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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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The exploration ended quite smoothly. Maybe I had severed around 30 necks of priests and holy knights in total, and I confirmed that the two items I wanted had both dropped. It took less time than I had thought.
I grabbed them and immediately headed to the location of the book. Unlike my worries, the scale of the dungeon was perfectly identical to the game, so finding the way was easy.
I ignored the occasional undead I saw along the way. Since I had secured the items, there was no need to engage in a scuffle with those things.
‘Anyone can tell this is the place.’
The entrance to the room where the demon was sleeping was decorated with holy-looking items and prayer inscriptions written in the language of the Holy Kingdom. Even those undead couldn’t come near here.
In fact, even without all these things, as long as they locked the door, unless someone else entered, there was absolutely no way for the demon to break the seal on its own. But those people didn’t know that.
I walked around the room, searching for a pile of collapsed stones. It was easy to identify because only one spot was collapsed while the rest was spotless.
I approached the pile of stones and grunted as I rolled the rock at the very front to the side. Then, a tiny hole large enough for a person to crawl through was revealed.
I immediately crawled inside.
The passage was slightly shorter than my height, so my head quickly emerged on the other side. Just in case, I surveyed the surroundings before going out. For now, I was relieved that there were no enemies.
It was a space that felt somewhat eerie and ominous. Should I say it felt like power was slowly leaking out?
In the game, no matter how long you stayed here, there was no debuff or anything, so it was probably just my imagination.
I looked around. The torches fixed on the walls had long since burned down to the handles, leaving only ashes, and a rectangular altar could be seen in the center of the room.
The book I was looking for was placed on that altar.
‘Found it.’
This was the book in which the demon was sealed. Its thickness was roughly the width of one of my finger joints, and the cover, as well as the pages inside, were all a dark black color like pitch-black night.
I approached the altar and picked up the book without any hesitation. Since the demon’s power had become so weakened, simply picking it up wouldn’t cause any harm.
The cover of the book was filled with unknown characters. According to the setting, it was written in the demon’s language, but I didn’t particularly want to read it, so I just thought it was written with something and moved on.
Instead, I took out the items I had been waiting for to drop while defeating the undead priests and holy knights from the pouch at my waist.
These were the pieces of the demon’s flesh that had been scattered throughout the cave.
The overall color was very red, and sometimes it even wriggled on its own, which was disgusting. It reminded me of an animal’s raw liver that I had seen on the internet before.
‘Raw liver doesn’t wriggle on its own though.’
Muttering softly, I brought one of the demon’s flesh pieces close to the book, and the book slowly absorbed it. It was like a process of two things merging and returning to their original form.
The second piece of flesh was the same. The book wriggled and absorbed the flesh I brought to it, and when the absorption was complete, it stopped moving. The color of the cover had become a bit redder than before.
This was enough. I put away the book in a separate bag I had brought. Now, before returning to the knighthood, I just needed to grab one more item.
‘I should have gained about 2 more levels, right?’
I briefly calculated the experience I had gained so far. Just the experience from the Headless Armored Cavalier alone should have been enough to gain at least 2 more levels.
If not, I could always go back to the knighthood and then go out for a bit of leveling.
To get outside, I had to crawl through the crack again. That door wasn’t designed with coming and going in mind from the beginning, so it had no handle.
As I stood up, the staggering undead stared at me with their rotten, mushy eyeballs. But unlike before, they didn’t try to attack me.
It was because of the book I was holding.
They were all resurrected as undead by the demon’s flesh inhabiting them, so naturally, they wouldn’t attack me while I was holding the book in which the demon itself resided.
And they didn’t sense any strong divine power from me either. They probably thought I was just a demon worshipper taking the book to break the seal.
After staring blankly at the undead that had gathered around me, I turned my body in the opposite direction from the way I had come. In this situation, they were no different from sandbags, but I didn’t want to engage them and take unnecessary risks.
If I was unlucky, one more piece of flesh might be absorbed into the book.
In a situation where I was holding the book, even if I killed them, the flesh wouldn’t drop as an item but would be absorbed directly into the book. If I wasn’t careful, my plan could be completely ruined.
Moreover, even before dropping the flesh, they were the type that would resurrect no matter how many times I killed them, so the experience efficiency was also a mess. If I remembered correctly, the experience gained from killing them once was either 2 or 3 on the first playthrough.
Even at my miserable level, it was a waste of time to kill them. There were plenty of more efficient leveling spots than here.
‘It’s not worth the effort.’
The path twisted and turned. There were quite a few undead along the way, but they all just stared at me blankly without taking any action.
