The moment Serati saw Beltia Crotium, she was inwardly taken aback. That woman is really a martial king?

Her appearance was utterly unremarkable. She was neither beautiful nor unattractive.

Well, it's not like skill is decided by looks, so that in itself isn’t strange... but something feels off about her...

Even her attire didn’t suit someone preparing for battle. She wore no armor. Just a cheap blouse and a worn skirt. If not for the iron sword cradled in her arms, one might mistake her for a farmer’s wife.

And there’s no presence at all.

No matter how she looked, Beltia appeared to be nothing more than an ordinary person who had never awakened aura. Serati even started wondering if she might be mistaking her for someone else. It reminded her of how she felt when she first met Leven.

But Leven’s impression seemed to be quite the opposite. "She’s terrifying..."

"What is?" Serati asked him.

"That it’s even possible... what she’s doing," he answered.

"Huh?"

Unlike Serati, Leven understood Beltia’s true nature.

How can she control her aura so perfectly?

That alone proved she was wielding her power with zero waste. Her mastery over aura was so complete that not even a hint of it leaked outside. Leven didn’t even need to question if she was mistaken. Though nothing could be seen or sensed, there was no doubt that it was there.

I can see that she’s there...

She was without question on par with Leven’s father, Gellard.

Desteran suddenly clicked his tongue. "This is unbelievable, Beltia..."

Though he’d been hunted by the Dark God’s cult for some time, this was the first he’d learned that Beltia was their Holy Sword.

He glared at her in disbelief. "You’re a martial king, and yet you’ve fallen into a cult?"

Karnak’s group all had oddly complicated expressions.

Uhh...

You’re one to talk...

You’re in a cult too, remember?

It was hard to say who was in any position to judge. Of course, from Desteran’s perspective, the Twilight Cult was the one and only truth. Everything else was heresy, so none of this struck him as strange.

Beltia opened her mouth. "Titles like martial king are mere worldly illusions."

Her cold voice carried through the darkness. It felt detached to the point of lifelessness. "I am now the honourable sword chosen by Tesranach."

From their exchange, it was clear they were familiar with each other.

Leven whispered curiously, "You know her?"

Desteran gave a wry smile. "We clashed once before. I nearly died."

"How did that happen?" Leven asked.

Beltia answered in his place. "Murder. Arson. Smuggling. Human trafficking."

The list spilled out. It basically included everything society deemed criminal and immoral. Given Desteran’s background, none of it was terribly surprising.

Serati and Leven muttered under their breath.

"Well, he is the head of Search Black..."

"Even if it’s the subordinates committing crimes, the leader should bear responsibility."

Or so they thought, until Beltia clarified. "Those were all acts he committed personally."

It bore repeating: this was the man who would eventually get along perfectly with Karnak.

How could he not be a first-rate piece of human garbage?

Even Desteran himself didn’t deny it. "Yes, the man I once was was certainly evil. But after meeting Lady Serakal, I was reborn!"

Karnak’s group stared at him with increasingly ambiguous expressions.

He really doesn’t seem that different from before...

Isn’t this just a more elaborate way of justifying himself?

Still, no one said anything aloud. He was an ally now, and there was no point in dampening morale. Beltia, for her part, didn’t seem particularly interested.

She turned away from Desteran and looked toward the magical array. "Looks like Master Diogres hasn’t fully regained his power yet."

Startled, Diogres looked up. "You’re not a mage, and yet you understand the purpose of this array?"

"As if." Beltia let out a faint chuckle. "But surely, it doesn’t take magical insight to guess what you desire most right now."

She had a point. If an archmage with sealed magic was laying out an enormous magic array and preparing something, the purpose was rather obvious.

"R-Right." Diogres forced himself to maintain a calm expression. "Of course, the seal hasn’t been fully lifted yet. But I’m close."

He broke into a cold sweat and smiled awkwardly. "Once my magic is restored, it’ll be too late to undo things. Wouldn’t it be better to resolve this peacefully while we still can?"

Serati and Leven sighed internally.

—Ugh, he’s terrible at bluffing...

—I guess exaggeration is a skill honed through practice.

He was threatening her, but his eyes wavered, his voice lacked confidence, and he kept glancing away. Varos, as if realizing something, muttered.

—So that’s what honest people look like when they’re lying.

But oddly enough, Beltia’s reaction was different. "As expected of an archmage. You’ve nearly undone the seal already?"

She genuinely believed him.

Wait, really?

She bought that?

Seriously?

To be fair, Diogres’s demeanor hadn’t been blatantly suspicious. He was an archmage, after all, with age and experience. Who’d expect someone like that to be so clumsy? Honestly, it was just that the group had spent way too much time around Karnak and grown overly attuned to fraud and deception. 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

Regardless, whether Beltia believed him or not didn’t change the situation. "It doesn’t matter. Whether you’ve regained your power or not, what I must do remains the same."

She carried a sacred mission bestowed upon her by the great God of Death.

Still with her arms crossed, she muttered, "Go now, faithful of the Black God."

Then, narrowing her sharp gaze, she stared directly at Karnak’s group. "I will handle them."

