Chapter 91 - House of the Lost (4)

Yoannis spoke to Mia.

"Where's Yo-han? If he stole Chairman Kim's card and used it, there should be a record."

He'd originally been looking for <De Vermis Mysteriis> to extend his foolish disciple's lifespan, but....

<De Vermis Mysteriis> itself was an extraordinary grimoire, and possessing it would benefit the clan.

More than anything, they'd already started this fight, so ending it half-heartedly wasn't an option.

Even if Yo-han's time as a wizard was short, judging by how he'd blown away Chairman Kim's building workshop in one go, he was the highest-caliber ritual wizard currently in existence.

Letting him slip away like this was dangerous.

"I don't think he took it with him. I'm in the middle of hacking nearby CCTVs, so...."

Mia was sorting through the information coming up on the iPad.

"Ah! A message came in from our subordinates, Master."

He checked the CCTV footage sent by the thrall vampires.

It was footage of Yo-han walking aimlessly before suddenly answering a phone call, meeting some woman at a hamburger joint, and then entering a walled church.

"...A woman? Who is this woman."

Mia was startled when he identified the woman in the footage as Ellie.

'Elizabeth.'

She wasn't an official nun yet, but... she was a nun directly under the Vatican, someone Yoannis had strictly ordered him never to touch first.

Yoannis, who had been watching alongside him, furrowed his brow as well.

Edward had done something stupid by attacking the campsite with a zombie horde.

Even if he had killed Yo-han and gotten his hands on the grimoire, if that nun called Ellie at the campsite had gotten caught up in it and died, Edward would have been dead too.

Yoannis half-opened his eyes and looked at Yo-han and Ellie captured together in the footage.

'...Did he hide there knowing? Or did he stumble in without knowing?'

"A case of not seeing what's right under your nose... or maybe it's like fleeing from bandits only to hide in a bear's den."

Yoannis thought for a moment, then made a swift decision.

"If the Vatican is involved, it's dangerous to mess with him carelessly."

In the end, they'd caused every kind of trouble imaginable and still failed to get the grimoire, so it was a net loss... but as the clan's master, he had to at least prevent any further damage.

"There were three major occult projects the Nazis ran in the past."

The Superhuman Soldier Development Plan, The Last Battalion.

The Lunar Base Operation.

The Holy Grail Search.

"Of these, the operation my unit was assigned to was the Holy Grail Search."

The initial reason he'd gotten involved was being scouted, but... it was also the biggest reason Yoannis had been active within the Nazi regime.

Because the Nazis were the only insane organization that could carry out insane plans like these with full national backing.

"Since the prize was what it was, we clashed with the Vatican bastards often. So I know them well. They're lunatics."

Yoannis looked at Ellie's photo.

"On top of that, this girl is a nun. It won't be some fake that mercenaries impersonate, the real 2nd Mage Hunter of the Vatican will be the one who moves."

The 2nd Mage Hunter never forgave any wizard who laid a hand on a nun.

Yoannis stepped outside the shop and prepared to return to headquarters.

"Shin Do-ryong and the Special Operations Division are out prowling too, so let's lay low for a while."

There was no need to make more enemies here.

The grimoire was important, but expanding their influence was also why they'd come to Korea in the first place.

***

A remote countryside village in Europe.

Someone knocked on the door of a large, weathered stone church standing in the middle of a meadow.

Thud, thud.

Wary of the late-night visitor, the elderly priest carefully lifted a candlestick lamp and opened the door to check who it was.

The visitor was a man with black hair and an unremarkable face, draped in a white cloak.

However, his deep, dark eyes carried an air of tension.

"I've come from the Vatican. We received word that a demon summoning ritual is being conducted here, so I came to investigate."

"Pardon? Haha... This is rather bewildering, springing something like that on me. This place is simply somewhere that listens to the weary."

At the man's strange words, the priest let out a good-natured laugh and said,

"You say you've come from the Vatican, but do you have anything to prove your identity?"

The man produced a wooden plaque from his coat.

Though the material was only wood, it was a plaque carved with the precision of a work of art.

But more than the craftsmanship, the priest's face twisted in shock at the truly arrogant inscription written in the center of the plaque.

"...?!"

[I am the Sword of God. Resist me and you die.]

There was only one person affiliated with the Vatican who carried such an outrageously brazen form of identification.

Terror and chills spread from the spine of the Demon Worshipper wearing the mask of a priest, flooding through his entire body.

"The, the Sword of God!"

'The Vatican's 2nd Mage Hunter, Gideon.'

The fact that this man had come in person meant he wasn't here to probe. He'd known everything from the start!

"Aaaaaaargh!"

