Chapter 58: Unbelievable! The Cardinal Inquisitor Actually Said to Me, This Worthless Lord…
The night was like a sheet of black cloth soaked through with icy water, smothering the entire Wailing Wastes.
Under the starlight, the outline of the City of Miracles resembled a silent mountain range, radiating a primitive, savage pressure, as though some colossal beast lay sleeping in the dark.
Three miles outside the city, at the Temple Knight Order’s temporary camp, the atmosphere was so oppressive it felt as though water could be wrung from it.
The bonfires crackled, their light reflecting off faces full of humiliation and fury.
The knights sat around them in silence, mechanically wiping down their swords and armor with oiled cloth.
The dry rasp of metal against cloth, mixed now and then with the dull thud of hands pressing too hard, became the only sound in that dead stillness.
Humiliation.
They were the sword of the Church of Light, the Father God’s wrath walking the mortal world. Wherever they went, nobles knelt and commoners cheered.
Yet today, two hundred elite knights had been forced to kneel by a mere youth.
Like a flock of lambs awaiting slaughter.
Centurion Kellan stood before his tent, staring fixedly at the black city in the distance.
His golden hair was disheveled by the cold wind, but the shock and humiliation on his face had not faded in the slightest.
Even now, his right hand was still trembling almost imperceptibly.
An Earth Knight.
An Earth Knight not even twenty years old…
That was more outrageous than the undead catastrophe itself.
“My lord.”
His adjutant approached soundlessly, speaking in a voice barely above a whisper.
“The brothers are… unsettled.”
“What happened today has shaken their faith.”
“Faith?”
Kellan’s voice was hoarse, like something scraped raw with sandpaper.
“When someone’s boot is on your neck, the only thing faith does is make your death look a little less ugly.”
The adjutant had no answer.
“Prepare the finest horse. Bring two of my personal guards.”
Kellan drew in a deep breath, forcing down the violent pounding in his chest.
“I must see Lord Augustus immediately.”
“Everything that happened here must be reported by my own mouth.”
He knew that this game was no longer one someone of his standing could play.
That black city, that young man, was no mere foe fit for some novice’s trial.
Half an hour later, at the Temple Knight Order’s main encampment.
It was a moving fortress.
Several thousand identical white tents spread outward in a perfect circle from the enormous command pavilion at the center—the one belonging to Cardinal Inquisitor Augustus, red as congealed blood. The arrangement was so precise it looked like a formation diagram copied straight from a military manual.
Outside the camp, three-meter-deep anti-cavalry barricades and sharpened stakes formed the first defensive line.
Every fifty paces stood an arrow tower reinforced with Holy Light runes, and the archers atop them did not move so much as a hair, like carved statues.
Several thousand knights and auxiliary soldiers moved through the camp in utter silence. The air was filled with the cold scent of holy water, metal, and iron discipline.
There were no individuals here. There was only order.
The moment Kellan reached the main entrance, a patrol blocked his path.
“Password.”
Only after strict verification was he allowed through.
As he made his way toward the vast blood-red pavilion, every knight he passed seemed to cut at him with their eyes, their contempt entirely undisguised.
Clearly, the farce of his vanguard being made to “kneel in punishment” had already spread throughout the entire army.
Kellan’s face burned. He could only pull his helmet lower.
At the entrance to the command pavilion, two Temple Gaolers stood like guardian deities, crossing their massive axes to stop him. Their heavy armor was covered in savage scars left by battles against demons.
“Lord Augustus is meditating. No one may disturb him.”
“I bring urgent military intelligence!”
One of the gaolers slowly lifted his head. The eyes behind the slit of his helmet were cold as ice.
“The inquisitor’s will is the Father God’s will. Do you mean to defy it?”
Kellan’s heart sank straight to the bottom.
At that moment, a calm, emotionless voice drifted from inside the tent.
“Let him enter.”
The gaolers immediately withdrew their axes and stepped aside.
As though granted a pardon from death, Kellan hurried inside, lifting the heavy curtain and stepping through.
The space within was astonishingly vast.
A massive white beast-hide carpet covered the floor. At the center stood an obsidian sand table, precisely reproducing the terrain of the Wailing Wastes.
A figure in a dark crimson priest’s robe stood with his back to Kellan, holding in his hand a black game piece representing the City of Miracles.
That aura—a mixture of the majesty of Holy Light and iron-blooded slaughter—made the air itself feel solid.
Kellan did not dare hesitate. He dropped to one knee at once, his voice trembling.
“Your subordinate, Kellan, pays respects to Lord Augustus, Cardinal Inquisitor!”
Augustus did not turn around.
He merely placed the black game piece gently upon the sand table at the position of the City of Miracles.
“Kellan.”
His voice was calm as a frozen pool.
“I gave you two hundred knights. I expected you to return with that lord’s head, or with his letter of surrender.”
“And yet you have returned draped in humiliation.”
Kellan instantly lowered his head until his forehead was pressed tightly against the carpet.
“My lord, your subordinate is incompetent! We… encountered an existence we could not resist!”
