Magical circles began to open up around Artyom, with dessicated and rotting limbs reaching out of them. Even before the first of the undead hands could properly reach out to try and grab him, Artyom was already jumping back to safety.

  He swore to himself as he discovered one of the circles opened up behind him well before the others, due to the zombie he bumped into, but a quick roundhouse kick separated its head from the rest of its body.

  Immediately, Arytom’s eyes darted to the glowing cirlces themselves, and drank in every detail of their figure. “So this is a summoning instead of actual necromancy or a psuedo resurrection,” he mumbled to himself. “And I recognize those characters drawn around it; they’re tiny and barely legible, but that’s definitely the glow of active rune magic.”

  Artyom couldn’t help but smile at the confirmation that Sister Elery was the source of the rune magic he’d been hunting. But that quickly turned into a frown at the sound of the groans and shuffling bones of the undead, all shambling towards him.

  Speed of the Olympian, Lion’s Strength, Tungsten Body.

  The man’s body became a blur as he punched a hole into the neck of a Skeleton and retrieved its rusted sword, and that blur soon became a one-bladed dervish as it began to tear through the rest of the undead in the dimly-lit catacombs.

  “Seriously, we can talk this through,” said Artyom as he cleaved through the last of the zombies. “I just want to know-”

  “That was just a distraction while I summoned my full army!” shouted Sister Elery as over a hundred summoning rings began to appear all over the floor, and even walls.

  They quickly began to disgorge undead, some of them even more than one per, and the caverns were soon filled to the brim with the stench of death and decay as almost every square meter contained at least one reanimated corpse.

  Artyom’s battle instincts quickly took over, first guiding his eyes to take in his surroundings. The basement floor of the catacombs was incredibly expansive compared to the rest of the underground structure he’d passed through to get there. The ceiling stretched thirty feet tall, with four pillars placed towards each of the room’s corners. Plenty of room to fight in, but also to hold enemies.

  Artyom quickly realized that he was towards the back of the space, next to the stairs. The largest horde he’d seen here to date stood between him and the culprit who was at the back of the room. Running would be a piece of cake; all the undead but the ghouls were slow, after all, and those were far enough back that he could escape before any of them got past the others.

  Did Sister Elery realize that? That she’d made such a blunder? That Artyom could run up for help to apprehend her and expose her secret to the whole town.

  But if he did that, he wouldn’t be able to interrogate her. With how swiftly brutal the four ladies were, all of them except Lensa would execute Sister Elery as a threat to their mission on the spot. He wouldn’t be able to ask a single question. Not to mention he didn’t want them to get any hint of what his real mission here was.

  But if Sister Elery knew what his reason for catching her was, she probably wouldn’t be fighting back, at least not with this much fervor.

  “Well, whatever is going on, I only have one choice: fight until I can break through to her.”

  Artyom squared his shoulders and lifted the rusting sword, ready to continue. But as he cut through the first half a dozen of the undead, Sister Elery was able to summon a full dozen more. And same with the next wave, and the next.

  “Is there even enough room in here for all your summons?”

  Sister Elery didn’t respond, instead putting her full focus on using her Skill.

  So Artyom did the same and continued to slash through undead, somehow managing to increase the rate at which he took down each one. At least for about ten seconds, when he began to realize something was off.

  “Wait a minute, they’re not fighting back. What gives?”

  Artyom knew a lot about summoning Skills. While the strongest ones could provide an army of perfectly loyal soldiers, that level of perfectly loyal also came with a downside- they only did what they were commanded to.

  And for the army in front of Artyom?

  “I think she forgot to tell them to attack me.”

  Artyom was ready to laugh, but his instincts immediately overrode that amusement. Two massive blunders by the enemy in such a short time was a sure sign of an incoming trap.

  Artyom’s paranoia ran through all sorts of scenarios for where this supposed setup was leading to, but even with his craziesst ideas didn’t lead to anything that made sense.

  “Wait a minute, I’m not fighting a general or a warlord, Sister Elery is a nun who runs an orphanage! She might have organized this whole plot, but that was probably thought up over a long period of time, not in the middle of a fight. What if…”

  Artyom launched an Aura Ping at her, and his eyes widened when he felt the results.

  Panic.

  Fear, stress, and a terrible swirl of negative emotions all well known to draw forth a fight-or-flight response. They all screamed in a cacaphonous frenzy in Sister Elery’s head, melding into a blind panic that cloisetered her off from the rest of the world. From Artyom’s pleas for peace, and apparently, to good judgement.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  He honestly couldn’t blame her.

  Sister Elery was supposed to be kind, loving and gentle, all to an incredible degree. She ran an orphanage for goodness’ sakes! Someone of such a temprement pushed to do something completely anthetical to their personal philosophy out of desperation was going to break sooner or later.

  The fact she would have gotten away with it if Arytom hadn’t put the pieces together and caught her red handed was a testament to her own mental strength. But the fact she got caught, and it seeming as if her whole world, including the lives of the children she cares about so much, is about to fall apart, it makes perfect sense she’d break into such a panic.

  But panic, Artyom could deal with.

  He began to fill his own mind with calming thoughts, happiness and hope for the future, and put them into his magic. With just one more thought, an Aura of Calm and Hope flew at Sister Elery.

  She flinched as soon as it struck, but her tense posture began to quickly relax and her summonings slowed.

