HPV 42

Banwes stood blankly, repeatedly recalling that face that wouldn’t leave his mind. Before he knew it, the sun had set. Bzhan had long since disappeared, but Banwes hadn’t even noticed.

Slowly lifting his stiff legs like a stone statue, Banwes stepped into the house.

A long corridor unfolded before him. He stopped in front of the door Riarun had closed behind him. Pressing his ear to the door and concentrating, he could sense a faint presence only he could perceive.

He couldn’t open the door to check if Riarun was hunched over and sleeping again.

Because each of them had been given their own separate rooms.

Banwes had no justification to open this door.

What if he barged in and Riarun got angry again, showing that unfamiliar, furious face like before?

Banwes removed his hand from the doorknob and sat down, leaning against the wall.

Even if it was annoying having someone fidgeting around nearby, it was still better than not knowing what they were doing at all.

He never used to care which room he stayed in at an inn, nor did he have any feelings about it. But now, strangely enough, dissatisfaction crept into his heart—this was not a room shared with Riarun.

—

Demons, and those who became their hosts, must all disappear from this world.

Yurichen had spent every moment of his life in the temple, engraving Gaioh’s doctrine into his very being. To him, demons were the “sworn enemies of God,” “things to be exterminated thousands and tens of thousands of times,” “threats to be stopped even at the cost of one’s own life.”

“Do you understand? The thing that has possessed your body must be eradicated from this world.”

The High Priest’s boots left soundless marks on the floor.

The demon’s host, bound tightly, screamed and cursed God with wide, maddened eyes. Without a flicker of emotion, Yurichen stood before him and fully unveiled his face.

His brilliant golden eyes shone colder than the dead of winter and more fiercely than the flames of hell. The host’s screams intensified.

Although the temple priests had kept the crisis within the duchy secret to prevent unrest among the townspeople, a few believers had begun to sense something was amiss from the temple’s chaos.

Those who had hidden themselves away in fear were suddenly called outside by knights of the duke’s household knocking urgently on their doors.

“What are the knights thinking…?”

The oblivious townspeople followed the knights’ guidance and entered the mill one after another. Some supported elderly women, others cradled infants.

Once everyone was inside, the doors slammed shut from outside.

Screams echoed. The people closest to the knights began spewing blood and collapsing.

“Please save us!”

“Help us, please!”

The terrified crowd pounded on the door, but it would not open.

Only then did they realize: these weren’t real knights.

They were demons cultists, disguised in knight’s armor.

More people fell, one after another, without knowing why. Shouts and cries swelled. People clawed desperately at the doors.

At that moment—

“This way, come this way!”

The door burst open.

And in that instant, they saw an angel: a beautiful young man with platinum hair streaming behind him, shouting loudly for them to come.

A knight rushed at Riarun, swinging a bloodstained sword.

Clang! The blade struck a round shield. The sword sank into the shield with a grating, splintering sound like a green fruit being smashed. Riarun bit his lip, extending his hand to strengthen the barrier and protect the people.

Two of the fake knights, faces contorting in frustration, halted.

“What the hell is that?”

“He’s a Spiritist. You folks around here probably don’t know, but they’re common in the South.”

A Spiritist hadn’t been part of their plan…

One of the knights muttered curses and barked an order to the others:

“Forget the townspeople. Chase that Spiritist and kill him.”

The people fled safely, and all the knights turned to pursue Riarun.

Riarun ran through the alleys.

In the game’s story, there was no scene where he saved people.

Of course not.

But knowing full well that people would die here first, how could he just sit by, claiming “the story mustn’t change”?

Arrows rained down from behind. The whistling of sharp arrowheads slicing through the wind—one grazed his ear, and searing pain and blood burst forth. Riarun screamed and squeezed his eyes shut.

He stretched his arm backward to raise a shield.

The arrows thudded into the barrier, but the force knocked him sprawling to the ground.

A moan escaped his lips.

The impact made it hard to regain his senses.

It felt like arrows would soon be burying themselves in his hunched body.

He squeezed his eyes shut tightly.

Thunk—a chilling sound rang out. But the pain he braced for never came.

Riarun opened his eyes.

It wasn’t him who had been struck—it was the enemy aiming a bow at him, now lying dead, an arrow through his throat.

