The Shadowed Legacy of the Soulless Messenger

It was great that the Grimoire of the Heavenly Kings had manifested itself. However, since the grimoire itself was alive, vicious, unholy, and evil beings could not touch it carelessly.

“Holy shit. What kind of grimoire is this? Is this the power of the Yaegas Gods? This is-!”

At that moment, the rats at the cellar’s entrance began to cause a ruckus. Azadine had entered.

-Squeak squeak…

A wave of rats rushed towards Azadine.

“Ah shit, these-!”

He saw the rats swarming towards him like a wave and quickly hopped onto a wine barrel. The rats scrambled up the barrel to pounce at him. However, Azadine had unstrapped the Moon Horn Bow from his waist and hooked the bowstring on one end, but not tying it completely.

He tightened the string and unleashed it as a walloping tool. The elastic tension in the bowstring made it act like a whip, sweeping across the barrel. The rats that were crawling up were easily swept away.

-Crack!

With the crack of his makeshift whip, the rats were hurled away.

“This is ruining the bowstring … this isn’t the time to think about that!”

The rats were constantly being batted away, yet more climbed up the barrel to simply die one after another.

“Mm… enough of this. You can’t kill that guy like this.”

The Fallen Holy Knight made his command, and the rats stopped their attack.

“You’re a messenger! A member of the Messenger Clan!”

Azadine shifted his focus to the man wearing the attire of the Rescue Knights Order.

“Are you a Holy Knight who fell? From the Rescue Knights Order?”

“Fallen? Ha, haha. Fallen, pfft. I’m finally serving a true god. Not some false archangel!”

“A false archangel?”

Azadine frowned. For a Holy Knight of the Rescue Knights Order to say such a thing before him, an ardent believer of the Trinity of Archangels, was an insufferable insult.

“That’s right. ‘The archangels will grace the true believer with the blessing of white magic?’ It’s all bullshit. The angels are already dead, and their corpses are powerless. The Rescue Knights Order is nothing but a gathering of frauds!”

With that conclusion, the Holy Knight pointed to his surcoat. It bore the emblem of the Rescue Knights Order, but Mezerry’s crest had been traced atop it with blood.

“The Kurts are the true gods. Their time is coming, and the Yaegas Gods’ kin, who have become powerless by mixing their blood with humans, shall be no match for them. When the true gods take over this world, we, their followers, shall be the new nobility and control this land!”

“Is that why you became a follower of someone like Mezerry, who hurts humans? How pathetic. Only he who upholds the virtues of wisdom, mercy, and courage is a true Holy Knight. It’s understandable that you couldn’t wield the power of the Rescue Knights Order. You are the furthest thing from being righteous.”

Azadine berated the Holy Knight. This seemed to agitate the fallen knight further.

“You dare to speak of the faith of the Rescue Knights Order? A soulless blasphemer like you?”

“By now, shouldn’t you be more concerned about your own soul?”

“What a joke.”

With a lift of the knight’s chin, shadows were cast over the wine barrel. The figures were still wererats, but their bodies were grotesquely bloated.

“Are they Mezerry’s kins?”

Azadine tied his Moon Horn Bow around his waist and switched back to the halberd pike head. The Holy Knight snorted at this.

“Irksome as you may be, you seem skilled. This is judging by how you got here and handled those rats earlier. How about you take this opportunity to serve a true god?”

The Holy Knight tried to cajole Azadine, but all he got was a flat refusal.

“I’m sorry, but I believe in the Three Great Archangels.”

“…….”

The expression on the fallen Holy Knight’s face was pricelessly hilarious.

An awkward silence lingered for a moment.

“What?”

“No, wait. Are you serious? You, a soulless blasphemer, have faith in the Rescue Knight Order’s deities?”

Azadine’s words shocked the fallen Holy Knight. He had witnessed countless fanatics who were self-proclaimed believers of the Rescue Knights Order but never had he seen a sincere believer.

Yet here was a member of the Messenger Clan claiming that he held the faith of the Rescue Knights Order.

“Yes.”

“You lunatic! Didn’t you hear me? The three archangels are dead, and they’re powerless now! The only magic-wielding Holy Knights in the Rescue Knights Order are the descendants of the original Yaegas! It’s only the nobles!”

“The point isn’t whether they possessed power or not. What’s important is if their virtues align with the philosophy of aesthetics.”

“No, but you’re not even ….”

The Messenger Clan, sinners guilty of murdering the Yaegas Gods, were persecuted by all of Hubris.

Yet one of them sought virtue and aesthetic philosophy from such a position?

“The Archangel Trinity has no power, and the Rescue Knights are fraudsters. I speak from experience. This faith has only betrayed me!”

“It doesn’t matter. Even if the Three Archangels have lost their power, I have gotten my redemption and my rescue. My faith can’t betray me. I only dread that I might betray it.”

As he spoke, Azadine assumed his pose.

“You’re a total nutcase, though you do seem skilled. Never mind. I’ve had enough. Die!”

The Holy Knight held Azadine’s skill in high regard, but his beliefs offended him more than that admiration.

