Philip stared, expression blank.

…What is that?

Hovering behind Louis Berg’s head was a halo.

But halos weren’t real. They were the stuff of myth, the gilded illustrations surrounding saints of old.

Never before had anyone who wielded the Holy Grail, nor any chosen as Saints, so much as whispered of a halo.

So what was this, unfolding before his very eyes?

Impossible.

This had to be a fraud.

The so-called Stigmata, the claims of sainthood. Wasn’t it all a fiction he and the Pope had concocted?

This display of divine power… it had to be a deception.

It had to be.

“A trick!” Philip shouted, stumbling back again. “R-right! It’s a trick!”

The fear gripping him wasn’t of death, but of damnation.

If this man truly was a Saint… if the Stigmata was real, the divine power genuine, and his selection the will of the Goddess herself…

Then what did that make him?

He’d be the one who turned his back on the Goddess. A heretic. An apostate. 

He did not want to be that man.

“Stay back!” Philip snatched a handful of dirt and flung it at the Saint.

The grit struck a transparent barrier inches from Louis’s face and scattered harmlessly to the ground.

“No intention of answering?” Louis asked.

“It can’t be… It can’t be!”

“It seems you’ve lost your wits.”

Louis reached a hand toward Philip’s head.

The halo behind him blazed, spinning like a celestial gear as a colossal wave of divine power washed over Philip.

A raw, guttural scream tore from Philip’s throat as his eyes rolled back in their sockets.

His consciousness dissolved into a distant haze, but through it, a voice echoed—the voice of the Goddess.

—My child. Tell me the truth.

“Ah… ahhh…”

Tears streamed down Philip’s face as a choked sob escaped his lips. He was repenting, witnessing his own sins with horrifying clarity.

“O, Goddess…”

He had been so wrong. Puffed up with the flimsy pride of the Holy Kingdom, he had looked down on a man from a foreign land. He had ostracized a man beloved by the Goddess, tried to murder a true Saint.

How ignorant. How arrogant. How utterly profane.

Such sins could only be repaid with death.

“Goddess… forgive my sins…”

A crazed smile stretched across Philip’s face as he raised his own sword. Without hesitation, he drove the point toward his own throat.

The sickening pierce of steel through flesh was followed by the drip of blood.

Philip thought, I am dead. I have atoned.

With that final conviction, he closed his eyes.

But there was no pain.

Puzzled, Philip slowly opened them. Before him was Louis Berg’s hand, wrapped around the blade, blood welling between his fingers.

“Ah…!” Philip gasped in horror.

To have scarred the Saint’s body yet again. It was an unforgivable sin.

But Louis’s expression remained impassive.

“I never ordered you to die,” he said, his voice level. “I only asked who commanded you.”

“Ah…!”

“I will ask again. Who ordered this?”

Only then did the name surface in Philip’s mind, and he spoke it aloud.

“…It was Cardinal Key Dupron.”

“I see.”

Louis nodded and withdrew his hand.

Philip’s eyes slid shut, and he collapsed into silent sleep.

Louis let out a long breath as the halo behind him faded.

“…That’s tiring.”

Maintaining the halo demanded a staggering amount of mental fortitude and Aura.

For anyone else, it would have consumed divine power. But for him, divine power was his Aura.

A Demonbane Aura.

Frankly, the power flowing from him was a far cry from what others called divine.

It wasn’t born from faith in a higher being, but forged for a single purpose: to annihilate the demonic.

A new power, born at the nexus of divinity and his master’s exorcism arts. The Demon-Slaying Aura.

I’ll have to study this further.

In any case, it had worked. Louis looked down at the unconscious Philip.

I’m glad it went so smoothly.

He hadn’t expected such a clean resolution. At best, he’d hoped the halo would prove his Stigmata was genuine and warn Philip off.

But the man’s reaction had been something else entirely, something akin to mind control.

He would have to determine if it was a result of Philip’s fanaticism or an inherent property of the halo itself.

There are no proper records of the halo, after all.

Regardless, now that Key Dupron’s name had come from the Templar’s own lips, Louis could make his move without political fallout.

If anyone questioned him, Philip would serve as the perfect witness—and the perfect tool to brand the cardinal a demon-worshiper in a religious trial.

Louis Berg rose lightly to his feet, a sharp glint in his eyes.

Key Dupron.

Tonight, he would drag that man down from his seat of power.

* * *

Meanwhile, in the heart of the grand cathedral.

“What is the meaning of this?” the Pope demanded. He and Cardinal Key had been locked in a bitter standoff for some time.

“If you leave now, you will be captured by those heretics, Your Holiness.”

