Cultists
"So here's the thing, if—"
Lovrick, who had been enduring Harrington's excited monologue, raised a hand and cut the speech short before it could run any longer.
"Hold on a moment. What about asking the surrounding villages for help?"
"Out of the question. As you know, even the nearest village is a week's journey away. Factor in the return trip, and you're looking at two weeks. More than enough time for the cultists to relocate their base. And by then, of course, the people they've taken—"
"...Fair point. All right, I hear you. The real question is, how strong are these bastards?"
"About twenty of them!"
The weakened kid, who had been listening to the exchange, shouted out the information with all the enthusiasm he could muster.
Must have felt like grabbing onto a lifeline, poor kid.
"There's no guarantee that's all of them, mind you. Well, if they're nothing but rabble, we could handle a hundred of them easily enough, but—"
"No high-ranking cultists have been sighted in the area recently, so we should be fine."
"Odd kind of knowledge for a lowly foot soldier to possess, don't you think? Hmm... Well, I imagine you wouldn't spout false information with your own life on the line. I'll take your word for it. We're joining the subjugation."
Since Lovrick and his companions seemed more or less convinced, Harrington's next targets were us.
"Master Ha Jun, Lady Noah—if you two distinguish yourselves in this battle, it will go a long way toward your future admission into the Guild."
"We already have the recommendation card, so admission shouldn't be an issue, should it?"
"Merits, once recorded, never fade. They will certainly prove useful later on. The truth is, the Guild's rank promotion system is heavily entangled with matters of trust—even genuinely skilled individuals can't climb the ranks quickly. But accumulating merits like these would shorten that waiting period considerably."
Now that was a tempting offer.
Frankly, if I was going to be registered with the Guild anyway, I wanted to climb as high as possible. The more I thought about it, the more this seemed like an opportunity too good to pass up.
Not bad, technician. Not bad at all.
"Tell me, Harrington—is there anything in this for us? We're mere merchants, after all."
The head of the trade caravan, who had been quietly observing until now, was apparently swayed as well, and asked point-blank what benefit participation in the subjugation would bring them.
They were all non-Awakened, to be sure, but having riflemen along would be convenient. We did need them.
Unlike monsters, human beings die when you shoot them.
Harrington had evidently anticipated this question too, because his answer came without a moment's hesitation.
"This is a secret, but... the Bolston branch has a standing trade contract coming up for renewal soon. It concerns wheat, and... your caravan deals in wheat as well, do they not?"
"Oho! Would you get us in on that deal? We've always had to trade through the same channels."
"I'll put in a good word with my superiors. There have been problems at that post, and headquarters is wavering on the matter. Even if the deal falls through, I promise I'll see that you're compensated in some other way."
Then I'm in favor!
The caravan's manager accepted Harrington's proposal with unseemly delight.
The expressions of the rank-and-file, suddenly facing combat with cultists, were naturally less than thrilled—but what could you do? If the boss says jump, you jump.
In a world without labor laws, this sort of thing amounted to nothing more than street gossip.
"By the way, do we actually have means of tracking them? The village has been in this state for at least two days now."
"The Guild has embedded tracking functionality for cult mana into our magic tools, so it's no trouble at all."
"Then lend us your fleetest runners. Ah, you mercenaries. Will you join as well?"
"Heh heh... The association pays ten silver coins per head for every cultist we bag. Of course we're joining."
And so, exactly as Harrington had planned, a fighting force for the cult subjugation was assembled on the spot.
Splitting your manpower at a moment like this would be idiotic. We left behind only the bare minimum needed to guard the cargo and committed everyone else.
With the situation settled, Harrington took out the same device he'd used during the suppression device inspection and began the search. According to him, cult mana was primal and instinctual in nature, which meant its traces lingered for a short while—long enough to follow.
I used the sudden lull to ask Lovrick about the cultists.
"Ah, I suppose you wouldn't know. They're the ones who've been swelling their ranks at an alarming rate these past few years. The country's in chaos, so it's understandable, I suppose..."
"Why call them 'cultists,' though? Isn't 'heretics' the usual term?"
"Because they practice human sacrifice. No exceptions."
"...Human sacrifice? To whom?"
"All manner of evil gods. Whether they actually exist, who knows. Then again, they might be serving some high-grade monster."
Remarkably, freedom of religion was the norm in this world.
That was because the First Emperor had proven, definitively, that gods did not exist.
