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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Chaos
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“Gregory probably… went on patrol about an hour ago.”
A young man answered the Chief’s question about Gregory’s whereabouts.
The Chief nodded and then muttered to himself.
“…Hm. Then I guess that Gregory fellow won’t be able to participate in the ritual.”
“Yes. Since there are still two hours left… Or should I just call him back?”
“No, it’s fine. We must always maintain our guard.”
The Chief said so and walked to his quarters.
His quarters were an ordinary wooden house, no different from those of any other member.
However, on his table were several extraordinary items, different from what the regular members had.
From unique weapons plundered from nobles, to communication magic tools, magic scrolls, and various potions.
It was filled with expensive valuables, mainly needed for combat.
Ssk!
However, he picked up the most insignificant item among them.
A worn-out metal necklace.
But this necklace was the most precious object to him.
It was his wife’s last memento.
Squeeze…
The Chief gripped the necklace tightly, his shoulders trembling.
Even now, when he thought of the moment he lost his wife, his body couldn’t control its rage.
Those damn nobles.
They were the cause of it all.
Because of Count Arzier’s ridiculous profiteering, their livelihood had worsened, and in the end, he didn’t have the money to treat his sick wife, losing her in vain.
However, the Chief hadn’t just stood by while his wife was dying.
He had gone to the government office and pleaded his case with tears, and even went into debt to get the so-called precious regeneration potion and feed it to her.
But the government office had long since lost its function, and the regeneration potion was of no use in curing his wife’s illness.
In the end, he blocked Count Arzier’s carriage and shouted for him to save his wife just once, repeatedly slamming his head on the ground, but all that came back was a group beating.
For the reason that a lowly commoner dared to block the Count’s path.
‘I have to wipe them all out…’
And so, the Chief lost his wife.
And when his beloved daughter contracted the same disease as his wife, the Chief made a decision.
That he would protect his daughter, no matter what it took.
【I can grant your wish.】
The voice that echoed in his ear at that moment was the beginning of all this.
An unidentified voice that said it would give him the power to protect his daughter.
At first, he had thought it was just an auditory hallucination.
He thought that he, who had lost his wife and was being chased by debt, was gradually going insane.
【I am real. Not an illusion or a lie, I am waiting for you not far from here. You are a special person who can receive my power.】
However, as time passed, the Chief began to be certain.
That the owner of this voice whispering to him existed somewhere.
Besides, this voice was the only thing he could rely on.
What could he, who couldn’t even handle mana, possibly do?
In the end, the Chief followed the call of the voice and walked aimlessly.
To the place it called… to the mountains, to the forests, to the caves, to where there was darkness, he kept walking.
Paaaaaaat!
As a result, he was able to obtain this power.
The powerful miasma radiating from his whole body.
“Kekeke…”
The Chief looked at his own body, dyed black, and smiled with satisfaction.
Thanks to this power, he had gained the strength to take revenge on the nobles, and he was able to gather the territory’s people who had fallen into the abyss like himself and organize a band of righteous thieves.
Now, his mission was to spread this power far and wide.
So that they could overturn the damn noble society.
To share the power so that all commoners could find their rightful rights.
‘I was not wrong.’
Thus, he became a priest of the ‘Priest’ rank.
He was granted the authority to share miasma with others.
“Ugh…”
Just then.
With a girl’s moan, the sound of a bed creaking was heard.
It was his daughter, who had long been suffering from illness, groaning in pain.
“S-Sophie…!”
The Chief hurried to his daughter and checked her condition.
Seeing the blue energy rising on her face, it seemed he had missed the time to administer a high-grade stamina potion.
The Chief hurriedly took out a high-grade stamina potion he had plundered from a noble and fed it to his daughter.
His daughter’s condition improved, and the color of her face began to return to normal.
“……Hoo.”
The Chief, letting out a sigh of relief, checked his daughter’s condition again.
He meticulously checked if her breathing was even, if she had a fever, and if the blue energy had spread any further.
As a result, there were no problems.
“…Somehow, I have to find a way.”
However, he couldn’t leave her in this state forever.
The high-grade stamina potion only prevented the disease from worsening.
It couldn’t fundamentally cure it.
