Ch.214Chapter 214 – Saint of Emiris (4)

Suddenly, the ground began to rumble.

This seemed unexpected, as I could see Kara looking flustered.

“What…?”

The approaching holy knights stopped in their tracks, apparently wary of the unforeseen situation.

Some of them returned to Kara’s side and began to protect her.

“Heretic, what have you done?!”

Kara shouted at me.

Of course, I hadn’t anticipated this situation either.

An earthquake occurring when I could barely move properly was absolutely not a good thing.

If Sera hadn’t grabbed me in time, I would have probably fallen over in an unseemly manner.

‘What on earth is this…?’

While I was confused by the sudden earthquake, that sound began to grow louder from beneath my feet.

Then, a very familiar shape of white, sharp fangs emerged from the ground.

-KWEEEEEEEK!!!!!

“Centipede!!”

Someone among the holy knights shouted.

Simultaneously, an enormous centipede revealed itself from the ground.

It was so massive that Beatrice forgot the situation and shouted loudly.

“What the hell, how can it be that size?!”

Not just Beatrice, but everyone here was in a state of shock.

Speaking of centipedes, I’ve caught one before, so I know how big they usually are.

That’s why I can state with certainty.

The one that just appeared seems at least three times thicker than the one I caught.

“Maybe the one I caught last time was a baby.”

“I-I don’t think so, Mr. K!”

Sera, who had fought that centipede monster with me before, screamed.

The giant centipede looked around for a moment.

Then it hurled its massive body toward Kara.

-KWEAAAA!!

“Oh no!”

Kara quickly flung herself sideways, and the centipede burrowed into the ground where she had been standing.

If she had remained there, Kara might have been turned into jerky by now.

I could see Kara, who had been briefly suspended in the air, landing on the ground.

‘Could that centipede handle the holy knights?’

I thought about it for a moment but soon concluded it couldn’t.

The church’s holy knights would surely receive holy magic support through Kara, plus there were the Red Knights.

Moreover, considering their numbers alone, there was no way they couldn’t defeat that centipede.

‘Still, it will buy us some time.’

Just as I turned to quickly tell Beatrice we should escape, I noticed something.

“Huh?”

My body felt lighter.

And beyond the centipede’s body, I heard Kara’s voice filled with shock.

“No! The heretic!”

Because of the centipede’s body, I couldn’t see what action she was taking.

But even if I could see, it wouldn’t have made much difference.

Because the centipede charged at her again.

-KWAAAAAA!!!!!

“You damned monster, do I look tasty or something?!”

Kara’s complaint rang out loudly, and soon there was a shock wave from the centipede’s body, suggesting she had used holy magic.

I immediately spread my wings wide and shouted.

“Run!”

A brief command.

But at that voice, my companions seemed to immediately understand what they needed to do.

Sera quickly threw smoke bombs to disrupt the enemy’s vision, and Beatrice created multiple chains to grab everyone’s waists and activated her magic.

“Reverse Gravity!”

Soon, the bodies of those caught in her chains began to float.

In that state, Beatrice quickly reached out to me, and I grabbed her hand and took flight.

“Damn it! Do you think you’ll escape?!”

Cross-shaped giant swords began flying toward me as if chasing me.

However, Kara couldn’t properly aim at me because of the smoke.

The swords flew far from where I had been.

“Stop! Come back! Heretic!”

I could hear Kara shouting urgently, though she couldn’t see me.

Perhaps she heard the sound of wings during her battle with the centipede.

“But who would go back?”

I’d die if I went back.

There’s no reason to go.

“Damn it!!!”

An angry voice echoed.

I could see Kara’s holy magic, including giant cross-shaped swords, flying through the smoke.

“…We survived.”

I said quietly as I watched the holy magic continue to fly in the wrong direction.

We barely made it.

+

We immediately retreated to the dwarves’ village after reaching a safe place.

Fortunately, there was an entrance nearby, so we were able to move quickly with Lara’s guidance.

“I can breathe now.”

“Was I that heavy?”

