Ch.3232. The Unworthy One

The captain of the guards first ambushed and neutralized the third brother, a warrior capable of handling magical power, then immediately paralyzed the entire family using the strange ability embedded in his dagger.

Then, with his eyes flickering eerily, the guard captain, driven by hatred and vengeance that weren’t his own, began methodically killing each member of the privileged family.

His actions contained no righteous will whatsoever.

When his pathetically foolish yet simple motive—to reclaim what he believed was his—combined with the vengeful spirit injected through the dagger, the guard was, rationally speaking, already as good as dead.

“O-o-o-bro—”

—Slash!

Even as he stabbed the throat of the youngest sister, a mere 9-year-old with whom he’d had no particular ill feelings or conflicts, his expression remained completely unchanged.

Perhaps it was because his shattered mind, beyond self-repair, had been reconstructed by the injected vengeance?

Showing not even the slightest flicker of emotion as the youngest died, he kicked her head, making her neck dangle loosely—after killing her, he moved toward his next targets.

Crack!

The third brother, paralyzed and unable to move, had his skull shattered with a blunt weapon prepared in advance.

Though he couldn’t kill the second brother who had left home and wasn’t present, the eldest, the family heir, was here and perfectly killable.

Crunch!

After splitting the eldest’s skull by driving a wooden stake into his head like a nail, hammering it with the dagger, only three remained.

The parents of this hateful body and the fourth son of the household.

“C-come on then!”

Though trembling with fear, the fourth son clutched a dinner knife, expressing his will to resist. But if the guard had been sane enough to care about such things, he wouldn’t be committing these insane acts.

Crack!

Clang!

“AAAAARGH—guh…”

Without hesitation, he grabbed the wrist holding the knife, crushed it until the knife dropped, then seized the howling fourth beast’s lower jaw and ripped it off.

“——!!!”

The young beast collapsed, making strange deflating sounds as blood poured from where his jaw had been. Now only two opponents remained.

One was the mother beast, and the other was the father beast.

“■■■s…! H-■ could ■■ do this…!!”

“…P-■ease!! ■, ■■ can still go ba—”

Irritated by the sounds coming from the beasts’ mouths—disturbingly similar to human speech yet increasingly unpleasant to hear—he grabbed the father beast’s head and squeezed.

Crack!

With a sickening sound, the head and part of the spine were pulled from the body like harvesting a radish, leaving him holding the beast’s head with several vertebrae attached, like a flail.

“■■■■■■■—!!!!!”

The mother beast howled at the death of her mate—even beasts apparently feel grief—but this wailing didn’t stir his conscience; rather, it enraged him further.

Wondering how to silence this noisy beast, he noticed the spine-attached head in his hand and was struck by an excellent idea, beginning to beat the mother beast with it.

Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

Of course, given its poor durability, it would clearly break or the spine would snap after a few swings, so he reinforced the head by manipulating blood with the dagger’s power, creating what could be called a “skull morning star” to reduce the beast to a bloody pulp.

After slaughtering the beasts in this horrifically cruel manner,

He finally began drawing the ritual formation with the blood and flesh harvested from the dismembered beasts, for what could be called his true purpose.

With six dead, the ritual’s foundation was a hexagram, and by placing each victim’s extracted heart at the endpoints of the hexagram, the basic preparations were complete.

Standing in the center of the ritual formation in this blood-soaked space, battered with blood and flesh, he stabbed his own chest—specifically, the left side where his heart was located—with the dagger.

At that moment, with a thunderous boom, all the blood and flesh in the room—even the magical power forming the barrier—condensed toward him and—

BOOM!!!!!!!

With an explosion loud enough to echo throughout the wealthy residential area, his body burst, shattering into pieces beyond recognition.

‘…Idiot. You think that’s how it’s done?’

Because he had botched every step of what should have been a straightforward ritual procedure, and because his basic motivation was utterly revolting,

Ma-Duk personally intervened to make him explode, despite his potential to become at least a Blood Warrior.

Naturally, his soul would receive no kind treatment after being guided to Ma-Duk’s divine realm.

Initially, he was sentenced to become a Revenge Hound, but his soul was in such terrible condition that it couldn’t withstand even that, so

his final fate was to have his soul burned as a catalyst, like gunpowder, inside a Blood Cannon.

A fitting punishment for his crimes.

“Oh?! Lucky! Who would have thought something like this existed?!”

Meanwhile, the dagger left at the scene of the tragedy was recovered and pocketed by a soldier who happened to be investigating the area—

After changing hands seven times in one year, the dagger wandered throughout the Rom Empire until it finally came into the possession of a legion commander in charge of defending the border region, where it stopped changing owners so frequently.

Of course, while there were victims along the way, it was inevitable that not once did an avatar of vengeance directly appear.

‘…Yes, I’ll wait. For revenge, revenge, REVENGE!!!!’

The legion commander who became the dagger’s owner had already become a slave, his mind dominated by obsessive thoughts of vengeance.

※ ※ ※

But this is a story from much later, so returning to the present situation—

‘…It succeeded! Well done, truly well done!’

Recently, I—Ma-Duk—had been spending most of my spare time directly helping humans with their revenge, while

trying to minimize my involvement with the church beyond obligatory interventions.

This might seem irresponsible—ignoring the organization I created while indulging in a hobby—but this is actually the orthodox way to run a church.

In Dungeon & Adventure, when gods appear too frequently within their churches, faith production tends to decrease, and this holds true in the now-realized world as well.

If I were to directly intervene in every aspect of the church and manipulate it, I would effectively demote myself from an object of worship to a mere leader.

So it’s enough for me to maintain an appropriate level of divinity and occasionally convey my intentions to Gracchus.

On the other hand, directly helping humans who pray to me for revenge is essentially divine missionary work, making it more efficient than any conventional evangelism.

Unlike typical gods who might or might not answer after a devout believer fasts for dozens of days and prays day and night, evil gods provide quick feedback with clearly visible effects.

In my case, I help with revenge in the form of blessings just for praying, regardless of whether they serve me, and if someone pledges to serve me for revenge, I even provide customized support services.

I might tip off the church with detailed information to help with revenge, or curse powerful revenge targets to make them easier to kill,

or sometimes directly whisper wisdom to help achieve complex revenge.

There’s also an advantage to this direct missionary work: I can personally control and verify the influx of people into the church, making it impossible for clumsy spies to infiltrate.

A god’s transcendent cognitive abilities easily detect those who pray to me with ulterior motives, and by gathering such individuals and feeding them false information, identifying spies becomes child’s play.

So today, using the sound of burning souls of spies in my divine realm as ASMR, I was helping expand the Revenge Church while also paying attention to another matter.

Specifically, the direction of training Gracchus’s private soldiers, which had recently been increasing dramatically in both scale and quality.