Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

Chapter 406: Fanatical Clergy

CH406 Fanatical Clergy

***

The surge of urgency within Alex peaked the moment he saw the priest’s triumphant grin.

The man had stopped right at the doorway—brazenly turning to face him.

Then Alex saw it.

Through Spirit Sight, faith energy—thick, radiant divine energy—flooded toward the priest like a tidal wave.

”You lose, heathen!”

”Holy L—”

”You think I will let you?!” Alex roared back, eyes blazing with a cold, manic fury.

[Delayed Spells: Quadruple Cast — Fireball!]

The fire mana Alex had silently gathered while running twisted sharply around him, compressing into four dense fireballs.

They launched simultaneously, streaking toward the priest and locking him into a perfect four-point crossfire.

BOOM!!!

Before the priest could finish his incantation—

before the divine spell could take shape—

—the explosions detonated, trapping him at the dead centre of the fiery convergence.

The blast tore through the temple.

It didn’t stop there. Shockwaves hammered the surrounding facilities, even reaching into the officers’ area where fortress troops were gathered.

Entire buildings collapsed.

The divine energy–reinforced temple cracked...

...and half of it caved in under the force.

”Alex. Alex! Answer me! Alex!!” Zora shouted over comms, her voice edged with panic.

Thankfully, Alex had warned them moments before the detonation.

Because of that, the entire expedition group had retreated and huddled behind Zora’s hastily erected Ice Wall—the only thing between them and the blast.

The instant the explosion ended, Zora dismissed the spell, allowing Kavakan and Mogal to rush inside the shattered temple.

But the first ones they encountered were not Alex.

They were the Paladins.

”Don’t waste time with them. Kill them.”

Udara’s cold voice echoed as she stepped into the ruin behind them.

A thick darkness surged around her form, cloaking her like a living shadow—

—akin to the manifestation of a true Dark Being.

She sprinted toward the weakest Paladin –one barely standing after the explosion, his armour cracked due to its divine protections being spent.

He raised his mace in desperation to block Udara’s strike.

It made no difference.

Udara’s blade—overloaded with internal energy to the point her Tier III shortsword seemed ready to snap—sliced through the metal like soft wax.

The follow-through severed the Paladin’s head cleanly.

Udara didn’t spare the corpse a glance. She vanished deeper into the collapsed section of the temple—toward where Alex had disappeared under the rubble.

Inspired by her... brutality, Mogal and Kavakan also unleashed their full strength.

[Call of the Wild]! [Lycanthropic Transformation]!

[Beast Totem]!

Kavakan exploded into his towering Weretiger form, while Mogal’s body swelled under the spectral force of his Bear Totem.

Both warriors roared and charged into the ruins.

If the Paladins had harboured even a shred of doubt before—if some small part of them assumed the scriptures exaggerated the horrors of the Dark Realm—

—that doubt died here.

Faced with Mogal’s towering beast-totem form and Kavakan’s monstrous Weretiger frame, the Paladins were convinced.

These invaders were truly the beings of the Dark realm their doctrine warned them about.

Their armour lay shattered—divine protections spent—but they refused to cower in the face of these outerworldly dark beings.

”I offer You my life, MY LORD!” both Paladins roared, voices cracking with fanatic zeal as they charged head-on.

They didn’t guard... Nor did they evade.

They burned their lifeforce, entering a suicidal frenzy, determined to drag the invaders into death with them.

But zeal alone was nothing before raw, overwhelming power.

Mogal’s iron-hard fist crashed into the first Paladin’s jaw, snapping his neck sideways and rattling his brain in its skull.

Before the man could collapse, Mogal’s massive palm—closer to a bear paw now—swept across his body, slamming him into the temple floor.

Crunch!

The barbarian brought his colossal thigh down in a brutal stomp. The Paladin’s head burst like an overripe melon beneath the pressure.

At the same moment, Kavakan’s twin axes met the second Paladin’s guard.

His crude, heavy axe smashed aside the Paladin’s divine-imbued sword and cleaved into the man’s dominant shoulder.

Flesh tore and bones cracked, leaving the arm hanging limply.

The Paladin never even had the chance to scream. Kavakan’s second axe hacked into the opposite arm, this time, tearing it away in a spray of blood.

A savage front kick caved in the man’s knees, dropping him onto the rubble.

Kavakan could have finished him cleanly with his axe. But the Weretiger’s blood boiled.

The Paladin’s stubborn resistance—and the cuts inflicted on him by the paladin—ignited Kavakan’s fury.

With a guttural snarl, Kavakan dropped one axe, seized the crippled Paladin by the legs, and swung him like a ragdoll.

Left.

Right.

Left.

Right.

Each impact landed on the Paladin’s head or upper torso, shattering bones with each smash.

By the tenth, nothing remained of the upper body that resembled a human being. It was now a hideous mash of flesh and bone.

Only then did Kavakan toss the mangled corpse aside, as if discarding refuse.

ROAR!

