Chapter 2: Time When the Moon Rises
Suddenly opening a coffin and making eye contact with the person inside is enough to make anyone flustered.
Even more so if that happens in a graveyard in the middle of the night, eerily illuminated by the blue moonlight.
And even more so if the person rising from the coffin is the one you just killed.
Creak.
A sound that shouldn’t be heard here, a sound that shouldn’t be heard at all. At the creepy sound of footsteps from behind, Berman put down the old lantern he was holding and hurriedly turned around.
No way.
Cracked tombstones scattered haphazardly, graves overgrown with weeds.
A place closest to silent death, a place that felt inexplicably eerie, but what caught his eye was a living, moving person.
“……!”
A boy slowly rising from the coffin, walking out between the wildly grown weeds and graves.
Luciel Lumineger.
“Th, This is what─”
It was the guy who had just breathed his last. To be precise, the person he had killed at someone else’s behest.
‘Damn it. I, I clearly confirmed he was dead.’
Berman gulped as he looked at the boy. Cold sweat trickled down his face in this completely unexpected situation, but he wasn’t so terrified that he couldn’t make a proper judgment.
An era where cursed beings walk the earth. An era where countless heretics, including demons and their followers, lurk in the shadows, waiting for the light.
And an era where a corpse reviving in a graveyard in the middle of the night wasn’t treated as an absurd ghost story.
He slowly backed away, moving his hand behind his waist where his sword was strapped, and gauged the mood of the boy who was calmly approaching him.
The light from the lantern placed on the ground wasn’t very bright, but it was enough to see the face of the person right in front of him.
“……!”
Dark blue hair and a clean face full of life.
He looked quite different from the zombies and ghouls that often appeared in graveyards imbued with dark energy.
It wasn’t a side effect of a curse that was making the corpse move.
This guy in front of him was definitely alive, just as much as Berman himself.
And that was even more surprising than encountering a zombie or a ghoul. For a guy with a pierced heart to walk out of his grave perfectly fine.
“Da, Damn it……!”
In a situation beyond his comprehension, Berman muttered a curse filled with bewilderment, but he drew his sword.
A fairly quick judgment. It was an action possible because he, too, had lived by the sword for a long time.
Tightly.
Berman gripped his sword so hard his knuckles turned white.
He didn’t know how the boy had woken up perfectly fine, but killing him again would be enough.
The opponent was just a kid.
Luring him out of the monastery was quite a bothersome task. He had no intention of repeating that tedious wait twice.
Whether the boy knew of his murderous intent or not, he slowly inhaled and raised his head to look up at the sky.
As if savoring the cool night air he was experiencing after a long time.
A dark night with darkness clinging thickly. The moon, shining alone in the sky, cast a faint blue light into the dark forest.
“Die!”
“It’s a beautiful moon.”
Berman ignored the boy’s nonsense, uttered while looking at the moon ominously hanging in the dark night sky, and swung his sword with a shout.
Quite a fierce momentum. If the person in front of him was in the same state as before he died, he would have lost his life once again to his sharp sword.
But unfortunately for Berman, the person in front of him was not the kid he knew.
And even more unfortunately for him, this place was a graveyard filled with a gloomy atmosphere, no different from a black mage’s lair.
Clang!
Berman’s sword, swung precisely towards Luciel’s neck, stopped in mid-air. As if it had struck something invisible and solid.
“Ugh……?”
Without letting his guard down, he had swung his sword with all his might, and it was blocked at an unexpected point, causing a groan of pain to escape Berman’s lips.
It wasn’t clearly visible, blending with the surrounding darkness, but what blocked his sword was a black fog faintly shimmering in the air.
A black fog, made of dark magic, that bloomed in the path of the rapidly approaching sword.
A speed that didn’t yield at all to the swiftly swung sword. It was the instantaneous casting and manifestation of black magic.
“B, Black magic……!”
A bewildered murmur escaped Berman’s lips.
For an illegitimate child of a noble family, abandoned at a monastery, to suddenly use black magic. It was an impossible thing. Didn’t he offer no resistance when he was killed just a moment ago?
Despite the confusion filling his head, his body moved faithfully.
