Chapter 129 - [Outsider]

Kinro placed the captured lich cultist on the steps of the church. The unmasked man slumped to the side, seemingly unconscious. I must have knocked him out with my bolt of electricity earlier.

Though the thought offended me, I realized that the lich cultists looked just like normal people when their masks were removed. The man slumped on the steps had plain Etronian features indicating that his family was originally from the Lowlands area, and the man’s sun-damaged skin told me that he had once been a laborer. Looking at the man’s unconscious form and seeing a real person made it even harder for me to get into the mental state that I knew I would have to soon enter.

Wordlessly, I fished through the deep pockets of my trousers and removed a small glass vial. On the side of the vial, I had written the English words, “Ammonium carbonate.”

“Hold your noses,” I told the other two as I uncorked the vial and held it up to the unconscious cultist’s nose.

The cultist awoke with a twitch and a gasp as his body automatically tried to retreat from the vial of smelling salts I held in front of his nose. After taking a moment to perceive his surroundings, the cultist’s expression hardened, and he reached for his weapon.

Naturally, Kinro disarmed him while he was unconscious. By the time the cultist realized he was unarmed, the point of Kinro’s blade was pressed against his throat. Now that Kinro was sober, his blade did not falter as he held it.

Fear appeared on the cultist’s face, but it was clear to me that his spirit had still not been broken. If given the chance, he would try to attack us or retreat back to his base. The cultist seemed intent on speaking, but I cut him off.

“Now, you’re going to tell us everything about the location of your headquarters and how many men are currently stationed there, or the man with the sword will hurt you. Do you understand?” I stared directly into the cultist’s eyes as I spoke. The anger I felt at the situation I currently faced and the sins I would have to commit in the near future caused my voice to come out as a furious hiss.

“Why should…?” The cultist began to answer rebelliously. Hearing the man’s tone, Kinro answered the man’s implied interrogative by swinging his sword so fast that I could barely see it. The cultist’s voice caught in his throat as several locks of hair fell past his eyes.

Honestly, I was just as shocked as the cultist. Kinro had swung his sword with enough precision to cut the man’s hair without touching his skin. I knew Kinro had power, but I had never seen so much precision from the swordmaster.

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“Okay,” the cultist gasped in shock. His voice was suddenly much less calm, and he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. “But… how do I know you won’t just kill me once I tell you everything?”

In response, I reached for the symbol of Nyx that I still wore around my neck. It was customary for priests to carry such symbols, and I hadn’t thought to remove it ever since I lost my healing factor the day before. “My sister and I are members of the Church of Nyx. We won’t commit acts of violence unless they become necessary.”

“Okay, okay,” the cultist said in a quavering voice. “I just joined; I don’t actually care about all that necromancy crap. It’s just… they offer three square meals a day, and they’ll hire anybody. I didn’t have a choice. I had…”

“Shut up,” I said, silencing the man. “How many cultists are there?”

“There are more than a hundred in the city, but most of them are out in the streets right now. When I left, there were just a handful of Aspirants there to protect the ritual, a few necromancers, and that outsider.”

“Outsider? You mean the mage dressed in blue? Tell me everything you know about him.”

“I never really got a good look at the guy. He just showed up about a month ago and started ordering around the top brass. Now that I think about it, that was around the time they started preparing for the ritual.”

“I see,” I said, sighing. I would have preferred to learn more about the Blue Mage. He was the only person in Etron who was a legitimate threat to me. Sure, Orion and Beatrix were stronger than me, but I could predict their actions with absolute certainty. Though powerful, high nobles were offensively easy to predict.

Orion would not act at all until King Theophrastus was dead. The King’s Seneschal truly believed he was acting in the Kingdom’s best interests. The only reason Orion was still aligned with the Lich Cult was his desire to create a strong leader who could lead the Kingdom of Etronia until the end of time.

Beatrix, on the other hand, cared far too much about her reputation to be seen with the Lich Cult. Sure, she hated me because Count Armond killed her father during the Rose Rebellion, but she would not attack me unless she could be 100% certain that I would not live to tell the tale.

The true leaders of the Lich Cult, the nobles, could not presently be traced to any cult activity. They lead the Cult by choosing its leaders and funding their operations, but they would not reveal their connection until after the death of the King.

I could handle the lower-rank cultists, and I knew I was at about the same weight class as the necromancers. It would be tough, but I could take them out.

“Kinro,” I said, turning my attention to the swordmaster. “Get directions from the prisoner. I need to talk to Miriam alone for a second.”

Kinro gave me an informal salute with the flat of his blade and went back to menacing the prisoner.

Once my sister and I had walked out of earshot, Miriam looked at me with a confused expression and asked, “What do you want to talk about?”

The two of us sat down on the edge of a fountain that was drained during my fight with the orcs. With a sigh, I said, “I want to talk about what I’ll have to do once we get to the cult headquarters. If we’re going to stop the ritual, I can’t hold back. I’ll have to kill any cultist we see.”