El-Cid said, —That was a close one. Good call.

Yeah... I’m not even sure why I did it, but I’m glad I did, Leon replied in relief.

It was a cunning, calculated trap. The Evil Order had laid multiple detection seals throughout the passage that would bind any intruder’s feet the moment they triggered. Once that happened, the Evil Order would unleash Apophis to scour the tunnel clean.

Even for an Aura Master, surviving that would’ve been nothing short of a miracle.

Karen shouted, “Mr. Hero! That thing just now—it was the same one we saw in the desert, right?”

Her face had gone pale. Leon nodded, letting out a weary sigh.

“Mhm. But this time, it wasn’t just a fragment. It was the real body.”

“We could’ve all died before we even realized what happened...”

“Yeah. We barely made it out,” he agreed.

There was no way the Evil Order had complete control over that being. They had likely left it under a conditional command, something like ‘devour anything that stirs in the depths.’

We won’t be using the tunnels again, Leon thought grimly.

Even he didn’t have the nerve to re-enter a passage prowled by a monster like Apophis. Had he not sensed the danger in time, only those who could slice open space itself might have escaped, and the rest would’ve been dissolved in its stomach.

Abandoning the plan to use the tunnels for their escape, Leon exhaled, steadying his breath. But before he could rise, Anna called out to him.

“H-Hero...”

“Your Eminence? What’s wrong?”

The woman, who had until now worn her usual composed smile, was trembling. Her hand quivered as she pointed at something ahead.

Leon’s eyes followed her gesture. And then, he froze. Before them spread a panorama of hell itself.

El-Cid said quietly, —This... This one, I’ll let you look away. I think that’s valid.

He had always taught Leon that a Hero must never turn from tragedy, that when faced with malice, he could not take a step back. But even he—El-Cid—was telling him it was fine to avert his eyes this time.

It was just that horrific. That unspeakably vile.

Even the Holy Iron Inquisitors, trained to steel both body and mind, gagged and retched, clutching their helmets or doubling over as bile rose up their throats.

Karen, who had once survived the filth of the slums, also stood frozen, eyes wide, as if her body had forgotten how to move. No human could react any differently.

What... is this...?

Leon forced his trembling eyes to look forward, his neck stiff as he turned to take in the scene around him.

There was death, despair, and lamentation. Nothing of life’s brightness remained, and only a thick, oozing mass of hatred and decay. Before Leon’s eyes lay a city that was decorated with people—no, what used to be people.

Why, Leon wondered, did a single word rise to mind?

Object.

This wasn’t senseless slaughter. It was deliberate, the work of someone who had taken pleasure in desecrating life itself.

There was a jar filled with the mashed remains of a parent and child. There were severed heads of brothers arranged like flowers in a vase. There were garlands of human limbs draped atop mounds of corpses.

Murals were painted across the buildings in blood and brain matter, and the “material” for those paintings, their shriveled skins, hung neatly as if freshly laundered cloth.

It was, quite literally, a hellscape.

—Leon.

El-Cid called his name, but Leon couldn’t respond. A small head lay at his feet—so small he could guess the child’s age.

—Leon?

Still no reply. Rage boiled over inside him, burning even El-Cid’s voice to ash. His vision blurred, tears running freely as his teeth clenched so hard his jaw creaked.

It was unforgivable. No reason, no excuse could ever justify this. These monsters—he would never allow them to exist.

El-Cid called for the third time, —Leon!

Only then did Leon blink and return to himself.

“El...Cid?”

—You lost yourself for a bit. Understandable. Even I’ve only seen something like this a few times in my life.

El-Cid’s calm, almost cold tone brought Leon back to focus. What had already happened couldn’t be undone. What mattered now was what came next, which was saving whoever might still be alive.

All right. Assess the situation first.

Blinking away the sting in his eyes, Leon glanced around. They had emerged not beneath the fountain as planned, but somewhere near the outskirts of the city center.

No life signs? Not one?

He had expected that, but the confirmation still weighed heavily. And it wasn’t just here. Across the entire area within his sensory reach, not a single life remained besides their own. Death had spread indiscriminately—men, women, children—all equal before its cruelty.

—Looks like some form of human sacrifice. But it’s a kind of exolaw I’ve never seen.

A human sacrifice? This grotesque nightmare?

It was nothing like what they’d seen in Blaine. The preparation for City Swallowing involved extracting flesh, blood, and life for their ritual with cold efficiency. That was also completely unforgivable, but what was happening in Calelum was an act of deliberate, malicious desecration.

Whoever led this ritual wasn’t merely evil. They were warped to the core of their soul.

—No lingering spirits either. They must’ve ripped out every soul and offered them up. The souls of these people might not be worth much individually, but ten thousand of them? That’s another story.

The horror from the cruelty and the evilness of the offender wasn’t the issue now. What mattered was understanding why.

There was always a purpose behind a ritual of this scale. What had the Evil Order sought to gain? What did they wish to summon—or awaken?

If they didn’t uncover that, they’d walk straight into the next trap.

Then, a foreign voice echoed. Without a word, every Master turned their head in the same direction.

