Chapter 17: What’s This? Take It Away Part 2

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The Priest King held his forehead in his hand as he looked at the three saints barging into his office at dawn.

“You do remember that I’m your king, don’t you?”

“Oh, Your Holiness. How could we forget? All of us saints are deeply moved by the self-sacrificing spirit with which you volunteered for the heavy duties of the Priest King, and we offer you our utmost loyalty.”

The old monk deftly brushed off the Priest King’s irritation with a sly grin. The Priest King reminded himself that this crafty old man, despite his exceptional reputation and overwhelming success on the Abyss Front, had skillfully avoided ascending to the throne.

“You’d better have a good reason for calling me at this hour.”

“Your Holiness, it is not that we called you. We were simply preparing to wait in your office when we discovered you were already hard at work, driven by your devotion to your people. To say we called you would be wrong.”

“Oh, for crying out loud!”

The young Priest King couldn’t contain his fury. It wasn’t anyone else, but this old man who had the gall to spout such nonsense. Far from being driven by devotion, the essence of his role as Priest King was to work tirelessly until dawn to keep things running.

“So, have you safely retrieved whatever constitutes the main body of the Seed?”

“Of course.”

The saints pointed to the pure white coffin. The Priest King clearly recalled how these crafty saints had knocked on his door with that coffin like it was some kind of battering ram.

The Priest King rose from his seat while grumbling. His stern lecture about treating a sealed relic with proper respect fell on deaf ears; the saints merely shrugged.

“Before we bury it, let’s confirm one last thing. Open the lid of the coffin.”

“Ah, Your Holiness. Even we cannot open it without breaking it. That’s why we brought it to you.”

“What?”

To properly undo this seal, which was formed through the multilayered combination of divine power from numerous gods, it required someone with the legitimate authority to command the Pantheon.

If lower-ranked priests had created a similar phenomenon, the saints with their granted powers and accumulated wisdom could have unraveled the tangled divine power like unraveling a knotted thread. But since those who forged this seal were saints themselves, it was a different matter altogether.

“Your Holiness, we’ll leave it to you to handle. While you’re at it, perhaps you could tidy up the sealing techniques as well?”

“Damn it! And you call yourselves subordinates?”

“We saints hold the highest representative of the Pantheon in the deepest respect.”

The Priest King sighed and raised his hand. He chose to ignore the sleep he would lose by not working on his documents.

Without anyone touching it, the lid of the coffin shifted with a dull clunk. A metallic clatter followed, accompanied by the sound of gears locking into place. The chaotic divine power inside was carefully redistributed according to its intended purpose and role, transforming the structure of the seal into something far more refined.

The Abyss would find it even harder to escape, and the maintenance of the seal through divine power infusion would become smoother.

The Priest King sighed again.

As soon as my term ends, I will throw everything away and return to my hometown to be assigned to a parish. I’m done with all of this.

The Priest King, having reset the surface seal, moved on to inspect the deeper seal. His hand gestures were precise, like a conductor leading an orchestra. With a soft scraping sound, the white coffin opened on its own.

Inside the coffin lay an ashen sword bound in chains. Its appearance evoked the image of a restrained criminal.

The Priest King slowly approached and placed his fingers atop the blade’s surface.

“Wow, this thing is vicious. The evil radiating from it is no joke.”

He immediately withdrew his hand. He shook it as if burned by scalding water, and once again borrowed the authority of the Pantheon to reinforce the seal.

The cold, metallic chill that came from the well-forged blade and the abyss energy that seemed ready to devour body and soul were now safely contained within the clear coffin. Nothing would escape its bounds.

“Let’s bury this thing somewhere appropriate and forget about it. Burying these cursed Seven Weapons as soon as possible is the right thing to do for world peace.”

***

Kriel opened his eyes. It wasn’t due to any ominous sign like a killing intent or the energy of the abyss.

His body simply felt oddly heavy. Last night, the watchman (Orishin) begged not to be sheathed and kept insisting that he would stand guard, so Kriel had agreed.

Though he spoke flippantly, he was reliable when it came to his duties. It seemed unlikely that he would have ignored an intruder. Or… did he?

How many times had he told that horse spirit not to—

The scene that greeted Kriel when he lifted his eyelids was far from what he had anticipated.

First, there was indeed a person. Someone had collapsed on top of him, and their body was overlapping with his.

