Ch.28Secret – 1

The meaning of the word “civil war.” It was quite simple.

Living sacrifice.

From ancient times, the word “civil war” had been used as a euphemism for living sacrifice among pagans.

The expression “to start a civil war” meant preparing a living sacrifice for their god, and “ending a civil war in victory” was synonymous with successfully offering a sacrifice.

In the current kingdom, there were dozens of officially recognized religious groups, but counting the unofficial ones, their number was impossible to estimate.

Although these unofficial religious groups differed in how they worshipped their gods and in their number of followers, they shared one common value.

It was the hidden meaning embedded in the word “civil war.”

As someone who still clearly remembered where this euphemism originated, I found such religious groups intolerable, so whenever I discovered one, I contacted Charlotte to have them exterminated.

Christine? She openly offers sacrifices; she doesn’t use such euphemisms.

My point is simple. If the word “civil war” these bastards used truly carries the meaning of that euphemism I know…

“Not going to answer?”

Then everyone who was here must have been offered as living sacrifices.

“An…swer…?”

Elliot and the two knights behind him were staring at me with blank eyes. Their faces looked like dolls gradually losing their sense of self.

This was a sign that their minds were being consumed by something. I still had so much to ask. But I had no choice. I could only hope they hadn’t trained their minds as well as their bodies.

I clenched my fist. I spread my legs slightly and took a step back. Then I stepped forward with my left foot, accelerating with the distance I had created.

I pulled my right arm back forcefully, then thrust it forward while pivoting my waist and pushing off my back foot, planting my fist squarely into Elliot’s cheek.

With a crisp smacking sound, Elliot’s large frame tumbled backward with a crash.

“What were you doing here?”

“You, bastard… an…swer…”

His speech briefly returned to normal, but then his words trailed off again, making me sigh.

This was hopeless. There must have been some trigger, and I had activated it, shattering their minds. It was a common spell used to prevent information leakage.

First, I needed to figure out what kind of religious group they were.

Pagans offer sacrifices for mainly three reasons.

First, to enhance their own power and abilities. Second, to place a curse on someone or somewhere.

And the third, which was also the most dangerous: to summon something that would fulfill their wishes.

My suspicion had almost turned into certainty. These people must have taken all the city residents and offered them as living sacrifices somewhere.

The pagans responsible were likely Scarface’s group roaming outside, the humans remaining in the lord’s mansion, plus these three knights here.

Now I understood what one of their gang meant when he complained about someone still wandering outside.

They must have thought they had sacrificed everyone, but then realized someone was still out there.

As for Cartina… honestly, I wasn’t sure.

The reason I had attached Serena to Cartina was that if Cartina was behind this, having Serena by her side would be much more reassuring.

After all, Cartina was the only one in a position to conceal such actions across the entire city.

“Hah. Well, fine.”

I hadn’t expected them to answer anyway. If Cartina was truly the culprit, these guys were just mindless meat shields.

The real perpetrator would be hidden somewhere else. Yes, for example, in that damned lord’s mansion.

Once you start suspecting, nothing looks innocent anymore. Even Cartina’s insistence on talking at the mansion seemed suspicious.

I couldn’t rule out the possibility that the invitation itself was a trap, designed to forcibly activate a sacrificial magic circle the moment we set foot in the mansion.

Leaving behind the completely frozen Elliot and the others, I approached the reception desk that he had smashed.

I rummaged through the shattered and charred fragments looking for clues, but Elliot had been so thorough in his destruction that nothing useful remained.

By this point, I wanted to find something here out of sheer stubbornness. Everything else fit together, but there were too many actions here that defied common sense.

Like the unnecessarily sealed windows, or the inexplicably closed main entrance.

At first, I thought people had hidden in this building to escape those rioting throughout the city, but now that this had been disproven, there must be another reason for all this.

Cartina and Serena would have gone down to the basement, so all that remained were the second and third floor reception rooms.

“I should go up and check.”

The question was whether to go alone or call Serena to come with me.

Since I hadn’t heard any sounds of fighting from the basement yet, it meant that at least for now, Cartina was still faithfully playing her role as the city’s lord.

Enough to keep Serena from throwing the first punch.

I examined Elliot’s petrified gang once more.

What could have been the trigger that changed their state like that? Someone pointing out contradictions in their memories? Doubting their own memories?

At least, it was clear that whether willingly or not, they had been involved in this sacrificial ritual, given their sudden loss of self.

At that moment, they all simultaneously lifted their heads. The action was so sudden that I flinched in surprise.

Wondering if there was something there, I looked in the direction they were staring, but there was nothing.

The wooden floor creaked. The three knights bowed their heads again, then began to move in unison, just as before.

They extended their left feet at the same time, then their right. Their upper bodies barely moved. The movements were so identical that it was unsettling.

The two lower-ranking knights went out the door first, followed by Elliot, who paused and turned his head toward me.

With his body facing forward but his head turned to look at me, there was an audible cracking sound as his neck joint twisted unnaturally.

“What are you looking at?”

I stared back, refusing to back down. Our gazes crossed.

“He will come soon.”

“He?”

Elliot’s manner of speaking had changed again. If earlier he had been forcing words out of his throat, now it sounded as if someone else was speaking through him. I snorted and continued.

“Is it that damn god again, you pagan bastard? This is driving me crazy. No matter how much you pull this shit, you’ll all lose your heads if the king of this country finds out, you know?”

“He will come soon.”

Having said his piece, Elliot turned his head back to face forward and walked away with heavy steps. In the silence that followed, only Scarface’s severed arm and head remained on the floor.

My clenched fist trembled. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I had no idea when these pagan bastards had infiltrated this place.

I can understand religion. No, more than understand—I think it’s not bad for ordinary people to have one.

Although it has never fully revealed itself, gods truly exist. I’ve even received direct help from gods in the past.

Even Christine received a separate divine power from me because her faith in me was so deeply serious.

Strictly speaking, I was also a kind of god. Not in the metaphorical sense due to my super-regeneration ability and immortality, but in the general sense of a deity.

But those pagan bastards were beings one should not associate with. Setting everything else aside, when you consider where the concept of paganism came from, it was impossible to accept them rationally or emotionally.

“My lord. I have something to report.”

As I was trying to suppress my anger and think about what to do next, I heard Serena calling. She was climbing up the basement stairs with the same purposeful strides as when she went down.

I was about to ask what happened, but paused when I noticed the empty space beside her.

“Where’s Cartina?”

“She disappeared. I suspect a teleportation spell was activated.”

“Teleportation?”

“Yes. And this. I found it in the basement.”

Serena held out something she had been holding. It was a crumpled and torn piece of paper. I took it and examined it from all angles.

It was just a torn corner, so I couldn’t make out the entire magic circle, but it was clear that some kind of magic circle had been drawn on it.

My knowledge wasn’t enough to judge this. I can barely detect residual mana. In cases like this, it was better to rely on Serena’s intuition.

“Is this… a scroll? It’s all torn up, only a part remains?”

“I’m not deeply versed in magic, so I can’t be certain, but my feeling is that it’s probably a sacrificial formula. Whether it was torn deliberately or by accident.”

“So this was where they offered the living sacrifices.”

“It seems so.”

“If this really is a sacrificial formula, then those windows…”

As I glanced at the wooden boards attached to the windows, Serena nodded as if she knew what I was about to say.

“They weren’t put there to prevent people from coming in from outside, but to prevent people outside from looking in. To hide what was happening in here.”