Paladin of the Dead God
chapter-137

Dietrich looked at her with a stern expression.

“What?”

“Ha-ha, yes, well, rumors are just rumors after all. I was just curious and asked. Now, I will take my leave.”

Delia crossed the banquet hall again with a heavy step. Dietrich glared at her back as if he wanted to stab her with his gaze.

Isaac seemed to understand why Dietrich disliked Delia.

Behind her muscular and seemingly simple appearance was a snake-like trait. The fact that she asked about Isaac was not out of ignorance but merely to confirm the truth.

However, whether she had realized that Isaac was disguised as Isolde was unknown.

Now, Dietrich had no choice but to ponder where the information had leaked from.

He bowed his head as his eyes met Isaac’s.

“I asked you to maintain security, and yet the information has leaked; I am ashamed.”

“No, it was information bound to be revealed eventually. As you said, perfect security does not exist, and it’s possible that the rumors started from the Salt Council and not the Duke.”

“If the Church finds out…”

At the moment, the Church considered Isaac a ‘heroic martyr who had met a saintly death.’

The Order was promoting Isaac to sainthood and using his ‘murder’ by the Immortal Order as a pretext to incite the Dawn Army.

The resurrection of Isaac could indeed be embarrassing.

Therefore, Dietrich worried that the Order might insist ‘such a thing never happened’ and confront Isaac with a sword.

But Isaac was not overly worried.

“I have already considered some options. You need not worry. More importantly…”

At that moment, Isaac’s eyes shone. Someone was crossing the banquet hall towards him. It was one of the people who had been observing rather than approaching Isaac during the past few days of festivities.

“I am glad to see you are well, Miss Isolde Brant.”

Isaac immediately recognized him.

Eastern Regional Chief Ilya Dote of the Inquisition.

The very inquisitor who had met Isaac in the territory of Issacrea. Isolde had been under his command to investigate Isaac.

Recalling his keen intuition, Isaac tensed up. He also remembered that Isolde had eaten the ‘red flesh’ at the Inquisition.

“I hope you recover fully soon.”

However, Ilya merely kissed the back of Isaac’s gloved hand and stepped back. Yet, a small note remained in Isaac’s palm.

The message left behind was in a code that other inquisitors could not read, but Isaac could.

‘Come to the backyard, alone.’

***

Rougeberg Castle was as vast as its history was long.

This meant that, just like its history, the castle was a complex mess of expansions and overdevelopments, with secret passages and hideouts unknown even to its owners. There were also discreet places that rarely caught people’s attention.

The backyard was such a place.

Ilya Dote was waiting there, amongst the overgrown bushes. It was unclear how long he had been waiting, but Isaac disliked his audacity in summoning a lady so late at night without prior notice.

Therefore, Isaac intentionally arrived quite late, forcing Ilya to endure the night dew for a prolonged period.

‘Six… no, seven.’

Before even stepping into the backyard, Isaac had detected that, aside from Ilya, seven others were hiding there. It seemed that the guests were all from Ilya’s faction.

While it would not be a problem if he decided to kill them all, he needed to be cautious if he wished to conceal his tentacles.

‘Hesabel, standby.’

‘Yes.’

With Hesabel already in position and covertly prepared, Isaac stepped into the backyard.

As Isaac approached, Ilya turned his head.

“You are late. Is Isolde not coming herself?”

It was clear that Ilya had recognized Isaac’s disguise. Even makeup couldn’t fool someone who knew his face, especially not an inquisitor.

Isaac did not respond and waited for Ilya to continue.

“Right. You had to use a stand-in. Couldn’t you at least send a message to Isolde? The Inquisition…”

Suddenly, Ilya turned as if giving a signal, and a shadow burst from the thick bushes, charging at Isaac. Ilya drew a short sword and struck the shadow.

“What is this…! Hey, come this way!”

Instead of joining the shadows to attack Isaac, Ilya moved to protect him.

Surprised by his unexpected reaction, Isaac pretended to be flustered while moving to his side. The attacker, undeterred by the dagger wound, continued to try to drag Isaac away.

As the attacker grabbed Isaac’s left hand, the arm twisted 360 degrees and snapped.

The opaque energy surrounding the attacker made it impossible to see what exactly happened to the broken arm.

However, as the attacker quickly retreated, the arm healed

instantaneously.

Isaac stood next to Ilya.

“Are you okay? It looked like you were grabbed.”

Ilya, who had not seen what happened, simply thought it was because of the short sword.

Isaac also drew his dagger, ready to fight.

As the first assault failed, those in ambush began to emerge as if shadows were sprouting from the ground. They were covered in pitch-black attire, surrounded by an opaque aura that made focusing on them difficult.

Ilya instantly invoked a miracle, igniting a flame above his head. The backyard lit up as if it were broad daylight, violently shaking the obscure aura of the ambushers. Seeing their briefly exposed forms, Ilya muttered through gritted teeth.

“Wallachia human hunters, you’ve come a long way!”

Sure enough, they were Wallachia human hunters.

***

The human hunters were dressed not as hunters but in the ordinary garb of knights and guards, as Isaac had seen at the Ariet Monastery. They were the ones under surveillance by Hesabel, and their numbers nearly matched.

‘I knew the Red Chalice was involved, so it was expected that they’d appear, but I didn’t foresee such a blatant attack.’

