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Chapter 69
The church tells its followers:
Do not be intoxicated by your ability to channel divine power. Remember that you are just an ordinary human, allowed to wield the grace of God.
It is not the follower who is special, but God. Do not take pride in your achievements, nor pleasure in your efforts.
Clichéd, rigid words. Words that sap the followers’ motivation. And yet, despite fading with time, these sayings have endured through oral tradition, because their credibility has been proven countless times.
Among everyone present, perhaps Lister felt pride in being the only one able to pass through Isabel’s divine veil. Perhaps he felt satisfaction at stepping into a realm he had never reached before.
Whatever emotions he felt, the fact remained that by passing through the wall Isabel had made to hide from them, he was now facing yet another immense trial.
“How….”
A cursed sword imbued with the Demon King’s power. A blade that leads men to ruin, that brings disaster and shatters the laws of the world.
Always accompanied by ominous titles, the demonic sword—a weapon overwhelmingly associated with negative consequences—occupied the top of the church’s official list of heresies.
The sword was the top priority for Zeronis, the church’s anti-heresy task force. To them, the sword’s wielder was no less than the vanguard of evil itself.
The church’s vigilance against the sword was always extreme. Researchers within the church spent nights among ancient tomes, searching for clues about the sword’s eventual return. Both the sword and its master were considered entities that must be immediately destroyed.
And yet, that very sword was in Isabel’s hands.
Since the night he met Isabel, Lister’s perception of her had constantly changed. From a naive, foolish follower with merely great power, she had become a proper priest worthy of the title of agent—and eventually, someone he could respect as a clergyman.
And now… she had shifted from a respected clergyman to the foremost target for immediate execution.
It made no sense. Not at all.
He could almost hear the remnants of his shattered heart collapsing once again.
“Isabel, the one who saved so many… was the master of the demonic sword? Have I been respecting her as a heretic all this time?”
Faith cannot be flexible. Those who believe in something may retain straight thinking, but such reasoning can snap under winds of doubt or stimulus.
Blind faith always waits, just beyond the edge of what one sees, eager to break the mind.
“Did the angel choose the master of the sword as her agent? A sword like that cannot be drawn without the will to claim it. Did Isabel willingly choose to become its master?”
Lister forced himself to ask the last question in his heart.
“Do I… have to execute Isabel?”
Holding Yuga’s hand, I leapt through the glass window and embraced the immense sensation that immediately engulfed my entire body.
The sense of realism was incomparable to being in the personal space. My skin tingled, my limbs ached, and my eyes spun. It had always been intense, but today it was even more so.
It must be because adrenaline surged through Isabel herself.
I wiggled Isabel’s hand and adjusted my grip on the hilt of Yuga’s sword in her hand. The steel golem I stood on had been shaking violently up and down, but I had already asked Isabel to bless my body to the highest degree possible, so the tremors didn’t feel painful.
“You’re surprisingly calm,” Yuga said.
“This is the second time,” I replied.
“That’s not it, Angel,” Yuga said, in a stern voice as if I had made a grave mistake.
“It’s because I helped with your training. The fact that you can stay calm is thanks to me. I can see you subtly trying to downplay my contribution,” Yuga said.
“Stop talking and cooperate.”
“Hey, come on! You won’t even take a joke,” Yuga replied, pouting.
I understood her disappointment, but now was not the time to pay attention to her. Look over there—three massive golems are charging at me while I stand on a moving steel golem.
Perhaps my composure was partly because I had fought Yuga in golem form in the personal space. I could vividly anticipate the trajectory, weight, and positioning of Yuga’s sword in my hand. Of course, imagining it from when I lay in the hospital, it still seems absurd that I could wield it to strike the golems—but now, living as an angel, my current logic makes more sense than my previous mortal logic.
And Yuga was coaching me quite effectively.
Thanks to her guidance, I knew the first blow would come from the rock golem’s fist. Trusting Isabel’s fully-enhanced strength, I leapt onto its forearm.
I lowered Yuga beneath my side and, following her instructions, shrouded the demonic sword with magic energy.
I performed the second form of the demonic sword technique, “Parting,” which I had proven effective against Geralt, the mutant. By using the chaotic properties of magic to slice through space itself, I split the rock golem’s arm vertically.
