Chapter 214: One Step (3) Part 1

—

That’s Deculein. You’re watching him too.

Concealed in the highlands, not far from Vahalla, Ellie scratched her head as she watched Elesol’s sign language flow like silent whispers carried by the wind.

"... Yes, I see him. Perhaps he is not in the best of moods today—"

Slap—!

Elesol slapped Ellie's arm.

“

Ouch

, that hurt...” Ellie muttered, wincing with a slight pout.

—

Just because someone is not in the best of moods, does that justify them going around and blowing people to pieces as they please?

"... That’s not what I meant," Ellie muttered, lowering her eyes to the land stretching far below.

Even to the Scarletborn, Vahalla was a troublesome city. Its inhabitants were all heretics who worshipped the Altar, making them a thorn in their side. That was why Ellie and Elesol had been dispatched—to remove them from the equation.

—

This isn't the first time Deculein has shown such cruelty.

Beneath the desert sands, Elesol constructed a prison for the Scarletborn, a place meant to hold the heretics of the Altar away from the rest of the world.

"But there are no gas chambers in Roharlak. If anything, that proves the Professor has kept his word," Ellie replied.

—

... That’s enough. You’re no different from those who have been brainwashed by the Altar. Let’s go back—there’s no need to stay here since we have their leader in custody.

Elesol finished signing, and Ellie turned toward the unconscious leader of Vahalla, bound to a tree.

“Okay. But...”

Elesol and Ellie planned to backtrack the Altar using the knowledge buried in the leader’s mind. In the end, Scarletborn faced only two choices—either choosing the mutually assured destruction that Elesol insisted on or the collapse of the Altar, as Ellie proposed.

"Elesol, let’s wait a little longer and see," Ellie added.

—

Why?

“... Just because,” Ellie murmured, her eyes following Deculein as he walked away, his movements as fluid as a passing breeze. Then, Ellie let out a quiet chuckle and murmured, “I just want to watch a little longer...

ouch

.”

Slap—!

This time, Elesol slapped Ellie on the head.

Slap—! Slap—! Slap—!

Not just once, but repeatedly, like tapping on a hollow gourd.

"

Ow

,

ow

—

ouch

, and also—there are still a few more children we need to take with us over there," Ellie said, stumbling over her words.

—

Take them with us?

Elesol narrowed her eyes and asked once more.

“... Yes.”

—

Which ones?

“Just as I said. Innocent children,” Ellie murmured with a quiet sigh, her eyes sinking to the ground beneath her.

***

Vahalla’s resistance was underwhelming—no, it was simply no match for the overwhelming force of the Elite Guard. The battle priests mentioned in the reports turned out to be half-trained at best, and aside from them, there was nothing but a congregation of Altar worshippers, little different from frightened civilians.

"Professor, what should we do with them?" asked a knight with a single star gleaming on his chest, his eyes settled on the thousands of unarmed Scarletborn prisoners awaiting my judgment.

Every last battle priest outside of these prisoners had been slain, but unlike before, their bodies did not explode—no, it failed this time. Applying

Telekinesis

to the human body meant seizing control of the very blood flowing through another’s veins.

Therefore, making the bodies of battle priests explode—those who had trained in mana and mastered magic resistance—was not only difficult but also distasteful, a crude method and an affront to dignity itself.

“... Deculein?” Ihelm said.

I swept my eyes over the prisoners, and there were men and women, adults and the elderly—all sharing the same look of fear. Yet, something about their composition felt unnatural and unbalanced.

“How strange,” I said.

“What is?”

I lifted my head and took in the village of Vahalla. It barely resembled a place meant for living—scattered among the dust were small buildings, such as houses, a temple, shops, and a school.

“There aren’t any—”

"There aren’t any children!"

Just then, a voice cut through the air, interrupting my words. Everyone turned to look, and there he was—a man with thin, nearly closed eyes, walking toward us. Dressed in the dignified robes of a priest, his black hair was slicked back, revealing an unusually distinct face.

“...

Tch

.”

The name of that named character came to me in an instant, and I couldn’t help but click my tongue. Even without knowledge of the game's scenario, he was a figure well-known in this world.

"Men, women, adults, and the elderly—everyone is here. And yet, not a single child in sight!"

The man's name was Logeff, the youngest son of the Mest family—the maternal relatives of the late Emperor. On the day his sister, the last Empress, was assassinated, he turned to religion.

Even as a Yukline myself, I could not overlook this named character in his own right. With his family's influence binding him to Sophien and his own rank nearing that of a cardinal, he was not someone to be taken lightly.

"Is that not so?" Logeff added, his thin eyes curling into a sly smile, like that of a fox.

Ihelm and I watched Logeff in silence. With his hands clasped behind his back, he walked forward, his eyes sweeping over the faces of the prisoners.

"Are you all afraid, perhaps?"

The prisoners held their silence, but in their eyes, a faint flicker of hope remained. Perhaps it was the sight of Logeff’s priestly robes. A shared faith, however distant, might mean mercy. They hoped that perhaps he would spare them from the hands of those who wielded steel and sorcery without restraint. A frail hope—naive and fleeting, destined to wither.

"Even as you tremble, you still hide the children away. Such devotion... indeed, it is touching," Logeff concluded.

At that, one of the prisoners nodded faintly, almost without thinking.

"

Ah

, so there are children," Logeff said, not letting the moment slip past him, and with a bright smile, he turned toward me. "Shall we have them brought forward?"

