Chapter 62: A Clever Hunt for Heretics (3)

Even after taking command of the 7th Squad, Karnak’s reputation continued to rise. This was largely due to his outstanding performance compared to other squads of the King’s Order.

For most squads, completing a single mission could take a significant amount of time. While there were rare cases, like the swift resolution of the Brellant affair, such outcomes were often considered a stroke of bad luck rather than something to celebrate—after all, the enemy had launched a preemptive attack, and the victory had been achieved by chance.

Karnak, on the other hand, tracked down heretics with incredible speed. He uncovered their locations with uncanny accuracy. Not only that, but he also extracted information efficiently and used it to swiftly carry out purges. Initially, some questioned whether he might be a spy for the heretics. However, reading his reports dispelled any suspicions.

The reports detailed logical deductions and careful interrogations, demonstrating that his methods were thorough and grounded in evidence. Karnak simply excelled at piecing together clues and extracting reliable information through interrogations. Of course, Varos scoffed at the idea.

"Well, it’s easy to look like a genius when you already know the answer and just match the details to fit."

Serati, too, found the notion absurd.

"We’ve never even conducted an interrogation."

All they’d done was kill their targets and use necromancy to forcibly extract information from their souls. Karnak, however, was unapologetic.

"As long as we get to the destination, does it really matter how we got there?"

In any case, the hunt for heretics was progressing smoothly. Since Karnak had become captain, he had taken on and successfully resolved five additional cases of heretical activity. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that everything was going perfectly. But Karnak himself felt dissatisfied.

“This isn’t yielding any real results,” he muttered.

***

In the southeastern border fortress of Asra, located in the Kingdom of Eustil, screams echoed from the central tower’s underground chambers.

"Aaaaahhhh!"

At the entrance to the basement, Milia, a priest of Latiel, shivered at the horrifying sounds.

It’s dreadful...

Logically, she understood. To protect the kingdom’s citizens, heretics needed to be interrogated to extract information. Torture, though unpleasant, was sometimes a necessary part of that process. Considering the atrocities committed by these heretics, such punishments seemed fitting. Even so, every time a scream pierced the air, she couldn’t help but recoil.

"Aaaaahhhh!"

Thankfully, Captain Karnak hadn’t allowed Milia to participate in the interrogations. It was a gesture of consideration for her youth and for the fact that she was a woman.

He really is a kind person,

Milia thought, silently grateful as she moved away from the basement.

She whispered a final prayer for the heretic’s soul, as any good priest would. “Latiel, grant this sinful soul the peace of atonement.”

***

The dimly lit basement was illuminated by flickering candlelight. Karnak sat at a table in one corner, diligently writing up the report to be submitted to the King’s Order regarding the latest heretic hunt. From the other side of the room came groaning.

"Ugh... ugh..."

A bloodied man hung bound and suspended in the air. It was a necromancer they had captured. In front of him, Varos sat on a chair, looking bored. Every now and then, he stabbed the man with his knife.

"Ugh... ugh..."

The man had been tortured so thoroughly that even being stabbed elicited only faint groans.

Clicking his tongue, Varos muttered, "His screams are too weak. Has he run out of strength?"

Without much thought, Karnak replied, "Twist the blade."

And sure enough, when Varos plunged the knife and twisted it, a loud scream tore through the basement.

"Aaaaahhhh!"

Watching the casual way they tortured the man, Serati couldn’t help but shudder.

No matter how many times I see it, I’ll never get used to this.

It was true that Karnak had never interrogated a heretic in the traditional sense, since interrogation involved pressuring someone into voluntarily giving up information. But that didn’t mean torture wasn’t involved.

The necromancer, bloodied and broken, whimpered pitifully. "Ju-Just kill me already..."

Varos replied with feigned indifference, "I’d love to get this over with. Do you think I’m doing this for fun?"

While Karnak had successfully tricked Milia into leaving the basement, he still needed to maintain the appearance of an interrogation. In other words, he needed screams to reverberate for a while.

“Aaaaaahhh!”

Serati averted her gaze. She understood, at least in theory. This was simply karmic retribution. Considering the atrocities the man had inflicted on others, even this was a light punishment.

But is it really karma? Isn’t this just crushing evil with even greater evil?

Still, stopping Karnak felt equally complicated. Thanks to his methods, the cult was being eradicated swiftly, and countless innocent citizens of the kingdom who might have been sacrificed were being saved. The means might be wrong, but the results were undeniably good.

Right, they’re just getting what they deserve,

she told herself, forcing herself to accept the situation as she approached Karnak.

He was busily jotting down a plausible excuse for how he had managed to locate the heretics.

Curious, Serati asked, “What’s your explanation this time?”

Instead of replying, Karnak gestured toward a section of the document. Reading through it, she found something along the lines of this:

One of the heretics employed a forbidden ritual to gain greater dark power. This involved necromancy known as the Cursed Hand, a vile technique that uses a severed human hand, dried and infused with darkness, as a medium for curses. Luckily, we managed to acquire such a hand and, through magic, traced its origins back to the heretics’ base...

As she read, Serati raised an eyebrow.

“The Cursed Hand? That’s a thing?”

In response, Varos casually severed the right hand of the bound necromancer.

“Aaaaaaahhh!”

𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Blood spurted everywhere as the necromancer screamed in agony. Holding up the detached hand, Varos nonchalantly offered it to Karnak.

“Here you go, young master. One Cursed Hand.”

“Drain more blood out of it first. It’ll dry better that way.”