Beatrice glared at me slightly as she spoke, but honestly, she was very heavy since her magic wore off while we were flying.

“Put your hand on your conscience and think about it. Would I be light?”

“Damn it.”

Beatrice was about to snap back but soon sighed and moved away from me.

“Maybe next time I should prepare scrolls for escape.”

“You should. Otherwise, we’ll have to retreat crudely like this again.”

The problem this time was that we didn’t have many items useful for retreat.

It seems we were too complacent, thinking we wouldn’t be pushed back.

My body suffered because of it.

“…I’m tired from using too much magic unnecessarily.”

Beatrice, who had worked hard to erase our traces of movement out of concern for pursuit, sighed.

Then she sat on the ground and took out a cigarette.

“May I smoke, Sister?”

Kris didn’t answer.

She just nodded silently, seemingly lost in thought, and taking it as permission, Beatrice began to smoke.

As the special cigarette she smoked burned and spread its smoke, I began to feel a bit calmer as I inhaled its scent.

I wasn’t the only one; Lara and Eina also sat down to rest, while Sera and Eve were quietly sitting somewhere, each lost in their thoughts.

‘…That was dangerous.’

Honestly, it was really dangerous.

Although there have been many dangerous situations before, this time was different in direction.

If most of our previous crises were due to lack of strength, this time the enemy brought a spell that targeted our weakness.

‘A technique specifically for heretics?’

I quietly bit my lip.

As the opponent said, I had underestimated the heresy declaration.

It was a mistake to think of it as just a religious declaration and to only consider the risk of attacks from various church factions.

I hadn’t thought there would be specific techniques for eliminating heretics.

And that wasn’t the only problem.

‘What on earth was that?’

Kris had clearly said that Kara had died.

She had also said something about… staying with her.

And then Kara appeared before our eyes again.

I was tempted to ask Kris if she had any idea, but…

‘I’d better postpone it.’

Seeing Kris deep in thought with an uncharacteristically serious face, I didn’t have the courage to ask.

It would be better to talk quietly with her later.

And this incident had given us another task.

‘First, I need to break that.’

The heretic-specific technique that Kara uses.

I needed to figure out how to counter it first.

If we can’t break those techniques, escape might be impossible next time.

In fact, I had noticed the activation condition for the technique.

‘The saint must keep the “heretic” in her sight.’

During the battle, Kara never took her eyes off me.

When the centipede appeared and diverted Kara’s attention, and when its massive body blocked me from her view, the pressure on me disappeared.

Whether she needs to see part of me or all of me, or if I just need to be in her field of vision, I could easily deduce that having me in Kara’s sight was the condition for activating the technique.

The question is, what do we do about it?

This time, from their perspective, an unknown variable appeared, causing Kara to make a mistake.

I thought that if we openly tried to block her vision, she would be fully prepared to counter it.

Since the condition was easy to notice, she would have prepared countermeasures in case it was discovered during battle.

‘I shouldn’t assume she came to catch me without any preparations.’

At the very least, for next time, we needed to devise and experiment with various methods.

I quietly fell into thought as I glanced at Beatrice smoking her cigarette, and Sera resting with Eve a little distance away.

And a moment later, I realized one fact I had forgotten because of Kara.

“…Getting into Ferarius right now is also a problem…”

We need to avoid the eyes of those crazy church people.

But there’s an even more fundamental reason.

“…We failed the quest, after all.”

Eina said quietly.

As she said, we had failed our quest.

The centipede would have been killed by the Emiris Church in the end.

But the problem was that we were supposed to kill it.

We needed to kill it and gain recognition, but we couldn’t.

Therefore, the condition that Dodo had set might be nullified.

“This is bleak.”

I was already feeling gloomy about how to resolve this difficult situation and overcome Kara.

Seeing Perry and Asam approaching from a distance with smiles made me feel a bit guilty.

“Nothing we can do about it.”

While the others were resting, lost in thought and exhausted, I felt I should address the mission failure first.

