Chapter 391: Things Went Smoothly (1)
Ghislain tilted his head as he stared down at Lavierre’s severed head lying on the ground.
“What’s with this guy? All of a sudden?”
To kill him as quickly as possible, Ghislain had activated his Third Stage Core. Lavierre should have had enough strength to put up at least some resistance.
But instead, he had taken the blow as if he had completely lost the will to fight. For someone of Ghislain’s caliber, it was impossible not to notice such an odd reaction.
“Was he trying to leave some last words?”
After pondering briefly, Ghislain shook his head. If there was one lesson he had learned through countless battles in both his past and current lives, it was this: never waste time listening to a cornered enemy.
He had narrowly avoided losing his head once too often by entertaining such distractions.
Right now, there were more pressing matters than ruminating over unanswered questions.
As the battle ended, the knights rushed over, shouting.
“Wow! We caught him!”
“As expected, ganging up is always the best!”
“I knew we’d win!”
The knights laughed freely. They believed victory was inevitable whenever their lord personally stepped into the fray.
Kaor, battered and beaten, collapsed to the ground. Panting so hard he was nearly drooling, he shouted.
“That bastard can’t fight for crap! Hey, did you all see that?”
“……”
The knights said nothing. Faced with someone bold enough to boast despite being in such a pitiful state, they didn’t know how to respond.
Belinda sighed deeply and slumped onto the ground. She could no longer muster the strength to stand.
“Whew, even without any real combat training, he was still tough to deal with.”
While the fight may have seemed easy from the outside, the reality was far different. Each of Lavierre’s strikes carried a terrifying amount of power.
If any of them had landed cleanly, it could have been fatal.
That was why even Ghislain had focused on deflecting and dodging his attacks wherever possible.
Had someone with Lavierre’s strength also mastered proper combat techniques, the fight would not have ended so easily.
“Is it because I’ve fought him before? How did I know he’d use that move?”
Especially noteworthy was the final technique Lavierre had used it was extraordinary. If Vanessa hadn’t been prepared, channeling her mana in advance, it would have been difficult for the three of them to block it.
“Well, the Young Lord always keeps so many things to himself… Even if I ask, he’ll probably just dodge the question again.”
Belinda grumbled softly.
As she suspected, Ghislain had anticipated that Lavierre would resort to that particular technique when cornered. In his previous life, he had suffered significant damage from it.
This was why he had instructed Vanessa to prepare defensive magic in advance.
With both the village chief and Lavierre dealt with, no one was left to oppose Ghislain’s group.
“Destroy everything and check for anything suspicious.”
At Ghislain’s command, the knights began to tear through the village, even digging into the ground as they searched.
The soldiers, who had been paralyzed by the spectacle of the battle, finally joined the knights in their search.
Descending into the basement of the village chief’s house, Ghislain frowned.
“This wasn’t made in a short amount of time.”
Just as Dark had said, the enormous magic circle had blood flowing through its channels. The stench of decay wafted from the surrounding corpses.
The knights who had followed Ghislain into the basement recoiled at the sight.
“Ugh! What the hell?!”
“These maniacs… What were they doing here?”
“Urgh!”
Even these battle-hardened knights, accustomed to seeing horrific sights, gagged at the sheer brutality and grotesqueness of the scene.
“Check to see if anyone’s still alive.”
At Ghislain’s order, the knights broke apart the surrounding apparatuses, extracting people from within.
After thoroughly investigating, they shook their heads.
“They’re all dead.”
“It doesn’t seem like they’ve been dead for very long.”
“It looks like they were drained of their blood while still alive.”
Hearing their report, Ghislain clicked his tongue. The place was filled with thousands of skeletons, making it impossible to estimate how many years this atrocity had been going on.
The aura emanating from the massive magic circle was eerily similar to something he had encountered in his previous life.
‘It’s certain. They used this magic circle to open a rift.’
The rift resembled a split in space itself. Its blinding light made it impossible to see what lay beyond.
Many had tried to enter, but none succeeded. Only monsters from another realm poured out from the cracks.
The aura leaking from those spatial tears was identical to the energy emanating from this magic circle.
“Vanessa, can you interpret this magic circle?”
At Ghislain’s words, Vanessa shook her head, her expression tense. She was already in the process of analyzing the magic circle.
“I’m not entirely sure. There are traces of coordinate-based magic and mana concentration arrays designed to absorb surrounding energy… but it diverges from traditional magical frameworks. It seems to be an independently developed method.”