His enraged bellow shook the fractured walls—reminding everyone present that Weretigers, no matter how civilised they acted, were closer to savage apex predators than they were civilised men.

Mogal and Kavakan rushed after Udara, who was already tearing through the collapsed structure.

”Master! Master!!” Udara shouted, voice sharp with urgency as she tried to clear the rubble to reach him.

’...Hmm.’

A dull, throbbing ache pulsed through Alex’s skull as consciousness dragged him back.

Urgent voices—Zora’s, Eleanor’s, Udara’s—echoed faintly through the comms, tugging him awake.

He tried to shift, but something heavy pressed against his back.

When the haze finally cleared, he realised he’d been buried beneath the collapsed rear section of the temple.

He exhaled a strained sigh.

He’d known the risk the moment he’d unleashed his spell.

He hadn’t fired a simple volley of [Fireballs].

He had casted and held four successive fireball spells, held them mid-cast, then exploded them all simultaneously.

The force produced by the four spells, and subsequently the damaged they caused, far surpassed anything four single fireballs could achieve.

Which, of course, had been the entire point.

He needed raw power—overwhelming and instantaneous—to break through the Priest’s passive divine shield. His higher-tier spells required too much chant time at his current proficiency; and he couldn’t afford even a second of delay.

So he chose the dangerous path.

[Quadruple Fireball].

A spell only barely under his control...

But it had worked.

The blast not only covered the Priest but also crippled the entire temple—the conduit for Juror’s faith in this region.

With the structure shattered, the consecration anchoring the fortress should have broken as well. Juror’s interference would be drastically limited, and the suppressive field constraining Eleanor’s healing would fade.

’Thankfully... I still had enough mana left for Dragon Kumite.’

Alex felt a fleeting rush of relief.

He survived only because he’d thrown up a crude overhead barrier at the last instant, shaping energy using the Dragon Kumite method while the Happenstance Chestplate absorbed the rest.

His mana usage, however, had been atrocious.

Between the delayed [Triple Fireball] earlier and the reckless mana dump into the quadruple cast variant, he must have used five times the necessary mana—perhaps more. Even with his massive reserves, he’d nearly emptied himself dry.

But fate—or rather, Providence(?)—favoured him.

He had just enough mana remaining to shield himself from the falling rubble.

While he’d been unconscious, both his Everspring Rune Tattoo and OmniRune’s passive absorption had slowly siphoned ambient mana into his core, restoring a shallow pool of energy.

Boom!!

A burst of mana flared around him.

Alex braced his palms against the cracked stone, gritting his teeth as he forced the debris upward. The pressure on his back eased and, piece by piece, he pushed himself free and staggered upright.

He inhaled sharply against the pain, and forcibly said into the Comms,

”Don’t worry about me. Focus on the battle.”

Eleanor, riding on Fen’s back for protection and speed, arrived at the fractured front entrance of the temple.

”I’m coming over to you. My healing’s working again,” she replied.

”Save them for the others. I can handle myself,” Alex replied.

He pushed the last slab of rubble aside and stepped out into view. Udara and the others finally saw him—robes torn and dirt-smeared, several bleeding cuts along his head, arms, and back—but standing.

Only bruised by his own catastrophic spell.

Yet even in that moment, Alex felt something else—a faint pull from within the half-collapsed temple.

A whisper... a tug on his instincts... a calling.

Something of import to him laid within the temple.

But Alex ignored it entirely.

There was no time for mysteries.

Instead, he headed straight –while limping a bit— for the Priest.

Blown clear out the back of the temple, the man lay half-buried under shattered stone. His lower body was crushed, but his torso was somehow still intact.

And, infuriatingly...

He was still alive.

’A Navi priest is indeed like a cockroach. His vitality is absurd,’ Alex thought grimly.

He’d read about it—how Navi clergy became harder to kill the more divine energy they accumulated—but experiencing it first-hand was another matter entirely.

Any ordinary Pangean warrior of similar rank, even one who’d tempered their body to the peak, would have been vapourised by a delayed [Quadruple Fireball] to the face.

But this priest had survived, only to fortunately by crushed by blasted debris.

Alex channelled mana into his Beta Bracer.

A gleaming, mana-coated wristblade snapped out with a metallic click.

He approached to finish the job—

Only to find the priest smiling.

Not only didn’t he breakdown at the dread of impeding death, but he was actually grinning.

”I curse you to ultimate damnation, you hellspawn!” he spat, eyes ablaze with fanatic hatred.

Before Alex could pierce his skull, the man shoved his palms together and formed a final hand seal.

”Pious Devotion!”

His lifeforce ignited.

A burst of divine radiance erupted from his broken frame, sweeping across the fortress grounds as threads of light shot out—each one latching onto the surviving fortress troops.

Alex’s wristblade plunged down, splitting the priest’s skull—

But the deed was already done.

The ”miracle” had activated.

The divine spell completed.

Alex stared at the priest’s corpse, jaw clenched as the glow spread across the fortress grounds.

He exhaled heavily.

”Come on... give me a break.”

***