The Fall of Jealousy
"Then what is it?"
Kaaang!
Only when the blade was already at his throat did Enoch snap back to his senses and throw up a barrier. The instant I tried to crush it underfoot, ice spikes like awls materialized in the air and rained down on me.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
Double casting—two spells unleashed at once. Against a mage whose capabilities you don't know, you're bound to get hit. Even if you do know them, the sheer speed makes the attack nearly impossible to dodge cleanly.
Taat!
But I was long past being green against mages. I put distance between us and slipped aside.
"Cold. Don't use that either."
"Shut up!"
Icicles filled the air once more. They shot toward me like a volley of arrows, and I spun in a wide circle around him, weaving through every one.
"There's only one talent I've never been able to copy!"
I checked as I kept dodging the ice magic.
"Your face?"
"I said shut up!"
The icicles came even fiercer. Their power had stepped up a notch, but gaps still opened between them. I drove through those openings. The spikes skimmed past the crown of my head as I closed the distance on Enoch.
Whooosh!
Before I could reach him, a wall of flame roared straight at my face. I had no choice but to spring backward.
"Hot, cold, hot, cold… I'm going to catch a cold at this rate."
"…"
Closing on a double-casting mage was never easy. Usually it meant a drawn-out fight until the mage's mana finally ran dry—unless you could force an opening.
"Are you insane?"
"Can't you tell just by looking? The talent you couldn't copy must've been your eyes."
"…It wasn't that."
"Then what?"
Enoch exhaled a long sigh and answered.
"A knight's talent. I've met plenty of knights in my time, but no matter how hard I tried, my skill with a sword—or any other weapon—never improved in the slightest."
That tracked. His frame was slender, ill-suited to swordsmanship. Build didn't dictate talent completely, of course, but as a rule the muscle-bound types swung a blade better.
"So I killed every knight who ever drew a sword in front of me. So that no one better with a blade than me would ever again enter my sight."
Thick killing intent rolled off his mana.
"And that includes you."
I let out a short, dry laugh.
"Looking at you now, your eyes really are broken."
"What?"
"You never look at what you already have. Your gaze is always fixed on what you don't."
I pointed at his chest.
"You already possess a mage's talent that other people could spend their whole lives chasing and never touch. That alone should be enough to be grateful for—so what's still missing that you're throwing a tantrum over?"
"…"
"Even if you'd been born with a knight's talent, you never would have been satisfied. Why? Because after swordsmanship you'd have wanted holy power, then authority, then fame. You hide everything you own behind that long hair and spend every waking moment coveting what belongs to someone else."
Enoch's hands began to shake. Then he shouted.
"What would someone who has everything know about that?!"
"I don't. But I do know one thing—you have magical talent I don't possess."
"…"
"I just don't cling to what I can't have. I hone the sword already in my hand. And that alone is more than enough to bring you down."
In that same breath Urik appeared at Enoch's flank, blue mana wreathed around a pair of axes as he brought them crashing down. He had cut through Enoch's subordinates at exactly the right moment.
"This trash—!"
Enoch flung up a barrier and caught the twin axes. Then he unleashed a burst of flame magic that blasted Urik clear.
"Guh!"
Urik crossed his axes and managed to cancel most of the fire, but he couldn't disperse all of it and went flying. From the start Urik had never been Enoch's match. In the previous life, the only reason anyone had managed to kill Enoch at all was because Sebastian had thrown his life away to do it.
Even so, the opening Urik created was of some small use to me.
Taat!
I closed the gap on Enoch in a heartbeat—a straight-line charge that made the perfect target for a mage.
"You idiot!"
A colossal wall of flame swallowed my vision. Too large to bat aside with a sword; the only sane answer was to get out of its range. I didn't stop. I kicked off the ground harder.
Kwa-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwa!!!
The firestorm shattered and scattered in every direction. A broad back stood between me and the blaze. Sebastian had appeared without my noticing and was catching Enoch's magic on his shield.
"Go, quickly—!"
By the time Sebastian shouted, I had already planted my boot on his solid shoulder and launched myself into the sky. I was almost certainly the first person in history to use one of the Twelve Holy Knights as a stepping stone.
Either way, it let me soar like a bird and put me right on top of Enoch.
"I told you to stop playing with fire."
The wind that had been coiling around my blade vanished; flames bloomed in its place. I brought the sword of Wrath down on him.
"Why won't you listen?!"
Kaaaang!
He hadn't survived this long as one of the Seven Deadly Sins for nothing. Even that he managed to answer, throwing up another barrier.
Crk-crk-crk!
But a barrier thrown up in a panic had no chance of fully stopping my blade. Cracks spiderwebbed across the shield, and beyond them I saw Enoch's face twist.
A moment later his world collapsed under my sword.
Chwaaaak!
The blade punched through the barrier and carved a diagonal line across Enoch's upper body. Severed strands of hair and a spray of blood leapt into the air.
"You… bas…tard…"
Enoch coughed up a thick gout of blood, staggered, and toppled backward. Only then did I draw the flames off my blade. Between his magic and mine, heat still clung to the air around us. Which meant, for all practical purposes, Enoch was already finished before that heat could cool.
"I'm a man who keeps his promises."
I said it loud enough for Sebastian to hear. The answer, however, came from the man sprawled on the ground.
"Coward… relying on other people…"
A sneer slipped out of me before I could stop it.
"Why take the hard road if you don't have to? If something's useful, you use it."
"If I'd had people like that…"
I tilted my head.
"You killed every talented person yourself, didn't you? Knights, mercenaries, painters. Did you hit your head just now? Want me to call a doctor?"
