Ch.421Troublesome Gift
by fnovelpia
The holy knights, driven mad with rage against heresy, roared like drunken elephants and destroyed everything in their path.
A festival of violence surging like a tidal wave.
The heretics hiding in the ruins were all either captured or dismembered without exception.
Among them were executives who managed finances and drug production.
Though not in charge of combat, they were still Master-level fighters as befitting their rank… but that meant little in the end.
“Destroy the heretic’s minions! Slaughter them like dogs and offer them to the spirits of the victims!”
“Face the wrath of Menes!”
When the holy knight unit, including high-ranking Paladins and priests, joined forces and rained down attacks like a storm, the enemies were reduced to half-pulverized meat before they could do anything.
They were supposedly kept alive for interrogation… but honestly, I’m not sure if they could be considered alive in that state.
They looked worse than Heinz.
—-
After the Crusade against the Council of Dream Utopia ended, Gwinel personally interrogated the financial executive and rooted out all the priests who had collaborated with them.
There were quite a few, more than expected.
The named priests protested their innocence with spittle flying, but whether they were truly falsely accused would be revealed once the Paladins investigated.
If innocent, they’d live; if they were indeed bribed, they’d die.
And… after thoroughly searching the underground ruins, we finally uncovered the true nature of the new drug they were producing.
“Good heavens…! Such, such atrocity…!!”
“Ohhh… Lord Menes…!”
The Paladins and priests who witnessed the LSD production facility collapsed like orphaned children, calling out their god’s name.
…It was indeed a sight worthy of such reaction.
“Uuuugh… uuuuugh…”
“Hieeeek…”
Could this be what a mad scientist’s laboratory looks like after their mind has spun five times over?
The dark, massive underground chamber was filled with humming vibrations and moaning sounds, with blue mana lamps on the ceiling illuminating five enormous glass tanks and dozens of beds.
On the beds lay naked people with emaciated bodies, bound and seemingly insane, each with strange tentacles inserted into their heads like straws.
The tentacles pulsated like pumps, seemingly sucking something out.
With each undulation, the bound victims convulsed with half-rolled eyes, letting out weak moans.
It was a horrific, blasphemous sight.
The tentacles embedded in their heads merged and thickened at intervals, all pointing toward the massive tanks, and what those tanks contained was…
“Jureek? Jururureek…!”
“Juwaak! Jwakjwak!”
They were monsters that belonged only in children’s nightmares.
The creature had translucent pink skin, with a body resembling the joints of a person starved for a hundred days, pulled apart and washed in acid five times.
Where fingers and toes should be, there were tentacles literally shaped like male genitalia, with tongue-like appendages that writhed whenever the tips opened and closed.
The face was equally horrifying.
They were bald and shiny, as if foreshadowing Leopold’s future, with pink vapor being exhaled from nostril-like openings on their crowns.
Their cloudy eyes were located where ears should be, and their facial area was so clear that the wrinkled brain and optic nerves were visible.
Below the chin, instead of a mouth, dozens of small tentacles and about ten long, thick ones writhed, apparently used to suck out the brains or cerebrospinal fluid from the bound victims.
Literally brain-sucking monsters.
After the half-crazed Paladins interrogated the drug operation members by cutting them into pieces like raw meat, we learned the shocking truth.
Truth is always shocking, but this was particularly disturbing.
A secret known only to the drug division within the Council of Dream Utopia.
They were kidnapping innocent people and offering them as food to monsters to extract drugs…!
And not in a figurative sense, but literally!
Yes, the true identity of LSD, the drug they were spreading in the slums, was…
Shockingly, a substance refined by mixing the pink vapor and excretions produced by these monsters!
Upon learning this horrifying truth, the priests fainted, and the enraged Paladins ground the captured drug operators until only blood remained.
The monsters too were sliced by the knights’ blades until they resembled meat paste.
—-
Thus, the Council of Dream Utopia, which had been infiltrating Holon’s slums dreaming of resurgence, was crushed in a single day with miserable screams.
Though the cult leader and a couple of core executives remained, having lost all their facilities and followers, they were effectively ruined.
The captured heretics were to be publicly executed in the square after being forced to divulge all information, and the priests who had been bribed into betrayal would be burned at the stake.
“Magnificent! All thanks to you!”
Gwinel, who had essentially achieved great merit, lavished us with praise and hospitality.
He even filled the letter intended for the Cardinal with commendations about Lacy and me.
We received a hefty reward, secured a meeting with the Cardinal, and our reputation grew even higher.
For one night’s work, things had turned out exceptionally well.
We enjoyed the lavish meal Gwinel prepared for us and left Holon with a grand send-off from the Church of Menes.
—-
Oh, and Hush, the only survivor of the Five Swords, became a slave.
With so many prisoners, she had become useless and was originally going to be tied up in the square for public humiliation… but after removing her mask, Gwinel let out a brief exclamation and canceled this plan.
Hush’s bare face, though a mess of tears and foam, was surprisingly delicate and youthful.
She seemed older than Lena but younger than Millia.
She had roughly cut silver-white hair and purple eyes, with impressively dark brown skin suggesting African heritage.
Up to this point, there was no issue.
Whether she was of mixed race or a young girl, having been active in a heretical organization, torture followed by execution would have been the natural course.
The problem was that her ears, visible through her hair, were long and pointed.
Ears clearly different from humans, though not as long as an elf’s.
This was a characteristic unique to half-elves, who were even rarer than elves.
It was no wonder Gwinel was surprised that the captured criminal turned out to be a half-elf girl. I was quite surprised too.
A half-elf working as an executive in a cult?
It was truly incomprehensible.
If she had been a pure-blooded elf, I could have understood it as Alvheim plotting to sabotage the Holy State, but being a half-elf, she was likely unrelated to Alvheim.
Unlike the half-werebeasts abundant in the northern snowfields, half-elves were rare because elves considered them products of disgusting bestiality and killed them all.
This alone was shocking enough, but what happened next was even more astonishing.
Gwinel branded the slave mark on Hush’s lower abdomen and gave her to me as a gift.
Something supposedly difficult to obtain even for a fortune… what was I supposed to do with her? I was honestly quite perplexed.
I’d known all along that slavery was established in this world, but I didn’t want to be reminded of it in this way.
Should I just kill her?
—-
“How about burning her at the stake?”
Lacy glared at Hush as if ready to light the holy fire, while Bells polished his sword blade beside her like an executioner awaiting orders.
Lilies just smiled with a strange expression, glancing occasionally.
“Isn’t it a waste to burn her? A half-elf slave is something hard to obtain even in the imperial household. The archbishop must think very highly of you.”
“A slave… though it seems a light punishment compared to her crimes, that depends on how she’s treated going forward. A half-elf’s lifespan is three times that of a human, so a hundred years of servitude would be sufficient, I think.”
Leonore and Nigel took the position that killing her wasn’t necessary.
There was no particular reason to keep her alive, but it seemed a waste to just kill her.
Demian appeared indifferent, while Millia had an expression that seemed to ask, “Why use a kobold as a slave?”
“P-p-please, spare me…! I’ll be good, so please. Please just spare my life…!”
Hush, now transferred to me, knelt down trembling and begging, tears and snot streaming down her face.
Having witnessed Heinz’s fate firsthand, she seemed completely broken.
…I decided not to ask what exactly she was “good” at.
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