Chapter 5: The Corrupt Priest's Instinctive Fear.
Instinctive fear.
Instinctive fear.
It approaches.
Because of a single curse word he had unknowingly let slip, the priest was now charging straight at him with precision. Belkir tensed every nerve in his body and shouted.
"I'll handle the priest! You guys take care of the rest and back me up!"
Of course, there was no reply. He had taught them that himself. Belkir calmly drew an arrow and shot it toward the priest's body. He needed to inflict some damage before engaging in close combat.
The priest, with two arrows embedded in his body, calmly swung his sword and deflected the arrows.
Belkir instinctively knew that buying time wouldn’t be so easy.
"Fuck."
Muttering curses under his breath, Belkir drew the longsword sheathed at his waist. The sword, forged from Froststeel—a specialty of the Northern Kingdom—was the most valuable item he had taken when he deserted.
Clang!
The first clash was heavy, so much so that it felt like he was clashing with something more than just a human-wielded sword. But Belkir was no ordinary man either.
If Belkir had been ordinary, he would have been caught by the Northern Kingdom Rangers long ago and left to rot on a cold prison floor.
He was a man who had long been called a genius.
Sparks flew as their swords clashed. He deflected as much as possible. Fortunately, his opponent wasn’t particularly skilled in swordsmanship compared to his physical abilities.
Belkir’s judgment was accurate.
Marnak had only been properly trained in swordsmanship for less than three years. As a corrupt priest, he naturally had to learn swordsmanship from scratch without any advantages.
Time is dragging.
Marnak bit his lip. His opponent was far too skilled for a thief. He muttered inwardly about how terrible the game’s balancing was before shouting loudly,
"How many are there?!"
Belkir couldn’t understand what the priest in front of him was shouting about. Why ask how many there were in the middle of a fight?
Sparks flew again as their swords clashed.
"What nonsense are you spouting?!"
Marnak didn’t answer. He hadn’t been asking Belkir in the first place. A withered hand hidden in his robe extended two and a half fingers.
Two and a half fingers.
Two and a half fingers meant that among the Rangers chasing Marnak, this thief was on par with the most skilled one. A thief equal to a Ranger? Shouldn’t thieves usually be low-level mobs? Marnak grumbled inwardly as he charged forward.
Even if it meant taking some damage, he would cut down this thief.
If time dragged on here, he would be at a disadvantage. Without divinity, he wouldn’t die, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be incapacitated. Losing limbs would be quite troublesome. Not that there was no way around it.
Belkir noticed through his keen instincts that the priest had made some kind of decision.
But it was fine. He had his own plan ready. Preparations were already complete.
In an instant, Marnak closed the distance and swung his sword with all his might, deliberately leaving an opening.
"Haaah!"
My bones are fused—I’ll trade bone for flesh. That was Marnak’s strategy.
Belkir didn’t exploit Marnak’s opening. He simply calmly parried Marnak’s sword. But the result was different from before.
The shattered blade flew through the air and landed in the white snow.
"Hahaha! This is why I use Froststeel!"
Belkir had been persistently striking at Marnak’s blade for this very reason. How could a cheap iron sword possibly withstand one forged by a master from Froststeel?
Outclassed by gear, Marnak sighed,
"Tch. Just a gear difference."
Belkir pointed his sword at the priest.
"You don’t seem to have much anyway, so I’ll let you go this time. We’re planning to leave this area after this job. How about we part ways with smiles? Honestly, if you ran without looking back, I couldn’t catch you either."
At Belkir’s polite offer, Marnak snorted.
"Let me counter. Stop your thieving and leave now. I’ll let this slide just once."
"You seriously asking that? You think we’d just say ‘yes’ and leave?"
"Well, no—"
Thunk.
An arrow pierced through Marnak’s head. Belkir grinned like a mischievous child at the clean hit.
"You’re late, bastards! I almost died!"
The subordinate who shot the arrow chuckled.
"Don’t exaggerate, boss. We all saw you slice the priest’s sword in half with one strike."
"Hey! That wasn’t one strike. It was the result of meticulous calculations and split-second timing!"
"Yeah, yeah. Boss is always the best."
"My brilliance isn’t new. Anyway—did you kill them all?"
"Yes. Every last one."
"Did you really kill them all?"
Marnak’s voice came nonchalantly as he pulled the arrow from his head. Seeing the corpse that should’ve been dead rise, Belkir and his men stiffened.
"Why so shocked? Never seen someone survive an arrow to the head?"
Belkir wanted to scream, Because we haven’t! Marnak slowly repeated,
"Answer me. Did you really kill them all?"
The priest’s face was utterly serene as he asked. Belkir gulped.
"Yes, Priest. Your comrades are dead. Let’s just go our separate ways, huh?"
"You had your chance earlier. You answered by shooting me in the head."
Marnak knelt on the snow with one knee and slowly clasped his hands together.
Mother of Corruption, your son is in trouble. I'm so panicked and scared that I don't know what to do. Don't you think it's time for you to lend me some strength, since you've been watching all this time?
