Roughly a fortnight ago.
The very day Kallen and I arrived in Oscalt and everyone was sculpted.
Formel, who had been waiting outside the city, returned to Pirberg on the signal I sent.
A week to retrace the road we had come and reach the city of Talios.
About a day for the Order to spot Formel loitering about and realize something was wrong.
And a mere four days for them to finally reach Oscalt.
That Drik could appear before me now was thanks to the exquisite meshing of the intersection of all those spans.
Having sensed this whole flow through Formel, I could not help muttering.
"You're late."
The monster with its arm severed thrashed in pain.
It was a screech that would have burst an ordinary man's eardrums long before, but Drik was unruffled.
"Well, I think we came quite quickly."
Other paladins who had received Talios's divine power arrived one after another.
Among the paladins forming ranks in perfect order, Drik stood still.
Only then did I notice that Drik's armor differed subtly in form from the others'.
"Have you been given some sudden promotion?"
"Well, something of the sort. I am a commander."
"......An unprecedented parachute hire, beyond anything I expected."
The paladins soon set about hunting the monster.
Moving like the wind, they literally ground the enormous lump of flesh down.
A paladin who has received divine power can no longer be called human.
This was a fight of monster against monster, and the Talios Order's paladins could be called monsters that live for battle itself.
"A parachute? What is that?"
"It's nothing."
The news that Drik had taken the title of knight corps commander in under a month was shocking enough that I let a term from my previous life slip out without meaning to.
"It seems I had a talent even I did not know of."
"Isn't that something you'd naturally have no way of knowing?"
There were such men now and then.
Those more gifted than others.
In any world geniuses are born, and in that respect Drik was a genius at absorbing Talios's divine power.
The strength of the paladins butchering the monster was plainly beyond human.
But not a single one of them had severed that huge arm in one stroke as Drik had.
"I heard from the chapter master that my vessel for accepting divine power is larger than other men's. The commander of the Second Corps sat me in the commander's seat the moment my baptism ended and went off to the First Corps."
"Walter Schneider did?"
"He said that since I had a commander's level of force, there was no problem with it as a formality. The funny part is that the chapter master approved it on the spot. As you see, I have been landed with the Second Corps out of nowhere."
The Talios Order was a strange body.
An enormous religion that follows the order of strength with utter thoroughness.
Excepting a few posts such as chapter master, which handled administration alone, the stronger stood higher.
The Talios Order was a place where, so long as you were strong, twenty-year-old Walter Schneider or the outsider Camilla Rosette could be a knight corps commander.
"Still, it is true I entered the Order not long ago, so I am being handed all sorts of things by the Third Corps commander. Originally that was Walter Schneider's role too, but the moment he passed the seat on he went across to the First Corps. The Second Corps is now effectively part of the Third Corps."
Before long the monster collapsed, throwing up a thick cloud of dust.
Not even five minutes had passed since the paladins entered the fight in earnest.
———BOOM!
Drik and I left the ruined building and stepped into the alley.
Far off, beyond the shattered gate, the Talios Order's temporary base was visible.
Holding out near the wall so the knight corps could approach easily had been the right answer.
Drik spoke with a hardened face.
"Brother, it looks as though there is a great deal to explain."
Why Oscalt was in such a state.
What had become of the Findel Morein he had been searching for.
And why Kallen was nowhere to be seen.
I began to broach it in order.
I could no longer hide Luxeon from Drik.
In the end, leaving out Eladin and a few other digressions, I told him everything, and in the course of it Drik learned the story of my centuries of entanglement with the Luxeon Cult.
It was a long story, so by the time the conversation ended the sun was setting.
"......I see. At Findel Morein's hand, the whole city, Kallen included......."
Drik said nothing for a while.
The Order's temporary base was a place made by pitching tents outside the wall, a wartime camp used by the whole of the Second and Third Corps excepting the guard corps.
We were talking in a tent that appeared to be officers' quarters, where Drik had led me, when a person came inside.
"......I trust you have been well."
"Camilla Rosette. It's been a while."
Drik glared at Camilla.
"I believe I said not to come in until I came out."
"Oh-ho, putting some force in your eyes now that the Apostle is here?"
"......Mind your words and conduct. Regulations are absolute. Show proper courtesy before the Apostle. Third Corps commander."
Drik's words, as he worked at looking dignified, did not continue.
Because Camilla had slipped behind him in an instant and was choking his neck with her forearm.
"Oh, yeah? Then why don't you show me any courtesy?"
Drik did not answer.
Instead he silently threw Camilla down.
"Gack!"
"Courtesy, my foot. Where does a Third Corps commander think she is putting her hands on a Second Corps commander as lofty as the heavens?"
Drik gave a victor's smile.
I could not help letting out a dry laugh.
"You seem to be getting on well."
"Ugh...... yes. He has gone and gotten stupidly strong......."
Camilla let out a groan.
That lasted only a moment; she soon brushed herself off and rose.
"I came because I have something to report regarding the state of the battle."
It was not yet the time to catch up.
