Chapter 122
Chapter 122
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 122
Chapter Title: The Union's Pride
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“What do you think you’re doing? Can’t you see there are people outside?”
Loan’s tone quickly turned harsh.
Moments ago, he was the respectable head of an organization, but now he was no better than a criminal.
The abbot replied with a firm expression.
“We have no choice. The fallen monks will invade. We must prevent a greater disaster by keeping the gates closed.”
“Is that something a man who serves a god should say?”
“It is precisely because I serve a god that I can say this. Those outside are unbelievers or those who lack faith. The followers of our god are here, inside. I have a responsibility to save them.”
A reply without a hint of hesitation. Or falsehood.
A hollow sigh escaped him.
“You won’t even make the slightest effort. It’s as if you’ve abandoned your humanity and intellect in search of faith.”
“Heh, heheh. What are you saying?”
“I won’t believe your will is the will of the Orthodoxy. Nor is it the will of your god.”
Headmaster Gregor, Commander Hans. Even his seniors in the Stability Division, whose attitudes and hearts were always proper.
They would have gone outside. They weren’t the type to act like this.
Loan walked past the abbot and started up the stairs.
The priests and knights grew agitated.
The abbot hurriedly chased after Loan.
“Where are you going? What are you trying to do?”
“I saw it from the outside. There’s a terrace. I plan to go out that way.”
Opening the gate to let the people in would be best, but trying to do so would surely be met with fierce resistance.
He decided it would be better for him to go outside himself.
He didn’t know what was out there, but abandoning the people out of fear of the unknown was something one could only do after forgetting the pride of the Union.
It was to voluntarily forfeit the right to wear the emblem on his chest.
“You can’t! It’s suicide. Why would you throw your life away?”
It was a genuinely worried remark. Feeling that sincerity made him even angrier.
He condensed everything he wanted to say into a few short words.
“That is the Union.”
“The air outside is filled with a dark energy. It’s an aura brought by the fallen monks. If you stay in it, you’ll go mad. Even those outside right now are almost…”
Loan suddenly raised a hand, cutting the abbot off.
“Did you say a dark energy?”
He asked as he stepped onto the third floor. He turned to look, and the terrace was closed.
Loan erected a barrier of air to push back the abbot, who was following closely behind him.
The abbot, with a bewildered expression, tried to push against the invisible barrier with his hands.
He then saw Loan, who had somehow appeared on the railing, looking down before abruptly throwing himself off, and screamed.
“Madman!”
Words that someone devoted to religion should never utter.
Fortunately, Loan was not mad.
On the contrary, he had jumped only after careful consideration and calculating his chances of success.
*When did so many of them gather?*
Dark mana, flowing in with the fog through the darkened canyon, was filling the area before the gate.
And far away. Figures were slowly occupying the spaces in between.
Each of them held a mace, their eyes glowing crimson as they scanned their surroundings.
At a glance, they looked like maces, but they were actually crude weapons made by carving clubs and attaching sharp objects.
*Fallen monks.*
They looked as if they were searching for prey.
From a distance still too far to reach, one of them, having found a victim, swung his mace at the back of an old man's head as he tried to flee.
“Judgment of the god!”
The cackling cry echoed through the darkness.
Loan, who had landed lightly on the ground cushioned by Convection, stared blankly at the approaching monks.
Their steps were slow, but their necks moved busily as they looked around.
They were different from ghouls. The mere fact that they could speak proved it.
The dark mana hadn’t suddenly spread with the coming of night; they were bringing it with them. Like censers emitting darkness.
*I'm not sure about their reason, but their intellect remains.*
Judging by the change in their eyes and hairstyles, they seemed to be somewhere between possession and corruption, like the assassins from Le Tell.
Aside from their numbers, they weren't individually very threatening.
He could create a sea of fire with an area-of-effect attack right now, but there were still many civilians trapped in the fog, so he couldn't act rashly.
Another thing to consider was the people pressed against the gate, trembling.
When the gate first closed, they had screamed to be let in, to be saved, but now they weren't even screaming.
They simply stood with their backs to the gate, shivering as they watched the encroaching fog.
*They probably can't see the dark mana.*
Someone like the abbot could sense it as an aura, but to ordinary people, it would look like mad monks had appeared with the fog, armed and ready to slaughter them.
Everyone was too agitated to be reassured.
Loan calmly collected his thoughts.
He would save as many as he could.
*Whoooosh—*
Responding to his will, the Circle in his heart began to spin intensely. Outside it, the mana-attracting necklace was also diligently drawing in the ever-thickening dark mana.
The concentration was approaching the levels of the underground city in Rhodos.
With a sufficient supply of mana, there was much he could do.
First, he had to shield the people at the gate from the dark mana to move more freely.
They also needed protection from the approaching monks.
He thought simply. [Fire Wall] would suffice. Though, its size and length would have to be considerable.
He consumed all the mana gathered around the attractor at once, imbuing it with his intent.
*Fwoosh—*
A massive wall of fire, rivaling the height of the gate, shot out in a straight line, parallel to the gate itself.
The surging flames completely blocked the people's view.
It wasn't a physical wall, but the rising air from the intense heat was enough to block the dark mana.