After walking for some time, kicking away the ones blocking the path without hesitation, I saw the end in the distance. It was a dead end.
‘There’s a corpse…’
In front of it, a dried-up skeleton was leaning against the wall, dead. It was one of the priests who had been dispatched from the Holy Kingdom to subjugate the demon here in the past.
The clothing was a bit more ornate, and unlike the other priests, the corpse didn’t rise as an undead and remained dead. Among the players, it was speculated that he must have been an extremely powerful priest.
I approached the skeleton and carefully searched its clothes. Near the waist, I grabbed something sharp. I picked it up.
What I held in my hand was an ordinary-looking dagger.
A dagger tempered with divine power, maintaining its sharpness without any rust despite the long years that had passed. In the game, it would have the modifier “blessed” attached to it.
‘Looks like I can hold it. If I swing it now, it probably won’t show its true power though.’
I carefully tucked it away. If the book possessed by the demon was the key item to lure out the lord, this dagger was the key item to deal with the lured lord.
There was nothing more to see here.
When I walked out, kicking away the undead that stared at me blankly without taking any action, just like when I came in, darkness had completely settled around.
I approached the place where the horse was, illuminating the surroundings with the torch. The horse, which had been obediently tied to the tree, neighed when it saw me. I stroked its mane once and untied the bag, tying it to the saddle.
Now it was time to return to the knighthood and kill that lord bastard.
In a room decorated with all sorts of holy items, a woman opened her eyes.
There was no light source to be found in the room, but the moonlight pouring in through the stained glass that took up an entire wall brightly illuminated the room, so it wasn’t dark at all.
The woman got up and quietly approached the window, joining her hands in front of her chest. A sacred power of mixed yellow and white color rose from her clasped hands.
How much time had passed since that power appeared? The door swung open. It was a woman with a bright smile on her face.
“What did you summon me for, Your Holiness?”
“The demon’s seal has been broken.”
“Oh my.”
The woman covered her mouth with her right hand, as if surprised by the words of the being she had addressed as “Your Holiness.” But it wasn’t a sincere expression at all. It seemed like she was just pretending to be surprised for show.
“Which seal was it? All the ones in our Holy Kingdom are strictly managed… It must be the empire’s, right?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Should I go catch the bastard who broke the seal? Or subjugate that demon?”
The being addressed as “Your Holiness” shook her head slightly.
“There’s no need for that. Light exists there as well.”
“Light… Well, I don’t know. I don’t trust that woman.”
“She is a woman who wields the holy sword. A mere demon won’t stand a chance against her. You don’t need to worry.”
“I suppose you’re right. Even if her personality is a mess, she’s a holy sword wielder. So, if I’m not going to catch the one who broke the seal right away, and I’m not going to subjugate the demon, why did you summon me?”
“I merely wished to convey the facts. I also realized it only now that the seal has been broken, but that demon’s power has been greatly weakened. Even our novice nuns could easily kill that demon.”
“Even so, it’s meaningless to the people of the empire, isn’t it? No matter how weakened it is, if they don’t have faith, they absolutely can’t kill a demon. They should consider themselves lucky if they don’t end up replenishing the demon’s power by interfering.”
The pope nodded. Her golden hair, which reached all the way to the floor, created waves of gold.
“Then I’ll just tell the kids for now. They won’t engage in a holy war against the demon, but since there’s a possibility, I’ll tell them to train harder than usual. Is that enough?”
“Yes, that’s sufficient.”
The woman, who was about to turn and leave through the door, made an “Ah!” sound as if she had remembered something and turned around.
“Your Holiness, may I ask one more thing?”
“Of course.”
“If we do end up leaving for a holy war later, what should we do with the bastard who broke the demon’s seal?”
Her green eyes narrowed. Those eyes were shining with a very cruel emotion. A wicked sadism flickered in her green pupils.
“Do as you please. I won’t interfere, Inquisitor.”
“Gladly.”
The woman, addressed as the Inquisitor, smiled brightly, bowed her head lightly, and left the room. The pope stared at the closed door for a moment, then turned towards the stained glass.
“Your Holiness, one more thing.”
To be precise, she tried to turn. If only that Inquisitor hadn’t suddenly opened the door and poked her head in.
Despite her frivolous attitude and tone that made it hard to believe she was meeting the pope, the pope spoke softly in a calm and gentle voice.
“What else is left?”
“Do I not need to inform the Pope of the Moon separately?”
Upon hearing that question, the pope glanced at the moonlight shining through the stained glass.
“There’s no need for that.”
A very round full moon was hanging in the sky.
“It’s a night with a full moon rising, after all.”
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Inquisition on his tail now?