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◈ Paladin of a Ruined Order

Chapter 93

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Combat Church

When Cowin's head fell, Marcus was the first to react. He was the only one who'd seen Elbridge's move coming.

Marcus's face looked like the sky had just caved in.

"I thought maybe, maybe you wouldn't, but you actually killed him! What are we supposed to do now?"

"Marcus. If you want to put out a fire, you deal with the arsonist first."

"Sure, but the situation... ugh!"

Marcus raked both hands through his hair, clearly at a loss.

"Fine. Let's set that aside for now. The situation we're in. Is there any way to handle this?"

"That's something to figure out from here."

Elbridge's response sounded calm.

But inside his chest, something rippled sharply.

Since waking from the seal, Elbridge hadn't killed anyone. Even before the seal, he hadn't killed many people.

He wasn't used to killing. And he had no intention of getting used to it.

Sonia approached Elbridge, still gagging lightly.

Her eyes weren't on Elbridge, though. They were locked on Cowin's severed head.

"You bastard!"

Sonia kicked Cowin's head. It rolled across the temple floor, leaving a smear of blood behind.

Then she swung her staff and beat the headless body over and over.

Thud, thud.

But her expression as she swung the staff was complicated.

A faint satisfaction. A blurry sort of catharsis. A trace of irritation that Elbridge had taken her revenge from her.

But the strongest feeling by far was hollowness.

Sonia let out a long sigh and let the staff drop to her side.

"I really don't get it."

"Get what?"

"I don't understand how this world works at all. He did all this just because he wanted to be recognized? My dad got played by an idiot like that?"

Rombel answered.

"Looks idiotic from a distance. But to these guys, it probably felt serious."

"That's it? That's all it was?"

"He probably watched his parents get ignored their whole lives and die that way. He lived the same way himself, ignored his whole life. And his own children were bound to live the same way too..."

Rombel wasn't talking about Cowin specifically. He meant the paladins of the combat churches as a whole.

Cowin might have just been the first of them to act.

"Dwarves and elves live differently, but humans only get about eighty years. Two hundred years of this, passed down generation after generation... Honestly it's almost impressive they held out that long. Don't you think?"

Rombel took a surprisingly generous view of Cowin's story.

Unlike the other three, Rombel was fairly satisfied with how the world had been changing lately.

Thud.

Sonia kicked the torso again.

"These people didn't even have the strength to hold off a demon, did they? What's the point of being recognized if you just end up dead?"

"No, they probably would've held it off somehow. In my experience, people always manage to hang on even when a situation looks completely hopeless."

"That's just a guess. This time it could've gone wrong."

Rombel thought it over before answering.

"Even if he'd been certain he couldn't handle a demon, this guy would've acted the same way. The ones who cause real disasters don't weigh their options. He probably figured it was better to get a moment of recognition and strut around before dying than to keep living like this."

"The more you explain it, the worse he sounds."

Sonia still hadn't worked off her anger. She kept kicking Cowin's corpse.

Magic would've hit harder than a kick, sure. But when you want to vent, using your own body works better.

Rombel watched her for a moment, then spoke again.

"And... what the combat church paladins really wanted might not have been recognition at all."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I've learned one thing in three hundred years. The desire to see yourself succeed isn't nearly as strong as the desire to drag down someone you can't stand. Sonia. You looked back when we were climbing this hill, didn't you?"

"I did."

"What did you see?"

Sonia thought for a moment.

"A crowded street? A big temple?"

"Right. Looking down from this hill, you can see the non-combat churches' temples. Cowin probably watched those churches prosper more every day, and it twisted something in his gut."

"You're saying he did all this hoping the non-combat churches would fail?"

"Yeah."

"That's stupid. That's unbelievably, ridiculously stupid."

"Of course it is. Nothing clouds a person's judgment like a sense of loss and rage."

Elbridge had been quietly sorting through his own thoughts. Now he spoke.

"Rombel. This isn't as simple as that."

"Why?"

"Cowin said earlier, 'our interests aligned with theirs.'"

"Right. Sounded like there's some outside party involved."

"It's more than involved. Chances are that outside party was the one driving the whole thing. 'Our interests aligned' is the kind of thing you say when you're the one accepting a proposal, not the one making it."

