Instinctive Fear.

It’s coming.

An unintentional swear word had been uttered, and now the priest was running, aiming precisely for him. Velkir shouted, every nerve in his body twitching.

“I’ll take care of that priest for now, you clean up the rest of the mess and help me!”

There was no answer, of course. Belkir calmly pulled back an arrow and fired, aiming for the priest’s body. He needed to inflict some damage before he could engage him up close.

With two arrows in his body, the priest calmly swung his sword to block the arrows.

Velkir knew it wouldn’t be that easy to stall.

“F*ck.”

Muttering a low curse, Belkir drew his longsword from his belt. Made of frost steel, a specialty of the Northern Kingdoms, the sword was the most valuable item he had taken with him when he escaped.

Boom!

The first collision was heavy. You’d think it was a human sword. But Belkir was no ordinary man.

If he were an ordinary man, he would have been captured long before the Rangers of the Northern Kingdoms had a chance to pursue him, and he would be lying on the cold floor of a prison cell.

He was a man who had long been labeled a genius.

Sparks flew as sword met sword. He deflected as much as he could. The good news was that his opponent wasn’t nearly as skilled with a sword as he was physically.

Belkir’s judgment was correct.

It had been less than three years since Marnak had been properly trained in swordsmanship. As a priest of corruption by profession, he naturally had to learn from the ground up, without any compensation.

“Time flies.

Marnak bit his lip. His opponent was too good for a rogue. He muttered a small curse at the game’s shitty balancing, then shouted out loud.

“How many!”

Belkir couldn’t understand the priest in front of him at all. Swords clashed, and suddenly, how many?

Swords clashed and sparks flew again.

“What nonsense!”

Marnak didn’t answer. He hadn’t asked Belkir in the first place. The skinny hand in his arms spread out two fingers and a half.

Two and a half fingers.

Two and a half fingers, the same number of fingers as the most skilled of the rangers who had followed Marnak’s escape. A rogue, a ranger’s equal. Aren’t rogues supposed to be low-level hobgoblins? Marnak grumbled to himself as he turned and charged.

Even at the cost of a few losses, he would cut this rogue down.

Stalling here would put him at a disadvantage. Unless you had divinity, you wouldn’t die, but that didn’t mean you wouldn’t be incapacitated. If you had a limb chopped off, you were pretty much screwed. That didn’t mean there was no way around it.

Belkir could tell by his keen eyes that the priest had made up his mind about something.

But that was okay. He had a target, and he was ready.

Marnak closed the distance in an instant and swung his sword as hard as he could, keeping the gap as wide as possible.

“Ha!”

My bones are whole bones that stick back together, so I give him my bones and take his flesh. This was Marnak’s strategy.

Belkir didn’t try to exploit Marnak’s weaknesses; he just calmly parried Marnak’s sword. But the result was different.

The halved blade flew through the air and stuck in the snow.

“Hahahaha, this is why I wear frost steel!”

This was why Belkir had been so relentlessly attacking Marnak’s sword hilt earlier. How could a sword made of such cheap iron stand a chance against a sword forged from frost steel by a master craftsman?

Marnak grunted as he was pushed back from the temptation.

“Hmph. A difference in equipment.”

Belkir pointed the tip of his blade at the priest.

“You don’t seem to have anything, anyway, which is why I’m letting you go. We’ll be leaving the area after this one, so why don’t we just smile at each other and part ways?”

To be honest, I wasn’t sure I could keep up with the priest if he ran off without looking back. Marnak smirked at Belkir’s polite suggestion.

“I’ll suggest the opposite: quit doing banditry and leave now, and I’ll make a special exception for you this time.”

“Are you serious, do you really think we’ll just say ‘yes!’ and leave when you tell us to?”

“That’s not—.”

Poof.

A flying arrow pierced Marnak’s head. The clean hit made Belkir grin like a dog.

“You’re too late, you bastards, I thought I was going to die!”

The man who had shot the arrow chuckled.

“Don’t be so hard on me. I saw the captain cut that priest’s sword in half with a single stroke.”

“Dude. That wasn’t a single stroke. It was all calculated, and he cut it in two.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re the best.”

“I’m not the first to say that. Did you kill them all, by the way?”

“Yes. I killed them all, not a single one left.”

“Did you really kill them all?”

Marnak asked mournfully as he pulled the arrow out of his head.

The faces of Belkir and his men hardened as they watched the bodies that should have been dead rise.

“Why are you all so surprised, as if you’ve never seen a man alive with an arrow in his head?”

Belkir wanted to scream, “Because I’ve never seen one before!” Marnak spoke again, this time slowly.

“Slowly, I want you to answer my question. Did you really kill them all?”

The priest’s face was as calm as ever as he asked the question. Belkir swallowed hard and answered.

“Yes, sir. Priest, since your people are dead, why don’t we just go our separate ways? Huh?”

“I already gave you a chance to go your separate ways, and you responded by giving me an arrow to the head.”

Marnak knelt down on one knee in the snow and slowly brought his hands together.

“Mother of Corruption, your son is in trouble, and I am so bewildered and frightened that I don’t know what to do. Doesn’t it occur to you that if you’ve been watching this whole time, this might be a moment for you to lend a hand?”

