Chapter 194: 103. The One Called the Saint (Part Two)
A large city fairly close to the village of Rost had been burned down to the ground, practically wiped off from the map.
The city didn’t have outer walls or palisades to begin with, meaning the citizens would’ve been left utterly defenceless against the marauding band of soldiers coming to ransack them.
Sights of burnt-down buildings and their skeletal remains, countless piles of corpses, and broken weapons stabbed into the ground could be seen.
This was the reality of the warzone created by the civil war taking place within the Lome kingdom.
Writhing zombies were wandering around the sites of wanton destruction. Those things hadn’t been created by Vampires – no, it was simply this world’s ‘law of nature’ at play.
A portion of the people who died in Negative Fields like battlefields would inevitably end up as an undead. The scene playing out before our eyes was one such case.
The civil war of Lome kingdom had ended up producing the undead.
“I-it’s a carriage!”
Even within the devastated cityscape where the undead freely roamed about, survivors still existed. These survivors, basically refugees, spotted our carriage and urgently ran towards us.
“Please, save us!”
“Help us! We don’t have anything to eat… My child, my child is…!”
“There are undead roaming around here. Please save us!”
The refugees quickly surrounded our carriage.
Although some of them were hesitant at first after spotting the skeleton horses, their attention was soon shifted away and focused on the living knights escorting the carriage as well as us riding inside the vehicle.
The escorting knights tried to push the refugees back.
“Everyone, get back! Now!”
“How insolent! Who do you think you are in the presence of!”
Unfortunately for them, what the knights had said produced the exact opposite effect to what they desired.
Because the refugees thought that if the person inside the carriage was someone important, then he’d surely save them from this predicament.
The knights urgently looked around and saw the zombies shuffling towards the carriage’s location. Unable to stay calm anymore, they even began unsheathing their swords.
That only sowed even more chaos among the crowd.
At this rate, we might end up seeing casualties with one wrong move somewhere.
The crowd numbering only a few dozen soon ballooned past a hundred-plus in no time at all.
I scanned the faces of the refugees. From old people in their seventies all the way to children younger than ten were among the mix.
All these people were the weak who managed to somehow survive the warzone. But their future remained bleak.
Their homes were gone. They didn’t have anything to eat nor drink. All they could do for now was to run around trying to evade the roaming undead.
Charlotte could only ruefully look on at the tearful crowd.
As for Barus, he just sat in his seat with a tightly-clamped mouth. He seemed to be in a dilemma, trying to decide whether or not he could afford to take care of all these people.
I addressed him, “Are you planning to forsake all these people? Even though you are a prince of their kingdom?”
Barus was jolted awake from his train of thoughts by my abrupt question. His head then faltered. “We might be able to shelter them. Our camp isn’t too far away from here, after all. However, we just don’t have enough medicine to treat the injured among them. And also, not enough provisions and drinkable water…”
“All excuses, I see.”
Barus smiled bitterly at my observation. “Yes. Indeed, all excuses. However, if I try to save one person, it might end up killing two others.”
“Your side surely has some information pertaining to Raiden’s whereabouts, am I right?”
He turned his head and looked at me.
I continued on, “Even if he’s a Vampire now, he must have someone helping him so that he could safely hide somewhere. I want you to hand over that information.”
He nodded at my abrupt demand. “But of course. If that’s what it takes to prevent the Theocratic Empire from intervening, then all the more so. But, why are you…?”
“Very good.”
I stepped outside the carriage and then lightly snapped my fingers.
Rune letters were engraved on the ground all around us. Soon, well-armed skeletons and staff-wielding skeleton mages were summoned to this world.
The refugees all screamed at this sudden event.
Even Barus looked shocked by what he saw. Which was understandable, since this would be his first time seeing me summon the holy undead.
Skeletons went out to hunt down the zombies shuffling closer towards our location. Meanwhile, skeleton mages put some distance between themselves. Eventually, thirty or so undead mages had the hundred-plus refugees surrounded from all sides.
“W-what are you trying to do?!”
“He, he’s a Necromancer! He’s using Necromancy!”
“Is he trying to murder us all?”
The refugees began crying out in fear and nervousness. Charlotte worked hard to calm them down somehow.
I took a sweeping look at the skeleton mages surrounding the group of refugees.
A great opportunity had presented itself. This should be an ideal time to take the ‘Aztal rune’ out for a test drive, wouldn’t you say?
