387. Omen (6)
Virgilio is a seasoned Heretica.
While on an expedition to investigate heresy, he belatedly received news of the monastery’s destruction.
A seasoned Heretica doesn’t have many choices in unfamiliar territories where friend and foe are hard to distinguish. He decided to lay low. There was an old protocol for responding to the destruction of the main office, but he couldn’t be sure if that line of communication was still active.
Regardless, this veteran Heretica didn’t stop his operations. Even in a state of isolation with the main office destroyed and no support expected, he continued his heresy purification duties.
As a result, he was now being treated to drinks and meat at the village hall in his operation area.
“Hmm…”
Virgilio couldn’t figure out how he ended up in this situation. Even with his sharp mind, the flow of events was hard to grasp.
He had never leaked the information that he was an Inquisition Officer. It was only natural. If the main office was destroyed, it meant there was a large organization or nation hostile to Inquisition Officers, so revealing his identity was out of the question.
So, these people thought of him as a wandering mercenary. A wandering mercenary who saved the village.
“Adventurer! How about this? Does it suit your taste?”
“Ah… Yes. Thank you.”
“Try this too!”
“Uh… Yes.”
He was an investigator dispatched after reports of continuous disappearances and black leeches suddenly swarming in the clear river. While tracking the river’s upstream, he had detected heretical circumstances.
A witch had set up a nest in a hill outside the village, kidnapping people to conduct experiments for alchemy training. Since it wasn’t a demon incident, Virgilio successfully tracked down and struck the witch.
[Witch! As punishment for your crimes, the Temple of the Gods sentences you to death!!]
[Wait, wait!! I, I’m innocent…!]
The verdict was swift, and the execution was sharp. The Saintmetal Greatsword beheaded the witch, and all the potions and experimental tools were destroyed. The problem was the survivors; alchemy was a relatively low-risk heresy, so they weren’t subject to judgment.
[Savior!!]
[Savior!!!]
With the survivors in tow, he descended the mountain, only to be swarmed by villagers at the village entrance, who embraced him and dragged him to the village hall.
When he came to his senses, a feast was laid out. Virgilio awkwardly smiled and accepted the meat offered to him.
The meat was thick and roughly cut, grilled with wild vegetables, and had a strong gamey smell. The texture was quite different from typical beef or pork. He swallowed the chewy meat and wiped his mouth.
“The meat is quite unique?”
“Ah, yes. But try this too!”
The village woman, with a strange expression, kept offering various dishes. Perhaps it was the seasoned Heretica’s instinct. Virgilio accepted the food without showing any emotion and quickly rinsed his mouth.
In the Heretica’s training, there’s a part about the taste of toxins. Nerve toxins make the tongue tingle upon ingestion, biological toxins taste sour, and alchemical toxins can have a faint almond flavor. Dozens of toxins were systematically cataloged in his mind.
But contrary to his tension, the food offered by the woman was just a thin stew. Was he being too sensitive? Virgilio tilted his head and chewed the meat.
The muscle fibers snapped as he chewed. An unfamiliar texture and gamey smell. Was it just poorly managed meat? He couldn’t tell.
‘Always be suspicious.’
The sentence engraved in the heart of the Religiosa Heretica’s sanctuary flashed through his mind. Virgilio chewed the meat carefully and frowned.
Fragmented information pieced together like a puzzle in the seasoned Heretica’s mind. He subtly glanced around, showing no emotion, and drank some water.
One, this village is an ordinary farming community.
Two, it’s one of the villages devastated by the recent Phaeirn-Dane war, and it’s still poor as reconstruction has just begun.
Three, the witch on the outskirts had no signs of cults or heresy. She was executed solely for human experimentation.
Four, the meat available in this village largely falls into three categories: livestock like dogs, cows, and pigs; poultry like chickens and pheasants; and fish from the nearby river.
Five, the meat on this table has coarse muscle fibers and isn’t small. It’s gamey and tough, indicating a land animal…
Having reached that conclusion, Virgilio set his cup down on the table. He slowly reached into his sleeve and grasped his rosary.
A deep sigh and a wave of disgust rose within him. He felt like vomiting everything that had gone down his throat. Reaching for the greatsword beside the table, he spoke.
“Confess your sins before Lord Vaitas.”
“…What?”
The villagers froze in confusion. They appeared to be simple, honest, and humble farmers, the kind you’d see anywhere.
Evil often moves under the guise of kind neighbors. Following the teachings of the Inquisition Office, Virgilio drew his greatsword and slowly placed it on the table.
A cold gleam scattered chaotically. The villagers, intimidated by the sharp threat, stepped back in fear.
“What is this… What… Why, why are you doing this, adventurer!”
“Ahhh!”
The villagers shouted and hesitated. The young men, clearly frightened, hastily looked around and picked up whatever they could find, like sticks.
Seeing this, the village chief quickly gestured. He knew that a single wrong move could lead to real bloodshed. A mercenary trained in martial arts could slaughter dozens of villagers with just one greatsword.
“Let’s… let’s talk. If there was something lacking in our hospitality… or if you want compensation…”
“I am the Inquisition Officer of St. Bartholomew Monastery.”
