Chapter 778: Ghostly Expedition (4)

The Guido Cult priests suddenly appeared, making an absurd offer.

But before answering, Lennok quietly recalled his memories.

‘When was the last time I had contact with the cult?’

Come to think of it, it had been a while since he directly interacted with the cult.

He had faced the Pontiff recently, but that Transcendent was, by nature, not a being that could be defined as a single concept.

Strictly speaking, this was almost the first time he’d been involved with the cult since the Amrita incident.

However, it seemed clear that they were plotting something in the middle of the swamp.

“Attracting monstrous beasts with the scent of blood was part of their deliberate plan.”

Lennok said, glancing at the corpse of the young man he had cleaved in two.

“Were you planning to offer food to this failed Apostle?”

The passenger couldn’t speak properly and had vomited the paprika sandwich Lennok gave him. When the young man didn’t die in the sack and instead climbed onto the insect’s back, Lennok realized he wasn’t an ordinary human.

He had only wondered whether it was a monstrous beast capable of human speech, or a monster of a different category.

The priest at the forefront heard his words and retorted with an admiring look.

“You know a great deal about the cult’s order. Are you, perhaps, someone who serves the same doctrine?”

“Is that important right now?”

“Yes. It is important.”

The priest said, cupping his hands together respectfully towards Lennok.

“If you are a believer of our doctrine, would you perhaps become an offering for our cult’s Apostle?”

“…”

As Lennok fell silent at the absurd suggestion, the priest calmly explained.

“A sacrifice is needed to escape this swamp. We will long remember the grace of a believer’s benevolence for the cult’s well-being.”

“And if I’m not a believer?”

“…Then, we would have no qualms about seeking cooperation either.”

The priest replied, drawing a sharp sword from his robes.

“If we offer an unbeliever, our God will gladly accept our devotion.”

[These crazy organisms. Should we just get rid of them quickly?]

Davi, who was listening from inside the robe, grumbled.

[Listening to them is starting to annoy me.]

Regardless of whether he was a cult believer or not, they were asking him to become a human sacrifice. Their shameless request, devoid of decency, and their fanatical words and actions were so typical of the cult Lennok knew that he actually found it amusing.

“It’s not just because you need to escape the swamp, is it?”

Lennok spoke, slowly observing the priests surrounding him in the middle of the cramped island.

“The cult isn’t a group that hesitates to sacrifice to solve problems. If it were merely to cross the swamp, you would have already offered yourselves and obtained a means to do so.”

“…”

“Yet, if you deliberately summoned monstrous beasts to lure others who were crossing the swamp…”

Lennok smiled.

“It must be because you have a very urgent problem, one so pressing that you need to offer a high-level mana user to gain power.”

The cult’s believers, especially priests whose faith was deep enough to be allowed external activities, were truly nothing short of fanatics. Most of them wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice themselves as offerings. Yet, instead of making offerings among themselves to gain the power to cross the swamp, they waited for other sacrifices.

Wouldn’t that be because there was a problem that couldn’t be solved by simply offering the cult’s believers?

“Believer.”

The priest, who had been listening to Lennok’s words, gave a pale smile.

“You know too much.”

“As I said once before, I am not a believer.”

The moment Lennok said that and raised his hand.

The head of the priest standing right beside him exploded.

Boom!!

Lennok shook his head with a smile, looking at the cult members who remained expressionless even as they were splattered with their comrade’s blood.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d refrain from such unpleasant titles.”

““Kill him!!””

Dozens of cult members and mages clashed on the cramped island. Long-bladed weapons and cultic spells tangled and collided from all directions, scattering blood and flesh whose origin was unknown.

Just then, silver-white threads, densely woven through the chaos, rippled and burrowed into their minds.

Whish-whish-whish-whish!!!

Dozens of cult members cupped their hands together and assumed reverent postures as if dancing. The sight of the believers kneeling, as if in prayer.

But they didn’t assume that posture to perform a common ritual or spell together. Mana threads, intricately attached to their limbs, manipulated their bodies like puppets, forcibly depriving them of physical control.

They were made to stab their own hearts with the weapons they held in both hands.

Thunk!!

“…!!!”

The priests, kneeling as if in prayer, had stabbed their own hearts and died.

A series of exchanges that didn’t even buy a moment of time. Lennok, who had killed all the cult members on the spot, dusted off his hands and retrieved the severed mana threads.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to extract information about why the Guido Cult was here, but Lennok knew what kind of people they were.

They were a group of fanatics who would never reveal the cult’s information, no matter the interrogation or pressure. For Lennok, the most he could do was use his mystic eye to half-crush their minds and pick up fragments of information they spat out.

It wasn’t impossible if he had enough time, but being left alone in the middle of such a harsh environment was a different story.

“I’ll have to find a way to cross the swamp again. Should I build a boat?”

If he spammed teleportation spells, escaping the swamp might be possible, but if he used up the teleportation charges stored in his papyrus scroll here, he would have to refrain from using it while in Military City. Lennok wanted to avoid such a situation.

[If you make a boat out of trees grown in this kind of demon realm, they’ll quickly become toxic.]

