Behemoth – 4

‘The Inquisitor is already here?’

As far as I knew, Stella should still have been in the Holy Nation. After all, it was the player, not the Inquisitor, who was supposed to catch Behemoth.

Of course, she had to be in the Holy Nation if she didn’t want to hear people say she was just playing around while the player caught the demon.

The fact that she opened the door and entered right after Behemoth was caught meant that, even assuming she teleported here, she must have departed from the Holy Nation at least several hours ago.

However, Behemoth’s complete resurrection had only happened a few hours ago at most. The proof was that when I briefly stopped by here right before I left to get the runes, the city was still functioning quite normally.

The time gap was too narrow. It was as if they had known from the beginning that Behemoth would resurrect.

“……”

Stella seemed to be feeling similarly to me. She looked incredibly surprised to see me. With a face full of shock, she stood frozen in place, her mouth agape as she looked at me.

Her fingertips trembled. Her green eyes vibrated ceaselessly, alternating between looking at Behemoth, who had transformed into a bloated pig, and me, standing in front of him.

Perhaps the strength had left her grip, as her mace fell to the floor. A thud! was heard, and the nearby floor sank halfway, but no one paid any attention to it.

“Inquisitor-nim, are you alright?”

I was the first to break the silence. I couldn’t just stand there, facing her in silence.

“Uh, well… Yes, yes…”

She replied “Yes,” but her expression and tone seemed far from alright. I sighed deeply inwardly and put the Wingless Nightmare back into my waistband.

“How did you come here? I just stopped by because the lord of this place asked me to, but what about you, Inquisitor-nim? You’re not going to say you came by coincidence, are you?”

Stella, still unable to hide her shocked expression, stammered as she opened her mouth to my question.

“Well, we caught Behemoth’s traces… and it led here… His Holiness the Pope said that, now that the monster is dead, we can thoroughly investigate uncertain matters… and told us to go once…”

‘Ah.’

Her speech was so disorganized and fragmented that it took me a while to understand, but I generally grasped the cause-and-effect relationship.

Since I had killed the creature abandoned by God and completely eliminated the source of worry, the Holy Nation had begun to seriously focus on subjugating demon worshippers. That’s why they caught Behemoth’s traces earlier.

Not only did they catch Behemoth’s traces earlier, but there was no longer a need to leave Inquisitors and Grand Inquisitors behind to prepare for the awakening of the creature abandoned by God, so they could freely send out subjugation forces.

In the game, the player caught Behemoth before the DLC story began, and since the Inquisitor and Grand Inquisitor had to take turns monitoring him, they couldn’t leave for subjugation without concrete evidence.

Because if a demon awakened elsewhere while they were on a wild goose chase, their response would be much slower than if they had departed from the Holy Nation.

‘Wow, it’s unfolding like this?’

I wondered how many times the story had twisted because of my actions of going to the Holy Nation and catching the creature abandoned by God.

The summons to the Imperial Palace, the visit from the World Eater, and the relationship between the Popes and me. Every single one was a snowball effect after the creature’s boss battle.

‘Still, the situation isn’t twisted, so it should be fine.’

Stella arriving early was not a bad thing at all. Rather, it was a good thing, as it meant the chaos in the territory could be resolved more quickly.

Anyway, even in the game, when the player kills Behemoth, the Inquisitor comes with battle priests and stays in the city under the pretext of purification until a certain amount of time passes.

And for ordinary people, the commands issued by the Holy Nation’s Inquisitor and Battle Sisters would feel much more stable than those issued by a lord who had once been charmed by a demon.

It would be unfortunate for Cassandra, but she would have to overcome the subsequent events herself.

“I understand, Inquisitor-nim. Then, may I ask you a favor?”

“Ah… Yes, yes. What is it, Honored Guest-nim?”

“I have something I need to do now, so I would like to ask you to take care of the demon’s aftermath instead of me.”

I pointed with my thumb at Behemoth’s corpse lying beyond my shoulder. Stella nodded obediently. I patted her shoulder a couple of times as if to say “I’m leaving it to you” and left the room.

As soon as that happened, I heard someone slump to the floor behind me. It was clearly Stella. The shock of seeing that pillar of light must have been truly immense.

“……”

“……”

In the hallway stood two Battle Sisters who had followed Stella.

Nuns’ habits that were slightly less revealing compared to Stella’s, a mace and shield lying nearby, and faces staring blankly at me. They weren’t exactly in their right minds either.

The Battle Sisters stood there with dazed expressions, as if they had witnessed some miracle, until they heard my footsteps, startled themselves, and pressed themselves flat against the hallway wall.

Because of their figures, a posture was created where only their chests protruded significantly.

I deliberately averted my gaze and checked the spot where Helga had been tied. It was empty. Instead of tearing the curtains, she must have untied the knot, as the curtains were intact except for being slightly wrinkled in places.

Thinking that someone might have seen Helga, I cast my gaze towards the Battle Sisters who were still pressed against the wall. As my gaze reached them, the Battle Sisters trembled.

Like that, getting a proper answer was out of the question. It seemed I would have to go look for her myself.

Stella saw.