The Demon Worshipper screamed and thrust the lamp forward.

Whoosh...!

Flames surged violently upward and engulfed Gideon.

And then.

Shwaaak...!

The Demon Worshipper was cleaved in two by Gideon's sword, flames and all, and died.

Blood and severed organs spilled from the cleanly bisected body of the Demon Worshipper.

The stench of blood spread through the darkness-stained church.

"Haaaah...!"

The summoned Lesser Demons and Demon Worshippers glared at Gideon, their ominous eyes gleaming with hostility.

Through the open door, with the moonlight at his back, the blade of Gideon's cross-shaped longsword glinted.

Thud. Gideon stepped forward into the darkness, not a single emotion showing on his face.

"Kaaagh! ...Huh?!"

The demons and apostates were hacked to pieces and died.

".........."

In the blink of an eye, droplets of blood trickled from the tip of Gideon's blade as he passed through them.

Thud. Thud.

The reason Gideon had come alone to a church full of Demon Worshippers was not because he lacked support.

It was because having someone beside him would get in the way.

With each step, his sweeping blade tore apart the charging Demon Worshippers, shredding them to pieces.

The defiled church was likewise cut apart and crumbled down.

A sight as if a grinder were walking toward them.

".........."

And then Gideon's steps paused.

In the center of the sanctuary stood a man over two meters tall, draped in rags.

"...How absurd. When I searched and cried out so desperately, you showed not the slightest interest."

He spoke in a grim voice like scraping metal.

"Yet the moment I despair, you send your punishment at once."

Herald, a Catholic priest who had fallen and become a Demon Worshipper, glared at Gideon with burning eyes.

"Do you know how much I believed?! How much I devoted?!"

"He is not some merchant haggling in the marketplace."

To Herald's fierce outcry, Gideon replied with quiet composure.

"Do not dare place faith on a scale and try to bargain."

"Aaaaaargh!"

Crack, crack...!

Flames erupted from Herald's burning eyes as his frame grew larger and twisted grotesquely.

Mooooooo...

With a bestial howl rising as if from the abyss, Herald's hands burst into flame.

The surging fire set the church ablaze.

Unable to summon an Archdemon, he had possessed his own body with it directly instead.

A voice that was not Herald's rang out.

[I am! A lord of Hell! He who bathes in tears! The despair of mothers!]

An evil god once worshipped in the ancient land of Canaan.

Morax, the 21st of Solomon's 72 Demons, manifested through the body of the fallen priest.

...However.

"Faith is like breathing."

Gideon's dark eyes watched the burning Herald as his words continued.

"If you have forgotten how to breathe, then die."

A flash of light blazed, and the cross-shaped sword sent both flaming arms and the head of the Morax-possessed Herald flying.

[...Huh?]

Morax was caught off guard by the destruction of his vessel, and Gideon looked down at the corpse and spoke.

"Demon, return to whence you came. There is no shame in losing to God."

[You! Are merely human! A mortal dares...]

"No. I am the Sword of God."

Gideon's dark eyes looked down upon Morax.

"And God is my sword."

A truly arrogant faith.

Gideon's blade came down from above, and Herald's powerless body disintegrated completely, scattering into ash.

Only the flames remained, spreading and consuming the church.

Whoosh....

Gideon turned and walked out of the burning church.

Outside, a nun stood waiting for Gideon. She had a pretty face but a resolute air, with black hair and blue eyes, holding a black case in one hand.

It was Sister Sophia, Ellie's adoptive mother, who had come all the way here on business.

"...Sister Sophia."

At Gideon's call, Sophia approached and said,

"I've put up a barrier. With the distance, the sound won't carry down there."

Sophia gave a small nod, and below the church, Vatican-affiliated priests could be seen rounding up the remaining Demon Worshippers.

And the voice that had until now rung with the arrogance of God's messenger relaxed into something comfortable.

"Sophia, it's been a while."

"...Here's the next assignment."

Gideon received the documents but didn't open them, instead saying,

"There's something more important than this. Elizabeth... show me a photo of Ellie."

".........."

Sophia showed him a recent photo of Ellie.

A softness crept into the dark, weary eyes of Gideon.

"...She's grown so much."

Then his gaze drifted toward her chest, and he blinked.

"No, wait, she's grown way too much?"

Gideon looked at Sophia's face.

"Don't skimp on the fabric for her habit. Make it bigger, baggier."

Sophia stared at Gideon with a look of utter exasperation.

"...You might as well just tell her to wear a hijab."

Gideon nodded as if that made perfect sense.

"Well, that's not going to work."

Gideon let out a sigh.