Davi replied from inside Lennok’s robe to his monologue.

[They’d be full of moisture and unsuitable for waterproofing, so it wouldn’t be a good choice.]

“First, I should climb a tree and think. Gaining altitude will allow me to observe the surroundings more closely.”

The moment Lennok replied and slowly pulled on a mana thread he’d cast over a tree above him.

Rumble-rumble-rumble…!!

The entire swamp seemed to tremble with an impact, and something suddenly surged up from beneath the surface. A colossal mass large enough to fill his entire vision. A house-sized poisonous toad, covered in sharp spines, stared at Lennok with inorganic eyes.

[Gulp.]

An enormous amount of mana, perceptible just by it quietly staring at Lennok. Without being properly processed or circulated, the sheer accumulation within its body over time easily surpassed that of most superhumans.

Given that the presence of other monstrous beasts vanished cleanly with the toad’s appearance, it was likely this creature was the apex predator at the top of the local swamp’s food chain.

But instead of immediately charging at Lennok, the toad yawned widely, as if languid.

[Grumble.]

[It’s cuter than I expected?]

“…Are your vocabulary lessons going wrong?”

While Lennok and Davi conversed, surprised by the toad’s unexpectedly unguarded demeanor.

The toad, puffing out its throat, opened its mouth wide and swallowed the small island Lennok had just been standing on, whole.

Crunch-crunch!!

The corpses of the dead monsters, monstrous beasts, and priests disappeared into the toad’s mouth. Only Lennok remained, hanging from a mana thread cast over the tree, watching its meal.

[Slurp, slurp.]

A strange glint seemed to pass through the toad’s inorganic eyes as it smacked its lips. Most of those who died here were mana users, so it must have felt like a rather special meal for the monstrous beast.

Was it typical of a swamp-dwelling monstrous beast to chew and swallow several tons of earth just to eat a handful of meat?

As Lennok thought this and rummaged in his robe, the toad monstrous beast slowly began to approach him.

Creak-creak!!

Only then did Davi, upon confirming the toad’s body revealed beneath the swamp, let out a strange shriek.

[Ugh….]

“Does it still look cute to you?”

Below the toad’s neck, long, ape-like limbs flailed about in all directions. It was bizarre, like a mechanical device with misfitting parts forcibly jammed together and made to operate.

The toad approached Lennok, who was suspended in the air, and slowly opened its maw wide.

Only then did Davi realize why the monstrous beast hadn’t immediately eaten Lennok, muttering.

[It must have thought there was nowhere for you to escape, so it decided to eat you last.]

“It seems to be the type to save the best for last. I don’t blame it.”

Lennok said, and then swiftly dropped something from his robe.

“Then let’s see if it can savor this as well.”

Beep-beep…!!

What he had prepared before heading to Military City wasn’t just his usual artifacts or personal weapons. While contemplating how to easily project high firepower, he recalled the form of explosives he had attempted in the Well of the Codex.

Like the Mana Resonance Incendiary Bomb used in the Great Forest, explosives that compress and detonate mana in a specific way unleash power beyond imagination.

Among them, what Lennok pulled out this time was not a dispersal type, but a piercing heat bomb, focusing purely on internal destruction.

Hiss-hiss!!

A fist-sized metal sphere emitting an unusually intense heat. As it fell, emitting a brilliant blue mana light from its fractured cracks, he snatched it with a mana thread in mid-air.

Using centrifugal force, he swung the mana thread, and the moment the heat bomb at its end was accurately shoved down the toad’s throat.

KABOOM!!

The toad’s head exploded, its sticky skin and eyeballs beginning to melt on the spot. Even after its head completely melted away, its instinct to eat Lennok seemed to remain, as the ape-like arms attached to its remaining torso flailed in the air.

The monstrous beast’s body, unable to find Lennok who was hanging by a mana thread, lost its power and plunged back into the swamp.

Lennok watched it, then immediately climbed onto the tree, ready to depart.

“Let’s move quickly. Other monstrous beasts will soon flock here.”

The monstrous beasts of this swamp, as he’d observed earlier, preferred the flesh of their own kind over humans. Since he had killed a toad that was quite powerful even within the swamp, other monstrous beasts would likely come to feast on its flesh.

It would be best to quickly escape while the monstrous beasts’ attention was drawn here.

“…Hmm?”

However, Lennok, who was about to flee without looking back, perceived a sense of déjà vu in his sight and stopped again.

The corpse of the monstrous beast whose head he had just blown off.

More precisely, Lennok was gazing intently at the belly of its torso.

“…”

[Master?]

“Mana remains.”

[It’s not strange for strong monstrous beasts to leave mana behind for a long time after death, is it?]

“No. It’s something else. I was mistaken from the start.”

Lennok said, and immediately jumped down from the tree.

Adjusting his levitation magic to reduce his speed, Lennok landed on the monstrous beast’s belly and drew out a mana thread.

Snip!!

Imbuing it with cutting magic, he cleanly sliced open its belly and dug through its intestines.

“…Found it.”