“Hm, I figured as much.”
Even mages far more skilled than Vanessa in his previous life had failed to uncover the rift’s true nature. It wasn’t surprising that she couldn’t either.
Vanessa cautiously suggested to Ghislain,
“It’s clear that it accumulates power by extracting life force and mana from the surroundings. What if we take some time to analyze it in reverse?”
“No, destroy it immediately.”
“This? Right now?”
“Yes. The longer we leave it, the more harm it will bring to the surroundings. A barrier won’t contain it. It’s regrettable, but we don’t have a choice.”
As Vanessa mentioned, the magic circle’s unconventional structure rendered it immune to traditional magical barriers.
Once the rift opened, its corrupting aura would spread, gradually eroding the surrounding land. Humanity had already lost vast territories this way.
Closing an already opened rift required immense sacrifices. In his past life, Ghislain had witnessed countless lives lost to seal just one.
It was imperative to destroy the magic circle while it was still emitting its energy rather than fully activating.
Ghislain looked around at Vanessa and the knights.
“A stronger aura will invade your bodies than before. If you continue to absorb it, you’ll turn into mutants.”
In his previous life, everyone who lived near the spatial rifts became mutants.
For now, since this rift hadn’t fully opened, only the villagers had been affected. But if it did open, the contaminated area would expand exponentially.
The knights nodded. They had already noticed that the aura became more intense the closer they got to the magic circle compared to when they were in the village.
And the idea of becoming mutants from prolonged exposure left them uneasy. They wanted to destroy the magic circle as much as Clpoi’s head had been smashed earlier.
Ghislain drew his Aura Blade and immediately struck the magic circle.
Boom!
The ominous energy emitting from the circle seemed to scream in agony. There was no actual sound, but everyone felt it.
Bang! Boom! Crash!
Fully aware of the rift’s horrors, Ghislain obliterated the magic circle until not even a trace remained, grinding the floor into dust.
Only after confirming multiple times that the aura had completely dissipated did he finally stop.
“Summon the soldiers, show them this scene, and have them clean up the corpses and bones.”
The kingdom’s troops, which Ghislain had requisitioned, were shocked at the sight in the basement. Some even collapsed on the spot.
A commander of the Third Legion, who had fought alongside Ghislain in the war against Desmond, looked at him with trembling eyes.
“C-Count… What is this?”
“It’s the Salvation Church’s doing. I don’t know the exact reason, but those bastards are using people as sacrifices for some purpose.”
Ghislain refrained from mentioning the rift’s existence. There was no concrete proof to back up his words. People only needed to see what was directly in front of them.
The Third Legion’s commander cursed under his breath.
“These lunatics… What the hell are they trying to do?”
The Salvation Church was well-known throughout the kingdom as a public enemy and a heretical sect. Though infamous due to their connection to monsters, most ordinary people dismissed the rumors as just another excuse for noble infighting.
But if the church was killing people en masse and conducting experiments like this, it changed everything.
“If this has been going on for so long, they must have been kidnapping people for years,” said the commander.
“Exactly. This isn’t something that can be done in a short time.”
Kidnapping a few vagrants or beggars might go unnoticed, but abducting thousands from this small village would have caused an uproar.
The fact that no one had noticed until now meant that people had been disappearing gradually over a very long time.
“Make sure everything is cleaned up, and submit a report. I’ll personally inform the Marquis of Branford. There are a few more locations I’ve identified.”
“There are other places like this?”
“They’ve built facilities like this across the continent. We’ll track them all down and destroy them.”
“How did you find out?”
“A dead man spilled everything.”
It was a lie, but there was no way for anyone to verify it. Ghislain continued in a quiet voice.
“In any case, this is serious, so spread the word. People need to be vigilant. Understood?”
“Yes, sir. Understood. Besides, it’ll be hard to keep this a secret with so many soldiers having seen it.”
Rumors needed to spread like wildfire. The more enemies the Salvation Church had, the more nobles would be compelled to cooperate with him.
As the soldiers worked on cleaning up the area, Ghislain was lost in thought.
‘I know the approximate locations, so I can close many rifts in advance.’
Even if he didn’t have precise details, he could remember the general vicinity. A thorough search would undoubtedly uncover them.
‘I should’ve investigated more thoroughly back then.’
Unfortunately, when he was still a fledgling mercenary, he couldn’t pinpoint the exact locations of some rifts that had formed far away. His role back then had been fighting, not investigating.
