The Heretic of Cleric Academy-Chapter 132

Between the entanglement of the mountain ridge and the lump of flesh, we were staring at each other.

The flames that had reached my shoulders were hot. Though it was my right arm that was burning, my left arm was also hot, and both legs were hot. The heat seemed to be spreading throughout my body through my blood vessels. My stomach and chest were hot, and the area around my eyes was hot.

I walked, using that heat to drive away the heaviness attached to my toes. Gu Jun-hyeok walked toward me. Black and red tentacles were fluttering from the back of his neck. The black magic circle was drawn by those tentacles, and Gu Jun-hyeok’s body, which had been severed by the tentacles, was reattached.

Kyaaaaaaak! Aak, aaaaak!!

Kwajijijiik!

The mountain ridge and the lump of flesh tangled and collided as they fought. There was no superiority or inferiority in the fight. We walked through the shadows created by the battle, approaching each other.

Gu Jun-hyeok’s body was full of holes from being stabbed by swords, and was drenched in blood. My body would probably be no different from his.

Splash, splash, splash.

Even amidst the screams of the lump of flesh and the mountain echoes, the sound of footsteps was clear. We met at the crossroads where life and death touched, both covered in blood.

"We can’t shake hands."

Gu Jun-hyeok said with a cheeky smile. His left hand was severed, and my right arm was on fire. We certainly couldn’t shake hands. Most importantly, we were too far apart to shake hands.

I responded by raising the executioner’s sword instead of answering.

Whiiik!

Gu Jun-hyeok’s tentacles moved, cutting through the wind and drawing a black magic circle. The flowing magi seeped into Gu Jun-hyeok’s severed wrist. From the cross-section where the magi had seeped in, black blood flowed instead of red blood. The black blood hardened and became his hand. The hand was burning with black flames.

I drew a sorcery circle.

Fainting, nightmares, memory destruction.

I drew every sorcery circle I could think of, following my hand’s impulse. I didn’t think sorcery would work on Gu Jun-hyeok. However, if I could blur his consciousness even for a very brief moment, that would be enough.

Ssssss...

Purple mist flowing from the sorcery circles enveloped Gu Jun-hyeok. Black magi and black flames surrounded my body. Purple mist and black smoke gathered and scattered. There was no light in this place, and only mist and smoke flowed.

"Bosu..."

I held up my sword and called Bosu. Gu Jun-hyeok’s body reattached even when severed. I wouldn’t be able to cut his neck with ordinary swings. Even if muscles tore and bones broke, even if I shed bloody tears and nosebleeds, I had to stake everything on this one strike.

[Bosu reluctantly... responds to the prophet’s call.]

Bosu’s voice answering reluctantly trembled. Blood boiled and my heart pounded, and my vision became hazily blurred. Everything was blurry and only the sound of my own breathing was vivid. Bosu’s voice echoed in my head once more.

[Bosu fears death.]

"..."

[I fear the death of the prophet, not myself. Your body is dying now.]

My body was burning. The side effects created by demon flames and Loa powers were spreading throughout my body. My joints ached and my muscles hurt as if tearing, and my stomach was hot as if my organs were melting.

If I used Bosu’s power at maximum output here, my body might really break and die.

"It’s okay."

However, if I couldn’t kill Gu Jun-hyeok here and now, I would die. I couldn’t give up fighting and run away either. There was concern that he might report to the Vatican that I was the Voodoo cult leader. To survive, I had to kill him here and now.

[I understand.]

With Bosu’s answer, his tremendous strength filled my body. I could barely see ahead. It was tremendous strength obtained in exchange for my optic nerves. Though my vision was dim, that was enough. I put strength into my legs. And I leaped toward Gu Jun-hyeok.

Crack.

My leg broke. I could no longer feel pain. My body was already full of pain, so there was no room for new pain to enter.

I channeled the force from kicking off the ground directly into the sword tip. The executioner’s sword screamed as it rushed toward Gu Jun-hyeok’s head.

