Sofia flew at a relaxed pace, she was not certain how to best go about this. She felt the urge to go storm the Holy-See right then and there, but that had no chance of working out. Besides, no matter what, there was no way she could finish the quest anytime soon, in the meantime her first goal was to rid the kingdom of the Church.
The Church was deep rooted, that would be quite the hard battle. But if she could kill the Oracle and High-Priests, as well as take over or destroy the Holy-See, then it wasn’t impossible. She would also get rid of all of the ‘sinners’ if there were more, since these weren’t murders. But she was having second thoughts about the ‘normal’ Priests and Paladins in general.
That was because one thing she hadn’t paid much attention to before had struck her now.
Verenha’s Priest of the Church used to be an old man called Vronnis. He had never been anything but nice to her and the other orphans, he’d even lend her his own books to read sometimes. Of course that wouldn’t save him from Sofia’s wrath had he been complicit to the atrocities she had witnessed. But he was one of the villagers killed during their sleep.
So she was conflicted. After all, be it the kidnapping of Saints or what had just happened to the village, it may not have much to do with the non-monster Paladins, let alone the Priests in other remote villages. She took a while to make up her mind on how thorough she should be with her cleanup.
In the end, she settled for a middle ground. All sinners would be purged, so would all the higher-ups of the Church. For everyone else, she would use the Fox technique. Thinking this, she landed in front of a small military camp on the Sovuln border. She was wearing the bone armor, visor closed.
In her opinion, there was no way anyone under level 250 could deal with Pareth enough to be a danger to her. There was no way this camp had anyone over level 250, the highest level people would probably be the paladins.
No time for a sneaky approach. But no reason to make things too complex either… Sofia took out one of the Templar’s badges.
There was a single guard atop the camp’s gate. [Mage - Level 53]
Seeing her land, he stood up and raised his bow, pointing it at her.
“Who are you? Declare your identity!” the guard ordered.
Seems he doesn’t have [Identify], worth a try then.
“I’m with the Templars,” she answered nonchalantly, holding up the Orichalcum badge with the crest of the Church, a sign of the Templar order. “Need to check on the Paladins, you can bring them out or let me in.”
The man recoiled at the word ‘Templar’, but he lowered his bow. It wasn’t clear whether he took the bait or not, either way he nodded at her and replied, “They will be here soon, please wait a moment.” This was followed by him taking out a small horn from his belt and blowing into it twice in short succession.
So what will it be? A few paladins or the full garrison attacking me?
The man had been true to his words, as it seemed the paladins had arrived a minute later on the other side of the heavy log gate, she could see and hear the guard talking to them.
“Someone saying they’re a Templar, want to see you, they have a badge and all, looks legit. Came here flying so…”
I wonder if they have [Identify]. Though even if they did there’s no chance they would think I’m the same Saintess that escaped less than a year ago, considering the level gap and the unrelated skills. But my cover as a Templar would be blasted, if everything else doesn't already give it away.
The gate opened and two fully armored Paladins stepped out, weapons drawn. A man and a woman.
[Protector - Lv. 93]
[Protector - Lv. 118]
Protector? Interesting way of putting it.
The higher level woman stood in front, “You are not a Templar,” she declared, steadfast.
“That’s right. Does not matter though, you came. Now show me your murder history.”
At this sentence, the man raised his weapon more, while the woman did not flinch. “Why should we?” She asked, on edge.
“If you don’t, you will die,” Sofia stated matter of factly.
“You think you can take on this whole camp?! Fool!” barked the male paladin hiding behind his colleague.
The female paladin glanced back at the other, then at Sofia, “We will show you nothing. Leave this place at once.”
“Ah. So be it, then.” Sofia turned around to leave.
The guard who had still been watching from atop the gate had his vision suddenly turn blood red. He panicked and fell to his knees.
A large Ogre skeleton appeared behind the Paladins, a sword of light as tall as him in hand.
‘You have murdered [Brandon - Paladin lv. 93]’
‘You have murdered [Jane - Paladin lv. 118]’
Pareth caught the two bodies, teleported to Sofia, and disappeared inside the ring.
When the guard finally recovered, standing up in a pool of blood that surprisingly wasn’t his own, the Paladins were nowhere to be seen. The only person outside camp was the ‘Templar’ in her slick white armor. Her bone wings spread out, enveloped in holy light. She took flight.
Not monsters.
I’ll trust that there weren’t more in there. The Church doesn’t have that many Paladins to spare after all, especially not now, I doubt the Empire has stopped the attacks on the eastern border.
This didn’t feel so good… But I’ll do what I have to do.
To the next encampment then.
Since she had started from the south, Sofia followed the border north in the inverse path she had taken the previous day. In total there were eight more active encampments and nine empty ones.
