Ch.39Betrayer of the Altar (3)

What a madman.

While Sicton was rambling, I carefully opened my eyes slightly and recalled the thoughts I’d glimpsed from him.

Normally when I keep my eyes narrowed, opening them slightly only reveals a bit more of my pupils.

I couldn’t read his deep consciousness for fear he might notice something suspicious if I opened my eyes completely. But even from the surface thoughts floating in his mind, I could understand the situation well enough.

The man was a fanatic who believed without a shred of doubt that he would reach the Garden of Bacchus.

The way he had prepared the ritual was appalling.

Originally, Sicton was a trusted confidant of the Bacchus cult leader.

When news broke that the Divine Assembly had passed a resolution to “become independent from the gods,” Sicton was the first Bacchus follower with whom the cult leader shared this information.

While outwardly appearing to agree with the Divine Assembly’s intentions, Sicton was secretly preparing his betrayal.

Bacchus is the god of pleasure and entertainment. It was customary to hold a festival before convening any meeting.

During the festival, Sicton poisoned the cups of all cult members.

The poison he prepared wasn’t a neurotoxin or bacterial toxin, which is why he could drink the same poison and remain unaffected.

What Sicton used was magical nanomachines—a swarm of microscopic elemental spirits created by dividing a single spirit into hundreds of thousands of tiny fragments.

After the festival, as the cult was preparing for their meeting, Sicton gave orders to the microscopic spirits.

Having rendered the entire cult brain-dead, Sicton was using their bodies’ divine power and life force to conduct his ritual.

This cave was the venue for the grand assembly where all members of the Bacchus cult had gathered.

‘Truly, what an absurd human.’

I’ve never directly encountered gods or heard their voices since coming to this world.

But logically speaking, would a god praise someone who brazenly sacrificed their own followers?

At least now I understand the situation. I should call down Noiro who’s waiting above to help search the cave.

As a professional hunter, she’ll be good at finding traces of secret vaults and such.

At the very least, she’ll do better than me.

***

Noiro descended into the deep cave following Ortez’s instructions. The cave wasn’t luxurious, but showed signs of careful preparation. The smoothly carved floors and walls testified to the devotion of Bacchus’s followers.

‘Ortez said he confronted the enemy leader here.’

Entering a stone chamber on one side of the cave, she indeed found the corpse of an old man with his head separated from his body.

Red blood soaking a purple robe. The blood-soaked robe was slowly changing from lavender to deep purple.

Noiro carefully examined the body of the Bacchus cult bishop.

‘…Nothing?’

There were no defensive wounds that would typically appear from fighting or at least attempting to resist.

Noiro swallowed hard and turned over the bishop’s severed head that had fallen in the corner.

The severed head wore a smile. Similar to the smile Ortez himself always wore.

Seeing that smile on the severed head made Noiro’s heart pound violently.

No. How could this be possible?

Some kind of mind-affecting magic?

‘If he knew brainwashing magic, he would have simply brainwashed Geryones instead of pressuring him with authority and force. It’s unlikely to be mind control magic.’

Then how on earth could he make an enemy smile while being beheaded?

Noiro considered analyzing the bishop’s corpse further but decided against it. The fact that Ortez had entrusted this scene to her completely meant that a certain level of trust had been established.

And that ‘trust’ likely included confidence in her ability to distinguish between what should be said and what shouldn’t, what should be seen and what shouldn’t.

Noiro thought of herself as a hunter. Until now, she had compared Ortez to a beast.

The most incomprehensible beast she knew, and the boss who commanded that beast.

But thinking about it now, he couldn’t simply be called a beast. Noiro had always been confident that with enough time and resources, she could hunt any beast.

Wyverns known as sky rulers, other dragons, desert death worms, man-eating mosquito swarms mutated by magic stones—Noiro enjoyed hunting these formidable adversaries that had claimed the lives of many hunters.

Ortez was too bizarre to be compared to any real-world beast. More like a monster from legend…

‘Ah.’

Of course. So that’s why he was Hydra. The water serpent from myth that heroes defeated, with multiple heads and the most lethal poison in the world.

If Karisia was the immortal head of the Hydra, then Ortez was its venomous fang.

There seemed to be nothing worth salvaging from the bishop’s corpse. The grapevine staff had some kind of power different from magic, but it was faint.

“Not enough to call it a holy relic. Probably blessed by priests.”

I might as well take it. Even a small amount of divine power is better than nothing.