That story was fascinating in its own right... but it could wait.
In any case, it had become natural culture for people to maintain their own private faiths.
"But religious freedom is only permitted so long as it doesn't harm others. These human-sacrificing bastards deserve no such freedom."
"Agreed."
"What's certain is that they didn't spring up naturally. Their leadership has been observed, and they've got a sizable armed force. Think about it—these people kidnap others in groups and kill them. They're even organized into cell structures, making it nearly impossible to wipe them out in one sweep."
"...Ghastly."
"Which is exactly why Harrington's right—kill every cultist on sight. But... their combat strength is an unknown, and that worries me. They use bizarre magic, those people."
...
With the weakened kid left in the care of those staying behind in the village, the pursuit turned out to be surprisingly anticlimactic.
Traces of the cultists' camp were discovered in a nearby mountain.
We'd braced for a protracted hunt, but it took barely a single day.
"Ah, at this range the artifact picks something up. Roughly two hundred in number. The abducted villagers were around a hundred, you said... so that's a hundred cultists. Small operation. Manageable."
Having gauged the cultists' strength and concluded it was manageable, we began climbing the mountain.
Unlike the mountains of Korea in my past life, this one came with the default setting of zero human presence, making it densely overgrown—but since all we had to do was follow the trail, it posed no real difficulty.
The lingering traces of the cultists' mana led to a cave hidden discreetly halfway up the mountainside.
"A cave, is it? Fitting digs for such gloomy bastards. Ha Jun—do you see any guards? My eyes are telling me there's nothing there."
"Hmm... there are two. Pressed against the inner walls of the cave mouth."
I spotted two men hidden deep in the dark shadows.
Their presence was faint almost to the point of nothingness, but compared to the stealth of a Shadow Bear, it was nothing at all.
"Spot a person in a place this deserted, and that in itself is suspicious. Clever of them."
"Shall I handle them?"
"No—stealth is everything in this kind of work. Just watch. Time to show them we didn't survive this long on looks alone. Jack, put on everything you brought."
"Right."
Jack—Lovrick's companion, the one who'd once brought me that artifact encyclopedia.
Ever deadpan, he pulled all manner of objects from his backpack at the word of command and strapped them on.
A small crossbow, a mask shaped like a dog's face, and... a talisman?
All well and good, but the talisman doesn't really fit the worldbuilding, does it?
"There they are. Starting now."
Thwick...
Jack loaded the crossbow with the practiced ease of a man taking a bite of rice, and without so much as aiming, loosed a bolt into empty air.
The arrow made a sound no louder than a snapping twig.
It seemed to climb toward the sky—then abruptly carved a wildly unnatural trajectory and came screaming down toward the cave entrance.
"A homing arrow?"
"It splits, too."
Shwaak--
Kuhk...
Astoundingly, the single arrow multiplied into two and buried themselves in the crown of each guard's skull.
Because the arrows had skimmed the cave ceiling on their approach, the guards never had the slightest inkling before they dropped dead where they stood.
...
"Hold on... that smell. An alarm spell."
Just as we were about to enter the cave proper, Jack stopped us at the threshold.
The nose on his dog mask twitched, miming the act of scenting the air.
Sniff sniff.
"...It's right here."
Smack... crackle!
Jack hurled a talisman drawn from his pouch.
The thing clung to the cave wall as if alive, then emitted a tiny spark as the inscription on it flared to light.
Had the spell been neutralized?
"Impressive..."
"Right? You've no idea how much grief we went through to get our hands on useful artifacts. You two would do well to include a scout on your team eventually. They cut the difficulty of any fight down to size."
"Can you really just hire anyone, though? Don't the relics and artifacts do all the work anyway?"
"Relics, maybe. But artifacts are made of mana, so they have their own compatibility with each person. The quiet, deft-handed types tend to handle those best."
"...I am not quiet."
"That's the spirit."
Having overheard our exchange, Jack grumbled under his breath.
Either the vindictive type or simply incapable of letting things go, he kept muttering complaints as he took point and led us forward.
He does seem quiet to me, though?
Thud, thud.
We followed Jack into the cave.
Contrary to expectations of oppressive darkness, the interior was reasonably bright.
The erosion-eaten moss coating the walls gave off a faint blue glow.
Under any other circumstances, I might have marveled at the mystical atmosphere...
"Foul mana."
But with a malignant energy crawling up our spines like a wet tongue, none of us had the leisure to admire the scenery.
