Paladin of the Dead God
chapter-192

The crystal trembled and hummed with a voice. An angel manifesting itself spontaneously without a summoning ritual was an extremely rare event.

It meant that a deity was watching over this place, this moment.

As the crystal vibrated with a voice, all sorts of names of archangels flitted through Villion’s mind. Then, the angel occupying Lianne’s body turned its gaze upon him.

“Take that and get out, bastard.”

With a crackling sound, the crystal shattered, and Lumiarde was expelled. The holy sword stuck into the ground right before Villion. He realized that his gloves could sufficiently handle the cold emitted by Lumiarde.

The crystal had been an extension of the angel’s power.

Villion finally speculated about the identity of his opponent.

“Lady of the Lake, are you Nimloth?”

“Who gave you permission to speak?”

With those calm words, Villion was thrown to the ground headfirst. He could not understand what had hit him. Another faith’s angel couldn’t have such power, but Villion was still a follower of Elil. An angel could exert absolute influence over followers of the same faith.

Nimloth looked down at Villion and said,

“I have spared these nearly dead dogs because they still have some use to you.”

Nimloth’s gaze was icy as she looked at Villion and his cavalrymen.

“Go. There are threats to the Holy Land. Go and kill each other off. If you’re still alive afterward, commit suicide. If you can’t even do that, just disappear into the eastern wilderness.”

Villion couldn’t comprehend her words. She seemed to acknowledge that they were like insured members of the Immortal Order. Yet instead of executing him immediately, she was sending them to the Holy Land, even knowing they were unholy.

“Is Edelred and the Holy Grail Knight a bigger threat to the Holy Land than the Immortal Order?”

Villion could not grasp the implication. He had claimed that ‘the threat to Holy Land Elion is the Aldeon army,’ but he didn’t truly believe it.

It was more about redirecting his inner conflict with the Immortal Order as the target.

His thoughts were complicated, but he could no longer ponder. Nimloth’s words spurred them colder still.

“Go.”

Villion sprang to his feet, and at the same moment, his cavalrymen began to move.

Nothing had changed. Though he hadn’t turned Lianne into an undead, having Lumiarde was enough.

The holy sword was the key to the Holy Land; the power of the Immortal Order could handle the Holy Grail Knight.

Suddenly, a cavalryman shouted,

“The Aldeon army is approaching!”

Villion clenched his teeth.

The Aldeon army, which had confronted them on the Heron Plains, had pursued them and finally returned to Elion Fortress. Whether it was Nimloth’s command or for revenge, they couldn’t afford to fight with the Aldeon army nipping at their heels when they needed to rush to the Holy Land.

He had no choice but to cross a deeper line once more.

Villion removed the gloves that protected his hands and gripped Lumiarde barehanded. The coldness crept up his hand, arm, shoulder, and soon overwhelmed his head and heart. As the frost touched his heart, Villion felt a long-delayed contract finally being sealed.

His heart slowly stopped, and a strange power flowed through his bones.

Elil, who had been with him all his life, was no longer by his side.

In return, he gained the time to struggle for hundreds, thousands of years.

That time would be enough to earn honor to compensate for his current dishonor.

“Rise.”

Villion’s eyes flickered deep black as he commanded.

To the countless corpses that hadn’t been properly buried during the war and were stored.

The boundary between life and death began to blur throughout Elion Fortress. The power that bound the dead seeped from the ground, raising them.

Those insured by the Immortal Order could become undead with their former selves and abilities intact, but those who were not fell to miserable zombies. However, Villion now needed these mindless meat shields.

“Block anyone from crossing into Aldeon Fortress.”

***

“Advance to Aldeon Fortress!”

Mors led his soldiers at the forefront, racing forward. Despite his fatigue from the relentless advance from the Heron Plains leading only the Aldeon knights, a strange fervor and excitement propelled him.

At last, this tiresome civil war was about to end. Victory was within grasp!

Villion, who had led Georg’s army, had fled in a miserable state. There had been considerable resistance, resulting in not insignificant casualties, but it was a complete victory. All that remained was Elion Fortress. If Isaac’s plan had succeeded, it would be nearly empty.

“Accept their surrender as soon as we breach the gates…”

Bang. Suddenly, Mors’s vision flipped as he tumbled to the ground. He had tripped over something. Dizzy for a moment as he saw the knights rushing towards him, he was fortunate that they split like a tide, avoiding trampling him.

Delfric rushed to help him up.

“General! Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. But what’s this?”

Initially, he thought he had tripped over a body. But then he saw his horse, its leg broken, being held by a hand that had sprung from the ground. Before he could fully grasp the situation, alarmed shouts and screams began to erupt around him.

“What is it? Is this Georg’s cavalry counter attacking?”

“General! General!”

Reyna Hilde suddenly rushed in and slammed a sword down in front of his nose. Just as the words ‘killing a superior’ flickered through his mind, Reyna plunged her hand into the ground and pulled something out.

It was a zombie, pierced from the crown of its head to its jaw.

Reyna and Mors were simultaneously shocked.

“An ambush from beneath the ground! Are those Georg’s men insane?”

“What, this… Reyna, this is an undead!”

While Mors was amazed by Reyna’s imagination, it was natural for the younger people in this region, far removed from the Immortal Order, not to know about undead. However, Mors, seasoned with age, immediately thought of the Immortal Order.