“Do not dare to think that you can bribe me with worldly riches and glory. This meat on the table… is it human flesh?”
“Yes…?”
Realizing that things were taking a strange turn, the village chief stiffened. This only added to the suspicion. Vergilio, suppressing his disgust, raised his sword high. No matter how hungry one might be, cooking human flesh and serving it to travelers was an unforgivable evil, not a matter of survival.
At that moment, the village chief hastily spoke up.
“Oh, oh, it’s a misunderstanding!! That’s beef!”
“Do you think I’m that foolish?”
“It, it is a cow! That… that is…!”
The villagers exchanged uneasy glances, hesitating. As Vergilio’s blade gleamed, the village chief turned pale and prostrated himself on the ground.
“It is a cow!! Please, spare me, Priest!! It’s a cow, but recently its condition has been a bit strange… It’s a cow!”
“This is not the meat of a sick animal. The structure of the meat itself is from a different kind of beast. Do you truly call this a cow?”
Perhaps the villagers referred to travelers as cows and slaughtered them. Vergilio, trembling at the horror, prepared to execute them, raising his blade.
The village chief suddenly stood up and desperately shouted.
“See for yourself! If you see it, Priest, you’ll understand easily! Recently, the animals have been acting strange, and when we looked into it, we found that the witch from the back mountain had been spreading strange drugs! Now that the witch is dead, the livestock will return to normal… We couldn’t afford to lose our livestock in these hard times… So we chose the healthiest one to slaughter…!”
The village chief rambled on incoherently.
Vergilio lowered his blade slightly and stared at him. This was a situation where he might have to massacre the entire village, so he couldn’t make a hasty decision.
He decided to inspect the condition of the cow as the chief suggested. Since the chief offered to show him the evidence, there was a chance he might uncover traces of a larger heretical organization, so he couldn’t refuse.
And so, Vergilio found himself being led to the barn at the edge of the village.
* * *
The barn was set up like a strict detention facility. Thick wooden planks were placed by the door to lock it at any moment, and the stench of blood was so strong it could be felt even from outside the barn.
Vergilio’s eyes sharpened at the sight.
The suspicions were growing more concrete. If the door opened and the truth was revealed, he wouldn’t hesitate for a second to behead the village chief standing beside him.
The creatures inside seemed to sense their presence. Soon, a tearing scream and muttering sounds erupted from within the barn.
“Grrr… Grrr…!”
“Over and over, over and over…!”
“Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle!”
It was a horrifying scream that evoked physiological disgust.
Vergilio tightened his grip on the sword hilt and glared at the village chief. The chief, pale and trembling, hesitated.
“The livestock… they’ve been acting strange…!”
The chief’s gaze was fixed on the inside of the barn.
Normally, those who fear an Inquisition Officer in front of them would look at the weapons in their hands or the rosary around their neck, revealing their fear.
But this man was afraid of what was inside the barn. Vergilio clicked his tongue briefly and roughly kicked the barn door open.
“Grr… Grrr…!”
“Grrr…!”
The stench of rotten blood wafted out with a hot gust of wind. Feces, corpses, and rotten feed mixed with the stench of animals, boiling over.
The late afternoon sunlight illuminated the inside of the barn.
There were beasts there. Not livestock, but ‘beasts’…
“Lord…!”
Vergilio’s hand gripping the sword hilt went numb. The beasts inside the barn twisted their heads and stared at him.
Pigs, cows, perhaps dogs… The kind of animals commonly seen in rural areas. Their eyes were bloodshot, their skin swollen and red, rubbing against the floor and walls.
Some stood on two legs, others buried their heads in corpses, greedily chewing, some had multiple legs wriggling, and some had two heads biting each other.
Beasts in the form of livestock muttered in human language, screamed, laughed, cried, and tangled together. Still recognizable in their original forms, but grotesque and misshapen.
What kind of demonic creation was this? Was it the work of the witch he had killed today? He knew of heretics who conducted such chimera experiments, but there were no tools here for such advanced experiments.
“These things started appearing a few days ago. We… we thought it was the witch’s doing… That witch was originally an herbalist who settled in this village…!”
Vergilio chewed his lip as he looked at the beasts in the pen.
The seasoned Inquisition Officer’s instincts were tingling. It could be called a premonition or intuition.
Some kind of incomprehensible heresy was at work. Not these ignorant villagers, but something more secretive and malicious.
When Vergilio burned the village and left to contact other Inquisition Officers, he realized that the events he had experienced were happening in almost every region at the same time.
The signs were starting from the southern edge of the Eastern Union, in the rugged southern wastelands.
* * *
“These things… did you create them?”
[It wasn’t us… Master. Other creatures have intervened. What shall we do?]
“This wasn’t part of my plan.”
Fernandez, who had been manipulating the heretical situation, muttered in confusion as he cut off the head of a pig with limbs.
“Why are these things appearing now…?”
—————————
And who is like the beast, and who is able to wage war with it?
And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months.
It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, to blaspheme his name and his dwelling place, and those who dwell in heaven.
Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation.
And all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.
Rev 13:4-8
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