The fight began with me slicing through the tentacle arm reaching for me.
"Help Lord Ganagl! We must escape before the prince arrives!"
"Elianelle's bitches...! I'll make you birth as many as you kill and sink you as sacrifices to the deep sea!"
As Ganagl opened his tentacle-writhing maw with a fierce roar, the other thirty-seven cultists also took combat stances simultaneously.
Spears, swords, axes, and staves were aimed menacingly, while the seven bishop-level cultists mumbled prayers in grotesque pronunciation.
"Fhe'whgn ltulri'hagl clu'ph..."
A string of incomprehensible dialect.
However, there was no need to try to understand it.
Like the old saying that forgiveness is easier than permission, with magic too, killing is much easier and quicker than understanding.
And the 'Shadows' who joined this mission were people who knew this very well.
"Ymunh―"
Just as a Deep Sea Church bishop in gloomy robes spread his fingers toward me to unleash abyss magic-
Thunk!
A crossbow bolt flew like a beam of light to pierce one bishop's throat, and assassins appearing like ghosts slashed at the cultists with daggers and short swords.
"Guk...!"
"Gyaaak!"
"What are these bastards! Where did they suddenly...!"
The cultists thrown into confusion by blades stabbing from right beside them, from behind.
Poisoned daggers dug into sides to shred internal organs, blackened short swords severed spines, and blackened wires cut into and tore throats.
Swift yet stealthy, mechanical ambushes devoid of all emotion. The cultists collapsed spraying blood, caught off guard by the unexpected surprise attack.
"Assassins! Light, we need light!"
"Sphaera Lucis!"
Could there be someone among the cultists who learned magic through official channels?
Someone's hastily cast spell became a pure white sphere that brightly illuminated several dozen meters like broad daylight.
The assassins who had tried to retreat back into darkness after their surprise attack frowned at the light.
With everywhere brightly lit, hiding again was impossible. The assassins gave up on a second ambush and chose frontal combat, charging head-on.
"Found you, you filthy rats!"
"Witness the grace bestowed by our Lord!"
The cultists, not to be outdone, charged back at the assassins with hate-filled battle cries.
Sparks flew as spears and swords clashed, short swords and axes dug into flesh. Fire arrows cut through the air and several tentacles lashed out like whips.
The assassins' blood and cultists' gore mixed together, staining the earth red.
○
"Really, they just keep coming no matter how much we cut them. What are they, planaria...!"
"Hil... ah, no. Grimhild! Should I draw 'that'?"
"No, wait! Until they're too few to escape!"
"Yes!"
Thick bundles of tentacles whipped and crushed the ground, while a longsword flashing in the moonlight and magical light pierced the air.
The giant flexibly twisted his body to dodge the longsword and struck my armor with tentacles to push me back, and in that gap, the girl's greatsword sliced through the tentacles as it swept upward.
A fierce two-against-one battle.
Thanks to Argentir's assassins handling the Deep Sea Church cultists, the enemies Friede and I had to face was reduced to just one.
"Ah, it's not workiiing―!"
...Well, that one was more dangerous and powerful than all the others combined.
The Deep Sea Church's leader, Abyss Priest Ganagl Peytan.
He showed not the slightest interest in the assassins battling his subordinates, charging at only me and Friede like a maddened elephant.
He judged... no, instinctively sensed that everyone except us two posed no threat.
Though his intelligence was lowered due to the abyss's blessing, the instincts carved into his body remained intact, is that it?
Well, it was because such instincts remained that he could massacre his superiors and seize the church leader position even in his half-crazed state.
...Well, this was rather fortunate for us.
It was much better for him to target only us like this than to rampage around indiscriminately after losing his reason.
Judging by the level of the assassins fighting the cultists, if Ganagl's attacks were directed at them, about half would cross the river to the afterlife in an instant.
Whoosh!
I was distracted by such thoughts for just a moment, but when I looked back, my view was suddenly filled with squishy, pointed masses of tentacles.
This wasn't his regenerated arm reaching out.
The source of the tentacles bursting out like a fountain wasn't his shoulder, but a large hideous maw that had suddenly torn through the air beside me.
『Maw of the Servant』
The Deep Sea Church's main magic that summons a large mouth in the air and spews sharp tentacles from within.
"Tch...!"
Too late to dodge.
