CH 268

“Kyuuuu!” Hamchi screeched as his furs stood up.

“T-This is a bit…” Seung-Gu muttered.

Scribble, scribble, scribble!

Gringore did not forget his duties as a scribe and wrote down everything happening in front of his eyes.

And Siegfried was…

“What the hell are they doing right now?” he muttered while utterly confused at the actions of the soldiers and knights.

Why? Why were they doing this?

Why were they massacring the innocent civilians who had opened the gates in surrender? He couldn’t understand what was going on, but he decided to stop the meaningless bloodshed happening in front of him.

“Die!”

“Stop!”

“…?”

“Excuse me,” Siegfried said. He stepped between a man and the knight who was about to cut the man’s head off. “Please stop for a moment.”

“Who are you?! You seem to be one of the mercenaries who applied to be a holy warrior! Move! I’m currently purging these heretics!”

“Purging?”

“Damn it! Do I have to explain everything? Do you really plan to let these heretics who sided with that corrupt emperor go scot-free? These heretics have to be killed to repent for their sins!”

“Hap!”

The officer standing next to the knight drew his sword and swung it at the man’s neck.

Shwaaa!

A fountain of blood sputtered.

Thud!

The man’s lifeless body and his decapitated head fell to the ground with a thud.

“…”

Siegfried didn’t say anything. He touched the blood on his face.

“Your Majesty… we need to go,” Gringore said as he held his arm.

“Go?”

“This is a civil war. And those people are acting upon their faith and zeal right now.”

“Their faith and zeal…?”

“And Your Majesty is the King of Proatine. You’ve joined this war as a mercenary, but preventing them from doing their duties could have diplomatic repercussions in the future.”

“…”

“Please, Your Majesty. Let us just go…”

Gringore was just a scribe, but he was nonetheless wise enough to give the proper advice to Siegfried and even try to bring him away from the scene of the horrific atrocities being committed against the civilians.

However, this didn’t mean that Gringore couldn’t feel anything. ‘These mad zealots produced by faith are truly terrifying creatures… How can they commit such atrocities without batting an eye?’

The sight unfolding right in front of the scribe left a bad taste in his mouth, but his priority right now was to prevent Siegfried from making a grave mistake. He had no choice but to suppress his emotions.

“His Majesty tends to act impulsively and cause trouble, so I would like to request you to keep an eye… no, advise him accordingly when necessary.”

“Yes, Sir Michele.”

And Michele had told him to keep an eye on their king, so he had to be as rational as possible right now, and the same went for Siegfried.

‘These bastards… They’re making me hate them even more. I don’t condone this atrocity! Never!’ he thought inside, but he had to exert superhuman self-control right now.

‘This is a civil war between the imperial faction and the papal faction. This isn’t my problem… I’m just a mercenary, so I shouldn’t act rashly. I need to control myself…’ he told himself. He was technically not doing much for the Proatine Kingdom these days, so he didn’t want to cause unnecessary trouble for them.

After all, he was their king, so he had to keep his people’s best interests at heart.

“Let’s go somewhere quiet…” he muttered as he dragged Hamchi away. The giant hamster looked like he was about to lunge at the soldiers at any given time, so he had to be dragged away from the slaughter.

***

“Kyaaaak!”

“Ack!”

“Kuheok!”

“S-Spare me—Ack!”

There was no end to the screams in Aria City. The requiem played by the massacre rang from every corner of the city, and the rivers of blood merged into a sea of blood.

Meanwhile, at an empty tavern in Aria City…

“Should I just log out…?”

He felt like his temper was going to get the better of him if he were to stay any longer.

He was also worried about causing diplomatic problems with the Constantine Holy Empire. These people were NPCs, but their screams and the stench of blood in the air stabbed his conscience.

“Hyung-nim… Why don’t we just log out together? I can’t stand this anymore,” Seung-Gu said.

“Should we?” Siegfried muttered in response.

“Kyuuuuu! Humans are too evil!” Hamchi cried out in anger.

“It is truly a despicable sight. I thought that was the end of it, but this is simply going too far…” Gringore said as he bit his lips in anger.

‘I swear this game gets a bit too detailed from time to time…’ Siegfried grumbled inwardly.

Bam!

The old tavern doors were smashed into pieces as a woman was flung into it. 

“Ah, this bitch is too stubborn.”

“Hey, hand it over while we’re being nice.”

“Are you deaf or something, woman?!”

A group of Adventurers spat out curses at the woman.

“T-This is my late husband’s last remaining memento…! P-Please, anything but this, Sir Adventurers!” the woman pleaded while holding desperately onto a necklace.

However, her pleas fell on deaf ears.

“Hey, let’s just kill her and take it.”

An Adventurer pulled out his glowing enhanced sword and walked toward the woman.

A V-shaped wing emblem was pinned to his chest.

‘Genesis…’ Siegfried immediately recognized the emblem.

“Hey,” Siegfried said after stepping between the woman and the Genesis Guild member. “I’m pissed right now, so get lost while I’m being nice.”

“Get lost while you’re what? Ha! Who the hell are you?!” the Genesis Guild member scoffed before flashing his Rune of Insight at him.

“S-Siegfried? So you’re that bastard?”

“Yeah, I’m that bastard, so scram if you value your life,” Siegfried said with a cold smile.

“If I value my life? Keke! This guy has lost it!”

“I think you’re trying to rob her, but don’t you know you’re committing a war crime? Just stay quiet and act like a mercenary if you’re one. Do you really think that the papal faction is going to—”

Bang!

