The 10th Apostle
"V-Vice Leader."
Dorian sidled up beside him, stealing a glance back at the room where Princess Jayna was.
"That brat—I mean, that princess. If she goes back to Valkar and snitches, isn't that going to start a war?"
He frowned at the contract in Raon's hand, already worrying about what would come of it.
"She'll never talk."
Raon gave the contract a lazy flutter and shook his head.
"What? Why not? She got completely wrecked."
"You know how proud that woman is, don't you?"
"Of course I do. She's the kind of stubborn mule who chased us all the way to an auction and tried to sabotage us just because we wouldn't sell her something!"
Dorian rubbed his belly pouch, still looking anxious.
"That's exactly why."
Raon let out a quiet chuckle and went on.
"Do you really think a woman that proud is going to go around telling people she signed a sucker's contract with a Zieghart collateral just because she didn't want to die?"
"Ah..."
"By now she's probably slapping Inild around, making sure he didn't overhear any of it. Not that it matters—he was unconscious the whole time."
As if to prove him right, a sharp, meaty smack rang out from the room.
"Ugh..."
Dorian looked up at Raon with a thoroughly dumbfounded expression.
"Then... how are you going to use that contract?"
"This? The best way to use it is not to use it at all."
Raon neatly folded the special contract.
"What? Why? This is a chance to squeeze her for everything she's worth."
"This is a leash. A collar around her throat so she can never treat us however she likes. From now on, she'll be so terrified of what order I might give that she'll do nothing but try to avoid me."
"Ah..."
"That's why I said three. I'll give two orders, then leave the last one hanging over her head for the rest of her life."
"Urgh..."
Dorian's mouth fell open. He clearly hadn't even considered that angle. He looked a little frightened.
"Ah. A hungry ghost. A hungry ghost, this is..."
Wrath's blue eyes twisted as he trembled like an aspen in the wind.
"This one merely wears a human's skin, yet is no different from the hungry ghosts of the Demon Realm! No! He is worse! He knows no satisfaction!"
There he goes again.
"Are you not trying to make the entire world your slave this way?! Had This King not been born with a monarch's temperament and wisdom, even This King would have become your slave. What a terrifying creature..."
Uh... well...
"This King is a monarch of the Demon Realm. One who bows to no one. Do not even think of it."
Wrath waved a hand as if to say Raon should not even dream of putting a leash on him.
What are you talking about. You're sucker number one.
The words rose all the way to the back of his throat, but he could hardly go carving open the belly of a Demon King who produced stat points, so he swallowed them.
"How do you even think of things like that?"
Dorian stared at the contract and let out a hollow breath.
I can't believe we're the same age.
Whenever Raon made a decision and moved, the result was always the best possible outcome—the optimal one. At this point, the way he thought and the schemes he laid were more astonishing than his martial prowess. Like peeling an onion, there was a new person every time you looked.
"You're the weird one."
Raon glanced at Dorian's belly pouch and let out a quiet laugh. What could possibly be stranger than a guy who claimed he had nothing, then pulled out whatever you asked for?
"Me? I'm ordinary. Completely ordinary."
"Then every ordinary person in the world must be dead."
"I'm serious. Where else are you going to find someone as ordinary as me?"
"Ordinary people don't walk around carrying clubs, logs, and boulders."
"Those are daily necessities. You can't deny they all came in handy."
"Mm. Fair enough."
He wasn't wrong. The log, the boulder, and the club had all proven useful. A peculiar fellow—and an entertaining one.
Here they come.
At the sound of footsteps behind him, Raon glanced back. Princess Jayna and Inild were staggering out of the room at the end of the corridor.
"Um, by the way..."
Just as Raon was about to head upstairs, figuring they would come on their own, Dorian tilted his head.
"What?"
"How did you shake the ceiling and the walls earlier?"
"Simple."
Raon set his right foot on the floor and began circulating his aura, sending a tremor through it. The vibration ran up the walls and into the ceiling, and the corridor shuddered as if it were about to collapse.
