monotone (1)
When we arrived at the church, it was already in great confusion.
Knights and city troops surrounded the church, surrounded by wounded and spectators, and smoke and clamoring noises still emanating from inside the church, adding to the feeling of confusion.
“What exactly happened? Why did you stop controlling your surroundings?”
To the princess’s question, the knight who controlled the scene approached us and answered while stealing a sweat.
“Of course, we entered to settle the situation… but failed.”
failure?
At the unexpected remark, the princess, as well as I, couldn’t hide her embarrassment and immediately asked back.
“Did you say failure?”
Even if the opponent is a devil worshiper who uses bizarre black magic, that’s the case, the dwarf launched an attack alone and failed to subdue it?
Are there any collaborators in this city? The last time the devil worshiper incident broke out, the city was extensively renovated, but were there any devil worshipers left?
“Sorry. The attack was unexpected and the damage was great. The current situation is even more confusing…”
“What do you mean by an unexpected attack?”
I couldn’t stand it because I thought it would lead to an excuse if I left it alone, so when I intervened, the knight began to answer steadily, while stealing sweat.
“Even though it was a weekday today, a lot of people suddenly visited the church, and some of the visitors suddenly started to stir up a disturbance. It failed.”
First of all, it seems to be the same person as the guy I was talking to.
The method seemed similar to the method used for the students who broke into the greenhouse.
Perhaps they stimulated their desire to go to church, led them to church, and then roasted the brains of the people who arrived at the church and manipulated them with stigma to create a commotion.
However, there was a part that simply did not make sense to explain it that way.
It was early this morning at best when the Dwarf, who was presumed to be the culprit, left the academy.
Even if that means escaping the academy and arriving in the city, how on earth can you play tricks on so many people in such a short amount of time after arriving in the city?
This is not simply a matter of whether or not the devil worshipers are good at it.
People who have been stimulated by desire and flock to the church are, of course, usually people who have a certain amount of faith, and the fact that the incident happened within such an early time means that the church has been involved in something…
“Have you ever seen a suspicious person walking around here before the incident? Someone who is too short, or someone who is covered with a robe or something.”
This is not an area in the city where security has been abandoned, rather it is the center of the city where there are frequent patrols. Besides, there are many academy students who only wear robes on weekends, but today it is a weekday without them.
If he had been wandering around trying to trick something, of course he would have left a trace.
“There have been no such reports.”
“So, what about the city rangers who are out of touch or who suddenly disappear?”
“There is no such person other than the person who has been put into this field so far and has lost contact.”
it’s also weird
With that bizarre black magic, he made everyone ignore him, even the guards he encountered?
If he had been able to overcome the guard’s intention to identify a suspicious person and made him ignore him, there would have been no need to leave traces of him leaving the academy from the time he fled from the academy in the first place.
From nob le mt l. com
Leaving traces at the academy, leaving no traces in the city?
Something didn’t quite match.
It wasn’t just that it was strange.
“Does the fact that the situation is still not contained mean that there are still riots inside the church?”
“Yes. It is a difficult situation to approach with people who have not yet been able to get out of the church.”
“To be honest, I don’t think he would have stood by for the safety of the survivors.”
“Actually… even among the knights who entered the church, after the case of attacking a colleague with the same rampage, everyone is reluctant to enter the church.”
When I heard the news of the attack on the church, I didn’t think about it because I was focusing on the ramifications of the city being attacked by the dwarf devil worshipers, but why did the devil worshipers attack the church in the first place?
To avert my gaze, afraid that I, who started investigating the dwarves, might find out something?
It doesn’t make sense from the point of leaving traces that can be found if you investigate while running away in the first place, but even if that is the case, if the purpose was to divert attention, it can be said that the purpose has already been achieved by the time I left the academy.
Then shouldn’t he at least secure a hole for himself to escape before I arrive?
But why are you still wasting time inside the church as if protesting?
Have you already prepared a means to escape that the outside world hasn’t noticed yet? Or…does the church really have a purpose to achieve?