As I was about to approach them, who probably didn’t know about our mission failure yet, Perry shouted.

“Everyone!! Good news!!!”

“Huh?”

I quietly turned my head at Perry’s words.

I could gradually see him approaching, running excitedly while showing something.

“…Huh?”

What Perry was holding was…

The dwarven mark we had been trying to obtain.

+

“…They escaped.”

Kara quietly bit her lip.

A holy knight who had been watching her carefully spoke quietly.

“We found some suspicious places, but no decisive traces…”

The holy knights had found some unnaturally broken or bent branches, probably from where they had landed after flying.

But there were no further traces.

Of course, it wasn’t hard to imagine whose fault that was.

“There was a mage among the enemies.”

They probably used something to erase their traces while escaping.

Moreover, there was a dwarf among them who seemed to have been simply caught up in the situation.

If there were secret dwarf tunnels nearby, famous for being cleverly hidden using natural elements, and if that dwarf had allowed them to use it, tracking would be virtually impossible.

Although they had brought devices that could track those with the same nature as the Red Knights, it was still difficult to detect something deep underground.

“I’ve failed.”

Kara bit her lip and admitted it.

Due to the unexpected appearance of the centipede, her attention was diverted for a moment, causing her to lose the enemy.

It would have been better if the enemy had tried to turn the tide and attacked, but they had cleanly retreated.

“In the name of God, I have tarnished His name.”

Kara lamented.

She could vaguely sense that her god was angry.

Perhaps she should offer a fasting prayer upon her return to appease her god’s anger.

While sighing slightly at what she would face upon her return, Kara quietly turned her gaze to look at the centipede’s corpse.

“This really was troublesome.”

“…Yes.”

The reporting holy knight quietly agreed.

Of course, they weren’t a force that would lose to a single centipede.

But true to its status as an extra-large specimen, its carapace was extremely hard.

If the saint hadn’t been here, if the Red Knights hadn’t been here, one could assert with certainty that there would have been casualties among the holy knights.

In fact, there were holy knights who would have already returned to God’s side if Kara hadn’t healed them.

One of them was the holy knight currently reporting to Kara.

“Going to God’s side wouldn’t be bad in itself, but…”

The holy knight muttered as if slightly regretful.

Glancing at the knight’s eyes, Kara murmured softly.

“…Since I went through the trouble of saving you, please value your life a bit more.”

“Yes.”

The holy knight answered lightly to Kara’s nagging.

Turning her eyes away from the knight, Kara looked at the centipede’s corpse again.

An extremely large specimen compared to ordinary centipedes.

If they submitted the corpse to an adventurer’s guild, they would surely make a fuss about it being the largest on record.

‘But centipedes aren’t monsters that usually come to the surface.’

It was a dangerous monster that nests deep underground, especially in abandoned mines.

But in other words, it was a monster one would rarely encounter unless going deep underground.

And such a monster, especially a rare giant specimen, attacked at the exact moment when she could have eliminated the heretic.

“…This fits together too well.”

It could be dismissed as mere coincidence, but somehow it didn’t feel like it.

Of course, there was also a desire not to admit her failure, making her blame the innocent centipede, but…

“There’s no point in tormenting an innocent monster.”

Kara sighed and turned her eyes away from the centipede’s corpse.

“First, let’s gather our forces.”

At the end of Kara’s gaze were the holy knights of the Jeolei Church, who seemed to be gathering somewhat awkwardly.

Honestly, in terms of combat power, they weren’t much help,

but their eyes and ears weren’t just for decoration.

So bringing them in would provide the weapon of numbers.

At the very least, they could gather enough people to monitor the land routes to Ferarius.

“I was hoping to catch that guy quickly and spend some time relaxing in Ferarius…”

While feeling slightly annoyed that her rest time was diminishing, Kara quietly rekindled her determination.

“I won’t let you escape. Heretic.”

Kara began issuing orders to the holy knights again, thinking of the heretic who must be somewhere in the mountains.

Meanwhile, she dismissed the strange pain in a corner of her heart as just her imagination.