Vol 3 Chapter 61 – An Unheard-of Cult?!

“Guh, ah…”

“It hurts… it hurts so bad…”

“————”

Ah, one of them just died.

I was vaguely watching the piles of corpses spread out before me.

A dozen or so people were lying on the ground.

Apparently, they were bandits of some sort and were just about to attack their target when two unhinged individuals assaulted them from behind.

In battle, numbers are an enormous factor in victory.

Simply put, no matter how strong you are, you can still lose if you’re outnumbered.

This time, it was two of our psychos against a dozen or so bandits.

A simple difference of nearly ten to one.

Generally, if you’re outnumbered three to one, the smaller side’s chances of winning plummet.

This time, the numerical difference was more than three times that.

No matter how strong our side was, you’d think there’d be nothing they could do, that they’d have no choice but to be defeated by the sheer tyranny of numbers, but…

“Hmph. What unsatisfying villains.”

“Mm. But that just proves how much you’ve grown, Ann. Well done.”

“Hauwah! That makes me so happy, Master!”

“…These two are on a level far beyond ‘a little strong,’ aren’t they?”

I mean, I get that Antares is strong.

She can make full use of her Holy Sword’s power, after all.

But what about Al? He can barely use his Holy Sword’s power, yet he’s beating them to a pulp with nothing but his own brute force.

What is with this guy, seriously?

“Ugh, uwaaah…! He… help… help me…”

“Can you say that with a straight face to the people you’ve killed until now?”

Antares knelt beside the blood-soaked man writhing on the ground, speaking to him with a sweet smile.

This is hardly a situation that calls for smiling…

A man on the verge of death is begging for help, yet Antares just watches him intently without offering a lifeline, as if she were observing a dying insect.

Scary…

“You’ve committed countless evil deeds just to satisfy your own desires, haven’t you? You’ve violently stolen the property and lives of others time and time again, haven’t you? Well, now it is simply your turn to have things taken from you. You were a bandit, so surely you were prepared for this, were you not?”

“Yeah, I doubt most bandits think that far ahead.”

Anyone with such a noble mindset would never become a bandit.

Unfortunately for these guys, their fate was sealed today.

If Al and Antares hadn’t sensed them, they might have lived a little longer.

Not that bandits ever come to a good end, though.

“Besides, who do you expect to help you? Your friends are all lying dead around you. Hehe, they’re cute, like pests, aren’t they?”

“What kind of ethics does this girl have?”

This is terrifying… Antares’s sense of ethics and humanity are terrifying…

And more than anything, Al, the one who raised her to be this way, is the scariest of all.

Really, what is his deal…?

The bandit, looked down upon by such a fearsome grim reaper, whispered faintly.

“Help me, God…”

“God does not help people so easily, you know.”

“Hyoeeh…”

Antares stabbed him in the neck, finishing him off for good.

To take a human life without so much as batting an eye… she’s a veteran murderer.

Well, they’re only human. Who cares?

I composed myself and decided to ask about something that had piqued my interest.

“Humans really love to pray to a god when they’re cornered, don’t they? You’d think it would be better to struggle and try to do something yourself rather than wait for a god to help.”

“Well, that is because gods do, in fact, exist. The total number is small, but there are people who have actually been saved. I was not one of them, however.”

“Ri-Right, putting that aside…”

It seems Antares has some pretty deep darkness of her own.

Of course, I have no intention of poking my nose into it.

There’s nothing I could do about it now anyway, and Al has probably already handled it.

That’s why a psycho like her is so attached to him.

…Frankly, I couldn’t care less about other people’s pasts. It’s too much trouble.

As Antares said, if gods really do exist and people have been saved by their divine acts, it’s easy to see why religion is so powerful.

“It’s pretty different depending on which god you worship, right?”

“I am not overly familiar with the subject myself, but I believe they are completely different. There are many gods, and with them come various blessings. I do not know which god the pest I just killed believed in, but the fact that he was not saved must mean he was of little value.”

Just as there are all kinds of people, there are all kinds of gods.

Some gods actively try to help their followers, while others do not.

Well, since the number of believers seems to be tied to a god’s power, I’d think they would generally try to help…

“If they answered every single prayer, the gods would be super busy. It’s only natural they’d distinguish between believers. It might be sad for the followers, but that’s just not how equality works.”

“Those who are deeply pious, those who make large donations… I imagine how much one has devoted to their god is one of the criteria.”

That’s why those who get into religion get really into it.

Conversely, there’s a fair number of people who want nothing to do with it.

They can spend their time earnestly praying for help, with no guarantee they’ll actually receive it.

Or they can be the type who would rather spend that time honing their own skills, carving out a path for themselves.

Those types generally don’t worship any gods.

“Well, that’s a topic that has nothing to do with the people here, I’d say. You don’t believe in any religion either, right, Al?”

The prime example of that would be Al.

He is the exact opposite of someone who relies on others for help.

He’s a man who tries to solve everything on his own, and actually succeeds.

When I asked him teasingly, Al just stared back at me with a blank expression and replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“I do.”