“Damn... My apologies for the poor hospitality,” a low voice drawled. “It was quite the lively city, not long ago.”

With the words came a swelling pressure, a presence so heavy that every heartbeat seemed to stop. The power of something monstrous approached, step by step.

Leon had felt this presence once before. A young man with hair and eyes glistening the color of blood—something too flawless, too sinister to be human. It was the monster second only to the Archbishop within the Evil Order: Nekator of Destruction.

The Cardinals who recognized him instinctively swallowed hard.

“The Destroyer...”

“So he did remain at their base after all...!”

No one knew the Evil Order better than the Holy Church, and the reverse was just as true. Nekator, recognizing the two Cardinals, waved casually.

“Anna and Dominic? That’s an odd pairing. Would’ve been more fun if Irexana had come, but you two will do, I suppose.”

He jumped from the bell tower, landing lightly upon a street littered with corpses and blood. Looking down, he grimaced as if disgusted.

“Ugh, this stinks. Filthy. Was there really a need to kill them like this? They may be my ‘brothers’, but I’ll never understand their methods.”

Leon called, “Nekator.”

“Hm? Me?”

Hearing his voice, Nekator turned. The Cardinals wanted to stop the Hero from engaging a Nine Hell Bishop in conversation, but one look at Leon’s eyes made them hold their tongues. Those eyes burned with divine light.

“What do you think of this?” Leon asked.

“What do I think?”

“Yes. All living things die someday. Life and death are part of a cycle—there’s no right or wrong in that. But meaning still exists.”

Nekator had said earlier that he “didn’t understand” his brothers. Then could he understand Leon’s words?

Leon added, “Tell me, then—what meaning is there in this death? This slaughter? You yourself said you don’t understand it! Then why take part in it? Why do you live this way?”

The longer Leon spoke, the hotter his voice grew, until it trembled with fury. It was a question every righteous man must ask, at least once.

Why commit sin? Why commit evil? Why, while wearing the guise of a man, stray so far from all that makes one human?

“Well, why do you think?” Nekator said lightly, “My view’s a bit different from yours. I think not understanding is perfectly natural.”

“Natural?”

“I’m not you. You’re not me. So of course, there are things we can’t understand about each other, things we’ll never be able to share.”

It was a painfully simple truth. Even parents and siblings were like that. Even a friend trusted with one’s life could never truly peer into the depths of another’s soul.

That’s why people covered that unknown with faith. They chose compassion, tolerance, and hope.

“Futile,” Nekator declared flatly. “You said there’s meaning even if there’s no right or wrong in life or death—but I don’t agree. Both are meaningless. The act of judging them at all is arrogance. To me, life is nothing more than existing until it stops.”

“You find even your own life meaningless?”

“Pretty much. I fight because it’s fun. I kill because it’s fun. The only place that ever accepted me was this madhouse, so I stay. Expecting ideological conviction from me would just be awkward for both of us.”

Then, with a sharp grin, he added, “So it’s simple. I want to fight. You don’t like me, so why are we still just talking?”

“You...” Leon couldn’t suppress the disgust that boiled up from his gut. He spat the words like venom. “...should never have been born human.”

“I agree,” Nekator replied instantly, still smiling. “For once, we see eye to eye.”

He bared his teeth, eyes glinting with feral delight. Then, raising both hands, he clapped once.

“Come then! End my meaningless life!”

Whether that clap was a signal or not, the ground itself responded. From beneath the sea of corpses and blood, followers of the Evil Order began to emerge—dozens, then hundreds.

They were acolytes, the rank just below Priests, forming the main body of the cult’s forces. And even among them, several Priest-level figures stood.

“ɣɖɢŭɕɕɱʊɕ!”

“ɢŭɮɖɢŭɕɕɯʗʘ!”

“ɣɖɢŭɮɯʗʘʙʚ!”

Indescribable incantations, forbidden spells that shattered reason and seeded madness, filled the air, worming into the ears and scraping at the mind. However, the Holy Iron Inquisitors were ready. They answered with their own voices, their chants.

“AHHHH! AHHHHHHHH!”

Without lyrics or words, their unified cries formed harmonies that surged forward with Holy Power. The unholy incantations crumbled beneath that resonance, and the lesser exolaw wielders faltered, unable to even hold their ground. The sound of sixty warriors, their voices forged into one choir, was overwhelming.

Looks like we won’t need to worry about that side, Leon thought.

For the Holy Iron Inquisitors, battling the Evil Order was routine. Their methods, strategies, and counter-techniques had been refined for centuries. Even when outnumbered, they were never truly at a disadvantage.

The real problem lay elsewhere. Here, where they were standing off, four against one.

They surrounded the bishop on all sides, yet even then, Leon and the three Masters did not relax. Nekator’s presence alone demanded absolute vigilance.

Still, Leon steadied his breath and stepped forward as El-Cid’s voice echoed in his mind.

—You have to strike first.

The enemy’s natural form wasn’t perfectly balanced between offense and defense—he leaned heavily toward aggression. If they pressed him from the start, his lack of completion would show.