A man stood on a raised platform.
He had the kind of face one could see anywhere—plain, unremarkable.
And yet, there was sothing about him that made it impossible to look away.
It wasn’t because both of his arms were missing.
It wasn’t because his face was covered in countless burn scars.
It was because of the sheer intensity of the spectral energy gleaming in his eyes.
With those ghostly eyes burning with fury, the man spoke, enunciating each word with precision.
“—I was once a husband, a father of two, and an ordinary accountant running a family business.”
“—And I was also a failure of a man who could not protect his ho, a failure of a husband who could not protect his wife, and a foolish father who could not protect his children.”
“—I was a fool who believed in the kindness of the world. A wretched sinner!”
His words were not eloquent.
His voice was rough, unpolished. His speech pattern was awkward, lacking the natural cadence of a skilled orator.
Yet, his words carried sothing far more powerful—raw, unfiltered sincerity.
There was grief in his voice. There was sorrow.
A deep, festering han, a resentnt so thick and bitter that it seized the hearts of those who listened.
“I am a sinner. That is an undeniable truth! How could a man who failed to protect his family claim otherwise? That is why I do not run, I do not hide, and I do not deny my sins! But—!!”
“Why is it that those who have committed far greater sins—!! Those who have sold the na of God, those who have forsaken their duties—why...!”
“Why do they claim to be free of sin?! Why do they smile so shalessly as if they have done nothing wrong?!!”
His voice thundered with indignation.
Even though decades had passed, the wounds of the past had not faded. Ti had not eroded his grief; it had only concentrated it, distilled it into sothing more potent.
The man’s sorrow had transford into sothing else entirely—hatred.
A desire for vengeance burned within him, an unquenchable fire that would consu him only when he had seen his retribution fulfilled.
And so, he continued.
“I! I have no reason to live! I have lost everything—how am I supposed to go on? Living is agony! Every breath I take, every second I remain in this world is a tornt, so tell —HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO ENDURE THIS?!!!”
His wretched scream was a mass of tightly wound hatred.
It sent a shiver down the spine of all who listened.
Yes—
The man was alive, but he was already dead.
A vengeful spirit clinging to the mortal realm, bound by the singular purpose of exacting revenge before he could finally vanish.
There was an old saying—one person alone cannot change the world, but the wrath of a single man can destroy many things.
And vengeance? Vengeance has a way of igniting the hearts of others, setting fire to kindling they had not even realized was lying dormant within them.
“Co. Let us go. Let us bring them as much sorrow as they have brought us.”
*
*
*
Thanks to Irene Windler, the fire that had engulfed the Grand Temple had been extinguished.
But fire was one thing.
Rage was another.
Unlike flas, anger could not be doused by re rain.
Boom.
Boom...
Boom.
Crosses burned, and priests were tied to stakes.
Familiar faces.
Among them—Cardinal Michael, the leader of the Moderate Faction.
The sa man who had burned the Radical Faction at the stake just the day before.
Now, his own head hung low, soaked in blood, bound alongside the rest of his faction.
One might have thought the sight too cruel.
But—
“Y-you... You killed my daughter! You defiled her! You stole her purity and left her to die, you filthy bastard!!”
For a man like Michael, even this was too rciful.
A frail old man threw a stone.
It must have taken all of his strength to lift it, yet he continued to throw, again and again.
“Do you rember ?! Do you even know who I am?! I am the daughter of the woman you deceived fifty years ago, you wretched beast! Bring my child back, you monster!!”
A storm of curses rained down on Michael.
A man once hailed as a Candidate for Sainthood had been laid bare.
But that was only the beginning.
“Do you rember the village you visited?! The one where the people were dying from the plague, with no hope of survival? You ordered them to be burned alive, you bastard!”
“Why?! Why did you do it?! We paid you! We gave you everything we had—so why did you abandon us?!”
“AAAHHHH!! DIE!! JUST DIE ALREADY!!!”
The atrocities he had committed—no, the sins he had wrought—were only just now coming to light.
And the temple guards? The soldiers ant to protect these n of faith?
Schwing.
“Do not move. Move, and you die.”
Most of them had already been subdued.
They had not been bested by ordinary soldiers, but by half-demons disguised as Holy Knights.
It was clear how those powerless people had made it this far.
This was a land drenched in hatred and vengeance.
If there was such a thing as hell—
Then surely, this was it.
“Eight hundred fifty-nine thousand, eight hundred.”
“?”
“That’s the number of people who died each year because they couldn’t afford to pay the temple’s tithes and receive healing.”
“......”
“Funny, isn’t it? The temple monopolized healing magic and dicine under the guise of divine authority, yet refused to treat those who couldn’t pay. Isn’t that absurd? This is why codies fail. Reality is far more ridiculous.”
“Then those people are...?”
“Yes. Those who stand here today are the families, lovers, and friends of the eight hundred fifty-nine thousand people who were denied treatnt and left to die.”
“......”
