Chapter 142: Chapter 31: Sunday School

---D-Day+85, Daroine 24th---

---Raelera---

---Convent of Metia the Merciful---

*BAM*

*tang* *gulch* *thung*

Fuck!

*slich* *thunk*

Nuns with guns.  Geesh.  What is the world coming too when even priestesses are packing.  Though this holy bitch ain’t anymore.  On account of currently being impaled on my magic sword.

No, my other magic sword.

No, my other other magic sword, Tormentor.

Perverts.

Rammed my black sword in under her ribs and the business end poked out her back.  Pounding her into the wall behind.  Smell her flesh starting to cook in the flames.

*clang* *vish* *BAM*

Spin and rip the demon blade back out.  Nearly cutting her in two.  The holy sword Sanctity deflects a second nun’s knife coming in from the right while a third slices through where I was standing not a second before.  Another lead ball fires my way but misses.  Adding one more hole to the poor abused wall.

And thank god it missed.  Those fucking things hurt.

Picture having a solid burning metal lump, an inch across, enter your abdomen and gleefully tumble along.  Pulverising any bone or organ that doesn’t get the hell out of the way.

Kind of soft too so deforms as it rolls before finally tearing an even bigger hole out your other side.  Waving goodbye as it leaves a tunnel of gore and ruin behind.

Imagine how much that hurts.  Got it?  Good.  Now times that by a hundred and you might be close to how bad it really feels.

Would be dead several times over already without war machine mode.

*crash* *bam* *bam*

Another death squad of killer nuns bursts out the door of a room up ahead.  Firing their guns as they come at us head on in the rough stone hallway.

Christ.  This fucking place is about bursting at the seams with nuns and ninjas.

“Master! [Death Bolt]!”

*BAM*

Dodge to the side as soon as Frankie screams.  Turn to see my priest-wife’s spell punch through the middle of the bitch that shot at me.

“Aiyee!”

[Death Bolt] is the dark magic version of the other schools’ bolt spells.  Except this incantation pierces the victim and flash necrotizes tissue.  Now the rest of the body is still busily pumping away.  Causing a whole bunch of blood and gore to dump on the floor as the body falls apart.

Nasty way to die.

Of course I shouldn’t have needed her warning.  Should have seen the naughty nun aiming at me through the shadows.  Problem is, there’s no shadows here to see through.  Because of the fire.

Yes, fire.  Though inferno might be a better word for this.

Everything is burning.  Well, not everything everything.  But enough everything to make it a very shadow impaired environment.

“[River Wave]!”

Lizzy douses the burning walls again.  Filling the passage with smoke and steam.  Nice, but won’t last.  These are like holy flames or something.  They keep reigniting.

Yeah, Lizzy, the isekaied otome girl.  Got a few cuts on her but she’s holding up well.  Bet she never pictured our rescue mission turning out like this.

Of course she’s doing better than I am.  The nuns and ninjas are saving their muskets balls, or whatever the fuck those are, for me and my undead.

*clang* *bam* *zing* *crash*

Hear another shot in the distance among the sounds of battle and feel another shadow die.  These bullets seem to be made with fucking “Sun Powder” and overflowing with [Holy Curse Magic].  A lot more than was in the weapons and armor House Chastel used trying to kill Hitomi and me.

Not sure how they did it but, it makes them very good at “killing” undead.  While the holy flames restricts my undeads’ mobility.  The things are so fucking potent that most of the Bronze ranked and any of the Iron ranked can be taken out in one shot.

“Ngh!”

“Master!”

Besides the fucking rapture of getting holes punched in me?  Also get the goddamn joy of having my brain torn apart.  Like a rusty knife sawing off part of my mind.

Yeah, by killing, I mean those guns are actually killing my undead.  Shattering their souls and ripping them out of my mindscape.  Fuuuck.  Each tear is like a migraine on steroids.

Don’t feel it with the skellies but the living shadows live in my mindscape so, yeah.

Thank god my Steel and Silver ranked can take a couple rounds and still get home.  Feel how exhausted and injured they are though.  Can’t send them right back out.  Gotta give them time to recover.

This sucks!

On game day, I had numbers on my side so overwhelmed Chastel’s commandos.  Here?  Must be hundreds of ninjas and nuns.  Every one of them, armed to the teeth and bat shit crazy.

Yeah, figured it was a trap.  Didn’t figure they would set the whole building on fire.  God dammit.  Got cocky and now we’re paying for it.  Seriously, gotta get better at this or hire someone who is.

And how’s the harem doing?

Frankie?  Low on mana and wounded.  Red?  Battered and bruised but still fighting.  Blue?  Running dry.  Lili?  Stabbed but leading our support outside with bandages and potions.  Odaline?  Shot and pulled back to Lili.  Simone?  Merged with Ferra and here but injured.

