Crossroads of Life and Death
A few months before the grim news reached them, the women were gathered together in conversation.
They were not reading the Hero's chronicle. With her imperial duties multiplying by the day, Peria had found no time to decipher the inscriptions upon the Holy Sword. Instead, their attention remained keenly fixed on the shifting tides within the Empire.
"...It appears the Emperor intends to join hands with the Pope," Peria said.
"...Didn't the previous Emperor drive the Pope out?" Lena tilted her head. As a long-lived fairy, centuries and millennia felt like decades at most to her perception; the bitter feud between the imperial throne and the Holy See seemed like an affair of merely a few generations past. She could fathom no reason why the Emperor would now seek an alliance with him. "Does the Pope have no pride? To join hands with the very imperial house that banished his predecessor into the desert?"
Beatrice offered a gentle response. "That was thousands of years ago. Mortals are ever inclined to be swayed by immediate gains rather than deeds lost to antiquity. What truly matters, however, is the nature of those gains. We still cannot discern what the Pope hopes to obtain by aligning himself with His Imperial Majesty."
"...Come to think of it, you had an audience with both of them at the Imperial Palace recently, didn't you? What was that about?" Sayne asked.
Beatrice recalled that day. Before the faces of the Emperor and the Pope came to mind, however, her thoughts drifted to the vicious scars she had glimpsed etched into Sayne's wrists.
Yet she chose not to speak of them. When she had tried to administer healing light, Sayne had pulled back her arms with fierce, desperate rejection. Such an extreme reaction meant Sayne carried her own agonizing reasons, and understanding the depth of that inner turmoil, Beatrice could not bring herself to press the matter.
Instead, Beatrice looked quietly upon Sayne—who had stripped herself of her military office, severed herself from all sources of intelligence, and grown so deathly pale. Carefully guarding her expression and tone so Sayne would not feel the sting of pity, she spoke in an even voice.
"Well... they inquired whether the holy knight order under the Saintess's direct command ought to be reorganized."
"The order under your direct command?"
The Crusaders, the holy knight order subordinate solely to the Saintess, were indisputably the finest of the Goddess Religion's elite. The Four Guardian Knights who led them represented the absolute pinnacle of combat prowess within the Church, second only to the Saintess herself. Above all, because they fulfilled critical specialized duties such as the heresy inquisitions, they served as the Church's most vital foundation.
"Why on earth would they reorganize the Crusaders?" Peria asked, her brow furrowing.
"They suggested... that perhaps the Crusaders should be transferred from the Saintess's direct authority to the central administration of the Church. They argued that it was improper for an order bound only to the Saintess to oversee core ecclesiastic functions, asking how I would feel about reshaping them into the central pillar of the Church."
"Wait, isn't that just a blatant attempt to strip the Crusaders from your grasp? What about the Paladins?"
The Paladins, conversely, were the standing holy knight order answering directly to the Papal Court. The crucial distinction lay in their obedience to the institution of the Papacy rather than a single individual; while the Crusaders could not make a move without a direct decree from the Saintess, the Paladins could be deployed at the behest of archbishops and the senate. Consequently, the Paladins operated with far greater tactical flexibility across various fronts and were naturally vastly superior in number. If the Crusaders were the peerless elite, the Paladins—formidable in their own right—were primarily valued as the Church's broad military hammer.
"Wouldn't it be far more natural to designate the Paladins as the central pillar? Why go out of their way to touch the Crusaders...?"
At Peria's question, Beatrice let out a soft, weary sigh. "Indeed. It seems His Majesty and the Pope concluded that the Crusaders lacked operational flexibility during the war. They likely desire that kind of adaptability under their own control."
"Then couldn't they simply grant the Guardian Knights emergency proxy authority to mobilize the Crusaders?"
"I doubt that would work. The Guardian Knights are fiercely devoted; without my direct presence, they would refuse to lift a single finger."
"No, this makes no sense," Peria pressed. "Granted, the Crusaders weren't nimble, but wasn't it precisely that stubborn, unyielding discipline that allowed them to hold off an entire demon corps by themselves?"
The Crusaders offered their fanatical devotion solely to the Saintess, and that singular faith pushed their battlefield morale into the realm of terrifying zealotry. It was that very fanaticism that had enabled them to halt the demonic tide sweeping up from the southern Empire—holding the line against an entire corps led by none other than 'The Great Mountain' Malekidus.
"She's right. They are definitely not troops to be belittled," Lena chimed in with a scoff. "Among all the mortal armies I've witnessed, they were by far the most formidable."
"And yet they harp on about 'flexibility' anyway... which means there is a hidden motive behind it," Peria murmured, stroking her chin. "So, how exactly do the Pope and the Emperor intend to employ the Crusaders?"