Dyna spoke in a low voice, laying out the brutal truth.
“The organization—or rather, the Prophet—approached them. He asked them, ‘Do you seek vengeance?’ or ‘Do you need a place to die?’ And... well, when given the chance and the ans, they accepted. They chose to burn their own lives for the sake of revenge.”
“......”
Crack.
Ihan’s fist clenched tighter and tighter.
These people had nothing to do with him.
And yet, the more he listened, the more his rage festered.
Dyna must have noticed.
And yet, she did not stop.
“The Prophet gave them a gift—‘Fla Scrolls’ and ‘Gunpowder.’ An absurdly large amount of both. I have no idea how he managed to get his hands on such highly restricted military supplies, but given those resources, what do you think they did?”
“......”
Ihan surveyed the devastation around him.
Just monts ago, all he had cared about was escaping.
But now, the full extent of the carnage was laid bare before him.
His heightened sense of sll made it impossible to ignore.
...The stench of burning flesh.
“...Goddamn it.”
A scent he had slled far too often on the battlefield.
A scent he had never wanted to experience again.
Ihan clenched his jaw, his entire body trembling.
But the thing that enraged him the most—
“You bastards... Do you still think of yourselves as human after this?!!”
Boom!
Ihan’s roar exploded like thunder, shaking the air around him.
He didn’t care if he was heard. His voice rang out, furious and unrestrained.
People turned, startled, unsure of what had caused his sudden outburst.
But Dyna and Yan remained calm.
Because they knew.
Grab!
In the next instant, Ihan seized Dyna by the collar and yanked her up.
“Kugh...!”
Her body was lifted effortlessly. Her face contorted in pain as she struggled to breathe.
But Ihan didn’t care.
At the sa ti, Maximus and Raq moved to stop him.
“What the hell is wrong with you?!”
“Calm yourself—”
And then—
“—Are you seriously talking about HUMAN BOMBS?!”
“......What?”
The two knights froze, their attempts to intervene forgotten.
Ihan did not stop.
As if confirming the horror, he continued, his voice raw with fury.
“The stench of burning flesh is unbearable. But there’s sothing else—oil. And sothing even worse—that goddamn stench I will never forget.”
“That sll belonged to the suicide squads of Britain—those lunatics who would wrap themselves in Fla Scrolls and gunpowder, douse their bodies in oil and special chemicals, and hurl themselves against castle gates!!”
“......”
It was a scent only those who had fought in the Britain War would recognize.
And for Ihan, a man with a keener sense of sll than most—
It was an unshakable nightmare.
He glared at them as if he were about to kill them.
“You turned those people into walking bombs! You let them burn the Grand Temple to the ground—you monsters!”
His voice broke into a near scream as his grip loosened.
Every fiber of his being scread at him to kill them right then and there.
But sothing held him back.
The remnants of his own sanity.
And the knowledge that these people were just pawns, too.
“If it helps Dyna’s case,” Yan interjected, “we only found out about this plan today.”
“......”
Just another set of expendable chess pieces in this grand ga.
“And the ones who carried out the attack... they weren’t forced or threatened.”
“They wanted to do it.”
“How the fuck is that any better?!”
Raq snapped, furious.
If not for them, none of this would have happened.
But—
“You have no right to say that, Wild Fang.”
Dyna’s voice cut in coldly.
“You’re a knight, and a damn strong one at that. Do you even understand what it’s like to be weak? To lose your parents and children because you had no power?”
“......”
Raq fell silent.
Dyna scoffed, rubbing her sore throat.
“How arrogant. Then again, I get it. How could you possibly understand? You were raised as a knight of Galahad, blessed with talent fit for a champion. Could you ever comprehend the despair of those too weak to protect anything?”
“......”
“Sure, call us villains. The Prophet and I did sothing society would call evil. But at least we reached out to the ones the world abandoned. We gave them a chance to take revenge. We gave them the opportunity to punish those who had stood above the law under the na of ‘divine authority.’”
“And that’s wrong? If it were your child, your friend, your lover—wouldn’t you seek revenge, too?”
“But them? They don’t get to? That’s sohow different?”
“That’s...”
“Oh, I know. It’s selfish. It’s filthy. But at least I’ll say this—the Duke of Galahad slaughtered countless people to avenge his wife. So tell , are we really any different? You have no right to judge us. Because we are all monsters to soone.”
“......”
“Oh, and by the way,” she added. “I’m not insulting you. I’m just saying it like it is. We just stand on different sides. You’ll never understand them, because you were never powerless.”
Thud.
“But he will.”
She pointed.
At Ihan.
Everyone’s eyes turned toward him.
“......”
But even as all attention focused on him, Ihan didn’t react.
He just—
“...Fuck. I lost again.”
He muttered the words, filled with disgust at his own helplessness.
***
The next morning.
[The Grand Temple, along with nurous southern temples, has collapsed in simultaneous attacks.]
The world had been turned upside down.
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