And (N)one Shall Remain

When viewed by those unaware of its true purpose, the monastery’s building looked just like the sort of quaint getaway in the middle of nowhere. The sort where one might have imagined devout monks living in order to avoid the hustle and bustle of the world, where they copied and scribd documents or brewed liquor to pass the time and make themselves a living.

 

Of course, its purpose was nowhere near as mundane or kind, as instead it was a place to indoctrinate children and turn them into zealots willing to die for their temple and god without question. A place where many of their numbers would be weeded out by the cruel training they had to go through in order to get the privilege to be one of their gods’ warriors.

 

It was the sort of thing Esperanza has seen happen in her previous world. People who targeted youngsters who were feeling lost, as if they had no place in the world, and offered them a sense of belonging and a place for themselves. It would have been a kind tale, if not for the fact that most such people would then turn said naive youngsters into their own cult-ish adherents besotten to their ideology, whatever it may be, all in order to feel needed and to belong.

 

Such an approach pretty much targeted an inherent need of people and as such was difficult to do away with, much less when said people had spent years under such influence. As such, Esperanza held no silly thoughts like “saving” the younger ones in the monastery. After all, she was supposed to destroy the world anyway. Killing them now and later was only a difference of timing, in this case. 

 

Esperanza doubted that people who had already been indoctrinated for years on end would even deign to listen to her, anyway.

 

So she simply decided not to bother.

 

With the group’s three scouts as well as Ilavakide who was their best archer on guard around the monastery to take care of any escapees, the rest of the group marched up the steep stone stairs openly. Their strongest physical fighters took the front, of course. They were confident, not stupid, so they still arranged themselves in a formation to fight properly despite their confidence.

 

After all, there should still be a fourth tier in the monastery, even if it was an old and weakened one. That man alone deserves enough respect for the group to stay guarded, as if he managed to pull off a sneak attack, it was possible for him to take down some of their members, an outcome none of them wanted or could accept.

 

They made around three quarters of the way up the stairs before some of the guards posted by the monastery’s gate noticed them, which was mostly because the stairs had some twists and turns, and only the last quarter or so of its length nearest the monastery was easily visible from its gates. That they had not posted sentries elsewhere spoke dividends on either a misplaced confidence in their remote location or just a general feel of security since they were pretty deep in the Kingdom’s own territory and at least a week away from the frontlines after all.

 

It was a negligent thing, however, and they were about to pay for that negligence in blood instead.

 

Before the two guards by the monastery’s gates could call out or raise the alarm, Dai’Vasy acted first and directly skewered the two from crotch to mouth with spikes of ice that grew out from the ground beneath them. Neither guard managed to react on time, since they were just lowish third tier in terms of level, and Dai’Vasy’s attributes allowed her to pretty much match a fourth tier.

 

Neither guard likely noticed anything as by the time their eyes registered Dai’Vasy’s hand movement, she had already used her skill to manipulate mana and turned them into ice that went through the guards in question the very next moment. If there was a silver lining to the whole situation, it was that their deaths were likely relatively painless. One moment they were there, and the next moment, oblivion.

 

Not that Esperanza would spare their souls, though, as she absorbed them into her [Soul Storage] as she walked by, offhandedly noticing that both of the guards had [Orphan] as their first class.

 

As for the monastery’s gates, they were made from solid wood, at least half a feet thick or so. One glance with her eyes told Esperanza that the wood originated from a treant-like monster known for its durability, and much of those same qualities were passed on to the processed wood. Such a gate would hold against a typical army well, even against siege engines.

 

Unfortunately, the sheer might of a fourth-tier class focused in combat was far, far greater than what a siege engine was capable of delivering, and without a need for discussion, Val-Kas’j and Nalihimatu stepped forward and directly kicked the gates open without much preamble. The gates themselves held, but the bolt used to secure them in a closed position proved to be less capable of bearing the sudden amount of directed force and exploded into shrapnel that showered the group of unfortunate people close to the gates at the time.

 

One of them was even directly crushed between one of the swinging gates and the monastery’s wall, reduced to little more than a pancake of mashed flesh, blood, and bones smeared on the wall.

 

Right after the gates were kicked open, before the people inside could even recover from their surprise or even make any sense of the situation, Ani and Esperanza rushed in as they were the strongest of the group. They had a simple plan, which was that the two of them would hunt down the lone fourth tier in the monastery while everyone else would deal with the rest of the inhabitants.