Someone had steered the situation, pulled Cowin and the rest of the combat churches in, and Cowin had accepted the offer and gone through with it. That was the fair reading of things, for now.

Marcus, who'd been quiet for a while, finally spoke up.

"...Can we start cleaning this up? Am I the only one who's nervous right now?"

There wasn't much cleanup to speak of.

Covering up the situation had never been possible to begin with.

True, Cowin had been alone in the Bloodstained Spear temple.

But plenty of people had seen Elbridge and the others heading toward it. And anyone capable of killing someone at Cowin's level cleanly was vanishingly rare. Even without witnesses, people would have pointed straight at Elbridge.

Elbridge went and retrieved Cowin's head from where it had rolled off, and set it back beside the body. Then he turned to the others.

"You all must be tired. Go back and rest."

"Yeah. See you later."

Rombel gave Elbridge's back a pat and left.

Sonia's situation was different from Rombel's, though.

"I don't know anyone in Solenion... Where am I even supposed to go?"

"Can't you go back to the Central Magic Tower?"

Sonia's brow furrowed.

"Absolutely not. You said someone egged that bastard on. I need to see that person die too."

Marcus offered a suggestion.

"The mood's going to be ugly for a while... How about staying at the Order of the Rusted Shield's temple? That's probably the safest place in Solenion right now."

"...You think so?"

Sonia, and Marcus along with her, quietly made their way to the Order of the Rusted Shield's temple.

Once he'd sent the others off, Elbridge stood alone at the entrance of the Bloodstained Spear temple and waited.

It didn't take long for paladins to gather. Their eyes swept over him.

His grim expression. Blood spattered across his armor. The sharp smell of blood clinging to him.

The paladins of the Bloodstained Spear church realized at once that something serious had happened inside their temple.

A young paladin tried to step through the entrance. Elbridge blocked his way.

"Don't go in right now."

"Why would an outsider like you stop me from entering my own church's temple?"

"I'll step aside when the Archbishop arrives. Wait until then."

"Tell us what you did."

More paladins crowded forward, voicing the same protest one after another.

But Elbridge said nothing. He simply closed his eyes.

Before long, an elderly priest appeared. The Archbishop of the Bloodstained Spear church.

The Archbishop listened to something one of the paladins said, and his face hardened.

The old Archbishop let out a barely audible sigh. Then he walked up to Elbridge.

Elbridge held his gaze steady.

But the Archbishop looked away, like someone carrying guilt.

That settled it.

'The Archbishop already knows what Cowin did. The rest of them don't know a thing.'

Elbridge stepped aside so the Archbishop could enter the temple.

The Archbishop checked the pool of blood inside, then turned to the paladins waiting outside.

"All of you, wait out here. Don't come in."

Only then did Elbridge leave the Bloodstained Spear temple and return to the Order of the Rusted Shield's.

Several days passed.

"Everything's been so frightening lately."

High Administrative Priest Matilda shivered the moment she arrived for work.

"Priestess Matilda. Would you like some time off?"

Matilda shook her head at Elbridge's offer.

"I'd rather stay at the temple. Being home just makes me more anxious. The worst part's the walk to and from work. It feels like someone's watching me."

Human instinct was sharper than people gave it credit for.

Someone really might be watching Matilda.

"Why don't you eat and sleep here at the temple for a while?"

"I probably should. But... if I'm eating and sleeping here, does that count as overtime?"

"...Let's call it that."

The mood around the Rusted Shield temple was tense enough to spook even Matilda, who'd seen plenty in her time.

It wasn't hard to understand why. The Bloodstained Spear paladins had never imagined Cowin would die at the hands of a paladin from a neighboring church.

If Cowin had died fighting a demon, the atmosphere wouldn't have turned this sharp.

Elbridge stepped out in front of the temple. Sure enough, he could feel eyes on him.

Turning his head, he saw several paladins staring at him intently.

"..."

Even when their eyes met, they didn't look away.

It wasn't only the Bloodstained Spear paladins showing hostility. Other combat church paladins, and their believers too, all regarded Elbridge with varying degrees of the same coldness.