But I hesitated to take it with my armor, remembering the original work's description that this magic had a binding effect.
So instead of dodging or enduring, I swung my sword while lighting up my eyes.
Not metaphorically, but literally. Igniting blue afterglow in my eyes hidden behind the helmet.
"Haaaaah!"
Mother's sword, Edelmut, became a gray storm as it swept through.
A series of slashes wielded in all directions like cutting down a parent's enemy. The overlapping net-like trajectories of strikes shredded the approaching mass of tentacles.
Green fluid and severed flesh scattered messily, and the monster's maw that had lost its tongue clamped shut and vanished like a mirage.
"Hyaaaah!"
While I was dealing with one of Ganagl's spells, Friede had closed in to engage in close combat.
"Groooar! Little one, annoying!"
His two arms, unraveled into something like a duster, became dozens of whips and nets sweeping everywhere.
A fierce attack that seemed to need twenty hands to block.
However, Friede was barely managing to hold on with just her black steel greatsword, cutting, deflecting, entangling and crushing all the tentacles.
"This, ugh...!"
Perhaps at her limit just defending with a simple greatsword rather than a holy sword, she could barely block let alone counterattack properly, her cloak getting shredded to pieces.
Boom!
I kicked off the ground and lunged to thrust Edelmut at Ganagl's flank.
A perfect recreation of Eisenbalt swordsmanship's charging attack from the memories carved into Brunhilde's body.
Just as the lightning-fast sword tip was about to pierce through his side―
Whoosh!
Black tentacles burst from the ground a step ahead, wildly lashing around.
I reflexively stopped my advance and turned my sword sideways to slice through the mass of tentacles rising from the ground.
Black fluid spraying up from the helplessly severed tentacle cross-sections.
As I caught it with my cloak and shook it off immediately, the ground spattered with black liquid started smoking and melting with a hissing sound.
『Flesh Seed』
Magic that fires small flesh masses like seeds, summoning poison-filled tentacles where the flesh embeds.
"Groooaar...!"
As I stopped to cut these down and block the poison, Ganagl turned his head toward me as if he'd been waiting.
In the middle of that nauseating, creepy face, the tentacles of his jawless mouth spread wide to reveal a throat as black as the abyss.
"Something's coming! Front! Dodge!"
Friede shouted urgently. One of her traits, <Battle Instinct>, must have sensed the approaching crisis a step ahead.
"Don't worry!"
...Well, the advice to dodge must be a mistake due to lack of experience. Because the incoming attack was the kind of magic impossible to dodge.
At least, not at this middling distance.
"I-I hear it. The Lord, you, to the abyss...!"
Ganagl's mouth stretched down to his chest, and tremendous magical power churned from the darkness within.
There was nowhere to dodge. No matter how quickly I moved, I wouldn't be faster than the speed at which he could turn his head toward me.
So instead of dodging sideways as Friede advised, I reversed my grip on Edelmut and thrust its tip into the ground.
Yes. Mother had clearly said this was how to activate it.
"Receive-!"
"Oh Elianelle!"
As our shouts crossed, a formless power burst from Ganagl's mouth like a tank shell.
Magic that opens a connection to the being the Abyss Priests call god, releasing vast magical power flowing from there in the form of a shockwave.
『Call of the Abyss』
A destruction shell that crushes not just the target's flesh but even their soul.
Just as that overwhelming destructive force was about to sweep over and shatter me.
Flash!
Pure white radiance burst from Edelmut's blade to form a translucent barrier blocking my front.
The Goddess Church's defensive miracle, Holy Barrier.
The goddess's veil deployed through the sword became a shield protecting me, taking the abyss's shockwave head-on.
Thunder-like explosions and flashes. The pure white barrier rippled like waves, repeatedly distorting and reforming.
After several seconds like that.
As the shockwave Ganagl had spewed scattered while tearing up the earth, the Holy Barrier that had completed its role also shattered like snowflakes.
Neither defense nor penetration but neutralization. The remaining force of what broke through became a debris-filled gust sweeping through.
And in that moment, I.
"Haaaah!"
Burst through the dispersing torrent of neutralized force and brought down my gripped longsword diagonally at the monster's astonished face.
A deep sword wound was carved into Ganagl's upper body.
Though not enough to call fatal, it was an injury that would have been instant death and more for a normal human.