Any fallen monk who stepped into the fire would be reduced to ashes before they could even complete their path of penance.
*If they had just let the people in and done this, it would have been enough...*
They could open the gate now, but if they had possessed the intelligence to listen, this situation wouldn't have happened in the first place.
Loan shook his head with a bitter expression and summoned Aul.
“Aul?”
“There’s plenty to eat.”
He stepped into the fog.
He drew mana in with his breath, joining it to the path of circulation. Powerfully vertical, and at its turning point, horizontal as if knocking on a door.
Loan's steps did not falter, even in the fog.
His physical vision was obscured, but seeing the mana made it easy to distinguish things.
It was a matter of finding what was darker within the darkness. *Ssk—*
“Huh?”
A monk, searching for victims with his mace, was startled to see Loan suddenly appear before him.
His eyebrows shot up to the top of his forehead.
“Judgment of the god!”
He shouted as he swung his mace.
The sharp metal shards embedded in it struck Loan's head directly.
To be precise, it struck the Convection swirling powerfully around Loan and bounced off.
Loan closed the distance until he was nose-to-nose with the bewildered monk, examining every detail of his eyes and the color of his skin.
As his opponent tried to create distance to swing the mace again, Loan bound him with his Domain, then severed his wrist with a bullet of air and spoke.
“You let the darkness in by your own will.”
There was no reply.
The star-shaped Sheville circled beside Loan and separated the man's head from his body.
After his journeys through Ferrara and Rhodos, Loan's stance on dealing with demons, villains, and those consumed by darkness had become clear.
A human turned ghoul was no different from one poisoned. They needed treatment.
Those modified into vessels for demons needed purification.
But.
Those who embraced darkness for their own desire and greed were different.
*I no longer show mercy.*
Even if he could purify them completely like Aul, he couldn't grant them absolution for their actions.
*Swaa—*
Gliding through the fog, Loan launched Sheville without hesitation.
*Thud, roll, roll...*
“Eat.”
“Aul!”
Aul, too, swallowed the head without hesitation.
He had already started waddling after swallowing one, but after two, then three, he could only stay in one spot like a roly-poly toy.
His legs couldn't support his belly.
Loan considered carrying him or pulling him along with Convection, but then a thought occurred to him, and he spoke to Aul.
“If you’re storing up mana clumps for me, I have enough right now, so it’s okay for you to use it all.”
“Aul?”
The mana clumps already inside him must have been considerable. Aul had used a portion of those clumps for his own energy before.
He had been curious about what would happen if he let him use it freely.
After a questioning chirp, and seeing Loan give a firm nod, Aul…
“Aul!”
…cried out powerfully toward the sky and—*bulge*—expanded his body. He was four or five times his usual size.
With his stomach's capacity increased, he could swallow more heads.
Eventually, Aul grew to be as tall as Loan.
He began hopping around, pecking up heads like a chicken chasing feed.
Feeling a sudden sense of urgency, Loan also began to move swiftly through the fog.
The monks, realizing they couldn't handle him one by one, also began to charge at Loan recklessly.
But.
No matter how much darkness they had embraced, they were still just ordinary people with enhanced strength.
Loan annihilated the fallen monks with ease.
*Swaaaaa—*
As the monks fell, the floating dark mana also began to slowly disappear.
This was because the amount Loan was drawing in and purifying had surpassed the supply.
“Come this way.”
After the area was noticeably cleared.
Loan didn't forget to gather the terrified, wandering civilians in front of the gate, shielding them from the remaining dark mana.
After reassuring the people, Loan stood with Aul in the middle of the canyon, observing the changing situation.
“Aul, I didn't know you could get this big.”
“Aul!”
Pleased with his full belly, Aul flapped his wings grandly, and the motion completely blew away the low-lying fog.
Finally, the full extent of the incident became visible to everyone.
The blood-soaked road was lined with headless corpses clutching maces.
All of this had happened not long after Loan had jumped from the gatehouse.
“Aul, you worked hard, too.”
Aul rubbed his enormous face against Loan, making him step back, then walked through the air with an incredibly elegant motion and vanished.
The grotesque, strange, and somewhat dreamlike spectacle thus came to an end.
“Thank you, thank you!”
“You saved us. How can we ever repay this kindness…”
“Truly, it is the grace of our god. Thank you, O Lord.”
Those who expressed their gratitude yet attributed it to their god, and those who looked down from above in shock.
Loan looked up at the abbot with a bitter expression and commanded in a low voice.
“Open it.”
Though his voice was low, the sound spread as if he had shouted.
The knights looking down narrowed their eyes and turned their heads, and the abbot's hat was nearly blown off.
The abbot, who had been blinking, unsure of what to do, quickly began to bustle about.
“What are you all doing? Hurry, hurry and open the gate.”
And finally, the gate opened once more.
Loan didn't enter. He stood still, staring inside.
The people outside merely watched from behind Loan, gauging the situation.
The monastery's knights were in a similar state.
They lined up on either side, pressing their bodies flat against the walls, as if worried Loan might enter.
Just as the abbot peeked his head out between them to assess the situation.
“Come out.”
The low voice echoed harshly throughout the monastery.