What if the attack on the church was for some purpose rather than simply to pass the time?
What is the purpose of a demon worshiper who is prepared to lay down his life? I can only think of ominous thoughts.
“I don’t have time to stay like this. I need to enter.” After I came to that conclusion, I spoke to the princess, and the princess looked at me with a look on her face, wondering if she would ever say something like that.
“Even if I try to stop it, you won’t listen, so I won’t stop you. But please wait a moment until we organize the number of people entering.”
“Since we don’t know exactly how the other person is manipulating someone, I think it’s better to reduce the number of people entering. It can be dangerous.”
“…So you’re saying Saint Ronan isn’t included in that entry?”
“I have to go.”
Why are you asking such an obvious thing? The more the other person uses the bizarre method, the more I must be included.
After I said that, the princess started rubbing her temple with one hand, as if her head hurt again.
what. Why. We already expected this much.
“I’m mentally strong… I’ll select strong knights and make a composition including the clergy, so wait.”
Is it an illusion? I think I just heard a bloody sound like gnashing my teeth from the princess’s mouth.
If I said one more word here, I felt like I was in danger of being forcibly sent back to the academy, so I decided to keep my mouth shut and follow him.
I sounded out opinions in the sense of reducing damage as much as possible and solving it neatly, isn’t it too overreacting?
“Ronan-sama… Were you like this in the expedition?”
Celia, who had been silently observing the situation as the princess walked away to give orders, asked me such a question.
on an expedition?
For a while, I thought back on what I had done during the expedition.
If I had to say something reckless, putting a barrier on my body to kill the leader by accusing him of being a corruptor and receiving an attack, or sneaking out despite the objection of the princess, launching a special attack with the elves, and getting sucked into a tree to save the queen of the elves. I can’t help but think about it.
During that long expedition, only 3 reckless acts were committed, and as a result, they all worked out well, so wouldn’t this be enough?
“Such strange behavior…”
“It’s gone when you’ve been thinking about it for so long.”
omg.
It was so straightforward that it was not easy to justify it.
Haven’t the frequency of Celia and the princess pressuring me with counterarguments increased too much lately?
…
In the end, despite the princess’s words of selection, we entered the church with a large number of people.
And as soon as we entered the church, we could find survivors scattered here and there.
“My God, there are so many people who haven’t escaped yet.”
A clergyman accompanying him approached the fallen man with a surprised voice.
“It’s alive!”
“I’m alive here too!”
And fortunately, most of the people who fell inside the church lost their minds, but there seemed to be no abnormalities in their bodies.
Of course, I was able to notice that fact before others did. At the same time, the fact that others haven’t noticed yet.
“That person who fell over there…”
“Don’t go near me.”
“yes?”
I stopped one knight from approaching the other who was lying on one side.
The knight asked why, but instead of answering, I picked up a nearby broken stone and threw it at him.
Kwajik.
The next moment, the stone that was flying towards the fallen person was smashed by something.
Wow, I didn’t expect to react that way either. It’s more bloody than I thought.
“What is that…?”
I couldn’t look closely and only saw something close to an afterimage, but the knights probably saw it.
The person who had been lying on the ground, who had swung his hand like that, stood up from his seat with a creak and opened his eyes in this direction.
In the meantime, the movement was unnatural and bizarre, like a doll hanging on a thread and forcibly moving, so it stimulated a visceral sense of fear.
I was looking at this side with unfocused eyes, but I didn’t scream in pain, scream, or say anything.
“Saint Ronan, what the hell is that?”
“Probably the same people who caused the mayhem.”
“…Are you alive?”
“Dead. That’s nothing more than a demon worshiper insulting the dead.”
That statement was true. Instead of seeing the personal information of the person in front of him during his life, ‘the person who was human’, only one word, the puppet stigma, was circling around.
At my words, the princess firmly gave orders to the knights around her as if she had nothing to hear.
“All ready for battle.”
Some knights reflexively drew out their swords in accordance with the command, but hesitation was evident.
