Ch.508Heretic and Judge

Eljur stared at her right arm in disbelief, where everything below the elbow had vanished. Her green eyes trembled with shock. Just like when the villagers she loved burned before her eyes, impaled on stakes.

“Kuhk…!”

Blood overflowed past her contorted lips. The impact that struck when she tried to manifest her magic. The precisely arranged magical formula twisted and broke, causing rampaging mana to sweep through her insides.

‘I must… control the mana…!’

Blood vessels snapped one after another and her heart lurched. Blood backflowed from damaged organs and spurted up her throat. Demian’s greatsword had merely sliced off one arm, but the rampaging mana was carving up her entire body, leaving severe wounds.

Tracing a long trail of blood through the air, Eljur fell like a hunted pheasant.

Barely clinging to consciousness, Eljur managed to control her mana with desperate effort and deploy a barrier spell, but the hastily erected mana barrier shattered upon impact with the ground.

– Kuwoong!

Snow rose like a crown. Eljur vomited blood and let out a shrill scream. Excruciating pain surged from her lower body.

She had somehow survived, but her legs were twisted in directions they shouldn’t bend. A broken leg and a severed right arm. Only her left arm remained intact.

‘It hurts. Why? How could I, not even an Aishan-Gioro, be defeated by mere children? Impossible. Of all moments, why did it have to be when Jin…!’

Until just moments ago, Eljur had been overwhelming Demian and Millia, but a single moment of distraction had brought irreversible consequences.

After suppressing and dispersing her rampaging power, she found only twenty percent of her mana remained. It was barely enough for healing, let alone combat.

“To end so futilely…! I can’t stop here with just this much, with only this…! I…! I…!”

Eljur tried to push herself up with her trembling left arm, but her body betrayed her will. Her palm slipped, and she planted her face on the ground once more.

“Kyahk…!”

She couldn’t muster any strength. Unlike Dirade who had transplanted monster parts, or Valkers who received an evil god’s blessing, she was merely a mage who couldn’t withstand such severe injuries.

‘Kist… where is Kist…! He couldn’t have been defeated by a mere half-elf, so why hasn’t he returned?! If that idiot were here, I wouldn’t be in this state…!’

Cursing her absent subordinate, Eljur struggled pathetically across the snow like someone swimming.

‘I need to get up, I must get up…! Otherwise!’

Demian who had fallen with an ice pick embedded in him, Millia who knelt gasping while leaning on her bow. Eljur couldn’t defend against either of them in her current state.

Her mana was already at its limit just repairing her ruptured organs and reconnecting torn blood vessels and muscles.

However, until Eljur finally managed to rise, neither of them attempted any attack.

They couldn’t.

Both Demian and Millia had fallen unconscious after expending all their strength in their final attacks.

Only after standing up, supporting herself with an illusory staff that had no offensive power, did Eljur realize they had already collapsed.

“…Ah, ha. Haha, ahahahahaha! Kelok! Kheuk…! Huhu… yes, that’s right! After what happened to me, you couldn’t possibly be unharmed!”

Eljur burst into laughter at the belated sense of victory.

She had won.

She could be certain. Even with her mana nearly depleted, killing unconscious people would be as easy as crushing insects!

“Haa… haa…. Go to hell, you insufferable demonic bastards!”

Just as Eljur, with blood-soaked lips curled upward, was about to shoot a small blade toward their necks.

“That’s far enough, heretic Eljur.”

…her hope ended.

The radiance of order that judges evil tinged the snow-covered field with gold. Looking down at the golden longsword hovering at her neck, Eljur drooped her head helplessly.

Ceylon of the Golden Seal, the strongest judge of the Church of Astraea. An enemy she could never defeat even at full strength.

‘…I should have just fled from the beginning.’

Regretting too late changed nothing. She had wasted her time and opportunities to satisfy her sadistic pleasure, and now the price had come due.

“It’s over, Eljur. The goddess of order and justice, Astraea, does not forgive any evil. The retribution for your sins shall burn you!”

Looking at the companions rushing toward the two fallen figures, Ceylon pronounced Eljur’s execution with righteous anger.

Cult worship, collaboration with Ma’in, countless acts of cruelty, and terrorism on a city-wide scale. Each crime alone warranted more than execution.

“Retribution…? Retribution? Don’t make me laugh…!”

Perhaps the word “retribution” touched a nerve, as Eljur twisted her face and spewed fierce hatred.

Having been completely subdued, all she could do was rage.

“I, I was only taking revenge! Against the church that brutally murdered the people of my hometown who loved me, whom I loved, who had committed no wrong, by branding them as cultists!”

Eljur screamed, recalling her old hometown’s demise.

Even after more than a decade, she clearly remembered each villager’s name and their smiling faces.

…And their final moments screaming in the flames.