"L-Leg trembling?"
"Simple, right?"
He grinned and headed up the stairs.
"Whoa..."
Dorian stared at the walls and ceiling as the shaking slowly died away, and made a firm resolution.
He would rather die by a single stroke of the sword than become Raon's enemy.
What a terrifying man...
The moment Raon reached the upper floor, a voice packed with force rang out.
"Right column, reform your stance! They're coming again!"
He followed the voice and found Burren and the members of Team 3 holding the Lesser Light Wind Formation, perfectly turning aside the White Blood Cultists pouring toward them.
"Die in the name of the Blood God!"
The White Blood Cultists did not simply die. Even as they fell, they detonated Blood Mist, one of their blood arts. A murky smoke laced with blood qi billowed over Burren and Team 3.
"Blood Mist! Hold your breath and fall back five paces! Left column, Spirit Link! Right column, Purification stance!"
Burren did not panic even as the Blood Mist spread. He issued the right orders for the situation, then cut down a charging cultist without a shred of hesitation.
"Show these Blood Fiends the power of Zieghart!"
"Waaaaaah!"
"Kill the demons!"
Bolstered by Burren's perfectly timed commands, the members of Team 3 surged with courage and drove the White Blood Cultists back. A few of them were wounded, but nothing serious. They looked more than capable of winning this fight on their own.
As expected.
Raon watched Burren, wholly absorbed in the battle, and smiled with satisfaction. If anyone was going to lead the Light Wind Squad in his absence, it was Burren. Now that the man was back, there was a real sense of stability.
"You're not going to help them?"
Dorian pointed at Team 3, still locked in combat with the cultists.
"If I help them with everything, when are they supposed to grow?"
Real combat was the finest opportunity a martial artist had to improve. A true threat to their lives would be one thing. Stepping into a fight like this wasn't helping them—it was killing their potential.
"Let's head to the lobby."
He had confirmed Burren and Team 3. Next was Team 1, who had pushed through to the front. There were more White Blood Cultists up ahead than in the rear, so they might be having a harder time of it.
And Marta's been on my mind.
"The beef girl's eyes were certainly strange."
Yeah. She's carrying a grudge.
Remembering the chilling look in Marta's eyes before the infiltration, Raon headed for the lobby.
Sunlight spilled through the hole that Flower Spirit's explosion had torn in the roof, brushing across his face—and in that same instant, a cutting sound ripped through the lobby, as if flesh itself were being torn apart.
Marta. It was the sound of her sword splitting a White Blood Cultist's body in two.
"Where... where else are you..."
Her black hair and pale skin were stained with murky blood, and the killing intent in her eyes was even more vicious than before.
"Eek..."
Dorian couldn't meet that ghost-haunted gaze. He clapped a hand over his mouth and stumbled backward.
This is a lot worse than I thought...
Raon narrowed his eyes. Even though the killing intent wasn't directed at him, goosebumps rose along the back of his hand. This was no ordinary grudge.
"Aaaagh!"
Marta let out a beast's cry and hurled herself into the thick of the White Blood Cultists. Aura exploded from her like a horse snorting in fury, sweeping everything around her.
"Damn it! Help the squad leader!"
"Forget the formation! Hit them from the flanks while they're focused on her!"
With their squad leader rampaging like a maddened tiger, Team 1 abandoned the Light Wind Formation and picked off the stunned White Blood Cultists one by one.
Even without running a formation, Team 1 was dropping more cultists, and faster, than Team 3—all because of Marta's frenzy.
"Mm. This King made a mistake."
Wrath smacked his lips.
"Perhaps This King should have gone to the beef girl. That wrath is quite to This King's liking."
Wrath...
Raon nodded. What rode Marta's blade was wrath of the most vicious kind. She was not treating her enemies as human beings. She was drowning them in a sea of blood as if they were insects.