Other golems aimed at me with their fists, but I leapt high and let them pass beneath my feet.
However, I had gone too high.
“Don’t jump that high!” Yuga shouted, her voice flustered, and I immediately realized my mistake.
Isabel’s body was light—ridiculously so. And with her augmented physical abilities and the monstrous golems creating wind with every swing, jumping too high would mean I could lose control and fall.
I suddenly felt I could regain my balance. I gripped the sword with both hands and performed the second form of the technique mid-air, righting my body.
The wooden golem’s head split in two, and I stabilized my posture thanks to the wind generated.
Drawing the demonic sword was the right choice—the golems couldn’t repair themselves after being slashed.
Magic is chaos. Golems take their undamaged form as the norm, so using magic’s nature prevents their self-repair. Steel golems, however, are exceptionally resilient, so they must be toppled first.
Topple the steel golem, hit it with a divine veil to hide the sword, strike wounds it can’t heal, and finally destroy it—that was Yuga’s and my plan.
“Yuga, I’ll try to use the second form consecutively.”
‘You could, but you’ll tire quickly if you try it now,’ she replied.
“I need to finish this quickly—the steel golem is rising too.”
‘Then do it. The technique is the same, just be more diligent.’
Following Yuga’s instructions, I slammed her into the arm of a mud golem that had taken the least damage.
Simply stabbing wouldn’t harm the golem. But infusing it with magic to reduce cohesion is possible. My goal was timing—catching the golem’s fist as it recoiled.
With Yuga lodged in its arm, I manipulated the sword’s magic, severing the golem’s arm, and drew three successive strikes forming an inverted triangle in the air.
The sword felt heavy! Each movement pressed the weight against my arms!
But Isabel’s blessing gave me the strength to complete the technique.
The mud golem’s arms and lower body shattered, collapsing in a cloud of black haze. The sound of destruction rang in my ears.
‘…You’re pretty good,’ Yuga said.
“Cut the ‘pretty,’” I replied.
After turning all three massive golems into piles of dirt, wood, and stone, I aimed at the steel golem rising below me.
I released Yuga, spun halfway, and reversed my grip.
‘You’re really going to do that?’
“It’s better to stab than slash here.”
‘How do you even know that?’
“I did what you told me. Now help me. Demonic Sword Technique, Third Form.”
The third form, called “Deception,” is a piercing technique—the opposite of the second form.
I struck the steel golem’s head with a straight beam of black magic. Pure magic, opposite to the healing pillars Isabel often used, pierced the golem’s crown and created a small hole in the ground.
Even more important, I covered my body in magic, preparing to deceive the world.
The second form tricks the world into thinking the sword was not swung. The third form makes the world think I moved when I did not, forcing the world to adjust my position.
It appeared as teleportation, but it was fundamentally different—more like ultra-fast movement.
In the next moment, I was inside the steel golem, and everything between my previous position and the ground had vanished.
One strike with the beam, and a second strike as I reached the target—two attacks in total.
This was the third form of demonic sword technique, “Deception,” as described in The Long Tale.
The steel golem was rendered completely immobile. My ears rang from its pounding heart, and my body tingled, but it was over.
I had done it.
“…Phew.”
Exhausting. After consecutive uses of the second form and the physically taxing third form, I was drained.
But with Isabel’s body, it should have been manageable. This fatigue was merely what Isabel herself felt from continuous effort since the previous day.
I freed Yuga, straightened my back, and looked up.
It felt like being at the bottom of a deep well. The magic beam had drilled a thin line, and the second strike widened it for my body to pass.
The battle was over. I needed to get out.
I climbed along the hole’s walls. Even if I weren’t tired, it would have been a swift climb like a monkey scaling a tree—but fatigue slowed me.
I wanted to return the body to Isabel soon, but then I saw a shadow at the top, blocking sunlight. It was Lister, who had fought the golems alongside Isabel.
Ah, he could pass through the divine veil too.
At the time of The Long Tale, Lister couldn’t have done it—but he had grown through battles in Casteltina.
He wouldn’t die like a common extra now. Hopefully, he could support Isabel like Liz did.
But… why does his expression look so grim?