 

Esperanza could detect the rough position of said fourth tier, deeper in the monastery building, through her [Soul Sense], as the soul of a fourth tier had more weight to it in her perception. That didn’t mean that they knew how to navigate the monastery to get to where said individual was, though, and while the two of them easily swatted away the few enemies who reacted fast enough to get in their way, they still ended up lost and hitting dead ends from time to time.

 

A couple times, when the dead end they met happened to be blocked by thinner wooden interior walls instead of the stone exterior ones, Esperanza and Ani simply broke through the wall with brute force and went to the other side through the passage they made themselves. Naturally, throughout all this, their quarry was also moving, as they were likely warned or otherwise noticed the fighting happening in the monastery.

 

Fortunately, their quarry’s position deep in the monastery meant that to go out where the fighting was thickest, he would have to go through where Esperanza and Ani was, so they simply adjusted their approach to intercept the man. In the end, they finally caught their quarry in one of the larger halls – probably a dining hall, considering its setup of long tables and benches – of the monastery building, the old, wizened face of the human fourth tier contorting in surprise when he was suddenly faced with their presence.

 

The old man was only dressed in robes and carried a thick wooden staff, likely a cleric of some sort, which Esperanza had learned were great team players but typically rather lacking as actual combatants. As such, she wasted no time as her form shifted and her limbs elongated, launching herself towards the surprised old priest like a projectile.

 

Ani stayed back and simply kept watch to ensure nobody would be bothering Esperanza while she fought. At level twelve of the fourth tier, Ani was by far the highest leveled out of the group, though her leveling pace was also by far the slowest given her already high level. Meanwhile, at level eighteen of the third tier, Esperanza was close to the fourth tier herself, which was one reason she singled out some of the enemy fourth tiers for herself.

 

Some sort of gut feeling told Esperanza that it would be inappropriate for the [Progenies of Yore] to hit their fourth tiers before she did, and that it would even benefit them if she became a fourth tier ahead of them. Probably an indirect hint from Oldies, who always seemed rather reluctant to say too much on things that related to the system.

 

Esperanza was still uncertain whether they can’t say certain things about the system, or won’t due to some reason or other, but in the end, it couldn’t be helped, so she didn’t think too much about it and focused her mind on things she could actually do instead, like murdering the old priest before her.

 

To his credit, the old priest managed to reflexively cast a light barrier between him and Esperanza, which stopped her pounce short for the brief moment it took her to shatter the barrier with a few quick hits from her dagger and bone blades reinforced by [Soul Armament]. The ease with which she shattered the barrier surprised the priest somewhat, but he remained calm and cast another skill that created three orbs of light that revolved around his body.

 

Those orbs of light turned out to be rather solid and felt hot as if they were trying to burn her, but Esperanza ignored the heat and struck at them regardless. The orbs moved to block her strikes while the priest cast another skill that encased his whole body in a golden glow, but in the end, they failed to stop every one of Esperanza’s strikes as she could simply create more limbs and attack from more places than there were orbs.

 

One of her strikes bounced off against the layer of golden glow that seemed to suffuse from the priest’s skin and clothing, but that strike alone caused the glow to become very noticeably dimmer. The skill held against a second blow, but the third went through and one of Esperanza’s bone claws pierced through the priest’s abdomen, causing him to scream in pain from the unexpected damage to his soul from [Soul Armament].

 

Not that he had to worry about that for much longer, for Esperanza shifted some of her maws to the limb that struck the priest and then started tearing his insides up, even as she sent several more limbs to run the priest through at several vital locations. She still remembered the story from Alissa about how one of the temple guards used a self-sacrificial skill to greatly enhance her power, and Esperanza chose to play it safe and make doubly sure that her target was as dead as they could be to prevent any such mishaps.

 

After a short while, what remained of the priest’s very dead, almost hollowed out body fell to the floor. Esperanza waited until she claimed the old priest’s soul before she dropped his body, as only then was she completely certain of his death. After all, for all she knew there might be people with skills that allowed them to fake death so they could attempt a last attack to take their enemy with them.

 

Esperanza nodded to Ani after she was done, and the two hunted down several more high leveled third tier priests and temple guards who were still inside the monastery complex, practically decapitating the monastery’s remaining strongest fighters, while the rest of their group took care of the bulk of the place’s inhabitants outside, on the open courtyard where the temple guard usually practiced. 

 

While those fighting outside would be outnumbered greatly, neither Ani nor Esperanza really worried for their safety. They knew that the much stronger people from their group would make short work out of their weaker but more numerous opponents, and that the numbers involved were nowhere near enough to tire them out, so that side of the fight was pretty much already set in stone.