  “I’m not turning you in, the kids in the frontier will be safe like you wanted, so let’s just talk-”

  “I won’t be tricked by your magic! [Benediction: Absolution from Influence]! [Hide from Seekers]!” Sister Elery suddenly shouted.

  Artyom felt the connection to the priestess through his aura sever as she disappeared in a small flash of light, and he swore.

  “Of course you have Skills to break you out of mental influence like that! Why can’t you have any to help you deal with this stress?!”

  But something about those Skill names sounded peculiar to Artyom. Sister Elery had said most of her Skills were obtained from situations she’d had to deal with. Being a priestess who looked after an orphanage, the kinds of scenarios that could bring about those kinds of Skills and what they were meant to accomplish was straightforward to figure out. And with the knowledge of what those Skills were used for, Artyom could understand their inner workings… and potential weaknesses.

  He didn’t have long to think in peace, as the undead finally began to start moving towards him.

  “So that first Skill,” thought Artyom to himself as he took on a fighting stance. “Its name started with ‘benediction’, so it’s most likely from her priestess duties. And ‘Absolution from Influence’? Maybe she got it to help some of the townsfolk break out of their drinking habits.”

  A ghoul leapt over the crowd of approaching zombies and tried to jump on top of Artyom, but he easily stepped out of the way and positioned his blade right where its neck would be as it landed. It didn’t make a sound as it died once more.

  “So that would make it a ‘stop being an alcoholic’ Skill. However, it’s called ‘Absolution’, not ‘Immunity’. And seeing the obvious parallels in the naming convention to Christianity from back home, the Skill ought to be modeled after the idea of giving the target a chance of escape. It would probably free them from the addiction, but it won’t stop them from picking up the bottle again of their own volition. So if I’m lucky, it might not be an outright immunity Skill, and I should be able to use my aura on her again!”

  Artyom tore through the first wave of zombies in front of him, starting on the left-hand side of the row and running right with his sword outstretched, slashing through the undeads’ throats in a straight line to hit their magical weak point one after another.

  “But where is she? The second Skill she used honestly sounds a lot like ‘Hide and Seek’. Maybe she got it from needing help playing that game with the kids? In which case it would hide her just far away enough that they could still find her after not too long or without too much effort. So close by, but still hidden…”

  Artyom let his aura out in a wave that covered the entire room, and heard a relaxed sigh from behind the pillar farthest from where he was standing. He couldn’t help but smile at that.

  And that smile only grew as a quick flash of light emanated from there once more.

  More undead made their way to his position, but dispatching them was just as trivial as keeping his calming aura active. This wasn’t like the fight against the boss of Crystal Kobold Crossing, where Artyom had to put his everything into countering the enemy’s superior fear aura while fighting for his life against a physically powerful opponent.

  The undead had no chance of hitting him, even with their numbers. And his aura’s strength merely had to be non-zero.

  To make things go faster, Artyom cut his way through the horde as one would a brisk rain with an umbrella until he found Sister Elery behind one of the pillars. and used a strengthened directional aura instead of his standard room-wide attack.

  She had a frantic look about her, facial muscles pulled into a taught grimace as her entire frame silently shook. Wild eyes looked at Artyom in surprise as she slowly called out her pair of Skills once more.

  Skills almost always had a cost. It was either something from the body- stamina, magical energy, or sometimes even health- or it pulled from some kind of System-based pool. Either way, there was a limit to how many times they could be called.

  Sister Elery was reaching hers.

  And in five more minutes, she did.

  After one last teleport, Sister Elery slumped to the ground, heavily panting.

  Adrenaline and paranoia coursed through her veins and mind, and urged her to call forth her Skills again, to deny the definite lie of promised peace, to accept them above all else.

  “[B-Benedic…” she stuttered.

  But the energy they first provided had been spent, and her frantic visage finally began to settle as Artyom walked up to her through a path carved out from the horde.

  “You wanna just talk about it?”

  She looked up, entirely self-assured that his words were all lies. She’d committed the ultimate sacrilege, turned on her goddess and the chosen hero for her own selfish whims. Even the nobles knew it was best to finish the war as quickly as possible instead of diverting necessary resources back home. And she was attempting to divert the kingdom’s biggest resource, her goddess’s biggest resource!

  She knew she wasn’t truly being offered mercy because didn’t deserve any.

  But the gentle look on the man’s grizzled face said otherwise.

  Calm continued to seep through her and her frown slowly morphed into the thinnest of smiles, something of contentment.

  “Yes, I would like to-”

  Artyom was about to help her up, but she froze mid sentence.

  A fresh wave of energy flowed through her, easing her sore muscles and refreshing her mind. The calm was quickly dispelled and replaced with something cooler than it. Colder.

  The only times Sister Elery had ever felt this emotion, it burned hot, but right now, it was ice cold.

  Artyom jumped back when he saw the cold flames of utter hatred burning in her eyes, and narrowly dodged the hands of a dozen undead rocketing out of the floor all around him, incomprehensibly faster than before.

  The two of them were standing next to the pillar on the left at the back, and down the stairs walked a familiar lavender-haired woman.

  “I can’t let you hurt her, Artyom,” said Lensa, her own voice and eyes a spitting mirror image of Sister Elery’s current emotional state. “I’m going to keep my family safe and get rid of you once and for all.”