Mezerry’s kin, the diseased rats, began to lunge at Azadine while the other rats carried on scrambling onto the barrels to attack. However, Azadine, despite being surrounded, gave his enemies a serene comment.

“A piece of advice.”

He moved closer to the diseased kin of Mezerry as they crawled up the wine barrel to attack him.

“In this terrain, I have the upper hand!”

Azadine kicked the diseased kin of Mezerry with all his strength as if he were kicking a ball. He smashed off the head of one, sending the rest of its body sprawling behind him. Azadine seemed like he might fall from his perch due to the momentum, but…

He simply jumped and grabbed hold of one of the pillars that held the casks upright. With that momentum, he spun around and landed atop another cask.

The diseased ones chased after Azadine, jumping from barrel to barrel in pursuit. Azadine, however, spun around and launched a flying spin kick at one in mid-air.

-Wham!

Azadine’s kick caught a leaping diseased one on the leg, causing it to spin like a top in the air. Its head smacked into a barrel as it smashed on its face.

The smaller rats made their way atop the barrels and rushed towards Azadine. Still, the messenger dashed over the barrels and dodged the rats. He slid past them with his cloak untied and swinging wildly, catching many rats in it.

Azadine then tied his cloak into a sack before slamming it into the ground with a freeing swing. The bodies of the dead rats then rained down in a shower of gore from the impact.

“Ugh….”

“Asto-astonishi….”

The diseased kin of Mezerry were so deformed that they were unable to speak properly. Yet even they could not hide their amazement of Azadine.

His perceptive use of the terrain to his advantage to fight off his foe was so masterful that it almost excited them.

“What a lunatic. Though he is remarkably skilled.”

Azadine’s combat prowess stunned the Holy Knight.

A member of the Messenger Clan played freely with his surroundings atop barrels that a normal man would struggle to even move on, making Mezerry’s diseased ones into simple playthings.

“Ah….”

“As-astounding, so this is the Emperor’s messenger.”

Among those shackled in the cellar, those still conscious marveled at Azadine’s feats.

Mezerry’s diseased kin was agile and strong as their condition granted them madness, allowing them to move faster than the average wererat. A simple nick from them would fill a human with a fatal disease.

Be that as it may, that still required them to get close to attack.

They could move ten times faster than a normal wererat, but moving too quickly on the wine barrels would cause them to slip into the cracks and fall straight to the bottom. Nonetheless, Azadine toyed with them, knocking them down from the barrels, cutting off their ankles with his halberd, or simply tossing them back down.

“Hmm?”

The Holy Knight turned his head as the light around him flickered. At the ceiling of the wine cellar, the pages of the copy of the Grimoire of the Heavenly Kings were flickering.

‘It chose him! Ridiculous! A Grimoire of the Yaegas Gods recognizes a man with the Yaegas clan’s blood on his hands?’

However, it was also a good thing.

‘I can get the copy of the Grimoire of Heavenly Kings if I kill him.’

The copy released its magic to create a force of resistance to safeguard itself.

Said force would surely weaken if it chose a member of the Messenger Clan as its bearer. Killing him would weaken the resistance of the grimoire, allowing the knight to easily claim it.

“I can’t let you have your way anymore.”

As the Holy Knight unsheathed his sword and rose to his feet, the rats in the cellar swarmed at his feet.

-Squeaaaak!

The rats moved in unison, lifting the Holy Knight to the level of the barrel.

“Huh?”

The scene shocked Azadine.

“I’ll show you the power of Mezerry’s followers!”

An ominous black energy pulsed from the sword’s blade as the knight raised it.

“Hup!”

Azadine flung something at the knight. They were broken arrowheads he had taken off the arrows he had used to set the building on fire. He tossed them like daggers, but the Holy Knight simply snorted and swung his sword.

A black storm flew toward Azadine, wiping out the arrowheads.

“This little-!”

Azadine then flung himself to the side to dodge the attack, the blow striking a person dangling from the ceiling.

“Ugh. Aaahhhhh!”

The poor man’s body withered as his life source was drained from him. The man seemed to have been quite hefty but suddenly seemed to age by a decade in an instant.

“You dodged. A wise choice!”

The Holy Knight rode the wave of rats, chasing Azadine as he swung his sword. Each swing released a gust of wind aimed at Azadine.

“Ugh!”

Azadine realized that the person behind him was suffering the cost of each of his dodge.

“Hang in there!”

He kicked backward, knocking the dangling person out of the way of the black gust. Even in such a crisis, he could not evade the threats alone. He even attempted to protect those that had been captured.

“I’m surprised! Do you really believe in the Archangels? A member of the Messenger Clan trying to save people, hmph!”

“Shut up! Is saving people so weird to you?”

Azadine successfully hurled another arrowhead at the Holy Knight. Yet it didn’t pierce his plate armor. No matter how strong his throw was, he couldn’t penetrate the armor with such a light arrowhead when his footing was uncertain.

“Fooling around, huh!”

The Holy Knight unleashed another black gust of wind.

“Ugh!”

In his attempt to dodge the knight’s blow, he realized the person hanging behind him was a woman wearing a satin dress. Baroness Nort.

It was too late to get her to safety.