Vol 3. Chapter 58: Baptism of the Sinner

“What is this thing?? Little foreign girl, what kind of smokescreen are you playing at this time??”

Pinned to the floor by an invisible pressure and unable to get up, Kantesius roared.

“Heh! You two are really something, huh? One little trick after another, but they’re all meaningless!”

“In the end, you’ll pay a heavy price for angering the great Kantesius!”

With that, Kantesius once again tried to stand, but no matter what he did, he could not support his own body.

“This is all your fault, you damned pink-haired woman!”

Kantesius gnashed his teeth. He looked like he could swallow Vanessa whole.

“What did you do? Why won’t my arm grow back?!”

Kantesius clearly thought the only reason he could not stand up was that he was missing an arm. If only that arm could regenerate, then of course he would be able to prop up his body.

“Mr. Kantesius, it isn’t that I did something to you.”

Vanessa stood steadily on the judge’s dais, gripping the Judgment Hammer as she shook her head.

Her condition right now was terrible. She had already been anemic, and on top of that she had forced herself to use [Saint’s Favor] again, only making things worse.

If not for the faint healing she had received upon entering the cathedral earlier, she would not even have been able to stand now.

“So that’s how it is, Mr. Kantesius. You still haven’t noticed, have you?”

Vanessa watched the Kantesius who lay sprawled on the floor, unable to rise—

No, to be precise, she was staring at his back.

“Pink-haired woman, what are you talking about?!”

Kantesius clearly did not understand, but what was stranger was that Isatia beside him suddenly showed a look of realization.

That made the sense of unease in Kantesius’ heart grow even stronger.

“The stronger [Saint’s Favor] is, the more terrifying its backlash,” Isatia said, enunciating every word. “Likewise, it’s the same for a Spirit Soul.”

“On the Tyrelis Continent, there is no power that does not come with a price.”

“Barbarian king, you’ve been bitten back by your own Spirit Soul.”

“Bitten... back??”

Kantesius’ eyes went wide. The word felt completely foreign to him.

After all, from childhood to now, words like ‘resistance’ and ‘backlash’ had almost never appeared in his ears.

“What backlash? Don’t joke with me. I am the great Kantesius, seated among man-gods. Who would dare bite back at me?!”

Kantesius barked.

“You two rotten women, don’t get cocky. Once I get up—

You cut off my arm and even made me kneel here and kowtow to you—

I’ll make you pay it back a hundredfold!”

“Mr. Kantesius, you still don’t understand?”

“The reason you can’t get up isn’t us. It’s your Spirit Soul.”

“To be precise, it’s the unjust dead piling up on your Spirit Soul.”

“Ha! What a joke! That bunch of expendables is worthy of pushing me down??”

“I’ve branded them. For all eternity, they are my slaves. A mere bunch of ** dares to commit such an act of overreach??”

Kantesius sneered. He did not believe what Vanessa said at all.

“This is the Cathedral of the Dawn, and it is also a place of judgment.”

From the judge’s bench, Vanessa looked down on Kantesius from above.

“Any person with sin on them will be suppressed by the weight of that sin here and will not be permitted to rise.”

“Sinful? That’s a laughable claim.”

Kantesius burst out laughing.

“I have achieved immortal feats through the ages. For what crime am I guilty?”

“Mr. Kantesius, ordinary people and ordinary laws cannot judge you, nor can they condemn you.”

“After all, you are a king, and a dead one at that. You are not bound by those things.”

Vanessa gazed at Kantesius. Her voice, clear as a nightingale, carried a solemn note that echoed through the sacred cathedral.

“Since those cannot bind you, then the judgment shall be carried out by the Dawn Goddess—by Facilis.”

“The Dawn Goddess? Facilis??”

Crushed until he was gasping for breath, Kantesius clenched his teeth.

“You mean the Dusk Demon?? ...Heh. You think some foreign god has the right to judge the great king of all kings?”

“With the goddess as witness, the absent judge shall be filled by me.”

Vanessa lifted the metal hammer high and struck it heavily down onto the desk.

The sound it made reverberated across the entire cathedral.

“As for the evidence of your crimes—

The countless unjust souls coiled around this sinner’s body are more than enough to convict you.”

“What nonsense are you spouting?? Idiocy. You think you can judge me? Why don’t you ask whether my [Grandlord of Enslaved Souls] agrees first!”

Kantesius summoned his [Grandlord of Enslaved Souls].

Just as he was about to make his next move, he suddenly realized that after Vanessa’s hammer blow, he could now see things he had never been able to see before.

Countless hands, ground raw with bloody calluses, stretched out from his [Grandlord of Enslaved Souls].

They grabbed him and pinned him to the floor.

“What are all these things?!”

Kantesius was utterly stunned.

