Ch.4Fanaticism

“AAAAARGH!”

A man’s deep scream echoed through the forest. It was a scream filled with agony.

But the night forest, as if refusing to allow its tranquility to be disturbed, scattered the screams through the densely grown trees.

All the desperate pleas for life and curses that occasionally mixed between the pain-filled screams were dispersed as well.

The source of the screaming was a man nailed to a cross by his hands and feet, blood streaming down his entire body.

His mouth, half-open in agony, contained not a single tooth. Where his eyes should have been were only crimson holes weeping blood like tears. His body was covered in wounds—cut, burned, and gouged.

The man was not alone. Around him, at least ten men lay on the cold ground, clutching their grotesquely twisted and broken limbs.

The only difference was that, unlike the man on the cross, they had gags in their mouths.

The men’s eyes were filled with pain and fear. The metallic smell of blood flowing from the cross and the terrible screams were more than enough to destroy any will to resist.

Of course, trying to resist with their shattered and dislocated limbs would be meaningless. It would only hasten their deaths.

All they could do was shed tears as they imagined the future awaiting them.

The ground long stained with dark red blood, the cross with its endlessly screaming victim, corpses with limbs brutally severed and entrails torn out—

Despite this hellish scene unfolding before them, the reason the men hadn’t completely lost their minds was solely because of the woman before them.

“Almighty God, please look upon this lamb…”

Kneeling on the ground, seemingly unconcerned about the blood soaking into her clothes, a woman prayed with closed eyes and clasped hands.

She wore a simple nun’s habit without any decoration, but even that couldn’t completely conceal her voluptuous chest.

Moreover, the habit was completely open from just above her pelvis downward, revealing her jade-white hips and thighs.

Despite kneeling on the ground, her slender thighs and calves were adorned with white stockings and garter belts. Her outfit was closer to what a prostitute with a nun concept might wear rather than an actual nun’s attire.

It was a captivating scene—a beauty so rare that an ordinary person might never encounter someone like her in their lifetime, dressed in clothes befitting a prostitute, offering prayers.

Very sadly, even in this situation, men remained creatures faithful to their instincts. Thanks to those instincts, they maintained their sanity instead of going mad.

“You whore!”

An angry curse erupted from among the men carelessly thrown on the ground.

The nun who had been praying momentarily froze. The other men wore expressions that said, “Is this guy crazy?”

When even behaving properly didn’t guarantee a painless death, deliberately provoking her was clearly the act of someone who had completely lost his mind.

“You think you’ll be forgiven for this kind of thing just by praying? Go ahead and do whatever the hell you want! You filthy slut!”

The nun who had briefly paused resumed her prayer. She appeared completely indifferent to the curses.

The enraged man continued hurling insults, but the nun remained focused on her prayer without the slightest reaction. The surrounding men only hoped that they wouldn’t be caught in the crossfire.

The man hanging on the cross in such a miserable state, marked as the first sacrifice, had been the one who had cursed the nun the loudest. Mainly about her sexual experiences and which parts of her body she had used.

The torture that followed was so vicious that even these hardened men had to look away for a moment.

So when the nun gagged them because they were disturbing her prayers, they even felt a sense of relief that they wouldn’t accidentally make a mistake.

“How wonderful! With that lewd body of yours, you probably spread your legs for the Pope and got absolution easily! Since you’ve been fucked like a whore anyway, why not give us some too!”

The moment he finished speaking, the nun who had been intently praying opened her eyes. Her head turned sharply. Her eyes were yellow, but as dark as pitch.

Even the man spewing curses stopped, intimidated by her presence. The other men, sensing trouble, struggled to move their grotesquely twisted limbs to create distance.

The nun slowly rose to her feet. Her white garter belt was stained with blood. Her eyes remained fixed on the man who had just cursed her.

As she moved, her voluptuous chest asserted itself, and her long brown hair, reaching down to her chest, swayed elegantly behind her neck.

Step by step, the nun advanced. Her target was obvious. The man who had been running his mouth seemed to realize he had been marked and fell silent, his eyes rolling wildly.