So this was cultist mana?
Just as I'd heard—an aura with a distinctly chilling quality that froze you to the marrow.
...
The infiltration went off flawlessly.
The cave ran in a straight line, so there was no chance of getting lost, and the guards outside had apparently been trusted to handle everything—security inside was abysmal.
Thanks to that, we were able to penetrate deep into the complex without ever being spotted.
"Khek!"
Thump...
Jack's arrow punched through the brow of a guard who'd been sitting around with a bored expression.
The man collapsed without even managing a proper death rattle.
That made the third one already.
"Going smoothly."
"They're surprisingly weak, aren't they? The guards at the entrance at least seemed diligent about it."
"Most of a cult's rank and file are just common folk. Why would anyone with money or power bother playing cultist? Unless circumstances drive them to it, you almost never see that."
Lovrick spoke with practiced indifference as he severed the fallen guard's head and dropped it into a sack.
The sack, already holding five or six of them, bulged noticeably.
Proof of merit for the Guild, sure—but watching people lop off human heads and stuff them into a bag like this was thoroughly stomach-churning all the same.
Squelch, squelch...
We pressed onward.
At some point, the water pooling on the cave floor began churning under the trampling of dozens of feet, raising a considerable racket.
The sound echoed off the walls, spreading far beyond any hope of concealing our presence.
And yet the cave remained quiet.
Lovrick checked his artifact once more.
"Hmmmm... that's odd. They're all gathered in one place. Is there really a space this big underground?"
"Could they be holding a meeting?"
"No, wait. According to the numbers, the abducted villagers seem to be with them too... Don't tell me—!"
AAAAAAGH--
Before Lovrick could even finish his sentence, a scream echoed from somewhere far ahead.
A raw, tortured shriek that no horror film could hope to rival—it raised the hair on my arms in an instant.
At the same time, the sinister mana now gushing out in full force slammed into us again and again, like waves breaking on a shore.
"They're performing a ritual?!!"
"A ritual? Human sacrifice? You mean the captives are still alive?"
"Yes! Move, now!"
Tatatatat!
We abandoned all pretense of stealth and broke into a run.
Dozens of us moving at once made no small amount of noise, but the screams swelling louder with every step drowned out everything.
Thanks to that, we arrived at the chamber glowing blood-red without once being discovered—and an underground cavern so vast it defied belief opened up before us.
And there, we found a cross-section of hell itself.
...
"GAAAAAH! Save meeee! No—just kill me! Pleeease..."
"KYAAAAAH!!! Please... please... just end it... why are you doing this... sob..."
At the center of the cavern, villagers were being subjected to horrific torture.
One man had been impaled through mouth and anus on a long spit, and even in that state he clung to life, drooling blood-flecked spittle as he mouthed words of pure despair.
Another had the outer skin of his entire left half flayed away, the raw dermis exposed...
No. Describing any more of it was pointless.
"...You bastards!"
"Is this what humans do to each other??"
"Save them, quickly!"
Our people were consumed by a fury of incredible intensity.
Watching these creatures commit atrocities that no human should ever inflict on another, the indignation was enough to bring tears to the eyes.
Even the merchants who'd been grumbling the whole way, even the mercenaries who'd thought of nothing but their pay, were gritting their teeth with the same thought in mind.
As for Harrington, who had accompanied us in the capacity of a rifleman, he was so overcome he looked ready to weep tears of blood.
But Lovrick kept his composure, surveyed the scene, and issued his orders with cold calm.
"We haven't been spotted yet. Riflemen to the rear, melee to the front. Form up."
The cultists were either busy tormenting their captives or kneeling in prayer before a grotesque altar.
With those archaic hoods draped over their heads to boot, there was no chance whatsoever of them noticing us at their backs.
We swiftly assembled into a basic formation.
"Muhheeheng! Mommyyyyy..."
Even through it all, a child's animal-like wailing thundered from every direction like a wall of surround speakers.
A feast of screams, reflected and re-reflected off the walls into a chorus of echoes—I wanted to cover my ears.
Damn it. This is truly hellish.
I will kill every last one of them.
"...All right. Thank you for holding. When Jack fires, that's the signal—open fire on my mark. Understood?"
"Let's... let's do this...!"
"Jack, aim for the one at the center. Flashy red hood. Noah, you take that one as well."
Nod.
Jack and Noah inclined their heads, their expressions set in stone.