Ch.678I Should Have Killed You Long Ago

Volberg is an ancient god.

That was my final guess. Assuming this, everything falls into place.

An apostle, virtually a representative of an ancient god, using Volberg’s power.

The Crusaders of Volberg, despite endorsing a plan that requires sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives, albeit somewhat forcibly, not being abandoned by Volberg.

Even the former Knut who came to kill me described our meeting as Volberg’s guidance.

If we assume Volberg is another name for one of the ancient gods, all these events can be clearly explained as the intention of an ancient god.

If all of this were merely my misunderstanding, it would be blasphemy beyond measure… but no matter how I thought about it, that possibility seemed nonexistent.

Volberg, the one-eyed warrior god.

Is he a subordinate of an ancient god, or an ancient god himself?

Either way, it wasn’t welcome news.

If Volberg was an ancient god or his subordinate, it meant I should also be wary of Knut, a Crusader of Volberg.

Knut seemed unaware of Volberg’s true identity, but… if Volberg was connected to an ancient god as I suspected, Knut would likely become an enemy again someday, whether willingly or not.

…Should I try to convert him to another church?

“My appearance may be laughable, but you’re no better.”

Well, there was no need to worry about that right now. Considering how to convert Knut could be postponed. For now, defeating the apostle before me was the priority.

“Boasting about your fine equipment only to back away when you might lose. Typical cowardly heretic.”

I countered his mockery with provocation as I faced the nine streams of gale wind flying toward me.

A thunderous explosion overturned everything around us.

—-

Having abandoned close combat, Ragnar employed tactics that seemed like cowardice given human form.

Like most enemies I faced, he kept his distance while bombarding me with long-range attacks to wear down my strength. A method so familiar it made me sick.

If there was any difference between him and others… perhaps it was that his volume was nine times greater.

ᛁ ᚦ ᛃ

“Īsaz, Þurisaz, Jēra-!”

Spears of wind flying like the opening of battle.

Blades of blood multiplied ninefold.

A rain of ice picks.

Lightning tearing through the air.

Tree trunks breaking through the ground trying to entangle my body.

A magical spectacle reminiscent of carpet bombing was turning the palace into ruins. Each spell had power comparable to high-level magic.

“This much is nothing…!”

I tore away the trees binding me, dodging, breaking, and deflecting the incoming spells as I advanced toward him, but…

ᛋ ᚱ ᚷ

“Sōwilō, Raidō, Gebō!”

Every time I closed the distance, he blinded me with runes of light, then activated acceleration runes to escape in that moment—catching him wasn’t so simple.

That wasn’t all.

“Assassin! An imperial assassin has murdered His Majesty!”

“Support Lord Ragnar!”

Royal knights and Crusaders of Seals, who had joined through walls shattered instead of corridors blocked by debris, were rushing to help Ragnar against me.

The domination rune Ragnar had awakened had no effect on me, but it seemed to work perfectly on them as they spared no effort to help him, even at the cost of their lives.

ᚾ

“Naudiz.”

Even as they perished, their vitality completely drained whenever Ragnar placed his hands on their bodies.

I didn’t know the meaning of this rune since Knut had never explained it, but judging by appearances, it seemed to be magic that absorbed people’s lives to replenish his own power.

Each time a person turned into a mummy, the minor wounds on his body disappeared, and the sacred light he emitted grew stronger again.

If Lacy had seen this, she would have declared the very concept of runes a heretical creation—such a vicious method. The hundred or so royal knights gathered here were essentially his living batteries.

Unlike the royal knights, he left the Crusaders of Seals alone, apparently considering them too valuable to be used as disposable resources.

In any case, because of this, I had to occasionally attack the royal knights to finish them off while dealing with Ragnar. If not for the flames of the rune, it would have been an extremely troublesome task.

We fought like this for an hour.

============

Above Edricksa.

A small hawk circled in the air, looking down at the panicked city below. More precisely, at the inner castle that had once been the royal palace of Dane in the center of the city.

– Whoosh!

The palace, engulfed in flames, had been reduced to ruins with only its foundation remaining. Terrible corpses were everywhere.