The number of White Blood Cultists her sword had claimed climbed past twenty. She had been cut across the waist and taken a blade through the thigh, yet she bared her teeth as if it meant nothing and sent another cultist's head flying.
"Stay with the squad leader! Support her all the way!"
"Don't you dare fall back—keep fighting!"
Team 1 was busier keeping up with Marta than fighting. They had grown attached to her, in their own way, and they coordinated the battle around keeping her from getting hurt any worse than she already was.
"W-We're not stopping that, are we?"
"No."
Raon nodded. Try to stop her, and that killing-soaked blade might come flying their way.
Still, I can't just leave it.
He would have to give her an earful once the fighting was over. Whether that would actually snap her out of it was another question.
"That's as far as you could run?"
Rimer gave his sword a lazy spin as he looked at Darigon, who had been driven into a dead-end alley.
"Ghk! Dolvirte—"
Darigon clasped his hands together and tried to chant a spell in a rush—and Rimer's wrist flicked, smooth as water.
A roar of tearing wind.
The blue aura along his blade fanned out like a rainbow and brought every wall surrounding Darigon crashing down.
"Ah..."
Darigon's face went deathly pale as he watched the walls crumble to dust.
"A spell that lets you travel along walls. Interesting ability."
Rimer smiled at the wreckage.
"That's how you were able to snatch people without anyone noticing. But without walls, it doesn't mean a thing."
"Sh-Shut your mouth!"
"Even our family head couldn't shut me up. You think you can?"
"You old baaastard!"
The instant Darigon clasped his hands to cast a new spell, Rimer's eyes flashed.
"Ah..."
Darigon never finished the chant. His shoulders shook. A ghastly pain bloomed in his wrist—Rimer's sword had already moved, and it had split the joint clean through.
"Gaaaaah!"
Darigon clutched the stump of his severed wrist and stumbled backward.
"If you're not Apostle-rank, stopping your spells is simple. Either shut your mouth, or cut off your hands."
Rimer smiled as he stepped through the blood soaking the ground.
"That kid does it so well, and I never even taught him. That genius of his really does take after me."
"Ghk..."
Darigon tried to chant with his remaining hand, but Rimer was not about to allow it. His wrist moved once more, and Darigon's left forearm dropped to the dirt.
"Nngh..."
Darigon stared at the savage fountains of blood spraying from both arms, his pupils trembling.
"What's the fuss over a couple of wrists?"
Rimer's eyes glittered with a chilling light as he drew closer, step by step.
"You people punch holes in living throats and suck the blood out. Compared to that, this is just a little teasing. Teasing."
"Rimer..."
Darigon swallowed dryly.
They said he was injured...
They had said his dantian and mana circuits were ruined, but he did not seem weakened in the slightest. Those mad eyes. That light, careless way of talking. The insane elf they had once called Zieghart's Mad Sword had not changed at all.
"Now then."
Rimer reversed his grip and drove the blade down into Darigon's thigh. Wind aura was running through the steel, and blood erupted from the wound like a fountain.
"Aaaaaagh!"
"Were the people you kidnapped all in the basement?"
"Ghk..."
"Where were you planning to send them?"
"......"
Once again, Darigon kept his mouth shut.
"That's more like it. That's a White Blood Cultist. If you'd answered right away, I would have been disappointed."
Rimer grinned and circulated his wind aura again. The blade buried in Darigon's thigh began to vibrate, and Darigon drooled as his whole body shook.
"Gaaaaaah!"
"Don't put your faith in a woman named Celine. My disciple went after her. She won't be coming back alive."
"Hah... hah..."
Darigon spat ragged breaths through clenched teeth, as if enduring the pain by sheer will.
"I'm not putting my faith in that damned woman."
"Oh. So you already knew she was the reason this place got found out."
"I'm not a damned insect. Of course I knew."
"Then what are you putting your faith in, with eyes like that?"