From within the monstrous beast’s partially digested intestines, he cut open a particularly bulging and obstructed section once more.

Gush!!

Indescribable remnants of flesh and refuse poured out of the ruptured intestines, mixed together. Davi shrieked in disgust, but Lennok remained unfazed, extending a mana thread into the refuse and immediately pulling something out.

Thud!!

A massive container, almost comparable to Lennok’s height in size alone. On its exterior, the figure of a praying woman was carved, as if modeled after an Iron Maiden.

A unique artifact that seemed utterly unrelated to anything one would expect to find inside a monstrous beast’s digestive system.

Lennok looked down at the casket and said.

“The mana I initially sensed as belonging to the monstrous beast was, in fact, emanating from this casket. I mistook it for an overly primal intent.”

It’s natural for mana to remain in the corpse when a powerful monstrous beast or superhuman dies, but mana that has undergone the immense change of death is always altered to some extent immediately after death.

However, the mana Lennok had thought belonged to the monstrous beast had not changed at all even after its head exploded.

Through this, Lennok realized that there was something highly peculiar among the items the monstrous beast had swallowed.

Something so intense and special that it registered in Lennok’s senses even before the mana of the living monstrous beast.

“I see why the cult was enduring in the middle of this swamp.”

Lennok said, looking at the praying female figure carved on the casket’s exterior.

“They needed power to retrieve this item swallowed by the monstrous beast. Is that why they tried to obtain a means through human sacrifice?”

[It means it’s a treasure those crazy organisms wanted back at all costs.]

Davi, excited, flapped her tail wildly.

[Let’s open it right away!]

“…”

But as Lennok just said, it’s highly likely that other monstrous beasts will soon flock here. Knowing that, was it worth opening it right here, right now?

It might be better to risk mana consumption and carry it to a deserted place, or even just leave it behind.

“…Alright. Let’s open it.”

But Lennok dismissed those thoughts and immediately began to pour mana onto the casket’s lid.

Unless he knew how much further he had to travel to escape the swamp, moving with this would be inefficient. It would be better to check the contents here and just confirm whether he could take it or not.

Clatter!!

The casket’s lid was secured with a considerable locking spell, but Lennok didn’t hesitate, even knowing that. Lennok’s particle-level mana manipulation and intuition that had reached a transcendent level.

With the mana of an Arch-mage, most spells could be forcibly broken head-on.

Creeeeak…!!

Without needing to analyze its system, he forcefully blocked the mana supply part of the spell with mana and compelled it to replace the original spell’s structure.

That alone distorted the spell itself, blurring its fundamental principles, and in that gap, Lennok’s will immediately replaced the spell.

Thwack!!

As light ripples spread across the swamp lake, the lock shattered, and the door swung wide open.

“Alright, then let’s see what treasure the cult was trying to hide, right…”

Lennok’s words, as he peered into the casket, stopped dead. Davi also confirmed what had appeared before her eyes and fell silent.

[…]

“This is…”

Inside the casket was no artifact, no holy relic of the cult. The corpse of a woman, huddled in a praying posture. A peaceful face with closed eyes, dressed in an antique ceremonial robe.

Her appearance seemed subtly similar to the praying goddess carved on the casket’s exterior.

[Hmm….]

Davi, after a moment’s hesitation, asked with difficulty.

[It feels like we opened it for nothing. Should we just leave it as is?]

The contents of the casket clearly suggested an unusual situation. If this was an item the cult priests were so desperate to retrieve, the importance of this corpse must be truly immense.

Perhaps he had touched a sensitive spot or a secret of the fanatics that should not have been disturbed. From Lennok’s perspective, heading to Yorta, there was no need to touch or retrieve it and invite the cult’s pursuit.

But Lennok remained unmoving despite Davi’s suggestion, staring at the corpse’s face.

“This is problematic…”

[Master?]

“It’s someone I know. Someone I’ve met under my Victor identity, no less.”

Lennok murmured, quietly raking a hand through his hair. Because the peaceful, deceased face in a praying posture was unmistakably a face he remembered.

“This is the one who tried to sway Tatiana at the end of the Well of the Codex incident, on the outskirts of the Great Forest. This truly will be a problem.”

[…Huh?]

Only then did Davi, who wasn’t good at remembering human faces, realize the meaning and question him.

[Master, surely this organism is….]

“There’s only one high-ranking cult member who can turn others into Apostles.”

Lennok said, nodding. He had realized why the cult priests he first encountered could so casually speak of creating Apostles.

“The High Priestess of the Guido Cult has died. If this fact becomes known externally, it will be quite troublesome.”

The cult official who appeared in the very late stages of the Well of the Codex incident, attempting to persuade Tatiana Chiglet to become an Apostle. The highest-ranking cult member who represented the Pontiff’s will and presided over all internal cult rituals.

The corpse of the High Priestess, Seina Naidry, had been abandoned somewhere in this nameless harsh environment.

“No. It’s not over yet.”

At that moment, the High Priestess, who had been lying with closed eyes in a praying posture, slowly opened her mouth and spoke.

“If even this is a consequence orchestrated by Him, then I must endure it.”