One who seemed to be the hunting leader muttered in a grating voice.

“The inquisitor can be killed, but the lady just needs to be captured alive at all costs.”

They quickly drew crossbows to decide the outcome swiftly. Ilya clenched his teeth, attempting to invoke another miracle. Just then, a crossbow bolt pierced the head of one of the human hunters, accompanied by a tearing sound through the air.

Distracted by the unexpected arrow, their attention shifted from Ilya.

In the next moment, Isaac was already moving. It took only a split second for him to gouge out the throat of the nearest human hunters with his dagger.

Ilya, quickly grasping the situation, subdued another one. The seven enemies had now been reduced to four. However, facing the Wallachia human hunters in the middle of the night, even after a successful surprise attack, was challenging.

Click, clack.

The human hunters whom Ilya had slit the throat of began to heal before he even fell, his wound regenerating. As he attempted to escape from Ilya, several more crossbow bolts pierced his body.

Thump, thud! Ilya narrowly avoided the bolts that pierced the human hunters’s torso and rolled on the ground.

The human hunters, looking like a porcupine from his allies’ bolts, staggered and pulled the arrows out himself.

Ilya gritted his teeth at the sight. These assassins treated their bodies like weapons. Ilya assessed that with the current forces, it was difficult to combat the human hunters.

“Hey, you! I’ll hold them off so you can…”

Ilya tried to allow Isaac, disguised as Isolde, to escape and call for help. However, where ‘Isolde’ had been, only two choking, human hunters clutching their throats were found.

Their wounds weren’t cut but appeared as if they were massively gouged.

Isaac’s blade was wrapped in an incomprehensible opaque aura, but its nature was unclear.

“What is this…?”

“I would appreciate a little help.”

Isaac, who had approached quietly from behind, whispered. Startled, Ilya turned around only to be knocked down by a powerful impact.

“Being unconscious might help you.”

After knocking Ilya out, Isaac laid him on the ground. The illuminating miracle that Ilya had activated extinguished, and darkness enveloped the backyard.

Confused by the situation, the human hunters hesitated.

Suddenly, Isaac yelled at them in a furious voice.

“You dare attack an inquisitor and expect to survive!”

A man’s voice unexpectedly rang out, causing confusion among the human hunters.

“That’s not the lady.”

An annoyed voice came from the hunting leader.

Hesabel’s crossbow bolt flew towards the leader’s head, but he deflected it with a scythe without even looking at the approaching bolt.

“Don’t interfere, Hesabel. If you don’t want to complicate things for the Gullmar family.”

Hesabel felt alarmed but didn’t respond. Meanwhile, the human hunters, armed with crossbows, surrounded Isaac.

The hunting leader glared at Isaac from beyond the dark aura and said,

“Where’s the lady? Surrender her quietly, and we’ll spare both of your lives.”

“Introduce yourself first.”

“Fire.”

Bang. Isaac’s body jerked.

The hunting leader decided to make conversation easier by planting a few arrows in him first.

But then, a puzzled frown appeared on his face.

A shadowy, ink-like aura swirled around Isaac, where he was thought to have been hit by arrows.

Crunch, crunch. The iron-made crossbow bolts were absurdly crunched up as if they were light.

“The hunter lacks manners in his hunting skills. One should introduce oneself politely before inquiring about a lady’s whereabouts.”

“What is this…”

Isaac was unharmed, not even a speck of a scratch on him. The human hunters immediately drew their swords to subdue him, but at that moment, their eyes dropped to the squishy feeling under their feet.

For a moment, they thought they were standing on a pitch-black void.

An inexplicable, mysterious color had filled the garden floor, which they had not noticed until now.

[The shadow cast over the world (B) / Tentacles wrapped in the color from beyond, hidden within the shadows or made invisible.]

In an instant, a tentacle wrapped in the mysterious color from the ground pierced through the head of one human hunters. Before they could even scream or react in horror, the tentacle crushed the inside of the human hunters’s skull, sucking it dry and shattering it to pieces.

The remaining human hunters, trying to retreat in shock, found themselves trapped in a mire-like color from beyond. Inside, they faced snapping jaws, teeth, and tongues—all eager to tear them apart. Even those who emphasized decorum were forced to scream in this horrifying situation.

At that moment, the hunting leader gritted his teeth and shouted,

“It’s an illusion! Snap out of it!”

But by then, Isaac had already decapitated two more human hunters. The severed heads were disintegrated by the tentacles whirling through the color. Even their powerful regenerative abilities were useless before the predatory teeth that devoured everything.

The hunting leader, grinding his teeth, swung his scythe at Isaac. Dressed only in a gown and armed with a mere dagger, Isaac found it difficult to directly confront the hunting leader.

Bang. Instead, Hesabel continuously fired arrows at the back of the hunting leader’s head. Annoyed, the leader swung his scythe as if resolved to something and cut off his own wrist.

Obviously, he had been planning to invoke a powerful miracle, but Isaac had no intention of allowing such a miracle to be unleashed in the middle of Rougeberg.

“Shh.”

Watching for an opportunity to activate a miracle, Isaac did not miss the moment the hunting leader paused. He invoked the Grasp of the Abyss, and massive tentacles erupted from the ground like giant trees. The hunting leader tried to shout in horror, but the enormous tentacle swallowed him whole in an instant.

At the same time, the Dark Eucharist was activated.