A prayer muttered haphazardly as the words came to him. If other priests had seen this playful prayer, they would have surely thrown a fit, calling it blasphemy.
But in the end, divine power only requires one who desires and one who answers.
Marnak desired, and the Mother of Corruption answered.
Slowly, a dark green light swirled in Marnak's opened eyes. Belkir realized something was wrong.
"Hey! Shoot! Shoot, damn it! Stop just standing there like idiots!"
Marnak became a pincushion in an instant as arrows rained down on him. At the same time, a green light struck the ground, drawing a massive circle that enveloped them.
Belkir, with quick instincts, gave the most appropriate command for the situation.
"R-retreat! Run, you bastards!"
The thieves, desperately running across the snow, soon collided with an invisible wall.
"W-we can't pass! Boss! There's an invisible wall!"
"I know that, you idiots!"
What blocked their path was "The Line the Living Cannot Cross," a basic skill learned by priests of corruption upon their initiation. It was a technique used to prevent living enemies from escaping and to conceal the divinity of corruption before unleashing its power.
Slowly, Marnak's mouth opened as he pulled out an arrow from his body.
"If you wish to cross that boundary, you'll have to kill me or break my will. Or you could just kill yourselves."
Belkir gritted his teeth, drew his sword, and shouted.
"Hey! Everyone draw your swords! Even if he's a monster bastard, if we chop him into pieces, he'll die! Right?"
"Right!"
"Yeah! Arrows might leave small holes and let him live, but if we chop him up like the boss said, he'll definitely die!"
Filled with baseless confidence, the thieves all drew their swords.
Marnak casually pulled out another arrow from his body and said indifferently.
"Your opponent isn't me—it's the one who's coming now."
"What do you—"
THUD!
The air tore open as a massive creature fell from above. A giant with four arms, a featureless face with only a mouth, and its torso embedded with the upper body of a muscular man split open at the stomach. The giant slowly rotted from the outside while new flesh sprouted within.
Finally, its two mouths opened wide and let out a roar.
GRAAAAAH!
This was Marnak's first divine power obtained by offering 10,000 divinity from his first relic: the Giant of Corruption had descended to earth in response to the Mother's call.
Marnak pulled out the last arrow stuck in his head and said calmly.
"You can do whatever you want with the rest—just leave the heads."
GRAAAAAH!
A roar that shook their very brains. The giant's scream seemed to forcibly dredge up everything deep within their souls. Belkir's instincts screamed for survival.
"Sh-shit..."
CRUNCH.
That was the last word Belkir uttered before being crushed by the Giant of Corruption.
"AAAAHHH!"
"Save me! Priest! Please save me!"
Crushed flesh and torn screams filled the air as Marnak watched the massacre unfold with a serene expression. Slowly tapping his chest pocket where his mother's hand rested, Marnak smiled brightly.
"This is my first time summoning that giant friend of mine directly—but just looking at him fills me with awe."
GRAAAAAH!
The Giant of Corruption let out one final roar as a farewell before disappearing as quickly as it had appeared.
Kill!
"Yes yes. This time I truly killed all our enemies as you wished, Mother—and my entire party is dead too."
Despite charging forward valiantly, he hadn’t saved anyone. He rummaged through each corpse while organizing them into one corner, retrieving mercenary badges along the way.
Kill!
"Are you telling me to collect divinity from corpses right now? That won’t do, Mother. If I collect divinity, the corpses will rot away and disappear, won’t they? Then the mercenary guild investigators who come later will surely find the current situation suspicious. As you well know, I need to lay low right now."
Kill!
"I heard your suggestion to absorb all the divinity, turn everything to dust, and move to another city loud and clear. But I must respectfully disagree."
Kill…?
"Look over there."
The spot he pointed to held the thieves’ heads neatly piled up by the Giant of Corruption.
"That’s twenty-nine silver coins’ worth of heads right there. I remember exactly why I walked this snowy path. Mother. Wha—?!"
As he reached to retrieve the mercenary badge from Fyur’s chest, the body twitched faintly. Fyur’s bear-like physique clung desperately to his unconscious breath.
Marnak grinned.
"Still saved one, Mother."
Kill!
"You want me to finish him off for convenience? This bear cub of a man will be taken to Guis and revived. It’ll greatly boost my reputation. So hurry and help me, Mother."
A brief prayer later, a blessing halted the worsening of Fyur’s wounds.
Marnak hoisted Fyur over one shoulder and gripped a bundle of twenty-nine silver coin-worthy heads in his other hand, walking away slowly.
Kill!!!
The Mother of Corruption screamed urgently.
"Ah, right. Seems I still need you after all, Mother. Almost forgot."
He picked up a fallen sword and fastened it at his waist—the froststeel blade the dead bandit leader had boasted about.
"Thanks to you, I saved money on buying a sword. I’ll give you a thorough hand massage when we return."
Kill...!
