hand. Massive, razor-sharp claws tipped her fingers. Black smoke trailed from them—whether demonic energy leaking out or the claws made of it, no one could tell.
She swung toward everyone in the cathedral, intent on slaughtering them with her Satan's Claws.
She had planned to gather superior stock for thralls, but now she craved only annihilation. Her fury demanded it.
Slash.
But before she could fully swing—
A chilling sound reverberated through the cathedral. Her head hit the floor.
Black blood fountained from the neck stump.
Kim Jin-seo casually shook the black blood from her sword and face, gazing down at the woman's rolling head.
Stab.
She thrust her sword into the skull again.
Panic flashed in the woman's eyes as she looked up at Kim Jin-seo. Her face, stripped of its alluring beauty, was smeared in black blood.
“……”
Kim Jin-seo's expression was blank. But her gaze held disgust, contempt, and rage.
The cathedral fell silent, as if doused in ice water.
“Ha, haha. Kyahahaha!”
The woman's laughter shattered the quiet. Even decapitated, she cackled like a madwoman at some hilarious joke.
When the laughter finally stopped, she rolled her eyes, scanning Kim Jin-seo and everyone else before speaking.
“I'll return, without fail! And I'll bring you all a horrific nightmare once more!”
Black smoke poured from her severed body and head. It coalesced into mist and drifted leisurely out of the cathedral.
Kim Jin-seo slashed at it with her sword, but blades couldn't cut smoke.
Even as the black mist fully escaped and vanished, the woman's eerie laughter lingered in the cathedral.
*
Shaaaa……
The black smoke that escaped the cathedral rose into the sky. Riding the wind, it headed somewhere.
Where it finally halted and condensed was a deserted mountain valley.
In the valley's frozen winter chill, at its heart, the smoke gathered form.
A nude woman reappeared.
She scanned her surroundings calmly, unperturbed by the biting cold, then trudged toward the valley stream.
“Ha, ha. Ah, aaah. Aaaaaaah—!”
She plunged into the iced-over water. With her sharp claws, she raked her body madly, emitting grotesque cries.
Black blood oozed from the gashes. The clear stream turned black in moments.
The few loaches in it floated dead to the surface.
“Aaah……. This one, that one. All of them……”
She muttered endlessly, clawing and flaying her flesh.
She replayed the battle.
Her first thrall, called “Creation” by the Envy executive Gu Jun-hyeok, had died pathetically, absurdly so.
She'd hastily made O Hui-jin her second, but he too perished.
Shaken by a single word from that man he'd once called captain as a human. Utterly ridiculous.
Where had it gone wrong?
Choosing “Creation” as her first thrall? O Hui-jin as second? Failing to secure enough magic beasts and demons?
No. None of that. Preparations were fine.
The problem was that black-haired man. He'd effortlessly slain her first thrall “Creation,” wiped out the magic beasts and demons in the membrane, and finished off her second thrall O Hui-jin.
“Cult Leader……”
The Voodoo Cult Leader. He was the issue.
Without him, everything would have gone perfectly.
She could have killed the inferior clerics gathered there, kept the superior ones as thralls.
And become the strongest of Satan's Vessels, Satan's Chalice, earning the glory of Hell's sovereign.
But the Voodoo Cult Leader ruined it all.
If only she could kill him. Or better yet, make him her thrall……
Splash, splash.
Then, someone walked across the stream toward her.
The woman whipped around in shock. There had been no presence before. This was sudden.
Seeing the man, she gasped.
“Gu Jun-hyeok?”
It was Gu Jun-hyeok, executive of Envy and one of Satan's Vessels.
She blinked in utter confusion.
“You escaped? From the underground prison? How?”
“Nah, this is a taxidermy doll. The real me's still locked up.”
Gu Jun-hyeok said casually.
She examined him closer. But it was unmistakably him. Too perfect and intricate to be a crude taxidermy imitation.
After staring in shock for a while, her face twisted in fury as she glared and snapped.
“You! Because you told me to target the promotion ceremony! I helped you, and look what happened. I lost everything—my thralls, magic beasts, demons!”
“Oh, really?”
Gu Jun-hyeok replied nonchalantly.
He had indeed advised her and “Creation” to strike the promotion ceremony. Provided groundwork, intel—everything.
She'd trusted him implicitly, launched the attack.
At first, she hadn't understood why he'd help. As a Vessel of Satan, he was her rival.
But his explanation—“I'm trapped in prison, can't do anything. Cause chaos at the promotion, and I'll escape in the confusion”—had disarmed her suspicions naively.
Trusting him cost her every thrall, beast, and demon she'd tamed.
She glared daggers.
“If you hadn't said that—!”
“Yeah, you really should pick who you trust more carefully.”
Whoosh.
As Gu Jun-hyeok smirked, a massive finger materialized behind him amid black flames.
Before she could react, it slashed her throat.
Kiiiiing—!!
A horrific screech like clashing steel rang out. Her head severed clean.
It didn't reattach. No escape as smoke.
She died without a final word or death rattle. Simply, utterly gone.
“One left now.”
Gu Jun-hyeok picked up a claw that had fallen from her corpse, popped it in his mouth, and said.
From his hand, claws like hers sprouted amid demonic energy.
(To be continued in the next chapter)