Burned, withered, flesh torn to pieces.

The bodies of the royal knights strewn about were so damaged that one couldn’t even guess their appearance in life.

The hawk’s glass-like eyes etched the scene into its mind.

And into the mind of the Third Apostle, who was sharing the hawk’s vision through a far-seeing spell.

‘Things have gone wrong.’

The Third Apostle sighed lightly, feeling dismayed.

Despite risking detection by Feirus to persuade the Eighth Apostle to join their side, it was unclear whether they could achieve their purpose in recruiting him.

It wasn’t because the Eighth Apostle was incompetent. He had done exactly what the Third Apostle wanted—creating a situation where the Empire and Ka’har would clash with full force and both be destroyed.

By persuading—or brainwashing—the King of Dane to withdraw troops from the Ka’har invasion route.

‘I didn’t know the Eighth was the brother of the Dane King… but thanks to that, it was easier than expected.’

Up to that point, everything had been perfect.

The problem was that the Empire’s—or more precisely, Ludwig’s—response was faster and bolder than either apostle had anticipated.

As soon as he obtained information that the Dane army planned to retreat, he deployed the Empire’s strongest card to Edricksa in less than four days. The response was too quick.

Because of this, the Eighth Apostle had to face the Empire’s blade before preparing a perfect countermeasure. He tried to respond with hastily prepared sacred artifacts, but…

‘…He’s too strong.’

The Third Apostle swallowed dryly and lowered the hawk’s altitude to observe the situation in the palace more closely.

In the center of the ruins that had become a pile of stones. A woman in tattered armor, clutching a repulsive longsword, was approaching a middle-aged man surrounded by gray haze.

She wasn’t in good shape. Blood dripped with each step, her left arm was bent in the opposite direction, and one cheek was torn away, revealing her teeth.

However, compared to the middle-aged man who was gasping as if on his last breath, her injuries hardly deserved to be called wounds.

—-

“Kuhak…! Kuhek…! Don’t you ever tire, you monster…!”

The Eighth Apostle, Ragnar Lokan, spat out blood as he shouted.

His left arm had turned to dust and scattered, and there were two large holes in his abdomen. His complexion was as pale as a corpse, perhaps due to the cursed cold that had penetrated through his blood vessels.

An undeniable defeat. It must have been an unbelievable result for him.

Even he, who had continuously replenished his strength with runes of recovery and blood absorption, was reaching his limit, while the woman before him had endured without receiving a single healing, relying on her bare body until the mana in the atmosphere was completely depleted.

The result of stamina nearly twice that of equal-level powerhouses, combined with the boundless vitality bestowed by Durandal.

Thus, Ragnar was defeated.

Not by being cut by a sword or burned by flames, but by running out of strength after an endless war of attrition.

He couldn’t even activate the rune inscriptions anymore.

Given the nature of rune magic, which implements spells by absorbing mana from the surrounding air, once the atmospheric mana was completely depleted, chanting activation words was nothing more than shouting into the void.

Haschal was also unable to use rune power, but for her, the depletion of atmospheric mana merely meant that two of her many attack methods were blocked.

Unlike Ragnar, who had heavily relied on rune magic.

Though Volberg’s authority and blessing remained without rune magic, that alone wasn’t enough to face the Empire’s tireless monster—perhaps it would suffice against an ordinary hero, but not her.

“Got you, you bastard.”

Haschal, who had approached right in front of Ragnar, pointed Durandal at him and grinned. Perhaps because of the teeth revealed through her torn cheek, it was an eerily grotesque smile.

Killing intent overflowed through her blue eyes that spewed flames.

Ragnar trembled, feeling fear—an emotion he should never feel as an apostle of an ancient god. Death was smiling at him.

“The Third was right. Variable of fate or whatever, I should have eliminated you long ago…!”

He unconsciously muttered with a sigh. Feirus’s order to keep his mouth shut as much as possible because he talked too much came to mind belatedly, but it didn’t matter anymore. Beyond keeping quiet, he was about to close his mouth forever.

– Shall I help you?

It was right after that when a serpent-like, sinister voice penetrated Ragnar’s ear.