258. The Method of Distinguishing Good and Evil (6)
The faint light of dawn crumbled and fell under the ashen sky.
Fernandez took a step forward and glared straight ahead.
He could feel the gaze. Sticky, overflowing with killing intent.
He didn’t bother with words like “Come out.” He wasn’t just a skilled swordsman. He was a practitioner of a school, no different from their distant senior.
At least when dealing with dark mages, demon summoners, and heretics, he had to show more than that.
Fernandez spun his sword and sheathed it, then walked calmly. Toward the direction where their killing intent flowed. As if enjoying this moment.
Whether they were hiding their presence with all their might, or had received some kind of power by serving Urkasia, he didn’t know.
But the killing intent was so stealthy that even Fernandez’s senses couldn’t clearly grasp it.
Urkasia’s forces were always like this.
The offspring of the Pest King. Vermin under the shadows. Like centipedes, cockroaches, or maggots. Hiding in dark corners without sound or form, waiting for the right moment… They were like insectivorous plants.
Annoying, but not threatening. Hiding their bodies meant they lacked the confidence to reveal themselves and fight.
Fernandez turned his body and moved in the direction where the killing intent grew thicker.
* * *
“He’s moving from Centum 12th Street to 18th Street.”
“Stupid fool. He’s walking right into his own grave.”
A man chuckled under the shadows. Beside him, another man who had been watching Fernandez from a distance also couldn’t hold back his amusement.
“Isn’t he quite the expert? At finding his own burial spot.”
“Bishop, what do you think that old man told him?”
“He was quiet for a while, but it seems he’s gone mad, maybe from taking the wrong medicine. At best, he’s probably trying to send a message outside.”
“Is that so? Must be.”
They couldn’t set foot directly into the holy district.
The church buildings gathered the surrounding faith and radiated a certain level of divinity. Some churches even preserved relics.
Since they relied on the power of Hell, such beings couldn’t easily step into the holy halls. Just as daywalkers among vampires could walk under the sun, unless they were exceptional individuals.
The Shield Parish had been holding Sunday masses for the past few weeks, but fiercely rejected all other entries, effectively sealing itself off.
There was no reason to deploy high-level personnel to monitor such a church, so the spies here were of a lower caliber.
But even such individuals retained their instincts. Instinctively, they didn’t approach Fernandez.
It was an action beyond logic or reason, something even they themselves didn’t realize.
Under normal circumstances, they would have immediately abducted him and sent him to the “lab,” but now they were just observing.
“He’s heading toward the Bern District.”
“……An outsider?”
The man, who had been lost in thought while retracing Fernandez’s path, couldn’t help but tilt his head.
The Bern District was a closed-off area due to a rampant plague.
Anyone who had lived in Paltennoia for even a week would never go there.
And during this time, near the Bern District, disappearances of vagrants and passersby were rampant. Rumors had started to spread that those infected with the plague were kidnapping people to eat them alive.
So, heading to such an area itself suggested he was an outsider, but……
“It seems like he knows what he’s doing.”
Fernandez’s path was too direct. He was walking the shortest route, as if he had a clear destination.
“What the hell? What’s going on?”
“What should we do?”
“What can we do? He’s walking to his death, so let’s just keep watching.”
Even if he’s a dead man walking, dying before extracting information would be unexpected, but…… Since it’s a matter of extermination, His Majesty probably won’t say much. He’s too busy anyway.
The man smirked.
* * *
-This is it.
Faijashi said quietly.
The area where the plague had broken out, as mentioned by the Archbishop of Shield, was nearby.
As expected, it wasn’t an ordinary plague. The moment they crossed the district’s boundary, a palpable hostility was felt.
Hot, humid air swirled, and a foul stench pierced their noses.
The air was toxic enough to make their skin tingle and eyes sting.
‘He said it was a cave.’
The bishop had said he was abducted to some cave, where he saw all his subordinates being subjected to biological experiments, plunging him into despair. But that was impossible.
If it were outside Paltennoia, such a place might exist somewhere, though hard to pinpoint. But it was hard to believe the Emperor would set up a workshop in a place exposed to outsiders, nor could he have abducted the bishop across districts for more than a day.
Therefore, the Emperor’s workshop was inside Paltennoia.
This was a natural deduction.
But caves or caverns. Such things couldn’t exist within this city.
This city had endured for over a thousand years.
Every district was densely planned and constructed, the city’s foundation was paved with solid bricks, and the city had built a vast underground waterway system the size of the city itself.
