- 227: Incident
After that, a few days passed.
In that time, the Light Church’s headquarters were -at a glance- passing peaceful days.
Karen-san was endeavoring in her training against the Demon Lords as always, and Yorishiro was purging several number of corrupted components every day.
…Ates’ scheme of taking root into the Knight corps was also steadily proceeding.
It looked like nothing was happening, but things were certainly occurring.
The countdown continues —the countdown to the breakdown of everything.
The first small crack, that could be said to be an omen of this, happened today.
***
At that day, I was having a heated discussion with the knights about: ‘what is more precious for leg fetishists, the thighs or the back of the foot?’.
In that time, General Grades was participating in it as well, but bad news had come.
“Knight General! This is terrible! An incident has occurred!”
The young knight jumped into the station and said this with lost breath.
“What’s the matter?! Monsters?!” (Grades)
For the knights of the church, an incident normally means monsters.
The Aurora Knights had already been reborn as an actual group that can deal with the monsters under the lead of the new General Grades.
Everyone was trembling in anticipation at the prospects of showing this off, but…
“No, that’s not it!”
The newcomer knight said this with an impatient expression.
“The ones creating an incident are…humans!”
***
“To think that our first deployment since becoming the Knight General would be against humans. It doesn’t feel right.” (Grades)
The first thing that happened the moment we arrived at the place of the incident were the complains of General Grades.
In reality, the appearance rate of monsters lately has been abnormally low, and it was silent to the point that it felt as if they were waiting for the right moment.
The moment is most likely…the moment we will be encountering the four Demon Lords.
It is as if all monsters were commanded by them, and that in itself was ominous.
“Now now, let’s concentrate on the incident at hand.” (Haine)
It is not only monsters that the knight corps have to deal with; the public order of the Light capital is also an important duty of them.
Depending on the situation, I will also be lending my assistance.
My position in the church has gotten even harder to understand, and it is more like, anything goes for me.
The outline of the situation was the people had barricaded themselves in the metropolitan area.
An armed group suddenly appeared at a certain establishment of Apollon City and trespassed. They took the customers and employees there as hostages, and have barricaded themselves in there.
We knight corps are currently encircling the outside of that establishment. We have closed the escape routes.
“Hey, Haine. What do you think is going on?” (Grades)
“Doesn’t look like it has to do with robbers. If that were the case, they would have robbed money and everything worth it and wouldn’t have taken their sweet time to be encircled by us.” (Haine)
“That’s right. If they were aiming for money, there’s no one who would have chosen this place to do the robbery.” (Grades)
The place we are currently encircling is the Light Grand Library.
It is not only the biggest library in Apollon City, but also said to be the biggest library in the world.
I have used it a number of times myself, so it is a place I am pretty attached to.
What’s there are books about Gods, and I don’t think there’s anything robbers would want to go there to rob.
But if we see it from a different perspective, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call it a treasury. The knowledge that humanity has piled up has been stored in this building written in letters. And as you would expect from the biggest library in the world, there’s a lot of old books there. There’s a good amount of books that only exist in this library.
This point was making this incident even more troublesome.
What’s the objective of the perpetrators that have shut themselves in at such a delicate of a place?
“Of course, we will have to take into consideration the employees and customers that are being held hostages. This looks like more trouble than dealing with your run-of-the-mill monsters.” (Grades)
It is just as he says.
For now, what is it we should be doing?
We will warn the barricaded perpetrators with the ethereal speaker, ask about their objective, and hear out their demands.
Just as we thought about this, the other side made a move first.
A single armed person came out from the front entrance of the Light Grand Library.
“Ah!”
“That’s…!”
It wasn’t only me, but many other light knights raised their voice in bewilderment.
Because one of the possible perpetrators was actually a familiar person. It was the previous superior of the light knights after all.
“Dobbe!”
The previous Light Knight General. Abusing his position and authority, that avarice of his had finally bit him back and was fired from his job as Knight General not long ago.
Why is that person here?!
Without caring about our confusion, Dobbe takes out an ethereal speaker as well and speaks out loud with conviction.
“To the mere shadow that was once the Aurora Knight corps and has now rotten to its core! We are the true Aurora Knight corps! The legitimate sword that provides true justice in the Light Church! Its name is Ultimate Justice Aurora Knight corps!!” (Dobbe)
“Uwa…”
With this, I could now tell at an instant the reason of this incident.
It was so easy to understand now.
“What we demand is the justice and rights that all humans have in this world! Disassemble the high-ups of the current Church that are the source of evil and entrust the church’s administration to us! If you don’t, we will kill all the hostages and burn down this Light Grand Library!!” (Dobbe)
- 228: The enemy of humans are humans
“Knight General, what shall we do?”
The one being called at was the actual Knight General.
Our General Grades.
“Even if you ask me, it doesn’t look like they will be listening to us.” (Grades)
General Grades also looked pretty bummed by this.
This is a group that was newly made for emergencies, and now, its leader was holding his head in pain.
“This is already legit terrorism.” (Haine)
And so, the outline of this matter should be like this.
The decaying faction of the Light Church that had been expelled have congregated due to their dissatisfaction, and have now gone berserk in order to obtain their past glory.
Because of the law, no matter how much they struggle, they have no means of winning. Even if they were to use force straight on to steal it back, they have no chance of winning.
And so, what they have decided on doing was to take citizens hostage to take it in their hands.
They are using the lives of unrelated people to have their wishes granted.
“These people are the worst!” (Haine)