"Well... they proposed stationing them within the Imperial Capital to root out corruption and impurity across the realm. Where they previously remained secluded within the Holy Land, the court wishes them to intervene far more actively within the Empire's interior..."
"What!?"
Sayne, possessing a sharper grasp of military strategy than anyone else in the room, instantly recognized the venom lurking beneath the proposal. "You didn't grant your approval, did you?"
"Of course I refused, but... the requests from His Holiness and His Majesty were exceptionally ardent."
For Beatrice to describe their demeanor as 'exceptionally ardent' meant they had thrown a shameless, rabid tantrum. Sayne's expression darkened into an icy grimace.
"What could the Emperor possibly be planning... It's as though he's preparing for a war of conquest..."
It was true. If the Crusaders were granted sweeping authority to police the Empire's interior as a direct instrument of imperial and papal authority, their reach would inevitably spill outward, exerting crushing pressure upon neighboring sovereign states.
"It was already reckless enough for Count Cerindel to demand forced compliance from neighboring realms. How much further does the Emperor intend to overreach...?" Sayne's brow furrowed tightly. Perhaps the Emperor's goal was not merely placing his obedient hunting dog at the summit of the imperial military, but something far more monstrous.
A chill of foreboding crept along her skin, and she unconsciously rubbed her sleeve over her scarred wrists. Drawing a long, measured breath, Sayne forced herself to regain composure. Even if such horrors came to pass, what could she do? She was nothing more than an outcast now—and before that, an unforgivable sinner.
"Still can't read the situation, can you?"
Einzel looked down with a thin smirk at Count Cerindel, who stood rooted in place with a blank, uncomprehending stare.
"You fool. You should have checked where you were lying down before stretching your legs out. Far too late for regrets now, though."
The mocking laughter of the former Hero rang clear across the bloodstained field.
"S-Shut up..."
"Hm? What was that?"
"Shut your mouth! How dare a traitor colluding with demons put on such airs!"
Driven past the brink by pure terror, Count Cerindel flew into a hysterical frenzy. Manifesting blazing sword force along his edge, he lashed out with a desperate, wild flurry.
Clang!
Einzel casually deflected the tempestuous slashes using his dark blade, its pommel set with a deep amethyst. "Well, at least when panic grips you, your instinct is to swing rather than run. Good for you."
Einzel maintained an easy, nonchalant grin from start to finish, while Count Cerindel was drenched in cold sweat.
The Count had genuinely believed they stood on equal footing.
The Hero was a Swordmaster, and so was he. He had assumed there could not possibly be an insurmountable difference in raw martial skill, and that with several hundred imperial soldiers backing him, he could easily corner his prey.
The rogue was supposed to serve as a sacrificial stepping stone, a prize to cement Cerindel's ascension to the undisputed pinnacle of the imperial military. The Hero was supposed to flee pathetically before the might of the imperial host until he was dragged down in chains.
Yet what was this reality before him?
He had heard tales that the Hero commanded magic, holy miracles, and archery. No, the sickening chill that had washed over the field moments ago was dark mana—it was undeniable that he commanded high-tier dark magic as well. And yet, right now, the man was parrying every strike using swordsmanship alone.
Even so... even stripped down to pure bladecraft...
It was impossibly, hopelessly distant. It was absurd to think they occupied the same mortal realm of mastery.
"Getting bored yet?" Einzel asked, snapping his fingers.
Dead bone and shredded sinew began to weave together with horrific precision.
"A pity there isn't a single intact corpse left to play with, but hey, mushing them all into one pile solves that problem."
Under the sinister pull of his dark arts, severed torsos and mangled limbs twisted, fused, and ground against one another with nauseating wet crunches.
"...A Corpse Golem," Count Cerindel choked out, desperately clinging to the fraying remnants of his sanity.
With catastrophic momentum, the grotesque amalgam of dead flesh lumbered forward, mercilessly trampling the proud, elite soldiers of the Empire beneath its bulk. And the men crushed beneath its weight...
"Urgh... Aaagh... Uuuhhh."
Emitting hollow, guttural groans from broken jaws, they rose once more from the blood-soaked mud as shambling undead.
It felt like being swallowed alive by a waking nightmare—an unrelenting, hideous horror from which there was no awakening.
Before Count Cerindel could even process the horror, he realized he was entirely surrounded by his own soldiers—or rather, the hollow husks that had once been his men.
He swung his sword in blind panic, hacking through the shambling ranks of his former subordinates in a desperate bid to break the encirclement. The warm blood splashing across his face still carried the lingering heat of life.
This cannot be happening.
Count Cerindel bit his lip until blood flowed. I have to survive. I refuse to end up like these walking rotting corpses!
Yet barring his retreat was an abyssal presence that blocked all light, offering not the slightest sliver of hope.