They had merely created a paradise where everyone loved each other without discrimination and shared everything. At least, that’s what Eljur firmly believed.

But the Church of Imela, seeing only the village’s appearance, despised them as lustful and branded them as evil god worshippers before slaughtering them all. To her, it was a horrific nightmare and an utterly hateful atrocity.

That’s why Eljur abandoned miracles to learn magic, rose to lead a cult, and cooperated with Ma’in, yet never worshipped evil gods.

The moment she worshipped an evil god, the false accusations the Church of Imela had placed on her hometown would become truth.

For five years she lived solely for revenge against the Church of Imela—no, the Holy State—leading those sanctimonious hypocrites to ruin.

Whenever she saw Imela’s priests secretly visiting brothels, Eljur could only laugh bitterly.

These filthy humans, once stripped of their facade, had posed as righteous judges and tried to “judge” her hometown. It was disgustingly ugly and absurd.

—-

Of course, Ceylon had not the slightest interest in her circumstances.

“Is that your only excuse? What a tediously common story. I’m sorry, but I don’t care about your grudge. I’ve heard such excuses to the point of nausea.”

Having eliminated countless evildoers as a judge, the lamentations of criminals were so familiar to him that they were tiresome.

They all tried to defend and justify themselves by recounting their pitiful pasts, but to Ceylon—no, to anyone—these were nothing but unconscionable sophistry.

Eljur’s excuse was no different.

“Do you know what criminals who deserve judgment have in common? They all lack shame, fail to recognize their wrongdoing, and believe without doubt that only they are right. Just like you.”

“Ha, are you introducing yourself? By that logic, you people are—!”

“Silence.”

Ceylon cut off Eljur’s protest and raised his sword, enveloped in holy light.

“You said it was revenge for your hometown. That you committed such atrocities because of your desire for revenge…. Then let me ask you, did the citizens of Arvil kill your hometown’s people? Did the maiden baking bread, the five or six-year-old children, the fathers faithfully supporting their families—what did they have to do with your hometown?”

Of course, they had no connection.

Most of Arvil’s residents were simply victims caught up in the disaster called the Transcendence Descent Society while living their peaceful daily lives.

“That’s….”

Eljur was momentarily speechless, but soon found words to rationalize herself.

“…Yes, they were accomplices too! None of them ever stood up to denounce or stop the church’s evil deeds! Instead, they just clung to the church and fed on what it gave them! That makes them accomplices!”

“Is that what you think?”

Ceylon’s gaze grew even colder. A gaze colder than the winter wind. Contempt and anger urged him to deliver judgment.

“The thinking of criminals is always the same. All equally vile, all equally despicable. Heretic Eljur. There’s no need to move that foul mouth of yours any further. Your time for defense is over. Now, Astraea shall determine the weight of your sins.”

The holy light Ceylon emitted carved sacred letters in the air, forming a ring of light. The light of condemnation. Sensing her impending death, Eljur’s face twisted hideously.

“Ceyloooooon!”

Squeezing out her last strength, Eljur swung a blade of mana toward Ceylon. He didn’t even bother to defend.

Eljur’s final strike shattered like broken glass the moment it touched Ceylon’s armor.

Then, the light of judgment poured down upon Eljur, who glared at Ceylon with hatred-filled eyes.

– Kwadeuk!

The golden stream of light that punishes sin began to tear through, pierce, and pulverize her body.

“Kak, kehuk, kiiaaaaaaak! Imelaaaaa, Imelaaaaaaaaaa!”

With a desperate death cry, Eljur was dismembered in the torrent of light.

Her final scream echoed like a reverberation.

—-

After burning Eljur’s corpse, which had been reduced to chunks of meat, Ceylon treated Demian and Millia’s injuries with Lena and Agnes’s help. Both had sustained serious injuries requiring at least two weeks of recovery.

Meanwhile, Nigel and Leonore went searching for Hush, who had disappeared. Not because they thought he had fled, but to help him if he was fighting someone.

However, they couldn’t find Hush. Rather, Hush found them.

The half-elf, who had fled as if chased by Kist, staggered out of the forest a short distance from Arvil, covered in minor wounds and bleeding, with Kist’s head clutched in his right hand.

“I got lucky. I was barely holding on using the cloak of concealment and the forest’s protection when this guy exposed a weakness thanks to Eljur’s scream.”

After boarding the carriage, Hush collapsed backward with a tired smile and fell asleep.

Having confirmed everyone’s safety, Ceylon turned toward Arvil.

Only Valkers remained. He too was a notorious Ma’in, but Ceylon didn’t think his saint, Haschal, would be defeated.

‘Still, I should go check.’

With the threatening enemies all eliminated, Nigel and Leonore would be sufficient to guard this place. With that judgment, Ceylon got off the carriage and turned toward Arvil.

It was right then that the bell tower in the city center collapsed, and a pillar of dark mana rose up.