Skeleton mages knelt down and pressed their foreheads on the staves held in their hands. Soon, prayers and hymns began leaving their mouths.
The refugees’ eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when the beautiful hymn resounded out to the surroundings.
Their confused, chaotic clamouring grew quieter.
The sacred hymn cleansed away the fear clogging up their murky, confused minds.
Not only that, they dazedly stared at the skeleton mages as if they had become entranced by the aura of divinity rising up from the undead.
This aura of divinity spread out like ripples on a calm lake’s surface.
Skeleton mages, who could be called Priests at this stage, raised up their staves filled with gathered divinity.
This sacred aura…
The sanctuary where the goddess’s miracle could become reality…
“I declare the creation of a sanctuary.”
…Had been activated on this location.
**
(TL: In 3rd person POV.)
Skeleton mages slammed their staves down.
Bang-!
The ground below trembled seemingly from the impact. Rune letters radiating golden aura spread out from all around them.
Beautiful, brilliant light gushed out from the ground.
A sense of awe quickly filled up the hearts of the refugees standing on top of the Aztal rune engraved on the ground.
Some of them abruptly began checking out the state of their bodies. Their once-heavy bodies began feeling lighter, more languid than before.
Those suffering from diseases were cured, while even the little scratches on their bodies were taken care of – every single wound was rapidly being healed away.
The undead shuffling towards them melted away from existence, while those that were still far away shielded their eyes after witnessing the golden light.
But was that all?
“Oh my goodness…! How, how is this even possible…?!”
One of the refugees was freaking out of his skull while staring at his child.
The child’s arm had been severed during the war. The wound, currently wrapped around in some dirty rags in order to stem the bleeding, was steadily healing back to how it was.
And no, it wasn’t some simple healing either – the pain haunting the child steadily went away, while the severed bone began rising up from the stump.
Joints were being recreated, then blood vessels and muscles extended out all around them before intertwining with each other. Finally, new skin appeared to cover them all.
‘Complete regeneration’ had taken place right before everyone’s wide-open eyes.
The child’s trembling eyes looked down at his new hand. Perhaps still finding this miracle too difficult to believe, he repeatedly clenched and unfurled his fist. Then, he grew tearful after realising that his lost arm had grown back.
“Daddy!”
The child embraced his father. He felt his father’s body warmth with his new arm. On the other hand, the father could feel the strength of his child’s new arm holding onto him.
“This… this… it’s a miracle!”
Emotions welled up powerfully in his heart.
The father dazedly held his child. Even while doing that, he somehow managed to move his eyes currently soaked in his tears and stare at the Priest over yonder.
The boy didn’t even look like he had reached adulthood. Yet such a boy had created this miracle.
A miracle that seemed completely out of common sense, no less.
Barus and his escorting knights watched on, utterly stupefied as well.
The First Prince of Lome opened the carriage’s door and stepped outside while looking like an entranced man.
His heart was galloping away as his emotions fluctuated wildly.
It seemed that he was stuck in the perpetual state of being surprised as he stayed next to this young Imperial Prince.
When the boy was hunting the Vampire down, he gave off the vibe of someone cruel and merciless, yet when he was dealing with the weak, Barus felt a sense of benevolence coming from him.
“Your highness, are all the Priests of the Theocratic Empire capable of pulling off such miracles?”
One of the deeply-awed knights asked that question, but Barus shook his head as a part of his reply. “No, that’s not it.”
Of course such a thing couldn’t be true. Barus was certain of it. After all, he had heard plenty of things about the empire’s Seventh Imperial Prince by now.
He heard about the boy’s rather scary-sounding title of the ‘slaughterer of Vampires’ or the ‘butcher of lycanthropes’. But there was one other title that happened to be at complete odds with those titles.
“He is…”
All the refugees began kneeling down. They gathered their hands before their chest and bowed their heads.
While sobbing away, they offered their earnest prayers to express their gratitude.
They sent their gratitude towards a boy standing tall before their eyes.
“…The Holy Son(聖子).”
Towards the Saint, Allen Olfolse.
< 103. The One Called the Saint (Part One and Two) > Fin.
(TL: I’m not sure whether it was intentional or not, but the author used the Hanja letters “聖子” in the second last paragraph. In Korean Hangul, both the “Holy Son” and “Saint” are pronounced the same – “seong-ja” – but the Hanjas associated are different. For reference, the Hanja letters for “saint” are “聖者”. The “Holy Son(聖子)” is, of course, Son of God in the Holy Trinity.)