He had already heard from Isaac that the Georg’s cavalry might include members of the Immortal Order.

But now, the situation unfolded across the entire battlefield. Although most bodies produced during the battle had been recovered, many had been buried or trampled in the mire created by seasonal rains and were unaccountable. Worse still were the occurrences at the nearby burial sites.

From the rear, from a forest where bodies had been buried, zombies began to emerge. Even from within Aldeon Fortress, staggering, moving corpses wielding bows and spears appeared haphazardly.

“Undead! They are undead! Georg’s men are summoning undead!”

A knight screamed almost hysterically.

Mors felt a chill down his spine. The nature of the war had changed entirely with the intervention of the heretics. It had turned into a massacre or a war of annihilation.

The problem was that they seemed likely to be annihilated before they could even reach that point.

Handling undead varied greatly depending on how well one knew to deal with them. And in the Kingdom of Elil, knights who knew how to counter undead could be counted on one hand.

“To Elion Fortress! Head to Elion Fortress and make our stand there!”

Confronting the undead in the exposed wilderness was suicidal. Mors quickly led his troops towards Elion Fortress. But despair soaked his vision; the gates of Elion Fortress were firmly closed. They were likely to die clinging to the walls.

At that moment, a miracle unfolded before his eyes.

The gates began to open unexpectedly.

“Come this way!”

The one opening the wide gates was a knight covered in blood, Lavard Georg.

Without time to doubt his intentions, Mors hurriedly rushed in. Following him, the Aldeon knights poured in. Mors thanked the young knight who had opened the gates.

“Thank you, much appreciated.”

“No need for thanks. We’re just trying to survive too.”

Lavard gave a bitter smile and gestured towards the interior of the Fortress. Mors quickly realized that the situation inside the Fortress was not much different from the outside. Knights were fiercely fighting corpses within the Fortress, and except for around the gates, they were nearly surrounded.

It had only been Lavard and a few knights who had risked their lives to break through the undead and open the gates.

“How are things outside?”

“Not good at all.”

Mors recalled the number of undead that had surged from outside as he responded. A new hypothesis dawned on him. Perhaps Villion had not just evacuated people to the Fortress after burning villages and rounding up the residents. The absence of corpses might have been because they were already buried somewhere else.

“Let’s save the thinking for later. We need to fight now!”

The Aldeon knights, without a moment’s rest, began to confront or kill the undead alongside Georg’s knights. The arrival of the Aldeon knights gave the Georg knights a chance to catch their breath, but the situation didn’t improve significantly.

Outside, thousands of zombies were swarming, and instead of being able to protect Edelred, they were overwhelmed just trying to survive within the Fortress.

Mors, witnessing this, realized that the war had truly ended.

It wasn’t the outcome he had desired.

Instead, the end of the war had morphed into a new kind of conflict.

It was a war between the living and the dead.

Seeing this, Mors felt a surge of excitement. A hearty laugh burst from him.

“Ha-ha-ha! Enemies that I can kill without guilt! Perfect!”

He had been sick of killing his fellow believers and countrymen. In this situation, the vile undead, twisted by heretic sorcery, were an easy enemy to understand.

Elil’s miraculous strength seeped into his weary body.

“Elil! I heed your call!”

Mors immediately sprinted back into the battlefield.

***

“So, was this civil war orchestrated by the Immortal Order?”

On the bridge leading to the Holy Land, Edelred asked Isaac.

He had already heard from Isaac about the Immortal Order’s involvement, but the thought that they had been mere pawns in the Order’s scheme was disheartening.

They had thought they were fighting for a noble cause and honor, only to be used as pieces in someone else’s game.

However, Isaac shook his head.

“No. The civil war was already in your hands. Nobody ordered it, nobody orchestrated it.”

“But the Immortal Order…”

“The Immortal Order was just one of the tools. Immortality is a risky but useful tool. The Immortal Emperor Beshek wouldn’t care if his religion is used this way. He’s satisfied as long as the number of undead increases.”

Like those tempted by the Red Chalice, those who fear death are drawn to the Immortal Order. Those, especially Elil followers, who constantly duel at life’s crossroads, are even more susceptible.

Cunningly, the Immortal Order promises the participants of the beleaguered Dawn Army life insurance for resurrection. They suggest it can be cancelled at any time.

Insured individuals initially accept the offer planning to cancel it immediately.

But nothing is as seductive as the power of immortality when the weak confront the strong.

Eventually, Villion too succumbed to this temptation.

“But doesn’t the Immortal Order gain from this conflict? If the fighting increases the number of corpses, their ranks swell. Or perhaps they invested in the possibility of Georg’s rebels winning? Just as Emperor Waltzemer sent you, maybe they aim to push the Kingdom of Elil to side with the Black Empire!”

Edelred, seeming excited by his own words, exclaimed.

Isaac gave a bitter smile.

Regrettably, Isaac hadn’t told him everything. This young king didn’t truly understand the depth of fear. Of course, the Immortal Order has its own agendas. How would he react if he knew they hardly cared about a mere civil war?

Sure, they would prefer if the knights of Elil Kingdom killed each other, but that wasn’t the important part.

Their real objective lay within the Holy Land.

Revealing that purpose would make Edelred realize what true terror was, so Isaac couldn’t speak recklessly.

–TL Notes–