Hitomi?  Got separated when the fanatics sprung the trap.  Haven’t seen her since.  Lizzy?  Here and proving very useful with her water magic.  Mila?  Got to give the beastkin girl props.  She’s merged with Emelina and is a one half-dead wrecking crew.

Val?  Haven’t found her yet.  Or her sisters.  They never came back that night.  Nor the next.  The shadows, not my living shadows, saw them attacked in Raelera.  And captured.  Tried to help but were forced back by light magic.

Took a while for word to get to me because they aren’t really sapient, per se.  They feel but don’t think.  Hard to explain.  Gladly showed me what happened in the Raeleran slums.

Raelera, capital of Raneya county and former stronghold of House Gilend, is the largest city in northern Tourin.  With over 100,000 people, its called the “Jewel of the West,” and parts look like a medieval version of San Francisco.

The church, as in Metia’s, doesn’t have much influence but it's still here.  They have plenty of worshippers.  Just lost their power struggle with the local nobility long ago.

Metia also has significant competition here, namely Amedee.  An elven goddess.

The Universal Church of Metia has a couple churches in town and a convent.  According to Frankie, this one focuses more on serving the poor than being a holy whorehouse.

Of course this doesn’t mean important folk can’t go there to get laid by a nun or three in private “prayer services.”  Just that the church needs to tread more carefully in towns where they are weak.

The complex is called the Convent of Metia the Merciful and has a whole block to itself deep in the Raelera slums.

As soon as I heard what happened.  Gathered some troops and rode hard to Raelera.  By carriage it is about an eight-hour from Lions Keep.  As soon as we arrived I stormed the place early in the evening with the harem, Black Hart Knights, and Living Shadows at my side.

Reached the convent’s church and demanded to see the one in charge before a shit ton of wards triggered and hundreds of nuns and ninjas zerg rushed us.

Again, expected a trap.  Did not expect the whole convent to then burst into flames.  Nor expect the staff to have guns.

First, we fought our way out.  Had to get the wounded clear and secure an entrance for supplies and reinforcements.  Then, we fought our way back in.  Val and her daughters are still here, somewhere.

What follows is a bloodbath.  Hours of sweep and clear.  Every passage.  Every room.  The peaceful wouldn’t hurt a fly acting nuns all turn rabid.  Some literally foam at the mouth.

Bizarre sight to see ladies in nun habits pulling out guns and knives.

Bitches kamikaze us with holy hand grenades and hand cannons.  Sometimes even blowing themselves up trying to get at us.  Is it drugs?  Mind control?  Are they just insane?

The holy ninjas use pretty much the same tactics Mitsu and Yodo’s crew used when we ambushed them in that forest.  Though they have gunners now too.

They are much more organized and professional than the wacko sisters.  Ambush and retreat.  Again and again.

Wasn’t too bad when we were in the buildings up top.  But in the basements below it's a maze.  All of them are connected too.  On top of the traps and ambushes, they’ve even collapsed tunnels and rooms on us.

Thank god for magic or we would truly be fucked.

We are running three units to clear faster.  Frankie, Red, and Lizzy, are with me.  Blue, Simone, and Scurg, shadow warchief, with ex-patchy, the Black Hart’s captain.  Drabek, death knight, and Alex, shadow inquisitor, with Frosty and Mila.

Each group is a mix of the living and nonliving.

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We started off with just the harem, me, shadows, and some knights.  Once the size of the trap became clear?  We brought everyone.

Everyone?

Everyone!

Love that flick.

Was a bloody slog until thousands of skellie reinforcements arrived.  Once we had numbers on our side.  Started to make real progress.

Casualties are downright horrendous though.  Just about all the skellies are Iron or Bronze ranked undead.  And there’s a lot of fucking guns in this convent.

Worse, we can’t replenish the ranks.  The nuns and ninjas have covered themselves in sun powder.  Flammable sun powder.  So those holy flames everywhere?  Quickly spread to the corpses.  Reducing even bones to ash.

Does something to their spirits and souls too.  Keeps my necromancy from getting a hold of anything, astrally or physically, to use.

Goddamn frustrating.

*SLAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* *BAM* 

We're closing in on what should be the end of this maze when the doors at the end of the corridor fly open and a barrage of bullets comes out of the room beyond.

More shadows and skeletons die.  More pain tears through my brain.

~Shit!  Rush ‘em!~

Leap through the door swinging and Sanctity sinks into a chest.  Tormentor pierces through a skull.  Chests crushed.  Limbs slashed.  Blood splashes.  Screams cut short.

In seconds the entrance is littered with corpses. Not all of them belong to the church.

*choir of angels*

My eyes go blind as the brightness of the room overwhelms them.  After a few seconds they adjust and I can start to see again.  The room on the other side of the doors is bright.  Really bright.  Everything is made of, or painted, something white.  Outside you hear the roar of the flames.  Feel the heat.  Inside it is like angels singing.  And the air is cool.