“If only you… could receive this power…”
In the end, the only solution was to make his daughter a follower of the ‘Salvation Cult.’
To have her possess miasma and gain powerful physical regeneration.
Ssk!
So the Chief carved the demonic sigil on his daughter, unrolled a scroll, and prepared for the ritual.
Then, after undergoing a ‘complete transformation’ to draw out his miasma to its maximum, he tried to inject the miasma into his daughter.
“……Keuk!”
But it didn’t work this time either.
His daughter was the only one who couldn’t accept the miasma that others accepted so well.
What on earth could be the reason?
“Should I… take her to the Bishop.”
In the end, the only remaining method was to take his daughter to the Bishop.
If it was him, who had received the rank of ‘Bishop,’ he might be able to come up with a clever plan to inject miasma into his daughter.
“……”
However, the Chief had postponed this issue several times.
This was because the Bishop, who only appeared when conducting the ritual once every full moon, would always take a virgin as a sacrifice and take her virginity.
‘Even if it’s the Bishop… that ritual is…’
Moreover, that ritual was bizarre beyond measure.
If it were embracing a living person, he could at least understand it, but wasn’t it a method of killing the woman by embedding a mana stone in her solar plexus, and then embracing the corpse?
No matter how he thought about it, raping a corpse was outside the bounds of common sense.
He couldn’t rashly bring up the matter to the Bishop, afraid that his own daughter, who was still a virgin, might suffer such a fate.
Knock, knock.
Just then.
Someone knocked on the Chief’s door.
Soon, the words ‘It’s time’ were heard from outside the door.
It was already time for the ritual.
“Alright, I’m coming.”
The Chief said so and checked on his daughter.
On the body of his daughter, who was tossing and turning, the demonic sigils were disappearing on their own.
“Sophie, this daddy will definitely save you.”
The Chief said so and prepared for the ritual.
Because there was another way to save his daughter, for him to become a ‘Bishop’ himself.
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“There it is.”
Deep in the mountains.
I stood on a cliff and looked down at the refugee village.
Since my suit’s helmet also had a telescope function, I could observe the enemy’s movements even from this far away.
“It’s bigger than I thought…”
However, the scale of the enemy was larger than I had expected.
I had thought it was a group of about 20 bandits at most, but including the civilians, it was a village of about 500 people.
Just thinking that all those people would become followers of the demonic cult was enough to make my head spin.
“I can roughly picture the story.”
The time I had spent spying on that refugee village was only about 30 minutes.
But with just that, the background of how this village came to be was vividly drawn in my eyes.
The people’s livelihood, shattered by the tyranny of the former lord.
The moments of pain the territory’s people had no choice but to endure as a result.
‘They are people united by their hatred for the nobility.’
In the end, the mess the former Lord of Arizer made was what created them.
Not only did he corrupt the diligent workers of this land into a band of bandits, but he also made them rely on the power of demons.
If they had any sin, it was only that they were ignorant of the demonic cult.
“Fortunately, they can still go back.”
However, they were not so deeply immersed in the demonic cult that it was irreversible.
Looking at the chief and his close aides, if they stopped accepting miasma and were purified with ‘Holy Power,’ they would be able to return to their original human forms.
“The problem is…”
The problem was that there was no one yet who could handle Holy Power.
The time when the demonic cult began to flourish in earnest was when the player became a third-year, and from then on, those who used Holy Power gradually began to appear and help with the demon cult subjugation.
‘Well, I can fix it, but…’
However, even if I couldn’t use Holy Power, I could also remove the miasma.
The part where miasma is usually generated is the contaminated heart, so I just had to cut out this heart and then restore it with a heal.
Of course, they could die in the process, and they would have to feel enormous pain, but…
‘They have to endure that much.’
That was the price for using the wrong power.
Those who possessed miasma for a long time would eventually have their ego eaten away and degenerate into beings that would even devour their own families, so dying before that was rather a blessing.
“Alright, physical therapy confirmed!”
I had obtained a large quantity of high-grade healing scrolls in preparation for a time like this.
Let’s cut open the chests of the territory’s people, cut out their hearts, and replace them with new ones.
Of course, to do that, I needed the consent of the person involved… How should I put this?
To save you, I must remove your heart?