If they had done something in the underground waterways, unless the bishop was a fool, he wouldn’t have described it as a “cave.” Paltennoia’s underground waterways were superior to any other civilized city.
So, if he said it was a cave, it wasn’t underground. But it wasn’t outside the city either.
Then……
‘A recently closed-off district where the ground was forcibly dug out and concealed.’
In a city with a high population density and a large floating population, creating a secret base unnoticed was impossible. Except for one case.
-The plague. Ha. A good excuse.
‘There probably was a plague.’
Though Diemonica’s divinity blocked external stimuli, and Botan’s rune glyphs created a protective spell that shielded him completely, such a level of toxicity would make the presence of a plague seem natural.
But ordinary people would never come to this area.
If the toxicity was so dense that merely approaching it could make one lose their mind, then this place was undoubtedly the city’s most secret space.
-Click.
The sticky toxicity spread like a pale mist under the flickering magic lamps.
In the already dark night of Paltennoia, the old magic lamps and thick fog blocked their vision.
And beyond, the sound of weapons dragging on the ground echoed from the alley entrance. Along with the distinctive friction of chainmail.
‘Ordinary people would never approach this area.’
So, they weren’t ordinary people. Fernandez quietly drew his greatsword.
The moment he stepped into this area, the enemies would have noticed his presence. Even if they hadn’t, he already had a tail attached to him.
-Click, click.
The sound grew closer. A faint outline appeared under the fog.
The one who approached under the magic lamp was a soldier dressed in the distinctive armor of the Imperial Capital guards.
“This is a restricted area. Disarm and submit to inspection.”
“This is getting interesting.”
“This is a controlled area. Disarm and comply with the inspection.”
The jaw exposed under the helmet was as pale as wax. The pronunciation was accurate, and there was nothing strange about the movements. But no ordinary person would be walking around under this poisonous atmosphere with such simple protective gear full of holes.
“This is a controlled area. Disarm and comply with the inspection.”
-Click.
The number of soldiers was increasing. Two, three. No, just those whose presence could be felt immediately were already five. They were all muttering the same words as they approached.
Contrary to the words asking for compliance with the inspection, the soldiers drew their swords with expressionless faces.
The armor was clean, but the weapons were not. The blades, covered in rust and entangled with decayed blood and flesh, were revealed.
-Whoosh!
They almost simultaneously thrust their swords.
Fernandez pulled his body out of the blade’s range and bent his waist. The sound of the blade scraping through the air was loud.
-Swish!
Kicking off the ground and reversing his body, he swung the greatsword like lightning. The sword strike was so sharp that the soldier only hesitated for a moment. Soon, a diagonal slash followed, and blood splattered.
“This is a controlled…….”
-Clang!
One soldier collapsed just like that. But there was no time to stop.
Fernandez sensed the sword coming down on his back and twisted his body to the side, swinging the greatsword widely.
Greatsword techniques are fundamentally based on rotational force. The greatsword’s blade, drawing a large semicircle, tangled with the rusty sword and bounced outward, and like a snake, he slipped through the gap and struck the neck.
By the time the soldier’s head spun in the air, Fernandez’s sword was already attacking another soldier.
If anyone had seen it, it would have been considered almost perfect skill. A perfect counter where attack and defense were executed simultaneously in a single strike.
Only four swings of the sword were needed to bring down five soldiers.
‘They don’t defend.’
-Aren’t you asking for too much?
‘No.’
Fernandez shook off the blood clinging to the blade.
Even though they were robbed of their reason and used as puppets, the metallic smell of the living’s blood was present.
‘If they were puppets made by a vampire’s bite, they would have become ghouls. This isn’t the work of a vampire.’
-Well, such crude tricks are a dime a dozen. It’s hard to pinpoint. Especially for demons of the Urcasia lineage.
‘It feels like someone we know.’
-Huh.
Fernandez took a step back and looked at the fallen corpses. The blood gushing from the corpses’ bodies wriggled like worms and returned to their bodies.
Yellow-green bubbles burst within the blood. Poison seeped out from between them.
The blood, moving like maggots, clung to the corpses, and soon a twisted arm grabbed the rusty sword again.
“Gurgle. Gurgle. Croak.”
A corpse with its neck facing the opposite side staggered to its feet. The sound of bones crushing continued to be heard.
Five corpses slowly began to rise.
They were no longer in human form.
Arms twisted, faces attached below severed stomachs. They were nothing but lumps of flesh that would have terrified any ordinary person into fleeing just by looking at them.