After examining Sicton’s ritual chamber, Noiro moved from room to room, eventually placing her hand near the ear section of her gas mask.

“Chief of Divine Investigation. This is Noiro. I need verification on something.”

It was for communication.

Noiro had discovered a room where dozens of humans were arranged in bizarre formations.

They were the people of the Bacchus cult whom Sicton had turned into vegetables.

***

“What should we do with these bodies?”

“Hah…”

I couldn’t help but sigh. Strictly speaking, they weren’t corpses. The nanomachines… no, the microscopic spirits had simply scrambled their brains, leaving them brain-dead.

Their hearts hadn’t stopped, so they were technically alive. Technically.

“These people were attacked by swarms of microscopic elemental spirits.”

“What? By elemental poison? Even if they’d just replaced their livers with enchantware, or if they knew how to handle any kind of ability, they would have been protected by an ability field…”

I made a gesture of prayer with my hands. These people were far removed from things like enchantware.

“…I see. Superstition followers who suppress their ability fields as a way of life to avoid detection by the Ten Towers when using divine power. It makes sense that elemental poison would work on them.”

“If their brains are damaged, the chances of recovery are almost none, right?”

“I don’t have much experience using elemental poison for hunting, but… I’d say it’s impossible. They can’t be utilized.”

*Cough!*

A coughing sound came from the corner of the room.

Noiro immediately drew her bow and aimed. It was a girl, trembling and crawling with difficulty.

“I’ll kill you. I’ll kill…”

***

The girl looked up at the two people with blurry vision. A stranger wearing a gas mask and another person. Someone who felt so imposing that even looking directly at them seemed disrespectful.

A blue light seemed to flash briefly.

“This is interesting. I thought they were all brain-dead.”

He knelt down and lowered his waist. Their eyes met. The blue radiance was shining from inside his eyelids. His pupils looked like faint blue lines, barely visible.

The corners of his mouth were turned up, but his eyes, like single lines, made it impossible to tell whether he was smiling or not.

When the masked stranger tried to say something, he raised his index finger with a “shh” gesture, demanding silence. The stranger took a step back.

The smiling-faced man spoke.

“Do you remember what happened?”

“Sicton, Sicton…”

“Yes. Bishop Sicton betrayed the people of the Bacchus cult. What’s your name?”

“Ki…ne.”

“Kine.”

The smiling-faced man stroked his chin.

“I’m sorry, but your family members can’t come back. Sicton’s poison has penetrated too deeply. You must have had enchantware implanted in your body before, right?”

Kine didn’t answer. Her wariness of the stranger, which had been suppressed by pain-induced haziness, was finally beginning to function.

“Look at her right hand. The specifications seem a bit off.”

Despite her silence, the masked stranger quickly noticed the prosthetic in place of Kine’s right hand.

Cult members typically rejected enchantware implants, considering them tainted by the touch of evil wizards.

But when young Kine contracted a mysterious infection that rotted her right hand, necessitating amputation, they weren’t cruel enough to deny enchantware to a child.

Due to financial limitations, they purchased the cheapest available enchantware, resulting in a left-hand component being implanted in place of her right hand.

That’s how the youngest and only enchantware user among the Bacchus cult grand assembly attendees came to be.

“Very well, Kine. Who did you want to kill?”

Kine didn’t answer this time either. She didn’t know what relationship these two had with Sicton, who had killed everyone.

They had all been such kind people. Grandpa Teiresias. Grandma Agave. Uncle Penthos…

“Perhaps this person?”

The smiling-faced man placed a severed head in front of Kine. The strangely smiling head was unmistakably Sicton’s.

Seeing the severed head, Kine understood the whole situation.

Sicton must have made a deal with Blasphemia, who had been hunting the cult elders. They promised him wealth and power in exchange for exterminating the Bacchus cult.

He had tried to kill all the cult members as agreed, and while proudly attempting to collect his promised reward, he had been discarded.

“You… All of you Blasphemia—!!”

The girl, overcome with rage, eventually lost consciousness.

***

“What’s… your intention?”

I shrugged my shoulders. Noiro’s question probably meant why I had kept the little girl Kine alive.

It was because I had seen her before.

A girl magician with two left hands due to a wrongly implanted prosthetic.

In the original work.

“She had talent.”

“Talent?”

If left alone, she would have become an ally of the Demon Lord of Magic.

“Have you heard the term ‘corporate scholarship student’?”

Now she’s our asset.