Ch.110This Is a Funeral, Not a Festival.

A wall is a kind of fixed idea, a symbolic object.

City walls, wooden fences, house walls—their essence is all the same.

A sturdy shield to protect oneself from the outside. An unbreakable structure.

When facing a wall, people unconsciously feel reassurance. The belief that it will protect them forever.

Even if a wall is actually weak, people rarely imagine it breaking.

In other words, if a wall suddenly shatters, everyone is left dumbfounded.

Because it’s a situation that defies their common sense.

—-

– CRASH!

Like it was hit by a cannonball, one side of the wall explodes completely.

Shattered brick fragments pierce through the people inside like spears.

“Kuhek!”

“Geeeeek…!”

Two men with their heads split open fell forward, twitching.

Their backs were densely packed with wall fragments, like lotus seeds.

Lucky bastards. They died quite comfortably.

I brushed the dust off my shoulders and surveyed the remaining ones.

Thanks to the two corpses that absorbed most of the fragments, the others didn’t seem badly injured.

“Huh? Wha…?”

They all stood in awkward postures, dazed from the sudden impact.

Horror froze in their eyes as they faced me.

I could see their mouths slowly opening, as if about to scream.

Five bastards.

Disgusting just to look at them.

I rushed toward the young man closest to me.

A blond youth clutching his fragment-pierced shoulder.

This must be the one who was bragging about his adventurer lover. He had the youngest voice.

My claw-like fingertips touched the youth’s skull.

I lightly dragged them down, as if gently scraping the front of his face.

With a soft resistance, the youth’s face was torn off.

“Guuuuuuuuugh!”

He collapsed, clutching what had been his face, screaming like a pig.

Or rather, what had been the cross-section of his face.

Nothing remained that could be called a face.

Blood gushed through the empty holes where eyes, nose, and mouth had been.

Something dripped from inside the skull where the front was missing.

The brain, completely unharmed, breathed in the outside air fully.

I deliberately left the brain untouched.

A painless, quick death wouldn’t suit these bastards.

Four more to go.

Before they could react, I immediately rushed to the next one.

I blew off the jaw of a middle-aged man with a bushy beard, then kicked him in the lower side.

My foot, crushing his pelvic bone, emerged from the other side trailing mangled flesh and blood spray.

“Gueeeeek!”

The middle-aged man rolled around, his lower body severed, intestines dragging behind him.

He vomited blood-mixed waste through his gaping throat.

“Wh-what is this…!”

The voice that had boasted about starving a woman for a month.

I drew my black iron longsword and sliced open his belly.

The cut from his solar plexus to below his navel spilled out his intestines.

Avoiding the disgusting fountain of blood by twisting my body, I approached the next one to die.

“Aaak! Aaaaaaak! Monster! A monster…!”

A man sitting on the ground, his legs giving out, screaming as if insane.

It was comical watching him desperately trying to back away, scraping the floor with his heels and buttocks.

“Why that expression? You were so confident earlier. Didn’t you say you’d purify the witch with holy water?”

Mocking him, I cut off his legs.

Then I sliced off both arms, and the man fell backward, trembling violently and screaming at the top of his lungs.

“KYAAAAAAAK!!”

“You’re noisy. You should be quiet at night.”

I pierced his lung with the tip of my sword.

As air leaked from the hole in his chest, his screams quickly subsided.

I turned my eyes to the last remaining bastard.

A middle-aged man crawling on all fours, trying desperately to escape outside.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

He had mentioned Millia. Said she’d be perfect for his child’s coming-of-age ceremony.

I approached him, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and lifted him up.

“Uwaak! Aaaaaaak! Help! Help me!! Monster!!”

The middle-aged man convulsed and struggled.

His hands reached back to grab my wrists, and his heels repeatedly struck my armor.

“The monster isn’t me, but you all. I am… yes, think of me as divine punishment. A bit late, but finally arrived—like the whip of the gods.”

While offering this apt metaphor, I carefully pulled the middle-aged man’s limbs, like plucking weeds from a field.

“KYAAAAAAAK! Stop! Stooooop! KYAAAAA!!”

The middle-aged man convulsed as if struck by lightning, spurting fountains of blood from his few remaining limbs.

Murmuring sounds echoed throughout the village, and I sensed people moving urgently.

Thirty seconds since I shattered the wall.

They must have finally realized something was terribly wrong.

“Does it hurt a lot? Don’t worry. Not much longer now.”

I went outside and rubbed the middle-aged man’s face against the wall. Like childhood memories of drawing on walls.

It was my first time using a person instead of paint and spray.

“Gukeeeeuk! Guruk! Geeeek…!”

After making bizarre groans and convulsing, the middle-aged man soon went limp.

