Chapter 19.4

Chapter 19.4

「Shall we make our next move?」

「I’ll allow it.」

Katrina permitted Barold. With the formality of Katrina’s permission granted, Barold moved on to the next phase.

「Let the symphony begin.」

With a crazed grin, Barold cast a spell at the crumbling coup in front of him. In an instant, the courtyard was engulfed in a cacophonous hellscape.

Some were engulfed in a pillar of fire, and others rotted away in an instant. Some were swallowed whole by a gaping mouth in the air, and others suddenly sunk into the ground as it turned into quicksand. Still, none of them died quickly from these calamities, but instead were driven to the point of madness from sheer agony.

Most of the rebelling soldiers were just a group of men who were conscripted by the lords without any explanation before finding themselves facing off against the official Knight’s Order in the castle’s courtyard. To keep face to their lords and commanders, they had been pretending to engage in combat after the first call to surrender, but their morale was non-existent. A second call for surrender would have been met with immediate compliance. Most of them believed that, if they would surrender, their crime would be non-significant since they were practically forced to be there without any awareness of their alliance.

Almost all of the soldiers that were just tortured to death belong to the category of unfortunate civilians. Did any of them deserve such a gruesome fate? No. Of course, there a few abusive lords in the coup, but the royal family’s strong policing over the last decade or so had prevented much abuse from prevailing. While a few of the soldiers there had played some small part in these unlawful practices, the vast majority of them were soldiers who simply protected their land from monsters and criminals.

So, in a just world, none of them would have met such a fate.

「W-What the?」

「What’s happening!?」

Even the knights were shocked by the sudden eruption of carnage. This battle wasn’t personal to any of them. With the exception of a few rebels that were wholeheartedly involved in the battle, the knights had never planned to kill the majority of the soldiers who were putting on a show. In fact, many of the rebel soldiers near the outer edges of the group had been disarmed after a few moments of combat, knocked out with a careful blow (as to not leave lasting injuries) before being dragged out of battle. Those were the lucky ones who escaped the nightmare that ensued.

「You may call us traitors, but is this what your knight’s code demands? A massacre!?」

One of the surviving rebels started shouting. The knights, brought back to reality from this, shouted back their retorts:

「What would we gain from killing you like this!?」

「If we wanted to massacre you all, we would have done it in a flash!」

「If that’s our endgame, explain why those fools lying over there are still breathing!」

Confronting the battleground’s force and rage, the knights continued roaring to defend their honor. The accusation that they would have used such a sadistic method to take down these weaklings was nothing short of an insult.

「There! Whoever you are, you got your wish. The rebellion is suppressed! Show yourself!」

The commander of the royal guards, who had been commanding the battalion in the courtyard shouted at the unseen foe, when the commander of the rebellion had surrendered.

「Of course it’s you…!」

「I made things easier for you… Why the long face?」

「Why should we kill them with such an abominable method when we can simply knock them out!?」

「How admirable. But the punishment for treason is death. Have they not earned any demise that may come their way?」

「Our laws will not execute soldiers who had no option to refuse!」

The commander of the Knight’s Order felt genuine rage against Barold’s self-centered interpretation of law. The commander of the rebellion chimed in:

「You were the one who sent us here in the first place! How could you slaughter your own men!?」

「My men? What nonsense is this?」

Barold replied with a genuinely startled expression. Although, one didn’t even need to pick up on the sinister giggle in his tone to see through his intentions.

「In any case, you are a criminal! No excuse will get you out of this one! Your head is mine!」

「Oh, how terrifying.」

Barold said, playing scared. The knights enraged at his attitude, and their anger was reaching a boiling point. When they had moved to attack, Barold said:

「I still have some tasks left to do. I shan’t be taken out under false pretenses. It seems I have no choice but to defend myself.」

And activated a spell. In an instant, dense affliction filled the courtyard, morphing the corpses and unconscious bodies of the rebels.

「What!?」

「I will make you pay for your mockery of human life!」

「Mockery? I’m just helping the helpless souls you’ve massacred take revenge… Against all living creatures, that is.」

Barold said with a grin, before summoning a dozen Cerberus before walking away in strides. What was left behind were revolting Undead monsters, rebels turned into half-Mutants through the forcefull morphing and ejection of their sanity, along with Cerberus (which spread the contamination of affliction by their mere presence) facing off against the Knight’s Order, gritting their teeth as they were forced to take care of the hellscape in front of them.