A massive pillar of light descending from the brilliant ‘Sun’ floating in the sky, striking the mansion before her eyes.

The sacred radiance spreading near the descending pillar of light, painting a scene like a magnificent fresco.

The form of the moon appearing beside the sun, despite it being broad daylight.

Stella clearly witnessed all of it with her own two eyes.

No, it wasn’t just Stella. All the Battle Sisters present here witnessed that sight. And the Grand Inquisitor, who was still outside the Holy City, must have clearly witnessed it too.

In that short time she stood firm on her two feet, Stella pondered at least hundreds of times. She wondered if even standing firm without kneeling was an act of blasphemy.

The Battle Sisters under her command had already been doing so. They had thrown aside their maces and shields, knelt on the floor, clasped their hands, bowed their waists, and prostrated themselves, praising the descent of the divine light.

She was confused. She had clearly come here after hearing the news that Behemoth had resurrected, so why was such brilliant and sacred radiance erupting instead of the terrible and foul demonic energy?

Stella, gripping her trembling body and mind, led the Battle Sisters and pushed open the mansion’s door. She had to find out the identity of that light mass as quickly as possible.

The mansion she entered was filled with traces of demons everywhere. They were cleverly hidden to the extent that ordinary people wouldn’t notice them at all, but they couldn’t deceive the eyes of an Inquisitor.

However, despite the clear presence of demonic traces everywhere, there was no repulsive smell characteristic of demons. She probably guessed that the mass of light had purified all evil things.

Clutching her trembling heart, she ascended much further, and when she pushed open the only remaining door on the top floor of the mansion.

“Ah…”

Stella witnessed.

A man bathed in the brilliant radiance pouring down from the sun and moon, holding a weapon imbued with divinity, indifferently gazing at the demon that had become a mere corpse. And the mass of light enveloping the man.

It might be a blasphemous thought. It might be a truly utterly blasphemous thought.

For just a brief moment, Stella felt as if the man before her had approached the Sun and Moon far closer than even the Pope of the Sun and the Pope of the Moon.

Once her values were shaken, falling into confusion was instantaneous. Due to the ceaseless onslaught of confusion, Stella couldn’t even properly recall what happened afterward.

The Honored Guest-nim before her kept asking questions, but she couldn’t remember what she had answered. No, it was even questionable if she had answered at all. She had mumbled something, but whether that was even an answer.

Eventually, the Honored Guest-nim seemed to give up, entrusted Stella with the demon’s disposal, then patted her shoulder a few times and left. A thrilling sensation surged from the shoulder he had touched.

Her body ached. It was an unknown ache, different from pain.

“Oh God…”

Therefore, it might have been natural for Stella to slump to the floor as soon as the Honored Guest-nim disappeared.

Because a being who felt more divine than a Pope shouldn’t have existed.

‘Of all times to arrive, it had to be now…’

Although we had parted without much more conversation for now, I couldn’t hide my discomfort at Stella’s dazed expression. She definitely saw it, 100%.

No, there was no way she couldn’t have seen it. A pillar of light of that size would have been visible to the naked eye from anywhere in the city.

It was a massive pillar of light that descended directly from the sky and was large enough to shatter the mansion’s ceiling. If she hadn’t seen it, either she was blind or it was physically impossible to observe.

Stella’s arrival itself was welcome, as it meant the chaos could be resolved quickly, but seeing the pillar of light was not particularly welcome.

‘The Battle Sisters probably gathered every single one they had and came too.’

In the game, it’s stated that the Inquisitor personally brought all the battle priests under their command.

Even when they arrived late after hearing the news that Behemoth had been subjugated, that was the case. So, if they had come themselves to subjugate Behemoth, just how many troops would they have mobilized?

That is to say, there’s a very high probability that the dozens of Battle Sisters Stella brought to subjugate Behemoth witnessed the pillar of light that just descended from the sky.

And their reaction would likely be similar to what I just saw.

‘No choice, I guess.’

I just accepted it. It was already spilled milk, and there was no solution no matter how much I thought about it.

Anyway, this wouldn’t change my status in the Holy Nation. From the moment I received the brooch as the Popes’ honored guest, my actual status was practically just below the Popes.

Those Popes were so close to me that they would ask me to speak informally to them when no one else was around. So, perhaps I was on par with the Popes, or even higher.

And that wasn’t all. The Inquisitor and Grand Inquisitor were definitely on my side too.

Stella and Selene knew that I had caught the monster in the Holy Nation’s underground, and they also knew that I had been intimate with the Popes. Stella even owed me a personal debt named Lucia.

At the point where the very core of the Holy Nation-the Pope of the Sun, the Pope of the Moon, the Inquisitor, and the Grand Inquisitor-were all on my side, the power I wielded was practically absolute.

So, even if one more anomalous phenomenon was added to that, there wouldn’t be any dramatic changes or anything like that.

‘Where on earth am I supposed to find Helga… Huh?’

I was pondering where to find Helga when I heard footsteps beginning to approach from the far end of the hallway and stopped. It was a similar situation to when Helga, under a charm, had come looking for me.

But this time it was different. The hair glimpsed in the shadows was silver. And it was long enough to wrap around her body and still have some left over.

“Selene?”