Paladin of the Dead God - Chapter 407



Only Noblemtl

Episode 407. Graveyard Lord (7)

Isaac knew that the Graveyard Lord would not surrender easily and was prepared.

But his rebellion was more intense than expected.

The moment the tentacle dug into the skull, a dense divine power and force surged out like an explosion. Isaac exerted his strength so as not to miss even a single bit of the overflowing faith. However, the skull shook violently and trembled as if it would explode at any moment.

If he had struck with a normal sword or axe, this would not have happened, but Isaac’s tentacles dug deep into the soul of the Grave Lord, leaving a deep wound.

It was like tens of thousands of tons of steam had been compressed into a barrel. Isaac knew it was dangerous, but instead, he clutched his skull tightly with intense hunger and thirst.

[Ahhhhhhhh!]

The Grave Lord’s skull vibrated madly. Isaac transformed his right hand into a tentacle and completely rooted himself into the Grave Lord’s skull. Then, the tentacles greedily sucked in the power that was emanating from them.

But because the body was divided, the strength was lacking.

The sharp, vibrating, and raging powers were causing wounds all over Isaac’s body and drying up his tentacles. Now Isaac had to use all his strength to avoid being killed by the rampaging divine power. The power he was sucking from the Grave Lord was immediately consumed as strength for Isaac to endure.

“Die quietly!”

Isaac scolded loudly and brought the skull close to his face. His eyes met the empty ones of the Grave Lord. Isaac activated the Eye of Chaos. In order to fully consume this rampaging power, he would have to delve into the Grave Lord’s origins and history.

Crunch, crunch. Isaac’s eyelids flipped open and tentacles crawled out. Soon Isaac’s two arms and his entire face were connected to the Grave Lord. The two were fused together, sharing each other’s inner selves, their terrible pain and scars.

Isaac became Sarkan Nua.

***

“May your Majesty live long and prosper.”

In the midst of a shower of holy light, Sarkanua was crowned in Lichtheim. The Pope calmly praised him and crowned him, but the gazes of the bishops and priests watching him were not so kind.

“A worldly king is being crowned in Lichtheim.”

“This never happened even during the Unified Empire. He wasn’t even an emperor, but rather one of the seven kings who divided up the Unified Empire.”

There was muttering, but Sarka Nua paid no attention.

It is just the whispers of losers who suffer from inferiority complex. It is you who wears the crown, and it is you who has the power to protect and uphold the code of light.

“Then now… … .”

Sarkanua stood up before the Pope’s instructions were given and looked around with an arrogant gaze. Even the priest conducting the ceremony was so flustered that he was speechless.

The priests’ expressions became more distorted, and their muttering grew louder.

But Sarka Nua looked down at the priests with even more arrogance at the sound and gaze. After all, the priests could do nothing to him. Now he would do what the others had failed to do, what the Light Code had so desperately wanted.

“I was only 16 years old during the First Dawn. But I led the army and won the war. At that time, I didn’t even know that it would be called the ‘First’.”

To be precise, the main characters who led to victory were Bishop Villar and Saint Arte, now known as the Sword of May. Sarca Nua only led a thousand or so soldiers of the First Dawn Army, but it is no lie that he was a veteran.

“Unfortunately, the Second Dawn Army, which was trying to protect the Holy Land of Lua, failed. This was all because there was no great leader to lead the foolish flock.”

The faces of the priests of the Code of Light, who had been reduced to sheep in an instant, turned bright red. However, it was not a completely wrong statement. The Second Dawn Army, despite the fact that the knights trained by Saint Arte had come forward, ended in chaos due to the civil war of the Seven Kingdoms.

And this was why the Code of Light raised Sarkan Nua to the throne, even at the risk of humiliation.

“I hereby proclaim the Third Dawn Army. We will punish the traitors who dare to claim to be king, and reclaim our holy land. We will restore the former glorious name to the Book of Light!”

“May your Majesty live long and prosper!”

The priests habitually heaped praise on him.

The Light Code, whose authority had fallen to the bottom by the Treaty of Licht, decided to borrow its authority from a human with strong leadership. Sarka Nua, a genius military leader whose military prowess reminded him of the old Ellil, was the perfect fit.

Sarka Nua had the skills to match his arrogance, and he was confident in himself.

He was determined to capture the Holy Land of Lua at any cost.

But the real intention was different from what the Code of Light thought.

***

Sarka Nua and his army advanced towards the holy land of Lua with great momentum as if they had been blessed by the gods. The kings and warlords who tried to take advantage of his weakness either met with misfortune and died or were unilaterally defeated by Sarka Nua.

The same was true of the Undead Cult, which was still a handful at the time. Sarka Nua reclaimed the Holy Land of Lua with greater ease than the First Dawn Army. As the Undead Army was driven back into the desert, the Code of Light blessed Sarka Nua’s name and made him a saint.

The royal family expected him to return to his kingdom soon and reunite the empire. His enemies trembled in fear, while his subordinates and priests were filled with anticipation of the glorious era to come.

But the king did not return.

Instead, rumors spread that he was wandering around the Holy Land, Lua, madly searching for something.

“Your Majesty.”

Sarka Nua lifted up the woman who was bowing down to him and kissing his hand. There was no arrogance or authority in his gaze as he looked at the woman. With a gaze that looked up from an infinitely low place, he gently held his wife in his arms.

“Come in, Madam. I told you that this place is still like a battlefield and dangerous. Why have you come all the way here?”

At Sarka Nua’s words, the woman lowered her gaze with sad eyes and whispered.

“Sierin is waiting for you. I have prepared a birthday present for you, Your Majesty, and have been waiting for you… … I have told you that I will definitely return before your tenth birthday.”

Sarka Nua bit her lips tightly.