No matter how I thought about it, it didn’t seem like they would accept it easily…
“…If they refuse, it can’t be helped.”
I decided not to think about it in a complicated way.
If words didn’t work, couldn’t I just anesthetize them with a Repulsor Beam?
It was also more convenient to cut out the heart of an unconscious opponent.
‘Above all…’
Judging by the looks of those guys, they seemed to be trying to increase their number of followers by one.
I had to move quickly before another victim was added through the ritual.
‘I’ll be using this for the first time.’
However, the distance between the cliff I was on and the refugee village was quite far.
To approach quickly, I had to use the wingsuit that I hadn’t used before.
Paat!
So, I spread the jet-black wings that I had never once unfolded.
Now, when the flight system was still incomplete.
These wings, with a left-right length of 6m, would excellently supplement my flight ability.
Taat!
On top of the steep cliff.
I jumped towards the ground.
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“Everyone’s gathered. Let’s move to the Ritual Cave.”
The chief looked around at the lower-ranking priests gathered for the ritual and said so.
To increase the success rate of the ritual, it was necessary to gather as many people with miasma as possible and pray for their wishes, so it was necessary to gather all the warriors and take them along.
“Hmm?”
It was on the way to the cave, leading about 60 warriors.
A warrior suddenly stopped walking and looked up at the sky.
He pointed at the sky and said.
“That thing over there… what is it?”
The sunrise, when the sun was just beginning to rise.
A black shape flying with the sunlight at its back.
A colleague squinted his eyes to look at it and said.
“A monster…? Isn’t it a Harpy? It seems to be coming this way?”
The Harpy, a bird of prey monster.
At the word Harpy, the warriors heading to the Ritual Cave raised their heads with tense expressions.
Weren’t Harpies vicious monsters that mainly kidnapped women and children and dropped them to their deaths?
They weren’t a big threat to themselves who could handle miasma, but to protect the villagers, they had to drive the Harpy away.
“But that thing… is it really a Harpy?”
However, the closer the monster presumed to be a Harpy came, the more it made them tilt their heads.
It was too large to be a Harpy… and didn’t the shape of its wings resemble that of a bat?
“Wh-What is that thing…”
Moreover, when it came close enough to be observed in detail with the naked eye, they could definitely conclude that it was not a Harpy.
They had never once heard that Harpies scattered such red and blue phosphorescence.
“I-It’s coming this way!”
The unidentified something was approaching this place at a high speed.
Everyone, including the chief, immediately assumed a combat stance and began to draw out their miasma.
Hwoong!
While they were drawing out their miasma, the unidentified something descended at high speed and landed on the ground.
A rather large cloud of dust and dirt rose from the impact, but all the warriors, including the chief, did not miss the movement of it, which was supporting its body with one arm while kneeling on one knee.
Charrrrrk!
Just then, with the sound of metal engaging precisely, the wings began to retract.
The chief and his party stared with blank eyes at the sight of the 6m-wide wings automatically folding and retracting.
Witnessing the precision of future technology for the first time, they felt as if they were being overwhelmed by just that.
Ssk…
While they were swallowing hard and looking at the jet-black being, it finally raised its body.
A blue light emitting from the center of its chest.
Eyes that scattered a red glow.
A hard outer shell that at a glance looked absolutely impenetrable.
‘Wh-What on earth… is this?’
The chief and his party could tell just by looking at its appearance.
That even if all of them rushed at it, they couldn’t win against this unidentified being.
And that this unidentified something was not simply a monster, but a new standard of transcendent being that was beyond the common sense of this world.
【It’s a pleasure to meet you.】
“!!!!”
However, the transcendent being before their eyes was also equipped with intelligence.
Nowhere did it seem to have a structure that could open its mouth, but the transcendent being was clearly speaking to them in the human language.
“Wh-Who… are you? Reveal your identity.”
At this, the chief, with a pounding heart, asked for the transcendent being’s identity.
This was because the more he looked at it, the more the thought that it might be the ‘Archdemon of Hell’ he had seen in the scriptures popped into his head.
Soon, it opened its mouth.
【You don’t recognize me even after seeing me? I am your salvation. The rightful master of this land, whom you must serve.】
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