It was understandable to some extent, although the person in front of me was moving in a bizarre way, I didn’t think of it as a monster or an enemy.
Her clothes were somewhat dirty from the chaos, but she was dressed neatly for church, and she didn’t have any scars on her body, and she didn’t scream something that a human wouldn’t normally emit.
What’s more, this is a church. Killing a believer in a church was an act that was difficult to do without disrespecting God.
Of course, it wasn’t just such a person.
Right now, even the princess was a person who went through that expedition where she tediously used and ate the skin of a living human with me.
“hot!”
With a short spirit, two knights rushed at the corpse standing in a daze and fired sword strikes.
One was a slash aimed at the neck, and the other was a stabbing near the heart. It was a clean pass without any superfluities, but at the same time, it was a deadly attack aimed at a vital spot.
Surprisingly, the corpse moved its arm and succeeded in blocking the blow to the neck, but the heart was pierced.
“Avoid!”
It would have been great if it had ended there, but the moment faint smoke rose from the body of the stabbed corpse, I reflexively shouted that and cast a barrier in front of the knights.
bang!
Fortunately, the two knights did not question my words if they had ever participated in the expedition, but put down their swords and carried out my orders, and a barrier created in front of them prevented the corpse from self-destructing.
It was really fortunate. If I hadn’t met a student at the greenhouse and hadn’t experienced the phenomenon of mana boiling in the body, the reaction might have been delayed.
Then those two knights must have been seriously injured or dead at least.
“…Self-destruction, it seems.”
“Yes.”
“Now I think I know why the initial suppression failed. If you don’t know exactly how the riot started, it’s a technique that will only get you knighted.”
The princess looked at the scene as if she was getting sick of it and said,
“Come to think of it, there was a story about the dwarf demon worshipers getting into trouble by taking the method of self-destructing when it was time to die or getting caught. Are both of them okay?”
“Yes, it’s fine.”
“Sah, thank you for saving me.”
The two knights who came back alive after experiencing death on the verge of death answered the princess’s question with trembling voices.
“I think we should get those two out.”
“No! We can continue!”
“you’re right!”
The knights insisted on being healthy, but the princess also shook her head.
“It’s not that I doubt your will. But at least I can’t use the sword, so it seems difficult to go with us right now.”
“ah…”
As he said, with the explosion of the sword that stabbed the corpse, it was already completely shattered and scattered all over the place, rolling on the ground.
Without the barrier, fragments of that blade might have pierced the knights.
“Besides, the survivors inside the church also need to be transported to a safe place. I’ll leave that to you.”
“All right.”
That wasn’t the only problem. There were people close to human booby traps hiding between them, but there were overwhelmingly normal people.
I couldn’t ignore them and move on.
Besides, it couldn’t be ordered to send more troops to pick and retrieve only the survivors.
Because I must be able to tell them apart thanks to that human booby trap that might be out there somewhere.
That way, if the troops that came in with me fell off to transport people one by one, by the time they reached the devil worshipers, they might really be the minority I was talking about at the beginning.
“It won’t be easy.”
Perhaps she had a premonition of that future, the princess spat out words as if sighing.
I felt the same way. It was too systematic and intense for an impulsive outburst by a single devil worshiper that happened within a short period of time inside the city.
And why are you even doing this?
Seeing those human booby traps almost confirmed my suspicions.
This isn’t just a gimmick attack for attention. The devil worshipers obviously want something out of this church.
“aaagh!”
While I was thinking about it for a long time, I began to hear the crying of a child that did not suit the situation from a place not far away.
“Calm down, calm down!”
The priest next to him also seemed to be trying to soothe the distraught and crying child.
“What happened?”
Seeing so many people fall unconscious in such a chaotic situation, it must have been a devil worshiper trying to set a trap. Is there a child who has come to his senses?
I wondered if it was another trap, so I hurriedly approached the sound.
And although it is said that he is familiar with the place he ran to, the child who left a deep impression in my head was weeping sadly.