A Genesis Guild member at the back took out his pistol and pulled the trigger.

Thud!

The woman fell lifeless to the ground, and her blood painted the tavern flood red.

It happened so quickly that Siegfried couldn’t react.

“You crazy bastards…!” he roared.

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“Fwooh!” the shooter blew the smoke coming out of his pistol before putting it back in his holster. He smirked at Siegfried and said, “Long time no see.”

The shooter who killed the woman was none other than MassacreGod, who was also the Genesis Guild member that Siegfried had killed at the vineyard.

“How are you?” he asked.

“What the hell… are you doing? Do you really think that you’ll be safe after doing this?” Siegfried asked while trying to suppress his anger.

“Well…” MassacreGod took out a piece of paper and exclaimed, “Ta-dah! I have this thing here.”

“…”

“With this, how could there be any issues? Don’t you know? This is a free pass that forgives whatever crime you commit,” MassacreGod said while waving around the piece of paper.

It was the same Full Indulgence that the papacy gave to Siegfried.

‘Don’t tell me…’ 

He suddenly thought of something.

Why did the papacy give the Adventurers these indulgences?

It was going to cause headaches for them later on if the Adventurers abused the Full Indulgences and committed all sorts of war crimes. No, it was more like they gave these pieces of paper to them as if they wanted them to commit war crimes.

“Is this why…”

“Ding! Ding! We have a winner!” MassacreGod exclaimed, and then he said, “Don’t tell me you just realized? Ah, perhaps you’re slow because you only have one brain cell in your head? We already knew about it.”

“What do you know?”

“We already know that the papacy is making an example out of a few cities.”

“So?”

“Hey, what do you mean by so? It’s going to take a long time for them to run around to do all that, and it’s quite troublesome, too. Therefore, they gave us these indulgences to let us do whatever we want during this war.”

And that was the true reason behind the indulgences that the papacy had handed over to the Adventurers…

The papacy wanted to make an example of the cities that cooperated with the imperial family by branding the entire population of the cities as heretics and punishing them in the most atrocious manner imaginable.

The first few cities within the first strategic point the papal faction wrested control away from the imperial faction would be used as an example to make the cities under the imperial family’s influence tremble in fear.

The cities were bound to slowly distance themselves from the imperial faction for fear of being branded as heretics and getting massacred.

The papacy was committing genocide on a whole different level just to maintain control over the holy empire, which came from their ill-gotten riches as well as the Nameless God’s name.

“Well, we should be grateful for this opportunity. We couldn’t lay a single finger on these NPCs because of the penalty and whatnot, but we can use this piece of paper to be exempted from punishment. It’s great, right?”

“…”

“We are allowed to steal if we want to, kill if we feel like it, or even destroy things just for fun! I mean, where else could we find such a good way to relieve our stress? And…” MassacreGod trailed off. He formed a circle with his index finger and thumb before saying, “Plundering is quite lucrative, and you can find awesome items from these dead NPCs! Isn’t that awesome?! I’m actually thinking of buying a few more indulgences in the future…”

Siegfried didn’t have to listen to the rest of what MassacreGod had to say.

Whoosh!

Siegfried threw two rainbow-colored discs.

“What’s with this dumb ambush?” MassacreGod sneered.

He pulled out his pistols and blocked the disks.

Clang!

The disks bounced off of his pistols, and the disks abruptly scattered into thousands of throwables.

However, Siegfried wasn’t aiming for MassacreGod.

“Huh?” MassacreGod muttered blankly.

Chwaaaaaaaak!

The thousands of projectiles kicked up a storm in the cramped tavern and minced the Genesis Guild members into shreds as if they were in a blender.

***

“…”

Hamchi, Seung-Gu, and Gringore were rendered speechless by the Torrential Flower Rain’s might. It had been a while since Siegfried last used Torrential Flower Rain, and its power could only be described as death itself.

Corpses?

None.

The thousands of projectiles ripped MassacreGod and his lackeys into shreds without leaving a single body part behind.

Sparkle! Sparkle! 

The items of the dead Genesis Guild members fell to the bloody tavern floor with a thud.

‘Why the hell is this suddenly so strong…?’ Siegfried was shocked. He didn’t expect to deal so much damage without his debuff fields.

The reason Torrential Flower Rain could deal such a ridiculous amount of damage was a bit complicated.

First of all, the greatest damage boost was from the disks themselves. The disks were created using the scales of the Chromatic Dragon. Secondly, Siegfried’s recent level-ups had increased the damage output of the skill in accordance with his stats. Lastly, the skill’s damage depended heavily not on the weapon or the user’s level but on the total mana capacity of the user.

It had a unique condition of consuming a hundred percent of the user’s mana to cast, so its damage output would naturally change according to the user’s total mana capacity.

Siegfried’s mana capacity had dramatically increased after consuming the Chromatic Dragon’s Heart and the Terramog’s Core, which naturally increased the Torrential Flower Rain’s damage.

“H-Hyung-nim… I think you caused a problem just now…?” Seung-Gu muttered.

“Yeah, I did. I wanted to hold back since it was none of my business, and I’m no apostle of justice, but… They crossed the line,” Siegfried replied.

“T-Then, what are we going to do?”

“What else?” Siegfried replied with a shrug, and then he flashed a mischievous grin and added, “We’re going to properly stab these despicable papal bastards in the back and go over to the opposing faction.”

Ironically, the title above Siegfried’s head changed from being the Seggs Stamina King to King of Backstabbing as soon as he was done speaking.