The necromancers began spreading around the perimeter of the barrier. A somber female voice echoed through the darkness. "Break their hope."

***

A black aura rose from the cultists of the Black God.

"Beasts of barren, starving despair..."

"Follow the sacred blade of death and open the gates of hell..."

"By the edict of the inverted heavens, rise upon this land!"

Cracks split open across the earth as crimson-black light surged upward, and from within the light, grotesque monsters began to emerge. They walked on two legs like humans, but that was as close as they were to humans.

Where their heads should be were funnel-shaped masses without eyes, noses, or mouths. Their skin was blistered and scaly, and their backs were lined with jagged black spines like a porcupine’s. There were dozens of such demons.

Karnak clicked his tongue. "They can actually summon those? No wonder they’re the cult’s elite."

They were the Wiq-Tekka, which were considered among the strongest war demons even in Tartarus. Even by Karnak’s standards, they were formidable. Dozens of demons charged with crimson-stained blades and axes in hand.

The demons swung their weapons through the air while letting out hellish cries no human could comprehend. Waves of black magic crashed against the barrier from all sides.

Diogres grimaced. "D-Damn them!"

The demons weren’t targeting him or Karnak’s group. They were aiming solely to destroy the barrier.

"Well, I suppose that’s the smarter move," Karnak said casually, raising his hands. "Not that it’ll help them."

Their necromancy was undeniably powerful. It was an intricate and refined art of the highest order. But that only served to make Karnak grin wider. "Complicated and precise magic... just the kind I love to twist apart."

A storm of chaos mana erupted from his body. "Redeemer of Necromancy!"

Five chains of radiant light lashed out and coiled around the necks of the leading demons. The five demons flailed for a moment, then suddenly turned and began attacking their own kind.

The freshly summoned Wiq-Tekka began tearing into one another. The necromancers of the Black God's Cult ground their teeth at the sight.

"Damn it, is he using that spell too?"

"Curse that Redeemer of Necromancy..."

Lately, more and more mages across the continent had begun wielding that same magic. And the Black God's Cult was taking real losses because of it. It was threatening enough to push them to search desperately for a countermeasure.

And eventually, they had found one. It wasn’t elegant, but it worked.

"Beasts of withered, starving sorrow..."

"Follow the sacred blade of death and open the gates of hell..."

"By the command of the inverted heavens, rise upon this land!"

The necromancers summoned another horde of Wiq-Tekka. Dozens of demons surged forward and swarmed the five who had turned rogue. Even demons couldn’t endure a mob. The mind-controlled ones were quickly reduced to chunks of red meat.

One necromancer turned to Karnak, grinning smugly. "Hehe, that’s the weakness of your spell."

Redeemer of Necromancy allowed the caster to dominate all darkness. Of course, it had to be within the limits of what they permitted. There was yet a clear method of breaking that domination. But there was a weakness to the spell. The keyword was limit.

"If we summon more demons than you can take control of, that’s the end of it!"

In the end, it was a numbers game. That was the countermeasure the Black God's Cult had arrived at.

"Well, it’s not wrong, I guess..." Karnak clicked his tongue as he looked at the demons filling the battlefield. "But seriously. This is your big solution? Isn’t it kind of embarrassing? You’re just saying you’ll brute-force what you can’t beat with skill."

Apparently, they weren’t embarrassed at all. Not one of them showed the slightest shame as they proudly ordered the demons forward.

"Go! Demons of Tartarus!"

With a roar, the Wiq-Tekka surged again, charging toward the barrier.

Leven quickly swung his aura blade to intercept. "You’re not going any farther!"

Serati and Lapicel sprang into action beside him.

"Lapicel! That side!"

"Got it!"

The three aura users planted themselves in front of the barrier and engaged the demonic horde. Black magic clashed with aura blades, echoing with thunderous explosions. The ground split and the air trembled.

In the midst of the chaos, Karnak raised his hands once more.

"An eye for an eye." He grinned and drew upon his chaos mana. "Overwhelm their numbers with numbers."

He activated Redeemer of Necromancy once again, and blinding light engulfed the oncoming wave of over a hundred demons. Chains of light coiled around every single one of their throats.

"What?" The necromancers froze.

They couldn’t believe their eyes. But it was real. All of them, every single one, over a hundred demons had fallen under Karnak’s domination.

"Impossible!"

"He took control of all of them?!"

Even the most powerful mages could only control five or six demons at most with the Redeemer of Necromancy. Not even Elezar herself had ever reversed the will of this many. There was only one person on the entire continent who could do something this insane. And at last, the cultists realized why the young mage’s appearance seemed so familiar.

"Shit!"

"This isn’t just some Twilight cultist!"

He was the bane of the Black God’s church. He was the man who had disrupted their plans time and again, spread the Redeemer of Necromancy across the world, and even returned one of the three Saints, Jedex, to Tesranach’s embrace.

"It’s the archenemy of the church. Karnak Zestrad!"

"How the hell are you here?!"

And it wasn’t just the cultists who were stunned.

Even Desteran turned toward Varos with wide eyes. "Our leader is that Karnak? The Evil-Slaying Mage?"