Chapter 175: 094. Kasim Derian -3 (Part One)
**
Kasim Derian’s piety was truly unparalleled.
For the sake of good, he was more than willing to take on the role of evil. And according to his conviction, no sacrifices were too great or off-limits if it directly led to the subjugation of heretics that went against his faith.
His beliefs were truly contradictory. However, he religiously stuck to his conviction nonetheless.
As such, he didn’t suspect the veracity of the claims of heresy or even hesitate to subjugate what he perceived as evil.
For him, it didn’t matter if a few hundred had to be slaughtered in the process of locating that single evildoer hiding in their midst.
That was his belief. That was his unyielding faith.
Kasim glared at the Seventh Imperial Prince from under his helm.
He was enraged.
He heard all the necessary stories. He heard that everyone who had witnessed the Seventh Imperial Prince summon a bunch of undead abominations were exalting and praising the boy for it.
They said that it was the sign of Gaia’s greatness.
However, Kasim’s thoughts were quite different. He thought that the pureness of the goddess had been defiled by such claims.
A being tasked with protecting life itself was now commanding the walking dead? What a truly odious, insidious claim that was.
As for the boy? He had to be a devil in disguise, a heretic who falsely claimed to have received Gaia’s love.
That was how Kasim judged the Seventh Imperial Prince.
He raised his sword high and his eyes gleamed murderously. It was as if he had transcended the concept of time and space itself; the raindrops all around him began falling agonisingly slowly.
Kasim rapidly pulled his sword back. The afterimage of him just before he pulled at the sword still remained. He injected divinity into the weapon before powerfully slashing down towards where the afterimage was.
BOOM-!
The air expanded greatly.
The wind blade created out of divinity exploded forward quickly and mercilessly.
“Your highness, duck!”
The girl with silver hair shoved the boy prince aside. She yanked out her divine sword and defended against the wind blade.
The moment the formless blade of air sliced into her defence, Charlotte was powerfully forced back.
The girl possessed truly excellent skills.
Just how many others in her age group living in this world would be able to match her level of skill?
Kasim thought that to himself and shifted his attention back to the boy.
“I gotta take out the relic…”
While saying that, the boy was trying to do something.
-Do not allow him to use magic. If he casts any magic, it’ll only defile your piety even further.
That’s what Cardinal Mikael had told him.
Kasim’s eyes shot open.
He lowered his posture and his legs powerfully kicked the ground. His whole figure exploded forward like a tightly-wound spring being released.
He didn’t rely on the wind blade, but was personally slamming down with his sword at the Seventh Imperial Prince.
“Son of a…!”
The boy prince hurriedly waved his hand in the air, and out of nowhere, a shovel showed up on his grip. Not only that, a mysterious rune letter was engraved itself on the shovel’s shaft at the same time.
Wasn’t that… Divine Aura?
Kasim’s once-wide eyes narrowed down to slits.
Although that was the same Divine Aura as what he used, it also looked different from his version that utilised ‘wind’.
Kasim’s expression crumpled unsightly under the helm.
He was blessed with this sacred power, yet the damnable heretic before his eyes also held the same ability. That realisation gave rise to an indescribable disgust in his heart.
‘This is pure blasphemy!’
He strengthened his grip even further, and slammed the greatsword down on his target.
CRUNCH!
The shovel broke apart.
The Imperial Prince sucked in a cold breath.
Just as the greatsword was about to slice apart the boy prince’s figure in two halves, he suddenly leapt back.
Only the tip of the blade managed to dig into his shoulder and injure him. Was the wound fatal? No, it was far too shallow of a cut.
Rather unexpectedly, the boy prince’s movements were quick.
When Kasim narrowed his eyes once more and glared at the boy…
“Stop him-!”
The Imperial Prince summoned even more undead abominations.
From skeletons to banshees and even dullahans, quite a variety had shown up.
The Seventh Imperial Prince did that in order to stop Kasim’s rampage, but it only had the opposite effect instead.
The burly golden knight glared at the walking dead summoned before him as his emotions shot past the state of rage into genuine hatred.
“Uwoooooooh-!”
He raised his greatsword up high, and began shooting a continuous chain of wind blades.
Boom-! Boom-! Boom-!
The hundreds of undead blocking his path were mercilessly cut down. One of the stray wind blades was heading towards the flustered Imperial Prince.
“Oh, sh*t-!”
He managed to barely dodge the first wind blade.
He certainly seemed to possess a pair of sharp eyes. Unfortunately, the rest of his body wouldn’t be able to keep up for long.
The second wind blade flew towards him. This time, it was squarely and intentionally aimed at the prince’s throat.