However, their hair was different. It wasn’t Morgina’s black, lustrous locks but an ashen, colorless gray like that of scattered ash. Their pale skin gave the impression of a doll or a statue rather than a living person.

What is this? Kriel was bewildered.

This was someone who didn’t exist in his memory.

[Dammit, it’s morning! Everyone get up! I told you to leave the watch to me, and you all just dumped it on me to max out your sleep! Especially you, violent saintess….didn’t you say I was unreliable? And yet here you─]

The timing couldn’t have been worse.

Orishin, who had been flying over while shaking his head cheerfully, froze on the spot when he saw Kriel and the unknown young woman sprawled on top of him.

“You’re already making trouble from the morning? After I generously trusted you, you should at least be moved enough to give your best effort—”

It was a mess. Morgina who had groggily gotten up snapped at Orishin before turning her gaze to Kriel.

“….…?”

Morgina rubbed her eyes.

“What the he—”

“Wait. Whatever you’re thinking, this is a misunderstanding”

Kriel quickly interjected. Morgina clicked her tongue in annoyance.

“Tch. Horse head, did you keep watch properly or not?”

[Hey, that’s unfair! I was sitting all alone under the moonlight for hours with no one to talk to, feeling sorry for myself!]

“How do you sit when you don’t have legs?”

Even as she bickered with Orishin, Morgina did not lower her guard. She raised her right hand to her mouth and lightly scraped her palm with her fangs. A long, jagged wound formed in her palm and the blood flowing from it coalesced into a shape resembling a long rod.

Divine power began to flow into the blood-forged rod. As her palm healed, the rod twisted and transformed.

By the time Morgina gripped the rod with satisfaction, it was no longer a rod but a mace.

Someone managed to bypass the spirit’s watchful eyes and my barrier to infiltrate our camp?

The most plausible explanation was that this intruder was a spirit, similar to Orishin. Spirits, as embodiments of nature, could partially transcend spatial restrictions within their domains.

For example, a river spirit could manifest their avatar anywhere from the upstream to the downstream of their river. If the woman clinging to Kriel was a spirit of this mountain, she could have bypassed the barrier and directly infiltrated their camp.

But even that seemed strange. The abyss and nature were fundamentally incompatible with each other. And yet this woman had approached Kriel?

So either she’s like that horse head and is tainted with abyss energy, or she isn’t a spirit at all.

Kriel noticed Morgina’s expression, and more importantly, the way her tightly gripped hand radiated the unmistakable intent to swing her mace.

When he felt the killing intent emanating from her, Kriel’s mind raced. He tried to guess what she was thinking, using his experience from his time with the Western Army and working alongside Morgina.

Whoever this girl is, it’s clear she isn’t an ordinary human if she bypassed both Orishin’s watch and Morgina’s barrier.

And in this world, most beings who carried the label of “not ordinary” were from the abyss. Even if they weren’t from the abyss, anything suspicious was no better.

The most logical and efficient way to deal with suspicion was a preemptive attack. At least according to Morgina

It was clear that Morgina, relying on such common sense, had concluded that delivering an appropriate blow to the brain with her mace was the best course of action. After all, restraining an unconscious opponent was much safer than trying to restrain a conscious one.

Before falling into this world, Kriel would have found this line of thinking relatable as a player of the Tirnanog RPG.

However, as someone now forced to play the role of a noble knight, Kriel found it difficult to agree with her method. Watching someone use physical force on another without any solid evidence of wrongdoing was far from knightly conduct.

But didn’t I end up defending Morgina with this mindset and get dragged into a trial by battle?

A moment of doubt crept in, but Kriel resolved to act for the sake of honor.

He straightened and stood. He positioned himself in front of the ash-haired woman, in a position that shielded her from Morgina. Then, out of habit, Kriel put on his helmet. Though with his breastplate already shattered, he ended up looking rather ridiculous in his plain tunic and helmet. He took the woman by the shoulders, shook her gently and said,

“…Hey. I don’t know who you are, but wake up. You’re in quite a troublesome situation right now.”

Slowly, the ash-haired woman’s eyes opened. They were blue.

A shade of blue so deep it evoked the image of a sapphire. Yet Kriel found that gaze too sharp to call it a gemstone. It was the piercing cold light of a frozen glacier.

He had seen that exact shade of blue not long ago.

But did he just see it? No, his chest had been torn open by that sword of the same color not long ago.

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