Paladin of the Dead God

The first thing the sailors felt was a bone-chilling cold, an unusual sensation for the southern seas. Already drenched, they felt their body heat rapidly dissipate, but Isaac only stoked the flames of the Luadin Key even more fiercely.

“Why are you so late, you pirate bastards?!”

Isaac shouted with a face filled with exhilaration as he watched the ghost ship approach.

Eidan was slightly horrified at the sight. Though the sailors of the Salt Council didn’t harbor superstitious fears toward ghost ships, since they understood their origins and nature, these spectral pirates were still terrifying in their own right.

“Captain Eidan, prepare the harpoons! We need to capture them!”

“What?! What are you saying?”

“Hurry! They’re the only way we can pass through the Nightmare Strait!”

Eidan, shocked by Isaac’s plan to capture a ghost ship, quickly rallied the crew. Though the sailors were flustered by the sudden order to engage in combat, they swiftly loaded the harpoons. Eidan, observing their efficiency, suddenly realized that the storm had calmed somewhat.

‘Could it be that there’s a relic on that ship capable of calming the sea?’

If so, it made sense why Isaac had been so eager to make himself visible, lighting up his ship like a beacon to lure the ghost ship in. Sending the other ships away had also been part of his strategy—to make it appear as if the fleet had been scattered by the storm, tricking the ghost ship into approaching.

“Fire!”

Bang, bang! Several harpoons shot through the air, aimed at the ghost ship. Most missed due to the rough seas, but two hit their mark, embedding themselves in the hull. The ghost ship hadn’t anticipated being attacked so suddenly and failed to react in time.

“Pull them in! We need to board that ship!”

Isaac had already prepared to run across the chains first. Just then, he noticed a gleam from beyond the ghost ship’s railing.

Sensing danger, Isaac immediately hurled himself into the sea.

Bang!

“Sir Knight!”

Eidan cried out in horror, searching for Isaac, who had plunged into the churning waters. But finding someone in such rough seas was no easy task. The ghost ship had fired a harpoon of its own, and only then did Eidan realize that the ghost ship belonged to the Salt Council.

“Damn it! He’s wearing armor! He can’t swim like that!”

Eidan prepared to dive into the sea to rescue Isaac. He couldn’t afford to lose the one who carried such hope and potential in this perilous moment.

“Over there!”

One of the sailors pointed toward the ghost ship, and only then did Eidan witness what was happening beyond its deck.

A crimson mist had begun sweeping across the ghost ship, engulfing the undead crew.

***

Just before falling into the sea, Isaac had used the Red Worship to launch himself onto the ghost ship. Without fully regaining his composure, he immediately began his attack. 𝘳ᴀ

With his heart at the center, the first parts of his body to regenerate were his hands and arms. He used the Luadin Key to slice through the skeletal crew. As his legs and feet reformed, Isaac advanced, burning and cutting down five skeletons before his head even fully reappeared.

The sight of him regenerating his limbs in midair while cutting down undead sailors was unsettling, even to the undead themselves.

Of course, simply cutting them down wouldn’t be enough to fully defeat them. Unless they were completely incinerated, the undead would rise again.

But the yet-to-be-formed parts of Isaac’s body, still trailing behind, took care of the finishing touches.

[“You can now use ‘Red Worship’ to consume your enemies.”]

After giving up the Rite of Division, the enhanced Red Worship allowed Isaac to move his body more flexibly, enabling him to fight even without fully reforming. The crimson mist that followed him like a cloak consumed the skeletons, gnawing at them like a swarm of locusts.

Even though the undead provided no nourishment when consumed, rendering them beyond repair was still a significant advantage.

[“A Paladin! A Paladin is here!”]

The skeletal sailors, most likely former members of the Salt Council, drew their cutlasses and charged at Isaac.

They were brave, but their fatal mistake was that they had never heard of the famed Holy Grail Knight’s reputation.

Isaac didn’t need to focus much to deal with these common sailors, but he took the opportunity to practice his recently acquired techniques. His stance shifted slightly.

The Hunter’s Stance, modeled after Kalsen Miller.

One of the skeleton sailors swung his cutlass down at Isaac’s head. In a flash, Isaac’s blade barely seemed to move before it sliced through the sailor from crown to pelvis. The other skeletons were stunned—they hadn’t even seen Isaac take a step, let alone swing his sword.

Without a word, Isaac calmly took another step toward them.

Crack, snap, shing. There were no loud impacts, no cries of pain. Only the sound of his blade slicing through the wind and the faint noise of bones being severed.

With each step Isaac took, more sailors were cut down, their remains enveloped in the crimson mist, dissolving like melted wax.

The sight of the sailors being harvested one by one by the crimson mist, as if they were stalks of grain reaped by death itself, filled the remaining undead with terror.

[“That’s not a Paladin! Run! The Reaper has come!”]

Of course, the Immortal Order, in their pursuit of eternal life, didn’t believe in the existence of a reaper. However, these undead were once sailors of the Salt Council, and even in death, they clung to superstitions. To them, Isaac could only be interpreted as some manifestation of death itself.

When some of the skeleton sailors began throwing themselves into the sea, Isaac couldn’t help but be impressed.

‘Fascinating. Is this what Bashul referred to as the “sword that suppresses killing intent?”’

Kalsen’s swordsmanship was different from Isaac’s in that it refined the killing intent to an extreme degree. The irony was that the more the killing intent was controlled, the more effective it was at taking lives. Bashul would have loved to see this.

‘I should have asked Dera Heman about Bashul.’

Of course, asking Dera Heman would have meant revealing that Isaac had been the one who infiltrated Lichtheim during that time. While it was unlikely that a Bashul would die so easily, Isaac could only assume Bashul was still alive somewhere.

[“You… die, now!”]

The last opponent was an undead dressed in ornate clothing, clearly the captain. He had been waiting inside the captain’s quarters, a heavy harpoon at the ready. As soon as Isaac opened the door, the captain fired.

In an instant, Isaac transformed his body into a mist of blood with Red Worship, avoiding the harpoon and slipping into the captain’s quarters.

The captain, who thought he had disintegrated Isaac into dust, barely had time to process what had happened before realizing his head and body had been separated. His decapitated skull dangled from the end of the Luadin Key, flickering flames in his eye sockets as he muttered in disbelief.

[“Who… what are you? What in the world… are you?”]

“Are you the captain?” Isaac asked.

[“Yes… my name is Naith Roanne. What is it you…”]