Cowin had been born in Solenion and had lived his whole life in the Hillside Slums.

Of course people felt closer to Cowin than to Elbridge.

'...Would they still react like this if they knew what Cowin actually did?'

Elbridge let out a long sigh and was about to step back into the temple when several young paladins strode up to him.

"Sir Elbridge. If you had a shred of guilt as a human being, we assumed you'd come to our temple and bow your head. To let personal feelings interfere at such a grave time-"

But before they got much further, the Archbishop of the Bloodstained Spear church came rushing over and scolded the young paladins.

"You fools, you know full well how grave this moment is, and you still want to stir up trouble! How many times have I told you not to act recklessly..."

"But, Archbishop. Just letting resentment build up without ever raising a proper protest..."

Elbridge watched the little farce and let out a quiet laugh.

What happened between him and Cowin had been reported as an accident born of personal feuding, with no formal protest from the church.

The excuse sounded plausible enough. Nobody could afford division in the face of a demon army.

But the young paladins and believers believed their church had swallowed its pride in front of Elbridge.

A reasonable-sounding guess, but far from the actual truth.

As the Archbishop led the young paladins back toward the temple, Elbridge spoke quietly.

"Archbishop."

The old Archbishop turned to him, his expression a little tense.

"Could we talk this evening? I'd appreciate it if the others from the other churches could join as well."

The Archbishop had no authority to refuse.

"...Very well."

The young paladins, thinking they'd just wrung an apology out of Elbridge, exchanged glances and clenched their fists in triumph.

That evening, some fifteen people gathered at the Order of the Rusted Shield.

The High Paladins and Archbishops of each church.

Elbridge identified their affiliations by their attire.

'Order of the Bloodstained Spear. Order of the Thunder's Herald. Is that the Order of the Cleaving Blade? I figured that one would've folded by now, and it's still around. And of course the Order of the Laurel Wreath too...'

The ones walking toward the temple all shared one thing in common.

Chests puffed out, chins held high. No doubt performing for the young paladins and believers watching from the surroundings.

But once they stepped inside, every one of them quietly lowered their heads.

They knew exactly why Elbridge had called them here, and none of them could keep their chins up after that.

It was almost funny enough to laugh at out loud. Their posturing was ridiculous, and it was remarkable just how many combat churches turned out to be tangled up in this.

"..."

The High Paladins and Archbishops of each church stood lined up neatly, waiting for Elbridge to speak.

Elbridge, meanwhile, sat in a chair with his legs crossed, chin propped on one hand, watching them in silence.

A heavy quiet settled over the room.

After some time had passed, a middle-aged paladin finally spoke.

"Sir Elbridge. May I ask what business you called us here for..."

The paladin's armor bore an emblem of a sword splitting stone. The Order of the Cleaving Blade.

Elbridge shook his head.

"No. That's not how you should start this conversation."

"Pardon? What do you..."

"You should be opening with 'thank you.'"

'I'm sorry' would have made sense. But 'thank you'?

While they exchanged confused glances, unable to grasp his meaning, Elbridge held up two fingers.

Then he folded down the first one.

"First. You should thank me for not telling people what you did."

He folded down the second finger.

"Second. You should thank me for letting you keep your head attached until now."

Anger flickered in the paladin's eyes.

"I understand the situation is serious, but that's quite a thing to say."

"Is it?"

Elbridge uncrossed his legs and rose from his chair, walking up to the man.

As Elbridge approached, the middle-aged paladin's hand drifted toward his sword hilt.

But Elbridge's hand reached the pommel of the sword faster than the paladin's hand could reach the grip.

The paladin gripped the hilt a moment too late. The sword wouldn't draw.

At the same instant, Elbridge raised his leg and drove a kick straight down into the man's knee.

Crack.

Even through full armor, the paladin's leg buckled with disturbing ease, twisting to an angle no leg should bend.

"Aaagh!"

The middle-aged paladin collapsed, clutching his knee.

Elbridge crouched down in front of him and growled.

"From two hundred years ago until now, out of everyone who's broken a demon's seal, none of them survived crossing paths with me right after. Until you. You're the first, you bastards."

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