At the same time, countless tragic, grieving howls poured into his ears—

Sobbing and wailing, suffused with endless pain and despair, as if they had finally found an outlet to vent after all this time.

The terrifying negative emotions contained within them were overwhelmingly strong.

Never mind Kantesius—

Even Vanessa and Isatia, standing up on the tribunal, could not help but be affected.

“Quick, put it away!”

Kantesius hurriedly tried to recall his [Grandlord of Enslaved Souls].

If he took it back, there was still hope for him to fight the two women who had already reached the end of their rope.

But if he did not, he might very well be strangled to death by his own Spirit Soul right now, drowned by these negative emotions.

When the accumulated negative emotions reach a sufficient amount and scale, quantitative change leads to qualitative change.

They truly can become an exceptionally terrifying force that continually spills out and influences everyone around them.

In an instant, countless memory fragments that did not belong to him flooded into Kantesius’ mind like a tsunami.

In the blink of an eye, they were about to burst his already not-so-large brain.

“AAAAAAH!!”

Blood gushed from Kantesius’ seven orifices.

He had always been accustomed to pain, had always liked pain.

Yet this time, he did not laugh maniacally.

This intense agony bored in through every pore on his body and stabbed into his brain, like a thousand ants gnawing at his heart.

This time, he had been dragged out of his turtle shell.

He was no longer inside a Divine-Authority Secret Realm, so of course his wounds could no longer be restored.

“Stop, stop, stop it now!!”

Kantesius found he could no longer recall his [Grandlord of Enslaved Souls] at all.

It was no longer under his control.

It had instead fallen under the control of the souls that served as its medium.

“You... what did you people do?!”

“Mr. Kantesius, I already told you—we haven’t done anything.”

“This is the Cathedral of the Dawn and also a tribunal.”

“Here, every sin you’ve committed comes to find you. That’s all.”

Vanessa calmly watched Kantesius, whose seven orifices were bleeding and who, in a mere minute, had been tortured to the point he no longer looked human.

And this was only the beginning.

“This is only a tribunal. All that’s happened is that these wronged souls have been given the right to seek redress and resist. That’s all.”

“We have not become stronger because of this, and you have not become weaker because of it.”

Vanessa glanced at Isatia by her side.

The other girl probably had never imagined that the Cathedral of the Dawn inside her [Perennial Imperial Diadem] would have such a function besides healing.

Of course, this function was basically one that would never be used.

In ordinary circumstances, as long as Isatia could open [Perennial Imperial Diadem], you could basically assume victory.

After all, no enemy could be like Kantesius, this little cockroach, who dumped every single skill point into ‘survival.’

What’s more, if not for Isatia’s [Saint’s Favor] about to collapse this time, Kantesius would still have been worn down to death by her sooner or later.

Forget just draping the entire Marsmo civilization’s souls over his body—

Even multiplied tenfold, if he could only passively take a beating, he was doomed all the same.

If you can open [Perennial Imperial Diadem] and win outright, why bother going to the trouble of dragging the enemy into the Cathedral of the Dawn for judgment??

And this function would not have such a pronounced effect on every enemy either.

Kantesius had purely spun his own cocoon and been crushed by the weight of his own sins.

After Vanessa struck the Judgment Hammer, countless souls with no clear shape or outline had surged endlessly out of his [Grandlord of Enslaved Souls], like a crowd of drowning people scrambling for shore—

All of them taking revenge on the one who had made them sink in a sea of suffering for hundreds of years.

“AAAAAAH!!”

Very soon, the sacred cathedral was filled with the sinner’s shrieks and wails.

The people of Marsmo, Marsmo’s slaves, and even the Marsmo soldiers who had once sworn fealty to Kantesius all stepped out of that bony armor.

They tore and clawed at Kantesius’ body.

They poured out their grievances; nothing remained in them but hatred and resentment toward Kantesius, deep as the sea.

In no time, Kantesius was covered in blood, his flesh a mangled blur.

His vital energy and vigor were sucked dry by the souls; from tall and burly, he turned into skin and bones, as if his flesh and blood had been wrung out of him—

A sight too miserable to look at.

“Save me, save me!”

In despair, Kantesius shouted up at Vanessa on the judge’s bench.

“I—I admit defeat, I admit I was wrong! Save me, hurry!”

“Have you repented?” Vanessa asked calmly.

“I’ve repented! I repent deeply!”

“Just make them stop!”

Kantesius’ voice sounded like the last bit of life was being drained from it; his lamp oil was almost spent.

And yet, even like this, his desire to live was still incredibly strong.

He was clearly a dead soul who had been dead for who knew how many years, yet he clung so fiercely to the notion of living.

“No, Mr. Kantesius. You have not repented.”

Vanessa shook her head, then turned her words.

“You’ve only realized that you’re about to die.”

“AAAH! You damned woman!”