Fléau de Dieu

Divine Punishment

The phrase carved into the wall dripped with red paint.

—-

“What the fuck! What’s happening?!”

“Is it a knight? Has a knight come?!”

“What knight! Didn’t you hear that sound earlier? It’s a mage!”

Numerous men burst out of the houses behind me.

Just seeing my back, they all froze in terror.

“Wh-what… is this…!”

“A witch…?”

“That in his hand, isn’t that Delvin…?”

“Uh… uh, uh…!”

Some dropped their weapons, their strength failing from the horrific sight.

I turned to face them.

Bloodlust, intensified by the taste of blood, spread in streams.

Panic spread like a wave.

“Aaaaaaak! Monster! It’s a monster!! Run!”

“It’s not a knight! It’s a monster!! A monster!”

“Uwaaaa… save, save me…!”

The reactions varied.

Some screamed and fled. Some pointed at me in convulsions.

Some lost their will to fight and sat down begging.

“It’s late at night, what are you all doing still up? Is there a festival or something?”

I threw the middle-aged man named Delvin, whom I’d been using as a brush, toward them.

– SPLAT!

Delvin’s corpse flew like a cannonball, colliding with two men and bursting open.

This is what you’d call killing two birds with one stone, right?

Blood and flesh fragments spread out, covering the surrounding people.

The villagers, stunned by the sight of three people bursting like balloons simultaneously, finally came to their senses as the viscous heat flowed down their faces.

“Hiiiiik…! B-blood, blood…!”

“Aaaak! Aaaaaaak!”

One man, wearing intestines like a scarf, seemed to have lost his mind completely, screaming without pause.

It was a horrific scene.

Except for the fact that these bastards were even more horrific.

I rushed at them, tearing them apart.

Blood rained down, soaking my body, and wails and screams tickled my ears.

I grabbed a bald middle-aged man by both shoulders and pulled them apart, like tearing a well-washed lettuce in half.

The contents were dirtier than expected.

The man I kicked with minimal force flew sideways, half-split, colliding with fleeing people.

Six people simultaneously crashed into the wall and burst.

Too weak to even break the wall.

The brown bricks soaked up the fresh paint.

“Hiiik…! S-save me…”

A boy whose leg I’d grabbed begged, crying.

A child with facial hair just starting to appear.

A familiar face.

He had been leering at Millia in the alley.

Guilty.

“No.”

After spinning him once in the air, I threw him skyward.

“Uwaaaaaaaaaaa-“

The screams grew fainter and fainter. Yes, behave yourself in heaven.

My swing might have been too strong, as I was left holding just an ankle.

I threw the ankle at another man.

A man with a shoe sprouting from his lower abdomen trembled and collapsed.

I wiped the blood splattered on my face and moved on.

After a while, the sound of a watermelon breaking echoed from somewhere.

Seems heaven rejected you. Too bad.

—-

I advanced, slaughtering everything in sight.

Everything that came to hand was torn apart and uprooted.

Everything caught on my sword’s edge was cut to pieces.

Behind my path, limbless maggots writhed and groaned.

Those I kicked became paint without exception.

Whether decorating walls or coloring floors.

The brave one who thrust a spear at me was rewarded for his audacity by being skewered to the wall, struggling.

Yet there were still many left to kill.

Like ants, they poured out, alarmed by the screams and commotion, still more beyond.

I drew my bow and nocked an arrow.

The fully drawn bow released successive flashes.

The bodies of men hit by arrows were torn apart.

One leg per shot, six shots.

I didn’t kill them because I had another use for them.

The one-legged men rolled on the ground, clutching their severed stumps and wailing.

Yes, I know that feeling well. It really hurts, I’ve experienced it.

As I approached them, the men screamed and began crawling away.

Where did they think they could go? I deliberately cut off just one leg each.

I threw daggers to pin their outstretched wrists.

The men squirmed like insect specimens pinned to a board, shouting vulgar screams.

“Aaaak! Fuuuuuck!”

“Don’t come! Don’t come here!”

I can’t grant such requests.

Don’t feel wronged. You probably never granted others’ requests either.

Approaching the convulsing men, I tore off a piece of wall from a nearby log cabin, about the length of a forearm.

…This should be adequate as a torch, right?

I brought a match to the end of the wooden stick and lit it.

The warm flames began to climb up the inverted stick.

Sensing their fate, the men screamed.

“Hiiiiik! A demon, a demon is coming!!”

“Aaaaaaak! No…! I don’t want to die!! Don’t come here! You monster bastaaaaard!!”

“Please spare me!! Lord Elpinel! Lord Saulite! Any god! Please, anyone!!”

God?

I couldn’t help but laugh.