The young Noah, her own son who is not even ten years old.

However, a curse permeates the Nua family’s bloodline.

A disease in which the muscles of the entire body become weak and wither away, leading to a painful death.

Sarka Nua watched his grandfather shrink like a sun-dried turtle, shrink like a monkey, and die. If it were a normal illness, the priests could cure it, but it was not a disease, and it could not be cured by a miracle.

A curse runs in his blood.

Perhaps the desire for greater glory, greater war, and greater authority was also the result of having grown up seeing such horrors. Sarka, too, could not know when the genetic disease would break out. However, the curse was directed at the child instead of Sarka Nua.

When Sarka Nua had already joined the Dawn Army, Shierin had difficulty getting out of bed. Sarka Nua hugged his wife tightly once more to hide his emotional turmoil. However, he could not hide his trembling hands.

“Don’t worry, Madam. The forces of the evil Immortal Emperor are still targeting this place. If we can drive them out beyond the outer wall, we will be able to return.”

The woman looked at her husband quietly. She too was of noble birth and had some knowledge of political and military trends.

To anyone who looked at it, the events taking place in the Holy Land of Lua were not signs of preparation for war.

It’s about searching for something.

The woman whispered while hugging Sarka Noir.

“The church is suspicious of you.”

Sarka Nua flinched. But his wife hugged him tighter so that he wouldn’t get angry or look around.

“All priests are eyes. It was said that the Burning Maiden would watch over you. Because of the rumor that you… … were wandering in search of the secret of immortality.”

“That’s a rumor.”

It’s a lie. The wife realized it right away thanks to their long marriage.

But I just smiled sadly and rubbed his back, knowing that Sarka Nua would never give up on his quest for the secret of immortality.

“Please come before Shirley’s tenth birthday.”

Sarka Nua couldn’t do that.

***

Sarka Nua searched frantically for the secret of how the Immortal Emperor became a god and how they could bring down the Underworld. But he found nothing. The Order of the Code of Light, who had begun to suspect him, constantly summoned him.

In the meantime, if the Immortal Cult had attacked, I would have had an excuse to stay here, but the Immortal Emperor was strangely quiet. No, I provoked him in an incomprehensible way.

“Sarka Nua! You are accused of heresy. Murder, heretical rituals, collecting heretical relics… … Ugh, what the heck?!”

The day finally came when everything ended.

Driven to a desperate situation, Sarka Nua performed strange, ancient heretical rituals of unknown origin in the catacombs of the Holy Land of Lua. He offered his own blood, sacrificed animals, and even captured ordinary people to sacrifice them.

There is no way that a ritual of a bunch of random things with unknown origins will work. The ancient gods who were drawn to the ritual became greedy, but the ancient gods who could not defeat Sarka Nua became sacrifices to the ritual.

The inquisitors who came to capture Sarka Nua were astonished at the sight of the unholy ritual.

But Sarka Nua did not even look at them. He just muttered in a forgotten ancient language, ‘If you believe, it will come true.’

“How can someone who has dared to use the name of the Code of Light to gain glory and power do something like this and get away with it?”

One of the Inquisitors shouted loudly and instantly engulfed the cellar in flames. However, the flames did not reach Sarka Nua. A sudden cold blast pushed the flames away, and the corpses that filled the cellar rose and began to attack the Inquisitors.

The Inquisitors resisted desperately, but the enemy numbers were too great.

“Sarca, this is a long time!

One of the Inquisitors, whose whole body was being torn apart by zombies, screamed. Sarka Nua’s head snapped up.

“If your family died because of you, you should have some shame! Do you plan to live forever after sending so many people to their deaths?”

The inquisitor met his eyes and smirked. He cursed while biting his cheek.

“It was really funny to see your son burn to death. He was already so weak that it was hard to tie him to the torch, but to see him searching for his father while burning… .”

Sarka Nua grabbed his dagger in a fit of a fit, but the Inquisitor could not continue speaking.

As the zombie bit his neck, blood gushed out and his speech stopped. Soon, the crypt became quiet, with only the loud sound of flesh being devoured echoing through the room.

Sarka Nua asked, staring blankly into the darkness.

“Am I wrong?”

[I kept saying it was wrong.]

The immortal emperor, who I thought had fled into the desert, was right before my eyes as if he had never been there.

No, I’ve always been here, tempting him.

I hold the secret to immortality that you seek.

In Sarkanua’s dreams, in his visions, he was always there, in a corner of his vision, telling him to come closer.

“Is it too much to hope that my children will live long?”

[Then you should have gone to find the Red Grail.]

“Do you want my child to live forever as someone’s slave?”

[Aren’t you looking at all the people of the world as slaves with that arrogant gaze?]

That’s not wrong. But Shirin shouldn’t be. It’s selfish, arrogant, and pathetic greed, but that’s what Sarka Nua thought. Her child should become great like her.

Sarka Noir stared blankly at the fluttering blue rose petals and asked.

“Would it be okay if I surrender to you now?”

In the darkness, the face of the Immortal Emperor was still invisible, but Sarka Nua felt that he was smiling.

[Converting won’t save your family.]

“I know. Immortality no longer holds any meaning for me. But… … the Light’s Law is just, and my children and wife will go to Heaven.”

Sarka Nua staggered towards the Immortal Emperor and knelt before him.

“But I can’t go to heaven now.”

[I guess so.]

Sarka Nua raised his head with difficulty and looked up at the Immortal Emperor.

“So, if I want to see my wife and Cierrin again… … I must bring heaven down to earth like you. One day, you will cover the entire world with your immortal domain. Until that day comes, I will be loyal to you for thousands or tens of thousands of years.”

The Immortal Emperor slowly reached out his hand to his head.

[May your Majesty live long and prosper.]