“Oh?”
Only then did Augustus turn around.
That pale, handsome face of his held not the slightest expression. His ice-blue eyes rested quietly on Kellan, as though examining an insect.
“Then tell me. What kind of existence could make the Father God’s Blade of Purification snap before the battle line?”
Kellan did not dare conceal anything. He recounted the events of the afternoon exactly as they had happened.
From how the other party had countered him with the Imperial Code, to the terrifying pressure that had descended at the end like divine punishment itself.
When the words Earth Knight left his mouth, the temperature inside the tent seemed to fall several degrees.
Augustus listened in silence, his face utterly without ripple, as though Kellan were recounting nothing more than some village curiosity.
Only after Kellan had finished and lay prostrate on the ground, waiting for thunderous wrath, did Augustus finally speak again. His voice carried a trace of amusement.
“A young man not yet twenty.”
“A discarded son banished by his family.”
“In less than a year, on barren wasteland, he built a giant city ten kilometers across.”
“And from a worthless cripple, he leapt in a single bound to become… an Earth Knight.”
With each sentence Augustus spoke, Kellan felt his heart sink deeper.
To his horror, he realized that Augustus knew far more about Caesar than he had ever imagined.
“Kellan.”
Augustus walked over and looked down at him from above.
“Do you think this is something a normal man could accomplish?”
“No! Impossible!”
Kellan blurted it out without thinking.
“He must be a devil! A powerful demon disguised as a human! The ultimate heretic!”
It was the only explanation he could think of.
Yet Augustus only shook his head lightly.
In those ice-blue eyes flashed a gleam that mixed admiration with extreme danger.
“No, Kellan. You are mistaken.”
“Demons are the embodiment of chaos and destruction.”
“They would never have the patience to obey human law, nor to build a city brick by brick, stone by stone.”
“This is not a demon’s handiwork.”
Augustus turned and paced back to the sand table, his long fingers lightly tapping that black game piece.
“A piece discarded by his family. While everyone believed he was dead, he was building for himself in the darkness an impregnable fortress.”
“He endured. He lay in wait. He hid his fangs perfectly beneath the skin of a ‘cripple.’”
“And only today, when the time was ripe, did he finally show the world a power great enough to make the earth itself tremble.”
A cold curve touched Augustus’s lips.
“A man like that is either a holy son of the Father God left behind in the mortal world, a king chosen by destiny…”
“Or…”
“He is the finest deceiver imaginable, a supreme fraud who has the entire world dancing in the palm of his hand.”
“A ruthless hegemon whose ambition surpasses even that of the undead saint.”
Kellan stared, dumbfounded.
Augustus spoke lightly.
“You were frightened out of your wits by his power, and so all you saw was terror.”
“But in him, I saw… a possibility.”
“A possibility that could make the stagnant waters of the Eastern Territory boil over completely.”
As an inquisitor of cardinal rank and a mid-stage archmage, the power of an Earth Knight was formidable, yes—but not enough to truly astonish him.
What truly interested him was the unfathomable depth of calculation hidden behind that power.
This boy was playing a master’s game.
“My lord, then… what should we do now? Should we gather the main force and carry out… final judgment upon him?”
Kellan asked in a trembling voice.
“Judgment?”
Augustus let out a soft laugh.
“Kellan, broaden your perspective.”
He turned his head, and in his ice-blue eyes gleamed the excitement of a hunter who had discovered rare prey.
“A good sword cannot be casually used to chop firewood before one has understood its material and measured its edge.”
“What if it proves to be a holy blade capable of severing even the shackles of the gods?”
“When facing the undead, it is better to have one more ally of Earth Knight rank than one more enemy of equal standing.”
“Especially an ally so… capable of reading the times.”
Augustus’s gaze fell once more to the sand table.
“The undead saint wants to pull him into the camp of death.”
“And I want to see whether he is worthy of bathing in the Father God’s radiance and becoming the Church’s… sharpest blade.”
“But before that…”
A highly invasive light flashed through Augustus’s eyes.
“I need to weigh for myself exactly how much this newly risen King of the Wasteland truly amounts to.”
He lifted a hand and snapped his fingers toward the shadows in the tent.
Snap.
Four figures clad in black light armor and white masks emerged soundlessly from the shadows like phantoms, dropping to one knee.
“Transmit my order.”
Augustus’s voice echoed through the vast pavilion with unquestionable authority.
“Prepare my mount, along with the Deathbird Honor Guard.”
“In the name of the Church of Light’s Cardinal Inquisitor, deliver a formal notice of visitation to Lord Caesar von Valerius, lord of the City of Miracles.”
He deliberately put extra weight on the words “lord” and “deliver.”
Kellan’s head jerked up, his eyes full of disbelief.
Lord Augustus was actually going… in person… to visit that country lord? And as an equal, no less?
This was unprecedented!
Augustus paid no mind to his shock. He merely looked at the four Silent Guards and added one last sentence, his voice carrying a trace of cold amusement.
“Tell him this.”
“His new neighbor wishes to discuss with him… the future ownership of this land.”