They had two or three paladins each. And it was pretty clear that they never really bought into her Templar story, but the badge seemed to carry some authority nonetheless. Active camp n°2 had three Paladins, all around level 70. They obliged and showed their murder history, only one had a murder and it was counted as involuntary. Sofia let them live.
The n°3 was almost beat for beat a repeat of the first camp.
‘You have murdered [Mocpac - Paladin lv. 105]’
‘You have murdered [Oden Nint - Paladin lv. 109]’
Camp n°4’s Paladins were more varied, where one showed a clean history and one refused to show anything.
‘You have murdered [Peter - Paladin lv. 139]’
Camp n°5 was like n°2 where two paladins accepted and showed a clean history.
In camp number 6, the Paladins as well as half of the Soldiers weren’t present, it seemed they were actually busy fighting off the monsters from Sovuln. Sofia decided to let them off for now until she found the 7th camp in which all three Paladins accepted to show their history. It was peculiar how one of them had accepted even though his history wasn’t clean at all. It seemed he couldn’t handle the social pressure and followed his companions in accepting. Or maybe it was the lightning bolt forming in Sofia’s hand that had convinced him.
His history showed twenty three kills. The large majority of them were low level civilians, no involuntary. What an incredible tool this murder history. A shame I'm actively staining mine.
Since she would only kill this one, she did the same thing she had done in camp 4, grabbing the condemned and flying up. She didn’t have to show Pareth by doing this. The other two bewildered Paladins did nothing to stop her. Of course the Paladin she grabbed struggled, but he was only level 63, there was nothing he could do to hurt her through her armor.
Not even worth keeping. Having reached the clouds, she released her grip on the struggling man before continuing to fly north. The notification came a few seconds later.
‘You have murdered [Simon - Paladin lv. 63]’
And then came the northernmost camp. Sofia followed the same pattern that had worked surprisingly consistently until now, showing the badge and asking to see the Paladins.
What surprised her was how the Guard’s horn signal had been different than usual. Instead she was greeted by the sight of around fifteen archers aiming at her from the top of the wall.
Sofia scanned them one by one. They were all [Fighter]s, between level 30 and 50 for the most part, with an outlier being 78 and the gate guard being 82. She could tell that a few of them had skills to magically enhance their arrows. That wasn’t too scary in itself. If they have Mithril tipped arrows though, no matter the level, things could get ugly for me. What are the chances though? Mithril isn’t cheap.
Choosing to trust her armor, Sofia stood her ground.
The arrows rained down.
Sofia flew at a relaxed pace, she was not certain how to best go about this. She felt the urge to go storm the Holy-See right then and there, but that had no chance of working out. Besides, no matter what, there was no way she could finish the quest anytime soon, in the meantime her first goal was to rid the kingdom of the Church.
The Church was deep rooted, that would be quite the hard battle. But if she could kill the Oracle and High-Priests, as well as take over or destroy the Holy-See, then it wasn’t impossible. She would also get rid of all of the ‘sinners’ if there were more, since these weren’t murders. But she was having second thoughts about the ‘normal’ Priests and Paladins in general.
That was because one thing she hadn’t paid much attention to before had struck her now.
Verenha’s Priest of the Church used to be an old man called Vronnis. He had never been anything but nice to her and the other orphans, he’d even lend her his own books to read sometimes. Of course that wouldn’t save him from Sofia’s wrath had he been complicit to the atrocities she had witnessed. But he was one of the villagers killed during their sleep.
So she was conflicted. After all, be it the kidnapping of Saints or what had just happened to the village, it may not have much to do with the non-monster Paladins, let alone the Priests in other remote villages. She took a while to make up her mind on how thorough she should be with her cleanup.
In the end, she settled for a middle ground. All sinners would be purged, so would all the higher-ups of the Church. For everyone else, she would use the Fox technique. Thinking this, she landed in front of a small military camp on the Sovuln border. She was wearing the bone armor, visor closed.
In her opinion, there was no way anyone under level 250 could deal with Pareth enough to be a danger to her. There was no way this camp had anyone over level 250, the highest level people would probably be the paladins.
No time for a sneaky approach. But no reason to make things too complex either… Sofia took out one of the Templar’s badges.
There was a single guard atop the camp’s gate. [Mage - Level 53]
Seeing her land, he stood up and raised his bow, pointing it at her.
“Who are you? Declare your identity!” the guard ordered.
Seems he doesn’t have [Identify], worth a try then.
“I’m with the Templars,” she answered nonchalantly, holding up the Orichalcum badge with the crest of the Church, a sign of the Templar order. “Need to check on the Paladins, you can bring them out or let me in.”
The man recoiled at the word ‘Templar’, but he lowered his bow. It wasn’t clear whether he took the bait or not, either way he nodded at her and replied, “They will be here soon, please wait a moment.” This was followed by him taking out a small horn from his belt and blowing into it twice in short succession.