For all his cursing, he was terrified when directly confronted with her gaze. The nun’s eyes turned toward the torn cloth on the ground that had once gagged the man’s mouth, now split in two.

“Ah, my God. Forgive this humble lamb. Because of my inadequacy, You have been insulted.”

After offering this brief prayer where she stood, the nun continued walking. The forest was eerily silent.

The man who had been hanging on the cross, screaming and alternating between pleas and curses, was dead. With even the prayers to God that had accompanied the screams now ceased, the night forest was unbearably quiet.

“Urk?!”

The nun approached the man, grabbed him by the back of his neck, and lifted him up. Even if he tried to struggle, his twisted limbs made his movements look merely pathetic from the side.

Of course, to the man being held, these were desperate movements.

The nun returned to where she had been praying and threw the man onto a nearby rock. A stifled cry escaped him.

The rock was already a mess of hardened blood and human flesh, so what it meant to be placed there was obvious.

The nun grabbed the man’s right forearm and shoulder joint and applied pressure. A terrible sound of bones separating came from the shoulder joint. The man screamed convulsively, but the nun, without blinking, pulled harder on the arm she was holding.

“AAAAH! I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Please, spare me! AAAAARGH!”

With the sound of bones breaking and flesh tearing, the right arm separated from the shoulder joint, spraying blood everywhere. The man on the rock writhed in such terrible pain that his eyes rolled back.

She had torn off his arm with her bare hands.

The nun gently placed the dripping arm on a crudely made rectangular wooden box beside her.

Then she repeated the process. The left arm was torn off, then the right leg, then the left leg. Each severed limb was neatly placed on the box.

The rock was stained with blood once more. The man, with all his limbs torn off, could only make gurgling sounds, unable even to faint.

Everyone except the nun was paralyzed by the horrific scene before them.

Setting aside how difficult it is to tear off a human’s limbs while they’re still alive, they were overwhelmed by the cruelty of someone who could commit such acts without hesitation.

First, torture and crucifixion; next, having limbs torn off while still alive.

What would come next?

Despite dozens of terror-stricken gazes upon her, the nun’s hands did not stop.

She flipped over the body that would surely die soon anyway, positioning the back of the head to face the sky, and once again grabbed the shoulders and the back of the head.

Then she pulled.

There was a short cracking sound of bones breaking. The man’s neck was completely bent perpendicular to his body.

A death more meaningless than that of an ant walking along the road. For someone with the notorious reputation of being a wanted criminal in the kingdom for so long, it was an incredibly meaningless death.

But the nun’s hands didn’t stop there. She applied more force to the hand holding the back of the head.

With the sound of skin tearing, the last remaining blood flowed from between the torn flesh, but the hand pulling on the neck showed no sign of stopping.

Even as the shoulder joint collapsed under the pressure and blood splattered on her impassive face, she remained unmoved.

And finally, the spine connected to the neck was ruthlessly pulled out and revealed to the world.

“Mmmmph!”

“Mmph! Mmmmph!”

The nun examined the dripping human spine, holding it up to the torchlight as if appraising it.

Each time the distance between the torch and the spine changed, the long bone fragment emerging from the shadows was enough to destroy the sanity of anyone who saw it.

Sounds of madness erupted from all directions.

Ignoring the pain of their entangled limbs and their faces scraping against the cold ground, they struggled desperately to get even a little farther away from the hell before their eyes.

The nun’s face slightly frowned at the noise from behind as she hung the extracted spine on a torch pole and prepared to pray.

Her yellow eyes caught sight of the men crawling on the ground, tears and snot streaming down their faces. She had just been about to start praying.

It was blasphemous. Extremely so. The nun unclasped her hands that had been joined for prayer.

The reaper from hell approached the men rolling on the ground.

Dawn had broken. Morning sunlight filtered through the densely grown trees.

The sunlight embraced everything without exception. Even the scene of last night’s merciless massacre was gently bathed in its warmth.

In the middle of that massacre site, a blood-soaked nun was praying with clasped hands.

