I Became a Dark Knight in the Game

9 – Too Many Abysses (3)

It wasn’t difficult for Kriel to realize that the place he had drifted to was the world of the Tirnanog RPG. First of all, the monsters wandering around were all ones he had seen somewhere before.

Next was his appearance. It was as if the graphics of the last game character he had created had been brought to life.

He didn’t like the fact that the character was a dark knight whose skills deteriorated the more they were used, but he had his own hope.

In many game-transmigration novels, isn’t the goal usually to defeat the final boss of the original work? There was something similar to a system that imprinted skills in his mind, so he believed that if he ever defeated the Demon King, he would be able to return.

It didn’t take long for that belief to be shattered. He learned that the Demon King Balor had already been subjugated by heroes long ago.

‘Hero’ was the title given to player characters in the game.

Kriel tried to find a hero to get a clue for his return, but after the subjugation of the Demon King, the whereabouts of the heroes became unknown.

There were many rumors about the disappearance of the heroes. But Kriel believed that none of those rumors were true.

‘They must have gone home.’

Kriel laughed bitterly and from then on, he set his goal to ‘live healthily with a healthy mind’…

[How many of the Seven Demon Soldiers are currently unaccounted for?]

“Even if they are sealed, they keep trying to escape. Instead of looking for the unaccounted ones, it would be faster to count the properly sealed ones.”

He was agonizing over whether life between a unicorn-headed ghost and a so-called witch was healthy.

There were endless fruitless arguments like ‘Why is the Holy Kingdom’s management so lax?’ and ‘It’s because we’re short on manpower due to normalizing fallen spirits like you.’

“Instead of just the two of you arguing, why don’t you gather the other saints and hold a debate?”

Kriel mixed a joke to stop the quarrel. He didn’t know why the two were so eager to tear each other apart.

[Oh.]

“Since we’re all going together anyway… it might be worth a try?”

But Orisin and Morgina took the joke seriously.

*

Kriel was drinking water in a corner of the debate hall. He had no place in a logical meeting based on decades of accumulated abyss observation data, rather than finding the location of the abyss by intuition and sense.

Morgina also quietly approached Kriel. She was far from the enthusiastic debater who had been discussing spearheads and blades just a moment ago.

“What? No more debates?”

“It’s a lull. When I think about it, you made a big concession, so we don’t need to act individually.”

Originally, the task was to find the place where the main body of the relic was hidden. The reason the Priest King had summoned many saints was to search for the hiding place of the relics individually.

But thanks to Kriel, they could now charge straight towards the main body of the relic, so the troublesome search process was no longer necessary.

“So we decided to prepare for the abilities of the demon soldiers that each of us thought ‘this is it’.”

Kriel chuckled. After talking for hours, they still couldn’t reach a consensus.

“Even for saints, reaching a consensus is difficult. Do they have good dinners when the sects gather?”

“Have you ever been to the Festival of Light’s Birth? After all the festival events are over, when we gather to eat something, we fight for a long time. Starting from whether fish or meat is better, to those who say we should only eat vegetables because we need to abstain from meat─”

Morghina’s complaints eventually led to the pride of the Eve Kaha Order.

“But our order doesn’t have such annoying restrictions. Drink and eat meat as you please! If you join now, you can even keep your position as a great warrior?”

“Don’t proselytize.”

Kriel let Morghina’s nonsense pass. The first place he heard such similar words was on the battlefield.

He had known since Morghina went around to soldiers with blood-soaked maces saying, ‘Join our order and get free bread with strawberry jam every weekend!’ that Morghina had no talent for proselytizing.

*

The vanguard of Grikenkos, the demon Satranyak, gazed at the constellation map spread out in the air.

The constellations shining in the darkness were different from those that existed in reality. The stars embroidered in the air were equivalents of the Abyssal Power Map.

The six constellations, each with its own color, occupying the sky were proof of that.

The symbol of the Great Demon.

The stars representing Grikenkos gathered together to form the shape of a scale. The scale-shaped constellation held power that no other nameless stars could dare compare to, but compared to the other five constellations, its presence seemed lacking.

As demons usually do, Grikenkos wanted to disrupt the balance among the stars of the abyss and become the unrivaled ruler.

Satranyak offered a cunning plan to realize his master’s will. A method to mass-produce apostles of the abyss using the legacy of the Demon King.

According to the plan, the fragments of the Seven Great Demon Soldiers were to slowly grow by feeding on the world and bloom on the soil of corpses.

But things went awry. Despite scattering so many fragments, not a single being had ascended to the rank of a demon like himself, nor had any reached the level of a beast.

There were two possibilities to consider. Either the humans he had carefully selected were utterly incompetent fools who couldn’t even kill a single family member.

Or, they had been discovered by fools who worshipped heartless machines.

Satranyak flicked his fingertips. The constellation map disappeared, replaced by several screens illuminating the world.

The screens were connected to the worshippers serving Satranyak. They commonly testified that the Holy Kingdom had ‘secretly’ summoned saints.

‘Humans are animals very interested in each other’s secrets.’

Satranyak’s worshippers brought secrets without knowing who they served, or perhaps knowing and ignoring it, because the other secrets they obtained in return were sweet.

A summons for the saints. Satranyak sensed that the saints would set out to thwart his plan.

But even saints would have no sharp means. Satranyak had scattered the fragments of the Seven Great Demon Soldiers evenly across the world so that no pattern would be revealed.

The saints who set out to track them might reach the branches and perhaps the trunk of the tree. But they would never reach the roots.

Satranyak turned his gaze to a mummy with a blade embedded in its heart. The blade of the sword stuck in the mummy was as thin as a bone. But if one paid attention, they could see the blade regenerating as if flesh was filling in.

Over the past few years, he had been restoring the sword using the mummy as a medium, but the limit was slowly approaching. Even now, the regeneration speed of the blade had noticeably slowed.

Satranyak intended to abandon this hideout without hesitation if the sword consumed the last drop of the soul remaining in the corpse.

Even if the saints’ extermination squad found this place, there would be nothing left.

“…But it would be better to put a little more effort into the disguise.”

Satranyak selected those among the worshippers who were not worthy of being sacrificed. He planned to call them to this place, implant false memories, and then disappear.

Once the adults, satisfied with the supply of sacrifices, forgot about this incident, he would proceed with the plan in another location. Next time, with more capable worshippers, more discreetly.

*

“The core of the Abyss Seed is over there.” He pointed with his finger at a stone structure precariously perched beyond the cliff.

Kriel led the adults deep into the mountains. It was a place difficult for people to easily access. However, just because it was a place hard for people to reach did not mean it was suitable for the Abyss to hide.

In this world, which had been at war with the Abyss since ancient times, monasteries or cathedrals were built in almost every deep mountain.

If a demon appeared from a mountain peak, a monastery would be built to purify the place where the demon was buried and its corpse burned.

The place Kriel pointed to was also one of those monasteries. The adults’ faces hardened.

Such mountain monasteries regularly sent reports on the areas they monitored to the Holy City of Temris. Nevertheless, the fact that the Abyss was felt in the monastery implied that the Abyss had permeated the monks to their marrow, or that all the personnel inside had perished.

Either way, it was no ordinary matter. Whether it was the collective corruption of the monks or a mysterious enemy that isolated and annihilated the entire monastery without a sound.

“First, I will─”

“I’ll go too.”

Before Kriel could properly speak, Morgina added. Kriel glanced at her once and continued.

“…We will disguise ourselves as wandering priests and scout. If there is no news after 30 minutes of entering, everyone should storm in.”