*clack* *clatter*

Look around to see skellies begin collapsing.  Falling apart.  Shadows smoking more than they should.  Can even feel an itching burn on my skin.  Like a bad rash.

~Wait outside.~

This room is full of holy magic.  Probably like hell, for undead.

Without my undead there are only a handful of knights, Frankie, Red, and Lizzy, left with me.

The hall is large and laid out like a mini cathedral.  Pews and columns arrayed along both sides.  All facing a marble pulpit.  A pulpit with a couple foot tall glowing statue of Metia on it.  Its practically pulsing with light.  Probably what’s making the air feel so oppressive in here.

However, my eyes are drawn past the statue.  Against the far wall behind it, under a larger statue of Metia, are seven crosses.  And on them?  Seven crucified women.  My women.

Val and her six daughters.

The three to each side have stakes through the limbs and one through the chest.  Right where the heart is.  The vampire girls have not turned to ash.  They’ve shriveled.  Turned into dried up husks of the healthy sized peasant women I knew.

“Val…”

The cross in the center has my gothic loli pinned to it.  Naked.  Though she doesn’t have a stake through her chest.  Each limb does and they’ve shriveled up like her daughters’.  Her torso and head look drawn.  Thin.  Can see whip marks all over her.  Even on her face.

“Hitomi-chan?”

Almost run to Val before Lizzy’s voice stops me.  Then I see her.  My shinobi girl is sitting at the bottom of Val's cross.  Leaning her back against it.  She’s been cut up a lot.  There is a bunch of blood and her head is hanging down.

Dead?

As if hearing my thought, the bleeding battered head raises a little, focuses on me, and manages a small smile.  Before it droops back down and she collapses to the side.

Grab Lizzy’s shoulder before she can sprint to the japanese high schooler.

“[Eyes of Ouroboros]”

Breathe a sigh of relief as I see both are still alive.  Barely, but stable enough.  Val's daughters?

Gone.

Stopped otome girl because while there are bodies scattered across the hall?  No fires in here to burn them up.  There are not enough bodies to have caused my japanese girlfriend's many injuries.

Someone else.  Someone stronger must be-

*cough* *cough* *hack*

A mangled gauntlet reaches over the top of the pulpit from the other side.  With groans and scrapes a man sized figure pulls himself up and around while leaning against it.

What’s left of him is dressed like a metian inquisitor.  A high ranking one.  Wrinkles and white hair point to him being very old.

His body?  Is a mess.  Hardly an inch of fabric or flesh anywhere is free from some kind of wound.  Hitomi must have put up one hell of a fight.  His face is even slashed through on one side.  Taking the eye with it.

The remaining eye focuses on me and he grins.  Chuckling between hacking coughs.

“Y-you are… late.”

“So?”

His grin turns into a frown.

“Well, the whore-hero was on time.”  *hack*  “Early even.”

“So?”

“So…  She, hehe, entertained us instead.”

Feel the girls tensing up.  I calm them through our link.  Lizzy though is about vibrating in rage.  But barely manages to keep herself in check.  My lack of response seems to disappoint the devout douchebag.

“Tch!  I killed your girlfriend-  *cough*  -your undead sluts!”

Keep staring.

“Well, no matter.  My name will live on.”  The inquisitor turns and reaches for the statue.  “Remembered throughout the inquisition for ending your…?”

The pious wackjob is reaching to grab the statue with his unmangled right hand but stops, confused.

You can see the question written across his face, “where did my hand go?”  At least for the second it takes me to slam into him at full speed.  Launching him through the air to splat against the back wall.

*shulch*

The blessed fucker even impales himself on the outstretched arm of the larger than life sized statue of Metia.

“[Eyes of Ouroboros]”

Yep.  He's dead.

No way I was going to let him finish monologuing so threw Sanctity and swordmaged it to slice off his good hand while I charged in to bodycheck his ass into the stands.

Can’t touch his soul with all this holy crap in the air but fuck him.  Got people who actually matter to take care of.

*slich*

“[Embrace of Hygieia] [Touch of Menerva]”

Rip out Val’s stakes and slice open my palm.  Squeezing my blood out and running it down her throat.  At the same time casting [Recovery Magic] on Hitomi.

One of the knights speaks as I start carrying the two out.

“My lord Barton.  What should we do with the statue?”

“Don’t touch it!”  I shout, causing a couple of curious hands to snap back from it.  “Let the wizard types figure it out.  I’ve got what I came for.”

[Super Senses] is about screaming from all the power pouring out of that little statue.  Feels very much like a bomb to me.  Let the Stormgarde crew deal with it.

Until then?

Don’t.  Touch.  Nothing.

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