Chapter 360
Chapter 360
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 360
Chapter Title: Scout and Plunderer (5)
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A rural village on the northern coast of Mardun was burning. Not just the farmlands, but the massive wooden fence connecting the nearby settlements was completely engulfed.
Aeren watched the scene with bitter eyes before roughly kicking away a villager lunging at her. The villager tumbled across the ground, gasping for breath.
“Heaven’s punishment… You’ll receive heaven’s punishment…!”
“Yeah. You’ve done deeds deserving of heaven’s punishment.”
Unlike most northerners, Aeren could speak the southern tongue, however clumsily. Thus, she felt her heart grow heavy amid the cries and laments echoing from all sides.
Plunder occurred in tribal wars too, and Aeren was no flower-crowned pacifist with her head full of dreams. She was a shieldmaiden and avenger, and by now, the Yarl and king of the North.
The grains reaped here would soon become the North’s sustenance. The North was starving, dying. What was happening on this land had happened exactly the same in the North.
Yarls colluding with demons had sparked civil war, polluting everything, and the war had decimated the population capable of farming. The devastated lands were beyond counting, and there was neither the skill nor the foundation to stockpile food or resume agriculture.
That had been a year ago. This was now effectively the first winter since then. With the North in such straits, Aeren had accepted Fernandez’s invitation to divert the grumbling Yarls’ attention.
However….
“This is dishonorable.”
That was the problem. The North’s civil war? Alongside the spirits of their ancient ancestors who had fought demons, charging while crying “Valhalla.” Their battles had been struggles for survival and honor.
But where was the honor in this plunder? She scanned her surroundings with a heavy heart. The northern warriors here seemed no different from her.
“Yarl, the signal’s up.”
“Withdraw.”
“Yes!”
A red flower bloomed from the wooden plaques in the warriors’ hands. Those who had been ransacking storehouses and looting food shouldered their packs and bolted in the same direction.
Rally points, assembly areas, entry times, withdrawal alerts—all encapsulated in tactical signals. Implemented by Freya and coordinated by Fernandez. The signals from the northern civil war had grown astonishingly sophisticated.
That was the source of her dissatisfaction.
‘With such power, fighting them head-on wouldn’t be hard.’
Wasn’t there a better use for this force than raiding farmlands and slipping away just before the enemy’s defenses arrived? Aeren clicked her tongue briefly.
‘Well… if we had, we couldn’t have reaped this harvest.’
Literally. Turning them into mercenaries would have plunged the North into greater chaos. The warriors here were elite troops drafted from each tribe, the very manpower most needed to survive the winter.
If they’d been squandered futilely on a southern expedition without gaining food, the North’s plight would have worsened. As Yarl, Aeren knew personal honor was lighter than the nation’s survival. Now was the time to judge by pragmatism over emotion.
She glanced at the old villager’s face as he staggered to his feet, then turned and left the village.
* * *
Deep in the night, panting in the shadow-cloaked forest. Darian wondered why he still hadn’t died. Had his body become too defiled to return? Had killing a priest earned him an unabsolvable curse?
If so, it was laughable. The heavenly surrogates who had ignored all pleas for salvation had cursed a mere individual like him.
“Cough…!”
He roughly wiped the blood froth bubbling at his lips. Excessive blood loss blurred his vision and dizzied his head. With trembling hands, he gripped the broken spear shaft buried deep in his gut and yanked it out savagely.
-Crunch!
“Grr… Argh!!”
Black, dead blood sprayed out. Wounds that would have killed a normal person three times over crisscrossed his body. From the gut puncture to the long gash across his chest, the laceration devouring his right shoulder, and the half-severed slash at his nape.
Dead blood and yellow pus oozed, while fever like melting flesh raged through him. Coldly put, he was dying.
Day five.
Five days with the wounds neither healing nor worsening. Five days dying while preserved like a specimen. Nothing but a curse could explain it.
Even taking one step demanded superhuman endurance. A slight twist of his waist brought pain like nerves being gnawed by blades. Walking barefoot through a forest of needle-sharp thorns would have hurt less.
“You won’t kill me!!!”
He screamed at the sky, glaring straight at the moon. According to Shilde Church teachings, the moon was another face of the sun. When the sun’s light crossed to the material world’s opposite side, its traces collided with the celestial mirror, forming the halo.
The church had taught him this for years. “Behold, the Lord watches and embraces you at every moment. Even in the darkest night.”
Then answer! Darian glared at the moon with despair-filled eyes, shouting.
“You want to inflict greater pain on me?! Fine, do it!! In every action, every scheme of yours, I read fear! You want me broken? You hope these wounds make me give up? You want me groaning, begging mercy from you!!”
His boiling cries echoed thunderously. He dropped to his knees, tears streaming. From the moment he’d killed innocents on the emperor’s orders. Perhaps from the moment he failed to resist the demon’s command—his fate had been sealed.
But he’d believed. The emperor’s death would ultimately prevent greater ruin. Even if he’d refused, the emperor would have achieved his goals, so better to halt the mindless slaughter with his own hands.
It had worked. Pro-imperial electors and corrupt nobles feared him, a cathedral knight. Darian had subdued them by force. The commoners they expended were far fewer than those who’d die in war and famine.
Suppose a lord in a domain of two hundred thousand turned corrupt. Without Darian’s intervention, that lord would have devoured the entire population. With Darian behind such figures, they had to content themselves with one per week to survive.
Evil remained evil, but permit only the minimal evil possible. That was Darian’s choice. Even if it dirtied his hands, his life—only the minimal evil.
