“Light, come to me!”
As Podric Kendal, the bishop-level inquisitor, extended his left hand toward the pitch-black sky and shouted, a blinding pure white holy power gathered, as if to drive away the thick darkness.
“Light, punish!”
The punishment prayer commonly used by Ellington’s inquisitors was completed, and as the Beheading Priest swung his left arm—gathering holy power—like a whip, a sacred slash of light cleaved through the air.
The sharp blade-shaped slash of light was the representative reason why Inquisitor Podric Kendal was called by the gruesome nickname ‘Beheading Priest.’
Unlike mana, holy power grew stronger based on ‘faith,’ and its form varied slightly depending on the disposition of the worshiped entity or the personality and values of the wielder. In Podric’s case, his holy power took on the characteristic of an extremely sharp blade.
Slice.
With a chilling cutting sound, the heads of the zombies standing where the slash of light passed were severed and rolled on the cold dirt ground.
He had beheaded dozens of zombies with a single punishment prayer, but instead of wearing a leisurely expression, Podric maintained his stern face and shifted his gaze to the front, shrouded in pitch-black fog.
Beyond the pitch-black veil obscuring his vision, there was an unpleasant, sticky, and intensely foul stench of heresy.
Thus, despite the march of the dead closing in from all sides and narrowing the encirclement, Podric could renew his resolve for execution without the slightest wavering.
This one’s no ordinary foe. At least Grand Chevalier… No, perhaps at the threshold of Meister level or close to it.
Even as the undead encirclement tightened, the priest who antagonized all heretics, Podric Kendal, remained unshaken.
While steadily beheading zombies one by one with punishment prayers, he calmly rolled his eyes to assess the ‘true enemy’s level in this battlefield.
“Damn it all! How many zombies are there!”
Executor Bellikian swung his longsword vigorously while spitting out rough curses, Torres silently repeated drawing and releasing his bowstring, and Cecilia blocked the zombies’ approach with holy magic.
But there was no end in sight.
No sooner had they slain the initial dozens of zombies than another group of dozens appeared, and after executing those, yet more zombies emerged and slowly advanced.
The endlessly increasing number of zombies was irritating, but the real trouble was that with each new wave, the proportion of ghouls—classified as mid-to-upper-tier undead—increased.
At first, among the dozens of zombies, there were only a few ghouls.
But in the second undead horde, there were ten ghouls, and from the third onward, it exceeded ten and gradually increased.
Now, more than half were ghouls, and the number of undead pushing in at once exceeded a hundred.
“Heresy! Heresy!”
From right beside him, Torres warned of the continuous emergence of heresy.
Repeating the word ‘heresy’ despite having already identified the heretics meant that a more powerful dark force was gathering.
In the current situation, it was no different from a warning that more undead were swarming in.
“Captain. This time, their numbers are at least a hundred. So far, they seem mostly low-to-mid-upper-tier undead, but the increasing proportion of ghouls is ominous. It’s not certain, but they might send out upper-tier undead once our stamina is depleted.”
Bellikian also voiced his concern.
One of the basic tactics frequently used by black mages of necromancy schools or necromancers who handled undead was the ‘wheel battle.’
It involved launching multiple vanguard attacks with low-tier undead, easily created from low-level corpses, to wear down the enemy camp, and then deploying the reserved upper-tier undead units to finish them off once they were sufficiently exhausted.
This tactic was used in various groups and battlefields, not just by those who handled undead.
Bellikian, a veteran mercenary who had experienced countless real battles in the conflict zones centered around the old capital region of the Venic Kingdom—which had fallen due to political machinations and internal divisions induced by the Meiyah Great Empire—could intuitively sense that the wheel battle had already begun, based on the sequential advances of dozens to over a hundred low-tier undead even after more than an hour since the engagement started.
“Shall I use ‘Grace’?”
Cecilia Wonderbell also wore a despondent expression at the relentless sight of undead that didn’t decrease in number despite being felled and instead increased over time, requesting the use of ‘Grace.’
“No need.”
The Beheading Priest Podric firmly denied his subordinate executor’s request to use Grace and, at the same time, tossed away the eyepatch covering his left eye.
As the eyepatch vanished, his left eye was revealed.
However, instead of a prosthetic or an empty socket where his left eye should have been, something entirely unexpected occupied it.
No sooner had the eyepatch—serving as a sealing device suppressing a secretive power—fallen away than a platinum-colored pupil revealed its presence.
It was one of the ‘holy relics’ known to be bestowed by the Ellington Holy Alliance only to a select few chosen clergy: the ‘Eye of Punishment.’
“A holy relic? Damn it! Captain! You can’t use that recklessly!”
The moment the Eye of Punishment was revealed, light exploded from Podric’s body, pouring out a radiant brilliance like a storm that drove away the surrounding darkness.