The prisoners trembled violently. A gentle smile was ever present on his face, and his tone carried the perfect imitation of benevolence, yet beneath it lurked something unreadable—something far more insidious. Logeff, bound to the continent’s most dogmatic believer, was the kind of named character.

Then Logeff added, "

Oh

, and do you mean to take all these prisoners with you, Professor? Would it not be simpler to kill them here and bury them altogether?"

At the mention of being buried altogether, one of the prisoners collapsed, his body shaking as he fell to his knees and pleaded, "P-Please... I beg you, spare the children...! They have done nothing wrong—"

"Yes, they have," Logeff interrupted with a warm smile. "Because you have made it so."

Then Logeff added, "You have led the children astray with false faith. And such faith is a greater sin than faithlessness itself—for to believe in such faith is to bear the weight of its guilt."

The words poured forth, washing over them like a baptism of speech.

"You have placed the weight of your sins upon your children. And they, in turn, will pass it down to those who come after them."

The prisoners raised their hollow eyes to him.

"It is my responsibility to break the chain of this inherited sin."

In an instant, a dagger slipped from Logeff’s sleeve, its edge glinting cold. With a single stroke, the blade found its mark, cutting clean through the throat of the prisoner who had pleaded for the children’s lives.

"

Ghk

!" murmured the prisoner, letting out a choked gasp before collapsing and clutching his throat as he gurgled and writhed, finally falling still.

"What are you waiting for? Did you not say a sinner lies beneath the earth?" Logeff asked, his eyes settling once more on the knights.

"

Oh

, yes. That is correct," one of the knights replied.

The knights pressed their ears to the ground, their senses attuned to even the faintest tremor, allowing the slightest stir beneath the soil to betray the hidden location.

"That is enough," I said, lifting a hand and commanding them to stop.

Logeff and the knights blinked, their eyes settling on me.

"Rise."

One by one, the knights pushed themselves up from the ground, and Ihelm tilted his head, a faint look of curiosity flickering across his face.

“... Professor?” Logeff said.

I took a brief glance at Logeff before lowering myself onto one knee and pressing a hand against the earth. The heightened senses of my advanced

Iron Man

attribute granted me to detect the faint tremors of those trembling below. With that awareness, I sent a pulse of mana deep into the ground.

“Deculein, what are you—”

The ground shuddered as refined mana poured through the fractures, forcing its way between plates and fragments, unraveling the foundation from within.

Ruuuuuuumble—!

The result was a cataclysm, a force like a total bombardment, shaking the earth with a violent tremor. With a deafening roar, pillars shattered, and foundations collapsed, bringing all of Vahalla to ruin. Homes, shops, schools, farmland, tents, wells, and stables—everything within reach was swallowed by the earth.

In less than a minute, the city was nothing but dust and wreckage, its people’s lives wiped away in an instant.

"This will do," I said, turning to Logeff and locking eyes with him.

Logeff blinked slowly, letting his eyes wander over the ruins of Vahalla as he surveyed the devastation in silence before giving a small nod and replying, "... Yes, Professor. A scene most fitting for divine retribution. The children, too, must have departed in peace, bearing the weight of their sins."

“You—!”

At that moment, a prisoner sprang forward in a frantic rush—but he never got the chance to take a step. In an instant, an escort knight’s blade flashed, cutting him down where he stood.

Clunk—

The prisoner’s head tumbled across the ground, his face frozen in a twisted mask of despair and rage.

Still smiling, Logeff looked at the severed head before bringing his hands together in applause and saying, "Just as I have heard, Professor. A guiding light of this era, uncompromising in the cleansing of heresy—"

"We're leaving," I interrupted Logeff, turning my back on Valhalla. "There is nothing more to be done in this wretched land."

***

By the time we left Vahalla behind, the night had melted into dawn. As the first light touched the horizon, we paused briefly in the grand city of Macan.

"This place remains unchanged, don’t you think? We visited once on an academy excursion years ago, and it looks exactly the same," Ihelm remarked beside me.

I paid no mind to Ihelm’s chatter.

Then, Ihelm clicked his tongue and changed the subject and added, "Tell me, isn’t there something off about him? What kind of priest goes around cutting people down with a dagger?"

Logeff had slipped into our group as if he had been part of it all along and walked behind us, offering warm greetings to every villager he passed.

"We will be seeing much more of him," I replied.

As the main quest progressed and Logeff became further entangled with the Scarletborn and the Altar, our fates were destined to cross again. In some quests, he was the one who slaughtered ten thousand of the Scarletborn.

"Do you think so? Well, he remains Her Majesty’s cousin by blood, after all, even if he has long since severed ties with his house."

As we walked, a rotund man came into view in the distance, waddled toward the front of our group, stopped, and gestured toward me, saying he had something to discuss.

An elite knight stepped forward and reported, "Professor, that man requests to speak with you. Shall I turn him away—"

"No. Send him over. The rest of you, go on ahead," I commanded.

“Yes, Professor.”

The others headed into the hotel first, leaving me alone with the rotund man. Sweat glistened on his brow as he forced a smile, his face brimming with greed. I swept my eyes over him, from head to toe.

"What is it?" I inquired.

"

Hahaha,

Professor. I happened to come across something you might wish to hear..."

“Something I might wish to hear.”

"Yes, Professor. Please forgive me, but... there is a building here that is sheltering the Scarletborn."

Of course, the man was a snitch; that much was certain.