Yet what had been the result?
‘How many died in the civil war after the emperor’s death?’
Darian wasn’t adept at administrative calculus. But even in his limited view, the numbers exceeded dozens, hundreds of times over. Not just warriors slain in battle. Granaries to feed tens of thousands of soldiers, bases, farmlands, lands, and cities destroyed by those soldiers in the war.
War doesn’t just take soldiers. The civil war from the emperor’s death had starved hundreds of thousands. Dispossessed folk became bandits preying on their own, refugees dying of cold and hunger by roadsides.
If it had stopped there, yes. Darian could have accepted it. Pain to excise rotten sores. The empire’s strong supply lines would surely save them soon enough. If the next emperor was competent, entirely possible.
‘Holy Pantheon…!!’
The church hadn’t. Villages allied with the emperor, suspected of alliance, or in the path of his advance—all burned. He’d allowed villains to kill innocents? Yes. But the church?
By what right had they burned, driven out, torn apart the innocent? Because God willed it? As their slogans claimed, because the gods desired it?
“No more! I won’t allow it!! No longer!”
He screamed like a madman. A god desiring human death—what differed from a demon? And if saving humans required allying with demons, what wrong was there?
-Clatter!
A worn ring tumbled from his bosom. His gaze, fixed on the moon, snapped to the ground. A pale, slender finger rolled there. A severed finger with the ring still on.
‘I can’t die yet…!!’
Grinding his molars, he forced himself up. When he’d burned the Inquisition outpost in the Dragonspine Mountains, he’d awaited death there. He’d waited as enraged inquisitors charged.
Then suddenly, a crossbow quarrel pierced his finger and flew at him. The ring on the fingertip was familiar—Seiri’s. From the Imperial Magic Academy.
“Carlo Mano Pavilos!!!”
His rage pierced the heavens. Blasphemous vigor surged into his draining right arm. He battered aside a charging inquisitor and scanned the forest for Carlo, who’d fired the crossbow from hiding.
A faint laugh echoed from the woods—Carlo’s.
“Sir Shrike! Dying in a place like this? If you want to save this wench, follow me!!”
Gnashing his teeth at the shout, Darian had no choice but to shift from a fight to die to a fight to escape alive. Amid inquisitors slashing his body, he preserved his life and fled that hellish forest.
But Carlo was a master of evasion and stealth. By the time Darian could track him, Carlo had fled exactly a day’s distance ahead. The grueling chase continued. Day five, without a sip of water, relentlessly through the forest.
“Kill the gods, kill the demons, save humanity…!”
The madman muttered. One step. Feeling pain even elite agents couldn’t endure, yet another step.
“Kill the gods… kill the demons… save humanity…!!”
Another step. One more. Without stopping, again. Five days, tens of kilometers. Faster than a healthy man walking plains, charging straight toward his goal—
“Kill the gods! Kill the demons! Save humanity!!”
Fanatical faith, misguided conviction, extreme action—believing solely in that. One step at a time, in the stance of a cathedral knight who’d drawn blade for belief.
Humans need no gods or demons. No immortals. Gods don’t love humanity. If they did, they’d have suicided long ago.
Gods only weaken humans. Humans must walk, think, desire on their own. Must. Gods make humans beg and grovel.
Demons are no different. Essentially the same. Hell and heaven are ambiguous borders by human measure; immortals feel nothing but scorn for mortals.
Thus, kill the gods, kill the demons, save humanity. The material world is humanity’s; no being may claim it.
[Do you think you’re human?]
A dry laugh rang in his ear. Darian scanned with bloodshot eyes. The silent forest showed nothing.
“Who are you!!”
[Do you think you’re human, Darian Shrike? Who possesses such power? What human breathes and walks through such wounds? Simple will can’t explain it. You know that too, don’t you?]
The voice echoed with mockery. Darian gripped his sword hilt without slowing.
[Then what? Suppose it goes as you say. Kill all gods, all demons—what remains? You. Hypocrite, puppet. You’re a tool woven by fate, and at your ‘goodness’s’ end, we wait. You’re a toy created for our needs, not even essential. You thought you moved for your beliefs, but even that served us.]
“I live as myself, die as myself. Nameless echo like you will never take anything from me! Call me toy. Call me puppet! Deem I served you!! That shall be your epitaph!!”
[You don’t know who I am, nor even who you are. Foolish beast. I’m curious what awaits your thrashing’s end. Your face upon grasping all truths will be delightful entertainment. We watch you. Always, everywhere, every moment. Kill me? I’m everywhere and nowhere! Wind, sun, field, river! Time, and your fate! Kill me. The only way is your own death!]
“I sense fear of me in your words. Mere echo, by speaking to me, you’ve admitted your failure. If you truly saw me as a trivial toy, you wouldn’t curse my fate. You see me as a threat.”
Darian’s eyes blazed like a predator’s on prey. Fever-dazed eyes cooled, and glaring into the dark, he spat each word deliberately.
“Did you ask my method? That I lack a way to kill you? That I don’t know your identity! Yes—god, demon, whatever. One way suffices to kill you!”
-Shing!
He swung, felling the tree before him. The giant toppled with a deafening crash.
“Those who beg other-than-human existences. Priests and demon-worshippers offering souls for faith! Slaughter them all—what can you do? If no one in the material world fears you, knows you, reveres you. You’ll be less than fireflies!”
Kill demons, kill gods, save humanity. The madman muttered once more and resumed his steps.