At this, Bellikian, who had been executing ghouls approaching Cecilia, shouted with a shocked expression.
Holy relics.
Along with ‘Grace,’ they were precious items managed by the Second Diocese in the Ellington Holy Alliance, divine ultimate weapons permitted only to an extremely small number of clergy who passed stricter screening and selection processes than for Grace.
Unlike Grace, holy relics could be used multiple times.
However, unlike Grace, which could be produced in the Second Diocese’s main hall, holy relics did not newly emerge without a ‘miracle,’ so until now, they had been strictly managed and passed down to future generations.
Except for occasional discoveries in ruins from the ancient mythic age, their numbers rarely increased, so the Second Diocese severely restricted their use by possessors.
“Regrettably, there’s no other way, Bellikian.”
Podric coldly replied to Bellikian’s concern and activated the ‘Eye of Punishment.’
His vision turned platinum, and in a fleeting instant, a lightning-like flash sparked, clearing away the pitch-black fog blocking the sky and all directions.
“You’re… quite strong.”
As the pitch-black fog and dark clouds receded, the surroundings brightened, revealing the black mage ‘Harvest,’ who had been hiding beyond the veil.
He was leisurely observing the battle from the rear, accompanied by four knights clad in black plate armor, wielding long halberds and shields, but he wore a slightly surprised expression, not expecting a holy relic to appear.
“Heretic, in the name of light, I execute you here.”
No questions asked.
The Beheading Priest Podric revealed a thick killing intent toward the black mage and shifted the long halberd from his left hand to his right, assuming a combat stance.
Seeing this, the black mage Harvest let out a sneer instead.
“Can you break through my knights?”
He raised his left hand with a creepy smile.
Then, piercing through the ground, headless knights in black armor—dullahans—emerged.
Their number was twenty-two.
Not one, but twenty-two upper-tier undead classified as dullahans, yet Podric showed no panic.
“Even if you raise a wall with the dead, before the holy march of light, it is worth less than a sandcastle.”
As the Eye of Punishment shone once more, a blinding flash of brilliance sparked twenty-two times.
In an instant split into moments, twenty-two flashes occurred, and the twenty-two dullahans melted away like polluted clay.
“This… is impressive?”
Harvest wore a surprised expression at the overwhelming power Podric displayed through the holy relic, but he wasn’t particularly flustered.
He seemed to think of it as merely a plaything he had been toying with suddenly biting his finger; his gaze was utterly indifferent.
“Will it be a bit enjoyable?”
Instead of retreating from Podric’s fierce assault, Harvest chose to reveal his true power.
Then, toward the approaching Beheading Priest, four knights clad in pitch-black armor charged.
They were ‘death knights,’ a type of high-tier undead revived from the corpses of knights who could wield aura, known as knights of death.
“It’s futile!”
As the death knights approached, Podric attempted to use the Eye of Punishment again, but due to overusing it in a body unaccustomed to the holy relic, it didn’t activate as intended.
In the end, the four death knights reached point-blank range faster than the Eye of Punishment could activate, and the spears and blades of the dead wielding swordsmanship with already deceased bodies deeply slashed Podric’s shoulder, waist, and right thigh.
“Ugh!”
The weapons of death knights harbored wicked curses, so even Podric, who had passed the Sixth Diocese’s torture resistance training at the top, couldn’t ignore them.
Unable to overcome the pain curse, he staggered back.
“Damn it! Captain!”
To support the stumbling Podric, Bellikian charged like an arrow toward the death knights, and Torres released a bowstring nocked with a magic arrow he had been saving.
The arrow engraved with penetration magic pierced a death knight’s breastplate, but since undead had no hearts, it was a meaningless attack.
“Heresy!”
From behind the flustered Torres, Cecilia quietly completed her holy magic and sent it skyward.
A white aura soared into the lofty heavens, shining brightly and scattering in all directions.
“Magic, huh? Calling for reinforcements? Sorry, but I hate troublesome things like that.”
The Beheading Priest Podric and his executors were formidable opponents.
Even though he had inflicted critical wounds, there wasn’t enough time to finish them off.
The empire’s reinforcements were nearby, and if they joined with the Beheading Priest, too many variables would arise.
“Let’s end it here for today. My goal lies elsewhere anyway.”
With those words, Harvest took out a small hand mirror from his bosom and reflected Podric in it.
“Space, shatter and scatter.”
As he coldly uttered and smashed the hand mirror, the space where Podric and his executors stood shattered like broken glass, isolating them from the outside.
Confirming that the sealing barrier had activated successfully, Harvest smiled with a regretful expression.
“It’s a one-time use, so it’s a shame, but the performance is reliable… You won’t escape easily. By the time you wake from sleep, everything will be over.”
He muttered meaningfully and vanished into the darkness.