“E—even if I die, I won’t let you go!”

Seeing that begging was useless, Kantesius’ face instantly flipped.

To be honest, his hysterical expression, paired with his current neither-human-nor-ghost appearance, really was a bit terrifying—

The kind of thing that would give you nightmares if you saw it.

Immediately after, Kantesius was hoisted up by the very slaves he had never even spared a proper glance before.

They pulled him apart in eight directions.

Pig-slaughter screams echoed across the entire cathedral.

Vanessa frowned.

Even if this was the judgment of someone guilty of crimes beyond forgiveness, the sight was honestly a bit hair-raising.

So she turned her back, choosing not to look.

Isatia, on the other hand, did not particularly mind.

“Isatia, well?~” Vanessa asked.

“What?” Isatia paused.

“You know what I want to ask you.”

Vanessa smiled lightly.

“Didn’t you think that ‘little people’ can’t help?”

“...”

“The high and mighty ancient Marsmo king who crawled out of his tomb in the end was executed personally by his own people.”

“These ‘little people’ in your eyes saved our lives at the decisive moment and changed the outcome, didn’t they?”

Vanessa tilted her head.

“Don’t tell me that doesn’t count.”

Isatia fell silent.

[Virtue +50]

[Current Virtue: 3504]

Right then, Kantesius’ screams gradually weakened.

From that point on, he could only let out low groans like “urh, urh.”

To be clawed by that many wronged souls and still not die after screaming for so long—

One had to admit, Kantesius’ vitality really was ridiculously tenacious.

It wasn’t just that he had put all his ability points into ‘survival’; even his own life force was that strong.

He was practically a walking HP sponge, the king of tankiness.

But, finally, it ended.

The curtain fell.

Vanessa turned her head and looked down.

At this moment, the cathedral was filled with people—

Strictly speaking, filled with souls.

Kantesius was nowhere to be seen.

He had been torn apart completely.

Of course, a mere cathedral could not possibly hold everyone who had ever existed across the entire span of Marsmo civilization.

Outside the cathedral, and even farther beyond, there must have been more gathered.

They all bowed in unison toward Vanessa and Isatia, using a form of etiquette unique to the nation of Marsmo, and said a sentence the two of them did not understand.

But Vanessa knew what they were saying.

“Thank you.”

“There’s no need to thank us, everyone.”

“It wasn’t that we helped you.”

“It was the courage and spirit of resistance you kindled at the very end that led you to complete your own revenge on the tyrant.”

Vanessa’s lips curved in a gentle smile.

Then she pressed her hands together. Under the goddess’s gaze, she prayed devoutly for these unfortunate ones who had successfully taken revenge, fulfilled their wish, and finally found release, offering them her blessing.

She was like a Saintess blessing her believers.

Isatia beside her was stunned by the sheer impact of the scene and could not help but think—

[Virtue +120]

[Current Virtue: 3624]

“Everyone, may you no longer suffer in your next life.”

“By the goddess above, may she bless you.”

Vanessa closed her eyes and murmured softly.

At her words of blessing, the souls filling the cathedral dissipated row by row, turning into countless points of light that fluttered out of the cathedral.

“It’s been thousands of years. They’re finally free,” Vanessa said with emotion.

“Mm.”

Isatia seemed to be shaken as well, though her face still showed little expression.

Only—

Vanessa could not help looking at Isatia, a trace of worry flashing through her eyes.

She walked up to her, gently brushed her fingertips through the ends of Isatia’s hair, and comforted her.

“Don’t worry, Isatia. As long as my holy light doesn’t go out, you will be safe and sound.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“No need. You need to avoid suspicion, don’t you?”

Isatia’s meaning was very clear.

When you deal with someone too clever, there are many things you simply cannot hide.

“Is getting found out more important than saving you?”

Vanessa, however, did not care in the slightest.

Isatia’s pupils widened slightly.

[Virtue +100]

[Current Virtue: 3724]

“Pfft.”

Just then, Vanessa, who was looking toward the cathedral doors, suddenly let out a small laugh.

“Isatia, looks like I don’t need to worry about your problem.”

“?”

Isatia did not understand what Vanessa meant.

When she looked down, she was surprised to see rows of Imperial Royal Knights standing below, in full battle array.

“You all?”

Isatia walked to the front of the high platform, staring in some amazement at the familiar Imperial Royal Knights below.

“Your Highness Princess, we don’t know what happened, either,” one Imperial Knight Captain replied respectfully.

“Isatia, look at the doorway,” Vanessa said.

Hearing Vanessa’s voice, Isatia turned her gaze toward the cathedral’s main doors—

And found that at some unknown point in time, the interior of [Perennial Imperial Diadem], which should have been nothing but darkness, had once again come alive.

All of the buildings had been restored to the state they were in before the collapse.