Clang!

The sword couldn’t pierce his head and stopped. Gu Jun-hyeok blocked the sword with his hand wrapped in flames. Gu Jun-hyeok’s hand burning with black and murky flames was solid. However, I didn’t release my strength. I intended to pierce through his palm and drill straight through his skull.

Creak, creeak!

Gu Jun-hyeok’s palm scraped against the executioner’s sword. The sword was pulled and occasionally pushed, but ultimately couldn’t pierce through Gu Jun-hyeok’s forehead.

The purple radiance flowing from the executioner’s sword and the pitch-black flames flowing from Gu Jun-hyeok’s palm mixed together. The standoff was fierce. If I relaxed my grip, Gu Jun-hyeok’s hand would twist my neck, and conversely, if Gu Jun-hyeok relaxed his strength, the executioner’s sword would pierce his brow.

"Let me ask one thing."

In that precarious standoff, I opened my mouth.

"Jeong In-ah, where did you take her?"

"...Well."

Gu Jun-hyeok chuckled. The corners of his mouth were trembling. Gu Jun-hyeok looked me over with eyes vivid with killing intent and continued speaking.

"She’s scattered here and there."

"..."

"She might have been among the taxidermy you killed."

Jeong In-ah wasn’t at Florence. There was only taxidermy modeled after Jeong In-ah. Since she couldn’t have left the school, I naturally thought Gu Jun-hyeok must have kidnapped her. At least I didn’t think she was dead. There was no reason. I just vaguely thought so.

However, Jeong In-ah was nowhere in Eden Garden.

Ogun’s swords didn’t fly toward Gu Jun-hyeok. It meant his words were true. The hand gripping the sword began to tremble. My arm muscles were burning in demon flames and gradually losing strength.

I raised my left arm. Three swords that had been wandering in the air aimed at Gu Jun-hyeok. The sword tips heated red-hot with heat glinted sharply as if they would pierce through Gu Jun-hyeok’s body at any moment. However, the swords just stood still in place, not moving.

Ogun was going against my will.

"Ogun."

[...]

Ogun only let out a sigh without answering. I looked up at him who was watching me from somewhere and continued speaking.

"Stab."

Screeeeech!

The swords screamed as they flew. Toward Gu Jun-hyeok, and toward me.

Thud! The sword pierced through my stomach and passed through, piercing Gu Jun-hyeok’s heart. The force of the flying sword was transferred to my body. With that force, I pushed in the executioner’s sword.

Creak, creeak!

It scraped against Gu Jun-hyeok’s hand and the trajectory was altered. The executioner’s sword pierced his left eyeball.

I wanted to swing the sword as it was and tear apart his skull, but I no longer had strength left in my hand. I also didn’t have the Voodoo magic power left to maintain the executioner’s sword.

The executioner’s sword pierced in his eyeball disappeared, leaving purple mist as a trace. The purple mist bleakly circled around.

Gu Jun-hyeok touched the sword pierced in his heart.

"...Why do you keep... interfering... can’t stand it?"

Blood was gushing from his mouth as he spoke with a smile.

"What interference... you’re talking nonsense..."

I raised my hand. The two swords that had been flying in the sky aimed at Gu Jun-hyeok.

Thud, thuud...

The swords fell powerlessly and stuck in the ground. I no longer had the strength to control Ogun’s power. Tentacles protruded from the back of Gu Jun-hyeok’s neck, but the tentacles couldn’t quite draw black magic and drooped to the floor.

Neither I nor Gu Jun-hyeok had any strength left to fight. We had sustained too many injuries and bled too much. Our entire bodies were growing cold.

Thud, thuuud!

The mountain ridge and lump of flesh that had been fighting above our heads also lost strength and collapsed.

Silence came. Thin and faint rain sounds filled the silence. The thunder was small and the wind was thin. My heart beat slowly and weakly. The magi that had filled Eden Garden so thickly that you couldn’t see an inch ahead had also become faint.