A prayer mumbled as it came. If the other priests had seen the playfulness of the prayer, they would have called it blasphemy.

But power is only as powerful as the one who wishes it and the one who accepts it.

Marnak had asked, and the Mother of Corruption had answered.

Marnak’s eyes opened slowly, a dark green glint in them. Belkir realized something was wrong.

“Hey! Shoot him! Shoot him! Don’t just stand there and watch, you bastards!”

Marnak was immediately turned into a hedgehog by the flying arrows. At the same time, a green light blazed through the earth, forming a giant circle and enveloping them.

With a quick glance, Belkir gave the order best suited to the situation.

“Hey, we’re retreating! Run, you bastards!”

The bandits scrambled across the snow and soon ran into an invisible wall.

“Jee, we can’t get past it, boss! There’s an invisible wall!”

“I know, as*h*les!”

Standing in their way was ‘The Line No Living Man Can Cross’, a basic skill that Priests of Corruption learn when they switch classes.

It was a skill that Priests of Corruption had to learn before they could unleash their powers, and it served to keep their living enemies from escaping and to hide their divinity.

The hedgehog-turned-Marnak’s mouth opened slowly.

“You want to cross that boundary. You must kill me, or break my heart. Or you can just kill yourselves.”

Belkir gritted his teeth and drew his sword, shouting.

“Hey! Everybody draw your swords! Even the most monstrous creatures will die if I chop them to pieces! Isn’t that right!”

“That’s right!”

“That’s right, the arrows have small holes, so they might live, but if we chop them up like the captain said, they’ll die!”

With unfounded confidence, the bandits drew their swords in unison.

Marnak pulled the arrows out of his body one by one and said nonchalantly.

“It won’t be me against you guys, it will be the one who is coming now.”

“What does that mean—.”

Thud!

The air was torn apart and a giant creature fell.

Four gigantic arms. A head with only a mouth for a face. The upper half of a muscular man with a gaping belly was embedded in the dark green giant’s belly.

The giant slowly decayed from the inside out, sprouting new flesh.

Finally, the giant’s two mouths opened and it let out a monstrous roar.

– Aaaaahhhhhhh!

The first power that Marnak had gained from his first holy object, a sacrifice of ten thousand divine.

The Giant of Corruption had answered his mother’s call and descended to earth.

As he pulled the last arrow from his head, Marnak said.

“The rest is yours to do as you please, except for the head.”

– That ah ah ah ah ah ah!

A roar that rattled the brain. The giant’s roar seemed to force everything deep inside a man. Belkir’s instincts screamed for help.

“Shit, shit—.”

Kwazik.

That was the last word Belkir uttered before he was crushed by the titan of decay.

“Aaaahhhh!”

“Help me, priest, please help me!”

Crunching flesh and tearing screams. Marnak watched the carnage unleashed by the Giant of Corruption with a calm face. Slowly, he patted his mother’s hand in his breast pocket and smirked.

“This is the first time I’ve summoned my giant friend in person, and he’s quite the sight to behold. I’m quite fond of this power. Mother.”

***.

– That ah ah ah ah ah ah!

The giant of corruption roared in farewell, then vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

“Murder!

“Yes. This time, I really did kill all the enemies as Mother wished. All of my men are dead.”

I charged forward, but failed to save anyone.

I pushed the bodies of my men into a corner and picked through them one by one to retrieve their mercenary plaques.

“‘Murder!”

“You want me to retrieve divinity from a corpse right now? I can’t do that. Mother. If I retrieve the divinity, won’t the corpse decay and disappear? Then the mercenary guilds that will come to investigate the scene later will surely find the current situation strange. As Mother knows, it’s time for me to restrain myself.”

“Murder!

“I’ve heard what you said about just absorbing all the divinity and turning them into powder and then moving on to another city, but this son dares to disagree with his mother.”

“Murder—?

“Look there.”

In the place I pointed to were the heads of the bandits, finely collected by the giant of corruption.

“Those are the heads of twenty-nine silver coins. I know exactly what I’ve been walking this snowy road for. Mother, eh?!”

I was about to retrieve the mercenary plaque from Pierre’s chest when his chest moved very slowly. Pierre’s cub-like body barely held his breath as he lost consciousness.

I grinned.

“At least you saved one, Mother.”

“‘Murder’!”

“Anyway, let’s make it easy for you on your way out. I’m going to take this cub-bear back to Guise, and I’m going to keep him alive, and that will do much for my reputation, so come on, help me. Mother.”

At the end of the short prayer, a spell was cast over Pierre’s body that prevented the wound from worsening.

I picked him up with one hand and slowly walked away, holding a bundle of twenty-nine silver coins in my other hand.

“Murder!!!

The Mother of Corruption shouted urgently.

“Ah, right. I guess I shouldn’t be without a mother after all. I almost forgot.”

I picked up a sword lying on the ground and sheathed it at my waist.

The frost steel sword the dead bandit leader had boasted so much about earlier.

“Thanks to your mother, you have enough money to buy a sword. I’ll give you a hand massage when I get back.”

“Murder…!”`