Rimer frowned at the hope still lingering in Darigon's gaze. Below, Raon had already dealt with Celine. Above, Marta was carrying out a massacre. It was over. He could not understand why Darigon still had hope.
"You should have come a little earlier."
"What?"
"Heh heh heh. The ones coming today... there are two of them."
Even as he coughed up blood, Darigon's mouth split into a grin that tore from ear to ear.
The words had barely left his mouth when a terrifying aura erupted from the first floor, all at once.
Marta swung her sword without even noticing the long gashes that had opened across her shoulder, her waist, and her thigh.
She felt no pain at all.
Kill them.
Kill every last one of the White Blood Cult.
That single thought filled her head. No other emotion. No other will. Nothing else rose to the surface.
Just the demons in front of her. Those white-coated demons who had smashed through the village walls twelve years ago. The command to kill them all had shackled itself to her soul.
She followed the voice pounding through her skull and cut, and cut, and cut again.
Five enemies, and she went in. Ten gathered together, and she charged anyway, swinging. She had forgotten swordsmanship itself. She simply swung.
Whether her face was slashed or her hair was sheared away, she did not care. She brought her blade down on those white coats without end.
She knew she should not be fighting like this. She knew that as a squad leader, she ought to be looking after her people. But the moment she saw the White Blood Cult, she could not keep her mind.
As if it were an instinct she had been born with, she cut their throats. Until their murky blood covered her from head to toe.
The longer the fighting went on, the more she felt her strength overflowing—and then the murky blood of the White Blood Cultists soaking the lobby floor began to move of its own accord, tracing a bizarre pattern.
A low, resonant hum.
A pure white light bloomed at the heart of the pattern, and an aura so vast it made the skin crawl surged upward.
"Ah..."
For the first time since the battle had begun, Marta opened her mouth.
Her teeth clenched.
Ten beads were engraved on the left breast of the white coat. She bit down hard enough to crack.
Slowly, she lifted her head. A middle-aged man swept back hair like ebony, hawk-sharp eyes tilting his chin upward.
It was him. That one.
The demon who had burned the village, drunk the blood of the garrison, and abducted her mother and her people. The White Blood Cult Leader's disciple. The 10th Apostle.
"So Zieghart's little ones have come calling."
That indifferent voice had not changed either.
The 10th Apostle slowly raised a hand. A wound split diagonally across the palm. On that hand, countless people had died as nothing but blood. On that hand, her mother and her people had been dragged away. On that hand, the village had been reduced to ash.
It was the hand of a demon she would never forget, not even in death.
A deep, gathering roar.
The blood qi condensed in the 10th Apostle's hand seethed as if it were about to explode.
"Ah..."
The Light Wind Squad members who had followed behind her went rigid at the colossal power gathering in that hand, as if their ankles had been bound. They could not move.
"You son of a bitch!"
Marta crushed her instinctive fear with rage and lunged forward. Not to save her squad.
Absolutely not.
She brought her sword down for one reason only: to kill the 10th Apostle. To get in his way.
A deafening crash.
The instant she collided with the terrifying power erupting from his grip, her wrist bent as if it would snap, and blood surged up her throat. If it had not been for the Azure Cloud her father had given her, she would have died in a single breath.
"Nngh!"
It could not have been more than a second, and her entire body felt as if it were about to be crushed. She wanted to hold on. She could not. The difference in strength was heaven and earth.
Again. Again...
She had staked her life on training so she could take revenge on that demon—so she would never have to watch anyone else die at his hands. The gap in skill had never closed. In the end, she was about to throw away the life her mother had saved, as meaninglessly as this.
A grinding crack.
The strength drained from her grip. She wanted to tell the squad behind her to run, at least. She did not even have the strength for that.
"Ah..."
Just as the Azure Cloud Sword was about to slip from her wrist, Raon's low voice reached her ear.
The voice was calm, yet it carried a thread of warmth that struck her in the chest—and in that instant, the world before her eyes was painted in scarlet flame.