So what will it be? A few paladins or the full garrison attacking me?
The man had been true to his words, as it seemed the paladins had arrived a minute later on the other side of the heavy log gate, she could see and hear the guard talking to them.
“Someone saying they’re a Templar, want to see you, they have a badge and all, looks legit. Came here flying so…”
I wonder if they have [Identify]. Though even if they did there’s no chance they would think I’m the same Saintess that escaped less than a year ago, considering the level gap and the unrelated skills. But my cover as a Templar would be blasted, if everything else doesn't already give it away.
The gate opened and two fully armored Paladins stepped out, weapons drawn. A man and a woman.
[Protector - Lv. 93]
[Protector - Lv. 118]
Protector? Interesting way of putting it.
The higher level woman stood in front, “You are not a Templar,” she declared, steadfast.
“That’s right. Does not matter though, you came. Now show me your murder history.”
At this sentence, the man raised his weapon more, while the woman did not flinch. “Why should we?” She asked, on edge.
“If you don’t, you will die,” Sofia stated matter of factly.
“You think you can take on this whole camp?! Fool!” barked the male paladin hiding behind his colleague.
The female paladin glanced back at the other, then at Sofia, “We will show you nothing. Leave this place at once.”
“Ah. So be it, then.” Sofia turned around to leave.
The guard who had still been watching from atop the gate had his vision suddenly turn blood red. He panicked and fell to his knees.
A large Ogre skeleton appeared behind the Paladins, a sword of light as tall as him in hand.
‘You have murdered [Brandon - Paladin lv. 93]’
‘You have murdered [Jane - Paladin lv. 118]’
Pareth caught the two bodies, teleported to Sofia, and disappeared inside the ring.
When the guard finally recovered, standing up in a pool of blood that surprisingly wasn’t his own, the Paladins were nowhere to be seen. The only person outside camp was the ‘Templar’ in her slick white armor. Her bone wings spread out, enveloped in holy light. She took flight.
Not monsters.
I’ll trust that there weren’t more in there. The Church doesn’t have that many Paladins to spare after all, especially not now, I doubt the Empire has stopped the attacks on the eastern border.
This didn’t feel so good… But I’ll do what I have to do.
To the next encampment then.
Since she had started from the south, Sofia followed the border north in the inverse path she had taken the previous day. In total there were eight more active encampments and nine empty ones.
They had two or three paladins each. And it was pretty clear that they never really bought into her Templar story, but the badge seemed to carry some authority nonetheless. Active camp n°2 had three Paladins, all around level 70. They obliged and showed their murder history, only one had a murder and it was counted as involuntary. Sofia let them live.
The n°3 was almost beat for beat a repeat of the first camp.
‘You have murdered [Mocpac - Paladin lv. 105]’
‘You have murdered [Oden Nint - Paladin lv. 109]’
Camp n°4’s Paladins were more varied, where one showed a clean history and one refused to show anything.
‘You have murdered [Peter - Paladin lv. 139]’
Camp n°5 was like n°2 where two paladins accepted and showed a clean history.
In camp number 6, the Paladins as well as half of the Soldiers weren’t present, it seemed they were actually busy fighting off the monsters from Sovuln. Sofia decided to let them off for now until she found the 7th camp in which all three Paladins accepted to show their history. It was peculiar how one of them had accepted even though his history wasn’t clean at all. It seemed he couldn’t handle the social pressure and followed his companions in accepting. Or maybe it was the lightning bolt forming in Sofia’s hand that had convinced him.
His history showed twenty three kills. The large majority of them were low level civilians, no involuntary. What an incredible tool this murder history. A shame I'm actively staining mine.
Since she would only kill this one, she did the same thing she had done in camp 4, grabbing the condemned and flying up. She didn’t have to show Pareth by doing this. The other two bewildered Paladins did nothing to stop her. Of course the Paladin she grabbed struggled, but he was only level 63, there was nothing he could do to hurt her through her armor.
Not even worth keeping. Having reached the clouds, she released her grip on the struggling man before continuing to fly north. The notification came a few seconds later.
‘You have murdered [Simon - Paladin lv. 63]’
And then came the northernmost camp. Sofia followed the same pattern that had worked surprisingly consistently until now, showing the badge and asking to see the Paladins.
What surprised her was how the Guard’s horn signal had been different than usual. Instead she was greeted by the sight of around fifteen archers aiming at her from the top of the wall.
Sofia scanned them one by one. They were all [Fighter]s, between level 30 and 50 for the most part, with an outlier being 78 and the gate guard being 82. She could tell that a few of them had skills to magically enhance their arrows. That wasn’t too scary in itself. If they have Mithril tipped arrows though, no matter the level, things could get ugly for me. What are the chances though? Mithril isn’t cheap.
Choosing to trust her armor, Sofia stood her ground.
The arrows rained down.
