Paladin of the Dead God
chapter-147

Suddenly, Isaac’s charging figure provoked an immediate reaction from Rene.

“Stop right now!”

She did not entertain thoughts such as ‘Has the Paladin gone mad? Or is there some other motive?’

There was only one appropriate response for an imperial guard when someone charged at the royal carriage.

Rene’s sword flashed brilliantly. It was an attack meant purely to kill or incapacitate, devoid of personal feelings.

Isaac’s left hand collided with Rene’s sword, and with a loud crash, her sword was knocked upwards.

She didn’t lose her grip on the sword, but her defense was completely breached, exposing her. In a real battle, she could have been killed instantly, but Isaac merely brushed past her.

Shock and confusion filled Rene’s eyes.

Bashul was equally astonished.

‘Did he just wield sword energy? He truly is insane.’

Despite his talent, showing such a skill in public was risky. Fortunately, it seemed no one else besides Rene and Bashul had seen this.

The guarding knights belatedly drew their swords.

“Assassin!”

Isaac shouted before the knights could react.

Only then did Bashul and Rene look in the direction Isaac was charging.

A crouching old man in the alley was startled and looked up. Isaac recognized him immediately as one of the spies from the Red Chalice Club, which had recently been under surveillance by Hesabel.

‘Seemed harmless enough to ignore, but why?’

Boom. The drawn sword barely missed cutting the old man’s neck, instead shattering the wall behind him into debris.

The old man collapsed backwards, his strength leaving him. It was an intentional near-miss to provoke a reaction, but he still seemed insignificant upon closer inspection.

‘Just monitoring the Emperor? No, Isolde would have reacted more sharply to that.’

Then, Isaac saw something in the beggar’s bowl – not just coins but an eyeball, staring fixatedly at the Emperor’s carriage.

Someone was using this eye to watch the Emperor’s party. What Isolde sensed was a miracle of the Red Chalice.

Thump.

Isaac’s heart pounded violently, pain flickering throughout his body.

An intense murderous intent.

If he could feel this murderous intent, so could the imperial guards. Isaac found himself looking back at Bashul and Rene.

They were looking up, not at the old man.

The pale winter sky was tearing open, something revolting forcing its way out. A hideous chill of killing intent was spilling over Rougeberg.

Quickly, Isaac crushed the eyeball underfoot, splattering more blood than seemed possible. The sky’s tearing halted, but the monster was still squeezing itself through the gap.

A horrendous roar shook Rougeberg, Isaac staggered under the oppressive force, bile rising in his throat. Yet, he somehow recognized the monster.

‘A beast of Chaos? Why are they here?’

It was definitely one of the creatures of Chaos, though not fully visible yet.

‘Targeting the Emperor?’

Someone was deliberately summoning the spawn of Chaos, but Isaac had no idea who else could be responsible.

If the summoning succeeded, not only the Emperor but all of Rougeberg would drown in blood.

He had to stop the summoning before it was too late.

***

As the horses started frothing and bucking, Bashul instead of evacuating the Emperor, cut the reins to stop the runaway carriage.

“Your Majesty!”

Boom. Emperor Waltzemer burst out of the carriage, already sensing the anomaly and looking up.

“Looks like it’s trying to emerge. Can we stop it?”

“I just destroyed the summoner’s eye thanks to Sir Isaac, but without knowing where the summoner is, it’s hard to completely stop it.”

“How much time do we have?”

“Less than five minutes.”

In less than five minutes, the creature would be completely free. Waltzemer growled again and untied the bandage covering his horns.

As his glowing horns illuminated the surroundings, the maddened horses calmed down.

Bashul spoke, his voice filled with concern.

“Your Majesty, this is an assassination attempt targeting you.”

“So, you suggest we flee? Imagine the Pope’s joy hearing the Emperor fled from a monster that massacred his people.”

“In the radiance emitted from the Emperor’s horns, flames began to grow fiercely. While this sight was familiar to the palace guards, the cavalrymen were startled and hastily retreated. Soon, a massive golden wolf, larger than three attached carriages, revealed itself in the alley.

Its fur glowed as if it were on fire, and it had deer-like antlers similar to those of the Baltic elk. The wolf possessed eight eyes.

The cavalrymen, who had witnessed the mythical creature known as the ‘Haltaba’ summoned by the Emperor, felt an inexplicable sense of calm. Beneath this light, they believed they would be safe and victorious, despite lacking any concrete evidence.”

After calming his troops with a miracle, Emperor Waltzemer assessed the situation.

“No matter how we handle it, Rougeberg is going to suffer greatly…”

He could imagine how shocked Dietrich must be, watching him leave from afar. Waltzemer internally apologized, but there was nothing he could do.

Gooey substances, whether monster bodily fluids or vomit, oozed out from the cracks in the sky, scattering over various parts of Rougeberg. Wherever these fluids landed, screams erupted.

A blob the size of a horse, emitting a foul stench, dropped near the Emperor. Long spider legs sprang out from it.

Click, clack-clack, clack. The spider-like creature had too many legs and randomly arranged human features – eyes, noses, and mouths – all over its surface.

The soldiers surrounded it and stabbed at it with their spears, but the spears easily sunk in and were sucked further inside. Caught off-guard by this unexpected gravitational pull, one soldier was impaled by eight spider legs.