Although he wasn’t skilled enough to manifest Aura or Holy Power to pierce the black fog, he was still a mercenary who had rolled around in various places for a long time.
Berman quickly retrieved his sword and prepared for his next move. Or rather, he tried to prepare but couldn’t.
Stuck.
His weapon, entangled in the black fog, wouldn’t budge.
“Wh, What is this……!”
The small fog that had blocked the front of his blade was now wriggling as if it were alive, firmly entwining Berman’s sword.
“Damn it─”
Instinctively realizing that the opponent in front of him was something incomparable to the kid he knew, Berman let go of the sword entangled in the black fog in the air and tried to quickly back away.
But before that.
Whoosh!
In response to Luciel’s hand gesture, which he finished as if playing a melody in the air, a pair of fangs appeared in the air.
The wicked teeth, formed of dense darkness, mercilessly dug into the back of Berman’s neck.
Crack!
The hard fangs, made of Demonic Energy, roughly tore into the weak human flesh, and blood splattered in the darkness.
“Gah……!”
Berman cursed and struggled to shake off the teeth that appeared out of thin air, but a mere swordsman with no Holy Power, Knight’s Aura, expensive magic armor, priest’s blessing, or anything of the sort could not possibly shake off a spell originating from Demonic Energy.
“He, Help……”
His movements, flailing his arms in the darkness, slowly began to dull.
Whoosh!
At the same time, a gust of cold wind from somewhere extinguished the small flame that was precariously flickering inside the small lantern placed on the ground.
The acrid scent of thin smoke rising from where the flame had died out.
An ominous smell. The smell of death.
Step.
The graveyard shrouded in darkness.
And the dark energy felt along with the leisurely footsteps.
Step, step, step.
The liquid that had been trickling down his body, indistinguishable between blood and sweat, had cooled down at some point.
“Gaaah……”
In his fading consciousness, the last emotion Berman recalled was one: self-reproach for being blinded by money and taking on such a creepy job.
But as is often the case, regret came too late.
Gurgle.
With a sound like the death throes of a dying man, his movements finally stopped, and another death was added to the small graveyard.
🔹🔹🔹
I slowly raised my hand.
A young and strong body, incomparable to the previous old body, withered by a long contract with a demon.
The ritual was successful. The condition of the new body was perfect, and all the memories containing vast knowledge remained intact.
Moreover, I couldn’t feel the mark of original sin directly imprinted by God, nor the traces of the inscription from the contract with the demon.
It seemed that various curses and contracts were naturally broken as my life, the contractor, ended and my body perished. As expected.
It was truly clean.
Ah, of course, the situation wasn’t completely clean.
“……”
I stared quietly at the corpse lying in front of me.
The motion of swinging the sword without a moment’s hesitation. An action containing clear murderous intent.
Soon, the memories of the new body began to surface slowly.
The memories of the guy named Luciel.
They weren’t complete or detailed because they weren’t originally mine, but they were sufficient to grasp the current situation roughly.
The last memory was, of course, the figure of the guy now lying at my feet, swinging his sword.
‘A priest candidate from a noble family who was murdered at someone’s behest.’
It seemed that this guy named Luciel hadn’t had a smooth life either.
The fact that the place where he finally died was an old graveyard was fortunate for me.
I looked down at the clothes stained with dirt and blood.
The embroidered sun and griffin. The symbol of the Hesterica Church.
It wasn’t very pleasing, but if I thought about it differently, it could be a good opportunity.
Having the identity of the Church was quite advantageous for moving freely.
Then, for now, the first thing to do would be to return to the monastery where he originally stayed.
Of course, there was something to take care of before that.
Ssst.
I looked down at the darkness flickering at my fingertips. A familiar energy residing in a body I’m not yet accustomed to.
A power similar to, yet different from, the mana that makes up this world.
Demonic Energy.
The black energy, indistinguishable from the surrounding darkness, was flowing backward towards my hand in the graveyard where it was spread everywhere.
Breaking the laws of the world, from the grave to the ground, from the dead to the living.
I lowered my gaze and looked at the corpse lying in front.
“With the moon so bright, isn’t it a shame to fall asleep already?”
I muttered softly and slowly raised my white and smooth hand.
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