The one silver lining was that, as a seasoned mercenary, he had traveled extensively across the continent.
He still remembered most of the rifts he had encountered during his battles.
‘It wasn’t a coincidence that there were no rifts in the North.’
It was remarkable that some regions had no rifts at all. One such region was the northern part of the Ritania Kingdom.
To be precise, there was one rift near the border leading into the North, but none within the northern territories themselves.
‘Could it be because of the Forest of Beasts?’
The enemy had their sights set on the Forest of Beasts, so they had likely avoided conducting such operations in the area intentionally.
In his past life, no one had known this fact, leading them to believe that the rifts appeared randomly.
If rifts had existed in the North, they would have been investigated. However, since there were none, no one had even considered searching, instead focusing solely on preparing for the calamity to come.
‘This worked out perfectly.’
While the reason was unclear, Ghislain now knew what the enemy was up to. More importantly, he knew a significant number of locations where they were active.
Having prepared for the full emergence of rifts, Ghislain realized that closing even a few in advance could tilt the situation in his favor.
‘I need to act quickly.’
The Marquis of Roderick would soon mobilize his troops. With the rifts exposed, it was certain that the Ducal Families would escalate their efforts to cover their tracks.
He needed to inform the Marquis of Branford and other kingdoms about what he had discovered. Doing so would increase the pressure on both the Salvation Church and the Ducal Families.
“Let’s head to the capital.”
Leaving a few soldiers to secure the area, Ghislain promptly set off for the capital.
Upon Ghislain’s return, the Marquis of Branford greeted him with a skeptical look.
“What is it this time? You just left not long ago.”
“I’ve come to report something important,” Ghislain replied.
The Marquis’s expression turned stern as he cut him off.
“There’s nothing left.”
“…What?”
“I said, there’s nothing left.”
“I don’t understand what exactly are you talking about?”
“Don’t you think you’ve taken enough already? I gave you the Dragon Heart Shard, didn’t I? What more do you want?”
“….”
It seemed there was some sort of misunderstanding. Ghislain hadn’t come to request anything this time.
“I’m not here to ask for anything.”
The Marquis gave Ghislain a suspicious glare.
‘This brat has swindled me out of so much already.’
Though the outcomes had always been favorable, it didn’t erase the frustration of being manipulated. Moreover, the Marquis couldn’t fathom what more this man could possibly need.
Sighing in exasperation, Ghislain spoke.
“I’ve uncovered one of the Salvation Church’s schemes, and I’ve brought a witness.”
“Hm? What did you say?”
Realizing he had jumped to the wrong conclusion, the Marquis finally showed interest. The commander of the kingdom’s army, who had accompanied Ghislain, stepped forward to explain what he had seen.
The commander described the scene with such vivid detail that it felt as though the Marquis himself had been present.
Shocked, the Marquis turned to Ghislain.
“Is it true? They were kidnapping and killing people?”
“Yes. As expected of heretics, they’re plotting vile deeds. Like dark mages, they’re using humans as sacrifices.”
“Those bastards…”
“And it’s not just one location. There are several.”
Ghislain recounted what he had told the army commander earlier, vaguely attributing the information to what he had learned from Lavierre.
As Ghislain continued, the Marquis’s expression grew graver.
“Are you saying they’re doing this not only in our kingdom, but elsewhere as well?”
“Exactly.”
“It’s possible that the enemy fed you false information. If that’s the case and we’re wrong, we’ll be humiliated, and our credibility will be destroyed.”
Ghislain smirked.
“That’s why we should verify the closest locations first. The moment we confirm it, we need to strike all at once. We must also alert the other kingdoms immediately.”
The Marquis nodded in agreement. While they couldn’t confirm what was happening in the southern territories controlled by the Ducal Families, there were plenty of areas near the capital, as well as in the eastern and western regions, that needed investigation.
If what Ghislain said was true, they needed to act before the Ducal Families and the Salvation Church could cover their tracks.
The Marquis raised his hand and issued an order.
“Steward, prepare to mobilize the kingdom’s army immediately.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The Marquis stood, determination etched on his face. For a man who rarely left the capital, this was a significant event.
“This might turn out to be a greater opportunity than we expected.”
If everything Ghislain had uncovered proved true, it would leave the Salvation Church and the Ducal Families no choice but to face the combined wrath of every kingdom on the continent.