“Damn it! There’s an archer hiding!”

“We can’t even see them!”

The pursuers, who had been leisurely hunting him down like prey, froze for the first time.

They glanced toward the rooftop from which the arrow had flown—but saw nothing.

Fwoosh!

Another arrow, fired from a completely different direction, pierced another knight’s throat.

However, even among the enemies, skilled fighters were hiding.

While bodies fell under the rain of arrows, a few stood tall and firm.

They slashed the incoming arrows cleanly with their swords, and some even leapt onto the rooftops, attempting to catch the hidden archer directly.

“Hold out! He’s bound to run out of arrows!”

“Don’t let him pick up the fallen ones!”

Kugh—!

One of the shouting enemies suddenly dropped his sword and thrashed about. For a brief moment, the shadow of a black-haired boy flickered past his back, and with a final death rattle, he collapsed.

A deep puncture wound from an arrowhead marked his neck.

“What the…! Is he an elf or something? How is he that fast?!”

“Prepare for an assassination! Stay on guard around you, and he won’t be able to approach!”

“Judging by the presence, it feels like a kid! Lower your field of view!”

Over there!

New enemies came running from another alley.

Riarun couldn’t rely solely on Bzhan.

He started running again, deeper into an empty alley, and shouted:

“Don’t overdo it! Just fall back!”

Bzhan would have heard.

He always listened closely to Riarun’s voice.

Today, the day the demon cult launched its attack, Riarun was originally supposed to be evacuating north of the duchy together with Banwes.

The reason Banwes had been excluded was simple: The priests needed to gather their power for a large-scale purification, and if Banwes was caught in it, he would be purified too—because he was part of the monsters.

For Banwes, purification meant death.

However, Riarun took advantage of a gap and escaped from Banwes.

As soon as he fled the hideout, he hopped on the first public carriage he could find and rode back south.

Because I need to be part of the large-scale purification too.

That morning, Riarun had kissed Banwes and forcibly extracted the demon inside him.

Banwes had said it was too soon, but Riarun had snatched it away anyway, without warning.

Now that preparations were complete, all he had to do was shake Banwes off.

Thus, he’d hurled every nasty insult he could think of to make sure Banwes wouldn’t follow: starting with complaining that staying around a monster like Banwes during a sacred purification would only taint him too, comparing Banwes unfavorably to Paronai, saying Paronai was far safer and more trustworthy than him, and ending with a final blow—declaring that unlike Banwes, he would actually be helping the party with his own power.

After all that, he turned and left without looking back.

To the stunned Banwes, overwhelmed by the verbal onslaught, he’d even “accidentally” let slip that he was headed toward where Falonai was.

This had two benefits:

First, Banwes could assume that Paronai would protect Riarun, so the odds of him giving chase would slightly decrease.

And even if Banwes did try to find Falonai, it wouldn’t matter—because Liarun had actually lied and run in the exact opposite direction.

Paronai was supposed to be on the western side of the duchy, safely outside the purification range.

Will I be purified? I can feel the holy power. But I need to move a little closer to the center.

If only he hadn’t been spotted by the demon cultists.

The enemy hadn’t anticipated that the High Priest Yurichen would be passing through the duchy.

And now there were not one but two terrifying High Priests present.

Moreover, Yurichen Viezlin was a divine presence even among High Priests.

Now that the leader, the demon host, had been captured, their whole conspiracy was crumbling.

In desperation, the demon cultists had turned to massacring civilians, just like before.

It was a diversionary tactic to scatter the real knights of the duchy away from the captured host.

But there are also heroes and mages on our side. The bad guys will be caught soon.

Riarun believed in the story’s progression, but the madness of the demon cultists he witnessed with his own eyes was terrifying beyond belief.

Facing it firsthand made his body tremble uncontrollably.

Humans were scarier than monsters.

In this world, it seemed the only religious person he could trust was Yurichen.

He couldn’t trust anyone else.

“You persistent brat…!”

“Keep chasing him! That spirit magic will run out soon enough!”

Riarun gasped for breath, barely able to keep himself from dying by raising shields just in time.

He felt pathetic for doing nothing but running away, but there was no other choice.