My talk with Drik was drawing to a close as well, so I nodded to her.
"The confirmed enemy numbers are roughly eight hundred monstrous beasts of unknown nature, and roughly four hundred undead."
"And ours?"
"The whole detachment has come except the First Corps and the guard corps. Ninety-six paladins, two hundred forty-three squire knights, three hundred seventeen regular soldiers."
"That will do. First, pull the regular soldiers back. They would only be a needless sacrifice."
"Yes, understood. How would you like the forces deployed?"
"This is a battle of annihilation. Every last one must be exterminated."
Leaving no seed behind.
That was the greatest respect that could be shown to those who had once been human.
"The regular soldiers will stand with their backs to the wall. Cut off any undead that approach beyond it. And form teams of two paladins and three squire knights. Deploy twelve teams to each of the four directions. The ninety-nine squire knights left over will guard against the undead alongside the regular soldiers for now."
"Understood. When would you like the advance to begin?"
"Tomorrow morning."
The numerical advantage lay with the monsters.
But Talios's paladins were each of them specialists in combat.
Given the character of complex urban fighting, putting teams composed of paladins at the front would be more efficient than a strategy of one paladin leading many regular soldiers.
Drik and Camilla left, and soon I was alone in the tent.
The sky had already darkened, and the only light in the tent was a small lamp.
I watched the swaying lamp for a while.
Now and then the voices of soldiers came from outside.
They would seal the wall through this evening, and from tomorrow begin the full-scale extermination operation.
'A sense of loss is not the emotion you feel when something disappears. It is the emotion you feel when the absence of what is gone truly sinks in.'
As though whispered from right beside me, Kallen's voice circled at my ear.
Fifteen days had passed since Kallen died.
Watching the lamp, precarious as though it might go out at any moment, I felt an abrupt sense of loss.
"......."
A faint wind blew in through a gap in the tent.
The swaying lamp soon lost its light.
The room was no longer bright.
***
The next day.
A wide-ranging sweep against the sculpted humans and the undead began.
Drik and I left the outpost early in the morning with the paladins.
"Advance inside! Move in!"
"Three undead ahead!"
"Fourth operational zone secured!"
The teams made up of squire knights and paladins mashed the undead and the monsters like roasted potatoes.
They seemed to have no habit of gathering in packs of dozens either, so against paladins thoroughly practiced in exterminating monstrous beasts it could not have gone otherwise.
They pushed all the way to the city's center in no time.
"If this really is all of it, it will end more easily than expected."
"There won't be anything more out of the ordinary than this."
Findel Morein's plan was effective.
In fact, had the Talios Order not intervened at just the right moment, it would have been considerably dangerous.
Even so, the cause of his failure was simple.
When Findel Morein drew up his plan, he failed to account for the link between the Talios Order and me.
He had left the day I arrived in Pirberg, so he would have had no way to know.
Pirberg's paladin corps was a decisive variable, enough to overturn the trap in Oscalt.
The Luxeon Cult had not anticipated that I could mobilize them, and instead brought about a result in which they were driven onto the defensive by the knight corps.
Luxeon did not account for Talios.
So once an unaccounted-for enemy entered the board, its collapse was inevitable, and my standing before the cathedral leading these forces was likewise a natural result.
"How far has the operation progressed?"
"They have pushed to the third zone, apparently."
The city's center was the first operational zone.
In effect the extermination operation could be said to begin in earnest only once the first zone was taken as the top priority.
Spreading outward in a radial pattern, the operational zones widened as well.
Once the first zone was completely cleared they advanced to the second, and then toward the third, so the final fourth zone was the outer defensive belt abutting the wall.
The present hour was late afternoon.
The Oscalt purification operation was already at the threshold of its final stage.
"Good. Are you ready?"
"All in perfect order."
This was not the purification operation.
As the purification operation neared its end, room had opened up to pull out a certain number of the deployed paladins, and I immediately laid plans to storm the cathedral.
A second operation running in parallel with the purification work.
The search for Findel Morein.
Of course, entering the cathedral after exterminating everything through the fourth zone would not have been too late.
This second operation was somewhat premature.
But.
"It's about time we went in."
"Stand back."
Beyond that door was Findel Morein.
The one who had killed Kallen and stood him before me, who had made sport of his death.
The Luxeon Cult, which had murdered Eladin and meant to wield her power.
They were waiting for me beyond that door.
How could I not hurry?
Drik, having pushed twenty paladins and me back, stepped in front of the cathedral.
His sword slid from its scabbard as though grazing silk.
And then it was swung at a speed the eye could hardly catch.
———SHUNK!
A single sound of split air.
Yet the cathedral's main doors fell in nine pieces.
The cathedral's interior, visible beyond the wreckage, was unchanged from when I had seen it before.
A gloomy, dark chapel.
"Let's go in."
On an impulse I turned my gaze and swept the lot in front of the cathedral.
I thought I had seen the hem of the robe Kallen had been wearing.
But the lot was empty, with nothing in it at all.
A trick of the eye, then.
"Right."
I turned my head away again.