Hiroshi, again, was the first one to detect the problem.

「It don’t feel right.」

Layotte heard this mumble, and looked at Hiroshi with a stern expression.

「What’s wrong?」

「Not sure yet, but somethin’ don’t feel right.」

「I would ask you for details, but I suppose you can’t give any. What should we do?」

「Can’t be too sure yet, but anyone who’s supposed to be outta here better get movin’. We’re jumpin’ into battle any second, now.」

Hearing this, the King and Elena begin walking to the secret passageway after making sure they’ve packed the essentials. They didn’t seem to have a shred of doubt in Hiroshi’s assessment.

「Mio too.」

「Okay. Be careful, Sensei.」

「Right back at ya.」

As planned, Mio followed the evacuating royalty out. Their destination, like the Queen, was the workshop. Surprisingly, the defenses of the workshop surpassed that of Alfemina Temple. From the outside, the Azuma Workshop was a lonely building (rather old and large) surrounded by a fence. It’s defenses, however, had been bolstered to the point of deflecting any sieging weapons without a scratch, and it’s Magic Defense and Resistance were now on-par with Hiroshi’s. Even some Ultimate Spells would be canceled. Their workshop had been turned into a fort. They had even built in a system to purify poisons and curses before it could reach the ground, and to top it all off, those with malicious intent could not even step foot near the workshop because of a deterring barrier. By this world’s standards, the defenses of their workshop had been perfected by any stretch of imagination. Most would not even consider applying so many layers of defenses.

According to Hiroshi and Mio, this level of defenses were only possible because of the workshop was small enough. It wasn’t just its defenses that elevated the workshop to a fortress, though. The size of the storage room of the workshop, which had been expanded over and over again as they gathered ingredients, played a major part. All of the food supplies obtained through quests and harvesting trips, as well as all of Hiroshi’s passion projects (mostly spices) were plentiful enough to easily maintain a lock-down for two months, even if everyone in the Temple now had evacuated to the workshop. As long as a few members could slip away to bring in food once in a while, they could stay in that workshop until they have died of old age (barring an attack from something like an Elder Dragon).

Of course, this overkill of a defense system was the fruit of Hiroshi’s hobby-brain going haywire with some leftover materials. This wasn’t the initial intention, but as Hiroshi performed small renovations upon renovations during brisk breaks in his work, the workshop had seemed to lose its original purpose, morphed on the inside without any change to its appearance. It didn’t help that, instead of keeping him in check, Tatsuya and Makoto (who were secretly into these kinds of evil-hidden-layer contraptions) kept encouraging Hiroshi.

In that case, why weren’t they kept in the workshop from the beginning? In order to let Barold sense their presence in the Temple, anyone who could bait him were kept in the Temple as long as possible. It helped that everyone there (save for the servant girls) had some sort of combat training.

「Hm?」

Watching the royal member evacuate, Haruna noticed that one of the evacuees wasn’t moving at all. Oria, Elena’s right-hand-woman and head-servant, stood there with a hazy look, ignoring her mistress. Despite a nasty curdle in her gut, Haruna decided to approach Oria anyway.

「It could get dangerous here. Please hurry out.」

Turning to Haruna, Oria cracked a chilling grimace and stepped closer. A shiver ran down Haruna’s spine.

「That way, please!」

Suppressing her terror, Haruna insisted. Alarms were blaring in her head. Something wasn’t right. She considered knocking Oria out and having her carried away as she reached for her rapier, which she had practiced with enough to consider it an extension of her arm.

「No, Haruna-sama! Get away from her!」

Aearis yelled, jumping out of the Ritual Room. Reflexively, Haruna jerked away. Surprised by Aearis’ scream, the royal family turned around to see a shocking sight.

「Haruna-sama!?」

They all saw it. Although Haruna had jerked away, Oria was still inches away, now with a mad grin across her face, sticking a knife in Haruna’s side. The knife was oozing of nefarious aura.