“Understood.”

Watching the process, Serati found herself nodding in agreement.

“Oh, that makes sense.”

And then she immediately felt a pang of despair.

Wait, why am I so unfazed by this kind of thing now?

Spending so much time with these inhuman individuals seemed to have eroded her own humanity. It was moments like these that underscored the importance of choosing one’s companions wisely. While Serati was lost in self-loathing, the necromancer eventually bled out and died.

Varos’s unbothered voice broke the silence. “Oh, he’s dead.”

“He screamed plenty before dying, right?”

“Yes, young master.”

“Good enough, then.”

The tone of Karnak’s voice was utterly indifferent. With the

pretend interrogation

over, it was time to move on to the main event. Standing before the corpse, Karnak summoned his necrotic power.

The dark energy that filled the basement was potent enough that any skilled priest would have been able to detect it. Karnak, however, was unconcerned. After all, the dying necromancer had already saturated the area with darkness during his final moments.

Since the Shadow of Doom was the origin of this energy, its properties were identical to Karnak’s own necrotic power. Unless someone witnessed the scene firsthand, no priest would be able to distinguish between the two.

“Well then, let’s extract some information.”

***

Karnak performed soul summoning to summon the fresh soul of the necromancer. With the soul bound and suppressed, he forced it to reveal everything it knew. For an average necromancer, such a task would be daunting. For Karnak, the former Monarch of Death, it was effortless.

“Tell me everything you know about the Cult of the Black God and the death god Tesranach.”

“I obey, O King of Death. May your will be fulfilled...”

The necromancer, who had resisted fiercely in life, was now nothing more than a compliant slave in death. He divulged every detail he knew. The problem was that none of it was useful.

The soul spoke with absolute sincerity, revealing everything it knew. But what it knew was useless drivel.

“What is Tesranach’s true nature?”

“A god of death and darkness, a destroyer and creator who will reshape the world and establish a new order.”

“I don’t want the propaganda. Tell me the truth that the Cult of the Black God knows.”

“A god of death and darkness, a destroyer and creator who will reshape the world and establish a new order.”

“Damn it, he genuinely believes this nonsense.”

The necromancers they had captured so far weren’t high-ranking members of the cult. None of them possessed any meaningful knowledge. Come to think of it, this wasn’t all that surprising.

If you captured a priest from the church of the seven goddesses and asked them similar questions, would their answers be any different? Human understanding of divine entities was limited at best. But this was assuming Tesranach was a legitimate god.

“A god who didn’t even exist before suddenly appears, and you don’t find that suspicious?”

“Death and darkness have existed since the dawn of time. How could a god suddenly come into being? Surely, he has always existed, and it was merely ignorant humans who failed to recognize him.”

“Oh, so that’s how they teach it?”

It was clear that only the lowest-level members of the cult were falling into their hands. No one seemed to know the truth about Tesranach.

“It looks like we’ll need someone higher up in the hierarchy to get real answers...”

Still, their captures weren’t entirely useless. Karnak had pieced together the organizational structure of the Cult of the Black God. The cult was led by three individuals at the top. Beneath them were six cardinals, followed by thirteen archbishops, and finally dozens of branch leaders who oversaw smaller cells in each region.

The captured necromancers had all been low-level operatives working under these branch leaders. The branch leaders themselves were so secretive that even the necromancers didn’t know their superiors’ identities or whereabouts.

Watching from the side, Varos commented, “We’ll need to catch at least a branch leader to get anything worthwhile.”

“Exactly. Only then can we start tracing up the chain of command.”

Karnak, looking displeased, dismissed the spell.

“This one’s useless too. Nothing nutritious.”

The necromancer’s soul dissipated, turning into a dark mist of death energy that flowed into Karnak. It bolstered his strength.

“Aaaaaahhh!”

The soul’s final, tormented scream echoed through the chamber, but none of them reacted—not Karnak, not Varos, not even Serati. They had witnessed this scene far too many times to care.

With a sigh, Karnak grumbled, “I even went so far as to join the King’s Order, and yet nothing’s working out.”

Varos nodded in agreement. “If only we could snag someone big, like an archbishop or a cardinal.”

Serati shook her head. “But that would mean a major incident, wouldn’t it? You can’t wish for that. It would come at the cost of countless innocent lives.”

Karnak and Varos both turned to her, their expressions filled with surprise.

“Oh, that’s an interesting perspective.”

“So, this is what it means to sound human, huh?”

“Good lesson learned.”

Serati stared at them, seemingly exasperated at the previous rulers of the world.

“Does this really need to be taught?”

Still, they weren’t wrong. Only a significant event would provide the opportunity to strike at the cult’s core. Karnak stroked his chin thoughtfully.

“I wonder if a big incident’s going to take place anytime soon.”

***

His wish came true. At the King’s Order headquarters, in Commander Erantel’s office, Karnak and the 7th Squad received a new mission.

“There are rumors of someone in the capital, Drunta, colluding with the Dark Cult. Your task is to investigate and, in the name of the goddess and the king, bring judgment upon them.”

Erantel’s tone was unusually hesitant. He was normally confident and commanding, but now his voice wavered.

Noticing this, Karnak asked pointedly, “And who exactly is the suspect?”

Erantel hesitated, his discomfort evident.

“Well, you see...”

Finally, he spoke, his voice heavy with reluctance.

“...It’s His Highness Alford Ludan Eustil, the second prince of the Eustil Kingdom.”