The surroundings were a mess of human blood, flesh, and entrails.

It was hard to find an intact corpse. No, intact corpses didn’t exist in the first place. It was fortunate if arms or legs were still attached to the body.

Most corpses remained with only the torso and head, their arms and legs torn from their bodies.

There were corpses with their bellies split open and entrails completely spilled out, leaving them empty inside, and corpses precisely cut in half vertically. All the cut surfaces were uniformly rough.

The nun’s prayers did not cease. If anything, they grew more fervent.

And between those passionate prayers, occasional dying moans could be heard. They came from a man hanging on a cross that was completely stained red.

“…Amen.”

The prayer stopped. At the same time, the moaning ceased. Now, except for the nun, there were no living humans nearby.

The nun who finished praying rose from her blood-soaked body. In her hand was a small skull.

Her face was ecstatic as she gazed at the skull.

She moved her lips to give the skull a brief kiss, and even licked it slightly with her tongue. Feeling the sensation on her tongue, the nun crossed her thighs.

“Ah, my God.”

Your immortality, that sweet fruit.

“Please, bestow even a little upon this lamb…”

“Here, you need to eat this too.”

“No, I can eat by myself! My lord!”

Despite saying that, Serena obediently opened her mouth and bit into the meat I offered. Then she glanced at me, and when I grinned, she blushed furiously and chewed with her mouth full.

Originally, I hadn’t planned to go this far, but when I asked earlier how many years I had been gone and heard the answer was 8 years, I felt a bit sorry and changed my mind.

The moment I heard I had left Serena in the palace for 8 years, I realized my mistake. I must have been completely obsessed when I heard rumors about the dragon.

I thought that a dragon, a mystical creature said to be above the laws of nature, might be able to kill me.

Well, the result was that the dragon got bored and left first.

Anyway, feeling guilty for various reasons, Serena and I were now camping in the forest with a bonfire.

I wanted to return to the city immediately, but unfortunately, I wasn’t in a position to do so. It wasn’t time for me to go back yet.

It took almost two weeks to get here. That meant round-trip travel between the city and this forest would take almost a month.

But it had only been about fifteen days since I left the city. If I, who had fled after partially destroying the lord’s mansion, returned around the same time as the Royal First Knight Commander?

The receptionist at the Adventurer’s Guild would obviously ask why I returned so early. The important thing was that I hadn’t thought of a suitable excuse yet.

So I decided to take a walk in the forest with Serena to think about how to answer, and then return slowly.

The dragon was gone anyway.

It would probably fly around until it found a suitable volcano, then go inside and fall back to sleep. I just needed to wander around for a while and then report that the dragon had already left.

“Ack.”

“Ah…!”

Our voices overlapped. A piece of meat precariously balanced on the edge of the plate had fallen into the bonfire.

As Serena hurriedly tried to reach into the fire, I stopped her and put my left hand in first.

The bonfire quickly consumed the new piece of flesh. The skin instantly turned black and shriveled rapidly.

Ignoring the burning sensation in my hand, I grabbed the meat and pulled my hand out of the fire.

“Tsk. This is inedible now.”

The meat was already ruined. It was covered in dirt and ash, clearly looking unfit for consumption.

My hand? It had already fully recovered the moment I pulled it out of the fire. Serena naturally didn’t worry about my hand.

If she were going to worry about such things, she wouldn’t have crushed my spine when she hugged me.

“Serena, let’s just give up on this and—”

The sound of a sword being drawn interrupted my words. In Serena’s hand was her sword, World Eater, which she had drawn from its scabbard. Her expression as she gazed beyond the forest was concerning.

“What’s wrong?”

“The flow of mana is strange, my lord.”

“Strange how? I don’t sense anything unusual.”

“Let me correct myself. It’s not that the flow is strange—there is no flow at all.”

“……”

No flow at all.

Feeling the weight of those words, I set down the plate of meat I had been about to feed Serena. As far as I knew, only two things in this continent could cause such a phenomenon.

One was obviously black magic. And the other was…

“…Christine.”