As the magi lifted, a pit was visible behind Gu Jun-hyeok. It was a pit as deep and black as a well. It seemed to be a pit dug to retrieve the box that had been buried in Eden Garden.

"What’s in... the box..."

"...How do you know about that?"

At that moment, Gu Jun-hyeok’s expression hardened coldly. His pupils were trembling thinly. Pain was spreading throughout my body. I couldn’t speak properly and couldn’t finish my words.

I used intoxication sorcery with what little strength I had left. I inhaled the mist to drive away the pain. And I continued speaking.

"Something to resurrect... Satan or something like that?"

Gu Jun-hyeok twisted his lips mockingly upon hearing my words. And with trembling hands, he put his hand in his pocket.

"Similar."

What he took out of his pocket was an eyeball. Gu Jun-hyeok picked up the eyeball with blood vessels dangling from it and put it in his mouth. Tentacles extended from the eye socket pierced by the executioner’s sword and reconstructed Gu Jun-hyeok’s eyeball.

"I become Satan’s vessel."

Gu Jun-hyeok trembled all over, then looked at me with his newly reconstructed eyeball and said. That eyeball wasn’t human. Like a goat’s or sheep’s eyeball, the pupil was torn horizontally long.

I couldn’t read the emotions contained in those pupils. No, I couldn’t look at those pupils in the first place.

Swish!

Tentacles protruded from the back of Gu Jun-hyeok’s neck and his pupils. The tentacles wrapped around half his head. Pitch-black magi was flowing from his gaping mouth. It was much thicker and more ominous magi than before.

"The gray energy of death kills him."

Gu Jun-hyeok spoke. The magi that flowed from his mouth took shape and became a hand. It was a hand I couldn’t meet eyes with. Six eyes attached to six fingernails glared at me.

Thoom!

"Kuhek...!"

The shockwave shot by that gaze penetrated my abdomen. I flew backward endlessly with a sword stuck in my abdomen.

Thuud!

My body hit a tree. Blood vomit came from my mouth. It felt like all my organs had burst.

"Ah, haak...!"

I tried to get up but it was futile. I couldn’t put strength into my body below the chest. My spine seemed broken. Even if I had gotten up, I wouldn’t have been able to walk.

My body was already completely broken. It was broken beyond repair. I forcibly lifted my head that wouldn’t lift and looked at Gu Jun-hyeok surrounded by magi in the distance.

"Ah, um, hmm."

Gu Jun-hyeok cleared his throat and raised his index finger with his left hand burning black. And he wrapped his index finger with his right hand. The black flames transferred to his right hand.

Watching both hands burn black, he opened his mouth. Black smoke poured from his mouth as he moved it slightly, chanting an incantation.

"TH-TH-TH-AH-AH-AH-UUUMMM!"

A pale eye was carved on Gu Jun-hyeok’s forehead. He closed both eyes and gazed at the world with the pale eye carved on his forehead. The black smoke that had flowed from the corpses of dead taxidermy as they rotted was gathering above Gu Jun-hyeok’s head. The smoke took shape and became dozens and hundreds of pieces of flesh.

Splash, splash, splash!

The pieces of flesh began to clump together into one mass of flesh. Arms and legs sprouted from what had been merely a lump, and a head formed. It was a giant taxidermy. An overwhelmingly large taxidermy made from the flesh of all the taxidermy that had died so far.

Thud, thud!

With each step of the taxidermy, the ground shook and the air trembled. The taxidermy was approaching me. The taxidermy’s movement was slow and clumsy, but in my current state, I had no means to avoid it. I looked up at the sky with my last remaining strength.

"Ahh..."

The sky was completely covered with smoke and dark clouds. There wasn’t even a gap for a single ray of sunlight to flow through. In that endlessly high and frighteningly black sky, a fragment of light was looking down at me. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

It was the moonlight of the full moon.

"...Kalfu."

[It’s a night when the full moon is beautiful.]

With the answer, moonlight red as if it contained blood poured down over my head.