“Heretics? How can you call Baron Louis a heretic!”

“My, my… to think the leader of our faith cannot even recognize a heretic. Perhaps the weight of your office has grown too heavy for you?” Cardinal Key asked, his voice dripping with mockery.

It was not the Pope who answered, but another man stepping from the shadows.

Pain Atriker.

“He has a point. It seems the time to elect a new Pope is upon us.”

The former Knight Commander and current Inquisitor-General, a Templar who vied for the papacy alongside Cardinal Key, advanced with a sardonic smile.

“The Goddess will punish you all!” the Pope cried.

Laughing softly, Pain muttered, “If She could, She would have done so already,” his lips twisting into a sneer.

Pain was a faithful believer. He believed the Goddess existed, but he did not believe She could influence the mortal world.

If She could directly intervene, all Demonkin would have been annihilated centuries ago.

“The Goddess watches, but She does not act,” Pain declared. “That is why we must be Her hands in this world.”

“Pain, you madman! You’ve finally snapped!”

“Call me what you will. What matters is that the Goddess’s will aligns with my own.”

Pain’s eyes flashed as he drew the sword at his waist. A sinister killing intent radiated from the steel as divine power slithered across the blade.

“Pray you become a more worthy believer in your next life,” he murmured.

The Pope ground his teeth. “Do you think the faithful will stand for this? The Baron’s companions will come for your heads!”

Cardinal Key let out a sharp, barking laugh. “You needn’t count on the Divine Archer. We’ve already sent the Vice Knight Commander and a squad of Templars his way. They may not be able to kill him, but they can certainly buy us some time.”

“You scoundrel!” the Pope shouted.

Pain just shrugged, a bitter smile fixed on his face. “So he says.”

The Pope looked from one man to the other, then raised his eyes to the heavens. 

His death was near. He had lived his entire life for the Goddess, only to meet such a pathetic end.

O, Goddess…

Just as the Pope squeezed his eyes shut, a new voice echoed from the cathedral’s entrance.

“Well now. Looks like you started the party without this old man.”

An elderly man stood in the distance, white-haired, a massive longbow slung across his back. He held several oval objects tied together.

He tossed them onto the floor. They tumbled across the stone, rolling to a stop before Key and Pain.

“…You crazy son of a bitch,” Pain spat, his face contorted in disgust.

The objects were the severed heads of the Templars Key had dispatched.

The old man, the Divine Archer, still wore a benevolent smile. “So. I heard you were targeting my disciple. Is that right?”

“You old foooool! How daaare you lay a hand on knights of the Holy Kingdom!” Pain roared, charging the Divine Archer with eyes ablaze.

A powerhouse on par with a Grand Master, he swung his sword, imbued with divine power, straight at the archer’s neck.

But the Divine Archer just stood there. “You will answer my question.”

In the space between heartbeats, a volley of arrows materialized from thin air and slammed into Pain’s torso. He looked like a human pincushion, held upright only by the shafts protruding from his body.

Barely clinging to life with his own divine power, he forced words through trembling lips.

“You… bastard…!”

He couldn’t move.

Watching him, the Divine Archer walked slowly forward. “People are always getting it wrong. Calling someone ‘Grand Master-level,’ claiming they’re ‘close to it.’ Every time I hear such nonsense, I can’t help but laugh.”

With a snap of the Divine Archer’s fingers, the shafts embedded in Pain’s flesh began to swell. He screamed, a sound of pure agony, as the arrows grew within him, threatening to burst him from the inside out.

The Divine Archer paid his suffering no mind. “It’s laughable. ‘Grand Master-level.’”

Pain let out a choked gasp.

“There is no such thing as being ‘on par’ with a Grand Master.”

With another snap of his fingers, the arrows swelled again.

Pain’s scream was a raw, continuous agony.

“So noisy. Be quiet.”

With a third flick of his fingers, a dozen tiny needles of light appeared, stitching Pain's lips shut with threads of shimmering Aura.

He could only let out muffled, desperate screams.

“Ah, and I hear the First Prince is backing you,” the Divine Archer noted conversationally.

Pain struggled to speak, his voice a muffled series of grunts.

“I don’t give a damn about such things.”

The Divine Archer reached out, gripped Pain’s head, and tore it from his shoulders with a sound like wet cloth ripping.

A pool of blood spread across the stone floor.

Stepping lightly over it, the Divine Archer walked toward his next prey.

“My disciple specifically asked that I not kill you,” he said to the trembling Cardinal Key.

“…You’re insane.”

“So do try to survive.”

The Divine Archer formed a new arrow of energy in the air between his fingers, murmuring softly.

“It will be painful.”

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