"I thought I'd stop worrying once she was all grown up. Turns out you worry just as much when they're grown."

Sophia narrowed her eyes slightly and said,

"I clearly told you it was a dangerous day."

"No, you clearly told me it was a safe day. I just didn't expect that 'safe day' meant a stork would safely deliver a cute little baby." [TL: A play on the Korean expression "safe day" (안전한 날), meaning a non-fertile day in a woman's cycle, twisted into a joke about a stork delivering a baby.]

"...You should have used a condom."

"Condoms were just invented for people to have sex and feel good."

Gideon said with a dead-serious face.

"If you're not prepared to take responsibility for a lifetime from the very start, you shouldn't be putting it in. That's what a proper Christian does."

Sophia watched Gideon and thought.

She pitied the knight trainees who, not knowing this man's true nature, genuinely revered him as the Sword of God and trained under him with utmost respect.

'...What an idiot.'

And she felt like just as much of an idiot for having given her body and heart to a man like that.

Gideon's calm, gentle voice resonated.

"But even if she was an unexpected child, I love her with all my heart."

He looked at Sophia with a serious face.

"Ellie, and you too. I mean it."

".........."

Sophia quietly turned her head away.

Gideon tossed the photo of his beloved daughter toward the burning church to destroy the evidence.

The Vatican's 2nd Mage Hunter, "Sword of God", Gideon.

He was Ellie's biological father, whose existence she didn't even know about.

And Sophia, whom Ellie believed to be her adoptive mother, was in fact her real birth mother.

It was a secret shared only between Gideon and Sophia.

"When is Ellie's formal recognition as a nun going through?"

"...There shouldn't be any issues. I just don't know if it's the right path for that child."

"It may not be the happiest path, but it's the safest one."

Gideon said firmly in a low voice.

"If it comes out that she's my daughter, people will come running from all directions to take her hostage, and the Vatican will lock her in a gilded cage to put a leash on me. It's better for her to live as an ordinary nun under the Vatican."

On top of that, if the secret came out that a nun had given birth, Sophia could face repercussions too.

Even if he could shield Sophia from that, the fact remained that Ellie would be in danger.

At the very least, if she were an ordinary Vatican nun, Gideon could protect her without raising suspicion.

That was precisely why he went around slaughtering every wizard faction that dared touch a nun.

He performed the act of a zealot to protect a happiness kept at arm's length.

"...Ellie is all grown up now. What will you do if she falls for some guy and says she doesn't want to be a nun anymore?"

Ellie with a man? In a different sense, it was a situation he didn't want to imagine.

"Haah...."

Gideon sighed and looked up at the night sky, where embers swirled from the burning church.

"...Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani."

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

A melancholy voice echoed.

***

Ellie had gone into her adoptive mother Sophia's room, retrieved pajamas belonging to Ellie's biological father Gideon, which Sophia had been keeping separately and Ellie knew nothing about, and handed them to Yo-han.

"These were in my mother's room. They're probably guest pajamas!"

I accepted them gratefully.

"...Thanks."

I did want to wash up and rest right away, as Ellie had kindly suggested, but there was something I needed to do first.

"Could I borrow some wine and bread?"

"Wine and? Bread? Hold on... would sliced bread work?"

Ellie gave me some sliced bread from the kitchen and a bottle of wine she'd had stored separately.

I looked at the wine in my hand.

...I did ask for it because I needed it, but having it handed over this easily. It gave me complicated feelings.

Anyway, I stepped back outside the church.

The reason I'd asked was to set up a barrier around the church.

The Special Operations Division was out and about, so those guys probably wouldn't cause any major trouble for now either, but still, just in case.

And then.

Namgung Soo-ah, wearing pajamas with a long padded coat thrown over them, followed me outside.

"You shameless manwhore! A pretty girl tells you to come home and you just follow her?!"

Soo-ah grumbled with her brow furrowed.

I stared blankly at Soo-ah, dumbfounded.

"I've never even dated a girl in my life. Isn't 'shameless manwhore' a bit much?"

"Huh? You've really never had a girlfriend?"

Soo-ah's expression suddenly softened, and a pleased, teasing smile spread across her face.

"He's never had a girlfriend~ He's not popular~ Not popular at all~."

"Forget girlfriends, there hasn't been a single woman in my life, not even a mother."

"I don't have a mom either."

Then Soo-ah looked at the wine and sliced bread in my hands.

"So what are you going to use those for?"

"I'm going to set up a magic barrier."

"Oooh~ I'm that old man's disciple, so I'll tag along and watch."

Come to think of it, she was my disciple.

Ta-da~ Disciple Namgung Soo-ah has joined the party!