Kasim grinned victoriously, but Charlotte suddenly appeared before the Seventh Imperial Prince and deflected the formless blade with her own sword.
“You foolish child!”
Kasim ended up grinding his teeth.
These two’s resistance proved to be tougher than he bargained for.
He turned his head slightly and glanced at the imperial palace. More Paladins were hurriedly arriving in this location as the fight dragged on.
“Protect his highness!”
Arrows began flying in from all directions. Several Paladins yanked their swords out and rushed towards Kasim.
However, none of it mattered. He could afford to ignore all of these small fries.
He took a simple swing with his sword. The air expanded and the Paladins by the windows of the palace got sliced to ribbons.
Even the rushing Paladins were split apart into several bloody chunks.
Blood was raining down seemingly everywhere.
Kasim narrowed his eyes. He had been constantly counting the length of time he wasted after infiltrating this place.
Two minutes had already passed by since he was discovered and the Imperial Prince began putting up his resistance. In less than a minute, two minutes if Kasim was lucky, the empire’s five forces should arrive here en masse. The possibility of that happening was too great to ignore.
Meaning, he had to finish his task before that.
Charlotte, who was breathing heavily, hurriedly looked at the Seventh Imperial Prince behind her.
“Ouch, that f*cking hurts!”
“…!”
She held her breath. The Seventh Imperial Prince’s shoulder had been caved in and blood was welling up nonstop from the wound.
“Your highness!”
She was about to say something, but he simply shook his head.
He instead placed his hand on the wounded shoulder and activated healing magic. “I’m fine.”
He then summoned Amon’s relics and held them tightly. But just as he raised his head in preparation to use them, he clenched his teeth.
Charlotte was surprised by the sudden approach of a presence and urgently looked back.
It was Kasim rapidly moving towards them. Despite his hulking figure, he was incredibly agile. Not only that, he was spookily silent, too.
“Die.”
He raised his greatsword up.
BOOM-!
Without a shred of hesitation, he fired another wind blade at the Seventh Imperial Prince and Charlotte.
She raised her divine sword to defend while the boy prince placed his hand on her shoulder.
Both of them roused up their divinity at the same time.
The wind blade exploded right in between the trio, and all of them – Kasim, Charlotte and the Imperial Prince – were flung away in opposite directions.
**
(TL: In 1st person POV.)
Charlotte and I bounced and rolled on the ground.
“Are you alright?!”
She quickly regained her balance in the middle of all that rolling motion, caught me mid-air before stabilising our bodies, and urgently asked.
“I told you, I’m fine! Worry about yourself first!”
I checked Charlotte’s condition.
She was covered in blood. Thankfully, that hulking bastard’s sword hadn’t hit her so far, but all of his frequent ranged attacks inflicted quite a lot of minute injuries on her.
I really wanted to use healing magic on her right away, but…
I turned my head away.
There he was, the man named Kasim, walking toward us with that huge-ass sword of his as the crazy downpour continued pummeling us relentlessly.
It was kinda like staring at the final boss in a raid.
‘Right now, I can’t use either my musket or magic.’
…If I tried to use even a little bit of magic, he’d attack us immediately.
But fighting him with undead summoned through chantless casting wasn’t going to work.
‘This is bad.’
The bleeding from my shoulder was getting worse. I was getting light-headed too.
‘Right, I gotta somehow summon the holy undead knights.’
At the bare minimum, I needed creatures on the level of holy knights, or something greater, to fight that bastard.
‘The problem is, without properly gearing up first, it’ll be hard to maintain the summoning.’
Even back during the inquisition in the imperial audience chamber, I was barely holding onto my consciousness.
There was no way that bastard would stay still and wait for me to gather enough divinity to summon the holy undead knights.
The story wasn’t any better with Amon’s relic, since it required me to mutter out the activation phrase first.
The moment I tried to say the phrase out aloud, that bastard would pounce on me with everything he got.
While the heavy downpour continued on, I scanned our surroundings. More and more Paladins were showing up even now. They were rushing towards Kasim, but it was all meaningless.
Their blood danced and scattered in the air.
Those Paladins, who were strong enough to barely defend against the wind blades, could only moan in pain on the ground, hardly able to do anything else.
I stared at them and shouted out loudly, “Everyone, back off-!”
We’d only have more casualties if they persisted on stepping up here.
What we needed right now were the Holy Emperor, the sword king, or even the Crown Imperial Prince. If that wasn’t possible, then the combined might of the five forces, at least!
While such thoughts raced in my head, my gaze landed on a particular spot.
Eh?
I saw a blonde girl over there. She was in hiding, and by the look of it, she was offering a prayer with her eyes closed.
Divinity was spreading out from her whole body in the next moment.