Anna?
The kid I met at the church when I first went out to the city and cried while installing and destroying it?
For a moment, I wondered why this little boy was here, but now that I think about it, this little boy belonged to an orphanage run by Priest Reese.
Next to him, the nun who helped him infiltrating the church was also passed out, so there was nothing strange about it.
The odd thing is that this kid woke up alone.
Fortunately, the information I could see didn’t look like a trap set by a demon worshiper.
“Honey, calm down…”
“I’m Sajenny!”
“Yes, the priest is here. Calm down, dear.”
A girl’s throat is like a general.
While looking for a priest, the priest clung to him to soothe the crying child, but the child still couldn’t stop crying.
“I’ll appease you.”
When I stepped forward, the priest stepped back even though he had an ambiguous expression on his face.
Yes, the child is crying, but what does it matter if it is a saint or a nabal?
But I know roughly why this kid is crying.
“It’s nice, Anna. Is it because of Priest Reese?”
“… Cool. Who are you? Uh, Cool. Where have I seen you?”
As soon as I mentioned that I was a Rhys priest, the little boy, who had been crying almost screaming, stopped crying and started looking at me.
When I first met the kid, I hid my identity, so you must have heard of me somewhere as Saint Ronan.
“I am a friend of Priest Rhys.”
“A friend of the priest?”
To be precise, it is the second business partner that has helped and received help, but if you say it like that, you won’t understand.
“Yes. Friends since we were at the church on Delm Street.”
It might be more comfortable for this kid to live in this church, but I dared to mention the old church, thinking that it would feel more intimate because I would have memories with the priest in that shabby church.
“Priest Rhys is a kind person, so he has a lot of friends!”
As I expected, the child, who was somewhat vigilant, erased even a handful of vigilance when I brought up the story of the church in Delm Street, not enough to put a smile on his lips, and began to praise the priest with a joyful expression.
It seems so.
Even the coachman who tries to beat people with 3 silver is a man who cringes.
“By the way, Anna-sama, why are you with Rosetta-sama? Where is Priest Reese going?”
After watching the kid laugh for a while, I slowly got to the point.
Circumstances, Priest Rhys sent at least two of them to run away first, but it seems that he lost his mind when he almost escaped.
“Les… the priest is… aaa!”
The little boy, who was smiling brightly, began to cry sadly, not knowing what else he was thinking.
“The devil came because of my fault! Please save the priest!”
devil…?
My head went cold at the sudden story.
Calm down. It can’t be a real devil.
In the eyes of a child, a devil worshiper or a devil, that’s it.
“Anna, don’t cry and stay calm in order to save Priest Reese.”
When I said that, the little boy began to hold back his tears even though he continued to look like he was about to cry.
“What do you mean the devil came because of Anna’s fault?”
“that is…”
The little boy hesitated to speak for a long time. Perhaps he was afraid to say what he thought was his fault. But the thought that he needed to find a priest was stronger, so he finally opened up.
“The church has a gift from Orion-sama…”
A gift from Orion…? A holy relic? Did the church have its own holy relic?
Is that why you came aiming for that holy relic?
Gradually, the prey began to match. In the Republic, it was said that the main office of the Calliul Church was attacked and many holy relics were stolen.
“But the person who gave the gift said so. The devils are looking after Orion-sama’s things, so you should never talk about them.”
…Oh, I’m starting to feel like something’s going on.
“But I…I boasted that I had seen a gift from Orion-sama himself…so the devil came and took Priest Rhys away…it’s all my fault…”
While everyone was bewildered by the child’s out-of-context nonsense, I felt a cold sweat run down my back.
That… the holy relic that the devil came for…
“Is that gift…a crown of flowers?”
“…How do you know? Heck! Is your brother a devil too? …Huh? Come to think of it…honesty words…”
The little boy in his arms started muttering something more, but he had no time to pay attention to that.
Really? Is it really possible that the devil worshiper attacked the church for a garland made for a kid’s toy?
I’m going crazy. Really.