But to Fernandez, it was a familiar sight. In their grotesque, inconsistent forms, he felt a kind of common malice.
A malicious mockery.
-They must smell like the living. Good thing I don’t have a nose.
‘How enviable. And this isn’t the smell of the living.’
Diomonica’s unique hearing detected the dull heartbeat coming from inside their bodies. The heartbeat and blood flow within their bodies were clearly audible.
These guys are alive.
Depending on where you set the standard for ‘being alive,’ perspectives may differ, but at least these soldiers’ organic characteristics were still maintained.
‘It’s not the smell of the living, but the smell of those who cannot die.’
-Lord Nuhariphix of the flies…….
The right hand of Urcasia. A duke-level demon and a powerful being with one foot in the realm of quasi-deity.
It was a deed that carried his unique cruel heat.
In his previous life, Nuhariphix, the vanguard of Urcasia, never killed or ate the prisoners from the fortresses he conquered.
He used his prisoners as hosts to breed maggots and cultivate demons, or tore them apart alive, stuffed their souls, and sewed their bodies back together to make them move.
Before efficiency, it was merely a game. He was a monster who took pleasure in seeing humans begging for their lives scream for him to kill them instead.
And he was highly academic about where the line was that would stop human functionality. If it’s his doing, it roughly fits.
[Oh God……. I wish it wasn’t so. That…… must have been human.]
What kind of scene had the bishop witnessed? It was easy to imagine, and thus even more disgusting.
Conducting all sorts of experiments on human bodies…… is on a different level from a mage performing animal experiments out of necessity.
It is an experiment made purely of malice. Dissecting nerves for display, cutting them one by one while tuning the disappearing sensations, and casting spells to ensure the subject remains aware of everything yet unable to go mad—such acts are mere simple amusements for him.
Having seen such scenes. Even seeing his own subordinates treated like that, the bishop’s madness was rather deserving of sympathy.
Fernandez looked at the approaching soldiers.
A murky fluid was seeping from their dull eyes. He considered it tears.
Tears from soldiers who, even in that state, still retained their reason.
“May the Temple of the Gods grant protection.”
The greatsword rose as if to pierce the sky. In that stance, with eyes closed for a moment. As if in prayer.
“May they find peace.”
-Crash!
The obsidian greatsword reflected the magical light, drawing a black trajectory.
A fierce strike as if carving through space itself! The bodies within the trajectory were reduced to nothing more than chunks of flesh, scattering—
-Whoosh!
Simultaneously, his right hand touched a rune. Before the flesh hit the ground, it was engulfed in black flames and crumbled away.
For a moment, the flames spread in a circle around him, then subsided, scattering black ash.
A perfect incineration to ensure they could never rise again. Fernandez, with a black halo floating behind his head, drove the blade into the ground.
A gaze, hostility, and killing intent could be felt.
From somewhere deep within the alley beyond the fog. Directed at him.
“By the judicial authority of the Inquisition, the authority to execute heretics on the spot, the authority to command exorcism troops, and the authority to act as a proxy for the Church’s sacraments. I will conduct a heresy trial under the authority granted by the Temple of the Gods.”
The magical knot entangled in the rune dispersed. The black halo crumbled as if scattering. Releasing the hilt of the greatsword embedded in the ground, his left hand reached for another rune.
This time, it wasn’t a halo. It was Botan’s Rune Glyph.
Some of the seventy-three symbols densely embedded in his back burned and fell away.
Magic is a discipline dealing with mysteries, and mysteries derive authority from older histories.
Before Sadarkelisa became a demon, during the mythical era when the Celestial War had to be ‘predicted.’ The god once called the king of mages in those days. Botan’s spells, by their very existence, are powerful protections and possess the characteristics of mighty exorcism spells.
One of them, the Rune Glyph depicting wings and a gallows, burned brightly and attached to his left shoulder.
Völsung Örn. The Blood Eagle. A rune symbolizing vengeance and punishment.
To put it more bluntly, in terms of modern material civilization, it’s a ‘guillotine.’
“The accused has no right to defense, so pray.”
Executing the sentence. Fernandez whispered thus and raised his sword. He took a step forward and walked straight into the fog beyond.
From the shadows, a tearing laughter echoed like an auditory hallucination.
Of course, it’s a common occurrence.
Chapter 260
![[TS] Obsessed Gamer: The Ultimate Return](https://i3.wp.com/novelhitam.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/TS-Obsessed-Gamer-The-Ultimate-Return2.png?resize=85,105 "[TS] Obsessed Gamer: The Ultimate Return")