"Shut… up…"
But I was never one to shut up when told.
"And even if I'd been alone, the result wouldn't have changed. It just would have taken longer to cut you down."
"…"
"When a person talks to you, answer. No mouth? Or is the blood clogging your windpipe? Or maybe you're about to die and everything's getting fuzzy?"
Sebastian stepped up beside me and said quietly,
"He's dead."
The light had already gone out of Enoch's eyes. I nodded.
"So he is."
Another day of killing a man with words. Turns out speech was a terrifyingly effective weapon.
"When someone is talking, you should listen to the end. Truly a coward. Wouldn't you agree?"
"Indeed. Though I suppose that's exactly why he was one of the Seven Deadly Sins."
"The Seven Deadly Sins really aren't a job just anyone can do. The absolute peak of cowardice, the darkness of the world, no different from some halfwit you meet on the road."
For the record, I was not talking about myself. I was no longer the Wrath of the Seven Deadly Sins—just a diligent Inquisitor.
Sebastian huffed a quiet laugh.
"In any case, I thank you, Inquisitor Cael. Had we attempted this purge on our own, we might well have sacrificed a great many lives and still failed to put Enoch down."
Sebastian looked at his shield. The heat had melted and then re-hardened the metal, scrambling the holy patterns. Even with holy power reinforcing it, taking a Seven Deadly Sin's magic head-on left inevitable scars.
"You would have killed him eventually even without me. Everyone here would simply have become martyrs first."
I hadn't killed the Jealousy of the Seven Deadly Sins today. I had saved the people who were supposed to die.
"Haha. Kind of you to put it that way. Truth be told I feel as though I did very little this time."
"Trusting my word was more than enough."
I knew my own strength. Sebastian did not. And yet he had trusted a man he'd only just met enough to stake his life. That was no small thing.
Are all Holy Knights this trusting—Ludian, Sebastian, the lot of them?
Truly, they were the sort of people who got scammed easily.
"I see."
Sebastian nodded, then spoke with deliberate gravity.
"I didn't trust you blindly, however. I trusted the record of your achievements, Inquisitor Cael."
"Fine. We'll go with that."
"Haha. Thank you."
Sebastian chuckled lightly, then glanced at my sword.
"And that—will it remain a secret from the others?"
He meant the holy power I carried, of course.
"For now, yes."
"Hmm. I think I understand why without being told."
As one of the Twelve Holy Knights, Sebastian would know the relevant passages in the scriptures.
"Then I shall keep silent on the matter as well. In truth, His Holiness the Pope and the cardinals ordered me to observe you during the purge… If that offended you, I apologize."
I already knew. Cardinal Barun had told me himself. That was why I'd paid a little more attention to my words and actions than usual.
Hmm. Did I actually pay attention, though?
Probably not. Not that it mattered—I'd put on a performance no one could ignore.
"It's fine. I'm used to cheap little stares sticking to me."
"Hahaha…"
Sebastian laughed, looking faintly awkward.
"Still, you won't be able to hide it forever. There may not be many who can recognize it, but there will be some."
"I know. When the time comes, I'll reveal it myself."
"I see."
Sebastian looked at me with devout eyes.
"For now I'll speak well of you to them. The man I saw today was not a threat to the Holy Empire—he was a talent who will be of great service to it."
"I'd be grateful if you did."
Just then Urik approached with his men.
"I'm glad to see both of you unharmed."
I answered,
"You're lucky to still be standing after taking that spell."
"He must have been focused on you—the force wasn't as strong as it could have been. Of course, if I hadn't blocked it at all, it would still have been dangerous…"
Urik's tone, and the way he looked at me, had both changed completely.
"Any dead?"
"Thanks to Deacon Bella helping my men, we only have wounded. She even gave me some ointment."
Thin burn marks on the backs of both of Urik's hands were smeared with salve. He cleared his throat, a little embarrassed, and bowed at the waist.
"My thanks to Inquisitor Cael and Deacon Bella. And my apologies for my earlier rudeness. You saved our lives."
The mercenaries behind him offered the same courtesy. Urik couldn't have been happy about any of it. Alone he might have shrugged it off, but this time his entire company's lives had been on the line.
That was his problem. My mood was a separate matter.
"Just words?"
"Of course not."
Urik raised his head and looked at my sword.
"From the looks of it, that blade can't quite handle your flames. Our company has a sword that would suit you—one no one else could use, so it's been sitting in the warehouse."
"Offloading inventory on me?"
"I'm not that petty. It's a craftsman's work. It simply doesn't suit anyone else. Once you see it yourself, you'll understand what I mean."
Urik might not have been a match for Enoch, but he was still a mercenary who held his own anywhere. If a man like that was talking it up, the sword was probably worth a look.
"I forgive you."
That was the kind of mercenary soul I was. Forgiveness, when you got down to it, usually came from material understanding.
"Haha. Glad to hear it. That's a weight off my mind."
"Don't relax just yet. My moods swing hard."
"Then I'll stay on my toes until then."
Urik sounded almost confident. That alone made me look forward to the blade.
Sebastian spoke up.
"Then let's begin by confiscating Enoch's property. Separate from the commission fee, the Holy See will pay additional bonuses according to the spoils we recover."
"Understood, Holy Knight Sebastian."
They fanned out and began searching the ruined buildings. I started walking as well.
"Deacon Bella, with me."
"Yes, sir! Inquisitor!"
Bonuses were bonuses, but we still had our own share to secure. When you thought about it, I'd done nearly everything myself. Perfectly fair.
Damn right it was.