Bang! A loud noise and a horse’s hooves were followed by a spear piercing through the spider. The rider was Isolde, wearing casual clothes and armed only with a spear. She held the creature in place with the light emanating from the pit beast.

“It’s a Polyfaceted Spider! Its body is a colony, so if it’s not a miracle, you should attack by burning or crushing it!”

Bashul was reminded anew that Isolde was an Inquisitor. She was knowledgeable about heretical miracles and doctrines, even if it was only from books.

“I’ll handle things here; you go to the city center! The soldiers there will need help!”

Isolde bit her lip and then kicked her horse into a gallop. Although various monsters were appearing from the monster’s vomited fluids, none could approach the flames emitted by Haltaba.

Bashul suddenly realized that Isaac was the first to notice this conspiracy. More than ever, the Holy Knight’s power was needed.

But Isaac was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is the Paladin?”

“He went that way!”

A soldier pointed upward, toward a nearby high watchtower.

***

Upon reaching the rooftop of the watchtower, Isaac looked up at the sky.

Crushing the eye had some effect; the hole hadn’t widened, but the summoning hadn’t stopped either. The largest monster hadn’t emerged yet, but smaller ones that had slipped through the gaps were causing chaos throughout the city.

The source of the summoning needed to be killed for the hole to completely close.

‘If I were them, I’d try to reopen the hole.’

Considering they had been monitoring the Emperor through an eyeball, and the summoning stopped when it was destroyed, it seemed vision was crucial. Therefore, the adversary would likely try to regain sight.

Inevitably, they would have to expose themselves.

‘Focus on the senses.’

Isaac stretched out his arm. His left arm began to split along the seams of his fingers, a transformation that had occurred after he devoured the Drowned King.

Now fully transformed, his arm branched into five tendrils from his shoulder, enveloping itself in colors from beyond to stay hidden. He did not stop there; he sprouted eyes, ears, and other sensory organs on the tendrils.

Isaac had bizarre organs sprouting up that he couldn’t identify, but he decided not to worry about it.

‘Focus on the senses.’

Similar transformations were happening to Hesabel from afar. She, too, was avoiding the sun and focusing on the sensations conveyed by Isaac.

Isaac had parasites scattered around Rougeberg that could link back to him—rats, cats, pigeons, stray dogs, all paused in the streets, senses heightened.

The monster was of the Chaos Brood.

Although not under direct control, it was linked to Isaac. He tried to read its mind, but the thoughts were as distorted as water-soaked text. However, he could sense a slight direction.

Isaac, the monster, and his spawn all felt the same pull.

He pinpointed where these sensations intersected.

[Come forth.]

As Isaac opened his eyes sharply, the eyes on his tendrils did the same, focusing in one direction. Dozens of eyes looked toward a voice summoning the monster.

In the expanded pupil of Isaac’s eye, a man in a robe looking up at the sky was reflected on the terrace of a small inn.

It was close.

Isaac leapt down from the watchtower.

[Come to me!]

The voice calling the monster seemed to beckon Isaac too. Driven by this call, Isaac dashed toward the man. Just as the man noticed Isaac falling from the sky, a loud crash echoed.

Crash!

Isaac swung his tentacle arm to cushion the impact. The roof and terrace crumbled, throwing up choking dust.

“Got you, bastard.”

Isaac, his hand restored, grabbed the man by the throat. The fingers, still partially serpent-like, squeezed with enough force to crush. The man, missing one eye, stared back at Isaac with dilated pupils.

“You…”

“Look at me properly. Know that you won’t die a gentle death.”

Since he was going to kill him anyway, Isaac didn’t mind revealing his tentacles. He immediately used the potent Eye of Chao on the man. Purple tentacles burrowed into the man’s remaining eye. The dense dust and otherworldly colors concealed Isaac.

Amidst tumultuous emotions, fragmented information flooded in.

Isaac started with the most recent memories.

‘This miracle works similarly to how the Immortal Order opens gates to the afterlife.’

Someone was explaining the miracle to him.

‘You can only open the gate; you cannot control what comes out. It’s safest to cast it from a distance or use a separate eye. But…’

The person explaining pointed at him with a skeletal finger.

‘The monsters will instinctively be drawn to you. If you don’t run immediately after opening the gate, they will kill you.’

Crack! A sharp pain cut off Isaac’s reading. He hastily pulled his head back; the tentacles retracted into his eye.

“Gah, ugh!”

Isaac then saw a swarm of spiders and leeches attacking the man. These were born from the monster’s fluids. They ignored Isaac and tore at the man’s head.

His torn cheeks made it seem like he was smiling.

‘Damn it.’

The forcibly extracted memories swirled chaotically in Isaac’s head. It would take time to sift through the useful information, but he was certain the Immortal Order was behind this.

Isaac looked up at the sky.

With the summoner dead, the summoning should stop. As expected, the hole in the sky had closed. However, the peculiar sensation in his chest hadn’t faded.

Ooooooh!

A monster’s roar sounded from somewhere beyond the buildings.

It had already escaped the hole.

[The Nameless Chaos watches you.]

[The Nameless Chaos wishes for you to eliminate the ‘apocalypse handler.’]

[The rewards of Chaos await you.]