Paladin of the Dead God - Chapter 357



Only Krnovel

Episode 357. Thirsty Dinner (7)

Sadrazza trembled with rage at the traumatizing and hateful remarks.

[This son of a bitch!]

Sadraza swung his tentacles and struck Isaac down, but Isaac put the Ruaddin Key in and pulled out Kachulain.

A trail of bright red blood followed Isaac as he slid across Sadraja’s body. Unlike when he had fought the monsters of the outside world, this time Isaac had begun to dismantle Sadraja’s body.

Sadraza moved dozens of tentacles to crush Isaac. I thought it was a flawless attack that not even a fly could escape, but Isaac escaped through the narrow gap without a single scratch.

Instead, he swung Kachulain around and cut off a few of Sadraza’s tentacles.

[─────!!]

Sadraja was shocked to see the blood flowing out.

He had thought he had become accustomed to the pain of hunger, thirst, and loneliness for a thousand years, but he had rarely felt this pain. The struggle was foreign to him, who had only been waiting for his enemies to fall and die, and had only been greedy for rotting flesh.

I’ve never suffered such a serious injury while fighting monsters from the outside world.

[I gained the power of an angel by the authority of God! But how could you, a mere human, do this!!]

Isaac did not deny that Sadraja had gained the power of an angel. Even though he could not manipulate Urbanus, the greatest power possessed by angels, the power that Sadraja possessed was comparable to that of an angel.

It’s just that the opponent wasn’t good.

Just as the chemistry between Dera Heman and Isaac was not good, the chemistry between Sadraza and Isaac was also not good.

“I know quite a bit about tentacles.”

Isaac had been training while imagining and preparing for how the tentacles would move and attack. Sadrazza’s movements were nothing more than the feeble attacks of a lowly beginner swordsman.

Isaac spun Cachulain around and dashed over Sadrazza’s body again. The powerful blast of sword energy disintegrated the tentacles deep into their flesh. Sadrazza screamed and writhed as the unstoppable blade approached his Adam’s apple.

Then Sadrazza realized another power of his.

If you think about it, he was originally a priest.

Some of the severed tentacles twisted into strange shapes, and in an instant, they dried up and turned into lumps of salt. The dried salt tentacles immediately rushed towards Isaac.

Isaac instinctively slapped them away with his Kachulainn.

At that moment, the monster of the outer world that had invaded the fisherman’s house was struck by the tentacles. In an instant, the monster dried up as if its body fluids had been drained, and soon turned into dust.

Isaac snorted at the sight.

“Are you finally abandoning your roots?”

[What do you know!]

Anyone can see that it is a wicked miracle that goes against the Salt Parliament.

There was no trace of the faith that dealt with the richness, mystery, and origin of the sea. Now, all that was left to him was a dry salt desert and a wilderness.

As if reflecting the bastard’s thoughts, Sadraza’s body began to turn pure white from the tips of its tentacles.

[Salt Council? They are nothing but a bunch of runaways who have forgotten their traditions and everything! How much blood do you think they have left in this sacred city? How many of them have heard the blessed voice, and seen the mysterious temple under the sea!]

Instead of becoming smaller than before, Sadrazza’s body transformed into a stronger, angelic, miraculous form. Isaac distanced himself from the increasingly dangerous aura.

[Only I! Only I survived! I am the survivor of the Sea Cult, the descendant! I am the fisherman, the one who holds the fish, the one who has the float, the one who has returned to the sea!]

Sadraja let out a mad cry and was reborn from a chaotic negative form into a divine form that thinks for itself.

[I am the new god of the Sea Cult!]

Isaac smiled coldly.

“What a surprise. Who would have thought I would meet a comrade in a place like this?”

Of course, Isaac had no intention of claiming to be a god. It was not his cup of tea. So he could not sympathize with the crimes of this filthy thief.

Anyway, Sadrazza’s life is limited.

Because Aidan will be ready to end all this.

***

Inside the throat. Aidan and the sailors who followed him were preparing for the ceremony, sweating profusely.

The surrounding area was filled with tentacles, nerves, tendons, and throbbing hearts due to Isaac’s occupation of the sanctuary. Isaac, who entered first, was the one who said, “It seems that Sadraza has done something strange,” but in fact, everyone felt it.

In this sanctuary, there is a sinister but powerful force that Isaac sometimes displays.

But now, instead of attacking them, that power was encouraging them with a sense of comfort.

“Captain Aidan, are you sure you’re okay?”

“… … If it weren’t for the dreamer, do you think we would have been able to come this far? The grace we have received from him is limitless. If he is dragging us to hell, we should grab his hand and run.”

Aidan combined his crude ancient knowledge with the Thirsty Feast ritual that Isaac had taught him to perform the ritual. However, there was no way that a shady ritual that was performed with only the knowledge that had been instilled in him over the course of a few days would work properly.

Thanks to Sadraja’s basic settings, I felt something moving, but that was it. My consciousness was blocked somewhere and I couldn’t progress at all.

“While correcting the unclean prayer inscribed by Sadrazza, I checked to see if there were any errors in the letters… … .”

“Uh, Captain Aidan… … .”

“Uh, uhm.”

Then one of the sailors looked surprised and pointed somewhere. On one side of the prayer that Sadrazza had carved, the flesh that had probably once been a block of stone was moving around and changing the letters.

Some of the missing letters were made by revealing bright red veins.

It was an incredibly bizarre sight, but the letters had changed, so no matter how many times I read it, it was a normal prayer. The evil words that Sadraja had planted had been changed to normal.

Aidan broke into a cold sweat. He couldn’t help but think that this sanctuary was doing them a favor by carrying out Isaac’s will.

The help of the sanctuary did not stop there. When Aidan recited the prayer incorrectly, he hummed the prayer for him instead, and when the position or order of the sacrificial vessels was wrong, he moved his own flesh to correct them.

When Aidan repeated the same part wrong, the tentacles would come out and slap Aidan’s butt, and the sailors didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Finally, after all these hardships, the ceremony began.

But Aidan soon came to a difficult conclusion.

“My, my offering is insufficient.”

Aidan, who had always sought help from the Sanctuary to solve problems whenever he encountered them, unknowingly shouted into the air. Thanks to Sadrajah’s thrifty use of his power, there was no blood or corpses left in his throat for sacrifice.

Amidst the confusion and bewilderment passing by, one of the sailors suddenly stood up.

“Captain Aidan, please use my body.”

“what?!”

“This is something our church has been waiting for for a thousand years. We almost failed because of that idiot priest, but this time, we can fix it with our own hands!”

At those words, the other sailors also stood up.

“It’s already shameful to have come here with the help of outsiders. If I fail here like this, I won’t be able to show my face anyway!”

“That’s right, Captain Aidan! Please, give me… …!”

“Shut up, you idiots!”

Aidan got angry and kicked the sailors as they stood up and screamed.

“Are you giving up your life so easily just because things have gotten a little difficult? People believe in God so that they can do well, not in God so that they can do well! Don’t you guys even remember what Master Isaac said outside?”

At those words, the sailors felt a sting and shut their mouths.

“Isaac said that if a god eats humans, then it is not a god, but a monster! From that point on, that god is no longer worthy of worship or respect! Are you guys willing to sacrifice your lives for a monster?”

The sailors became silent at Aidan’s rebuke.

Aidan let out a ragged breath and glared at the altar again. Honestly, considering the urgency of the situation, he felt like throwing his own body at them. Especially considering that Isaac was fighting for his life outside, it was a meaningful choice to be able to clean up the shame of the Salt Council with his own hands.

But the experiences I had while trusting and following Isaac blocked that possibility.

Then Aidan noticed the red flesh walls of the sanctuary groaning.

Soon, dark red blood began to pour out from the gaping holes.

The sailors gaped at the bizarre and ominous sight. Aidan wondered if this sanctuary was sharing his blood, but soon realized otherwise as he watched the divine power filling up.

“It is the fluid shed by the monster of the outer world.”

The sanctuary was sucking up all the blood that had seeped into Mirmia’s underground and pouring it into here.

***

Dduddudduk, ddud, dduk.

Sadraza reassembled the shape by twisting its joints in grotesque ways.

Now, Sadraza had taken the form of an octopus, like a sun painted on a mural. With a red face about ten meters in diameter, pure white salt tentacles like spokes stretched out in a neat line from top to bottom.

It was frankly a bizarre and comical sight, with some of the tentacles still touching the ground, but Isaac felt a strange sense of relief.

“Is that the ‘most powerful form’ you could think of?”

Isaac was reminded of one of the ‘Awesome Beasts’ he had to hunt in the game, the transformed form of Sadraza. It was one of the most powerful monsters that had to be defeated in order to break the Salt Desert.

The monster nicknamed ‘The Red Priest’ looked exactly like Sadrazah now. Sadrazah eventually got tired of waiting and performed a ritual alone while the cursed sun was up, and was banished from the city.

At the time, I just thought it was a funny sight, but now that I look back, it honestly reminds me of the cursed sun that used to float over Mirmia.

The red heat that spread in all directions, the cursed hands that made wasteland and salt bloom wherever they touched.

Sadrazza was mimicking the cursed power that had destroyed his cult, his country, and his neighbors over the millennia.

Isaac could tell what he truly served.

Luaddin did not just destroy the city and the church, he completely destroyed the spiritual world of one priest.

[■■■, ■■■■… … .]

Sadraja muttered something that was not a language or something. It was different from the profane language or gore that the monsters of the apocryphal scriptures uttered.

It was just a language in which all systems had been destroyed.

“Have you finally lost your human language, you idiot… … .”

Isaac stood up from his seat. While Sadraja was transforming, Isaac did not just sit there and wait. Isaac was not a conscientious and good person to that extent.

Since Sadrazza’s life was limited anyway, he too was mustering up enough strength to endure.

‘The sanctuary also plays this role.’

The nameless sanctuary of chaos beneath Mirmia was sucking blood from the city and the sewers, some of which flowed into Isaac, and some into the throat beneath the Black Pyramid.

All the blood Isaac devoured was the blood of those belonging to the nameless Chaos faction.

The divine power contained within greatly amplified Isaac’s strength. At that moment, Sadraza began to move toward Isaac. It swung its sharp tentacles and destroyed the surrounding area as if to show off. Buildings were swept away like fallen leaves and crumbled into salt.

Within moments, Sadraza quickly thrust his tentacles down towards Isaac’s body.

Crunch. But the salt tentacle was caught in Isaac’s left hand. Sadraja flinched, but soon a smile appeared on his red face.

Now Isaac will become a pillar of salt.

But what actually happened was completely different from what was expected.

Red tentacles began to crawl out of Isaac’s left hand, crushing the salt tentacles as they climbed up.