The Cult Leader in the Clergy Academy

Chapter 275

Joseph approached the man without any weapons and only his bare fists. The man lightly snorted.

He pointed to the mace that was lying on the ground and asked, "Why did you throw away a perfectly good weapon? I don’t understand."

"Because I don't need it," Joseph replied.

The man took a few steps back as if to avoid Joseph. He could sense a strange energy emanating from him, so he quickly scanned Joseph's body with his eyes. It did not have any outstanding features—it was just an ordinary body that was inferior in every aspect.

In terms of physical quality alone, he was far below Jin-Seo and Ha-Yeon who were behind him. No, he was even more inferior than the average clergyman. It was a cursed body that would have struggled to even become a clergyman in the first place. However, there was a strength in Joseph's body that overcame such physical inferiority.

"Impressive. Did you manage to shape your body like that through training alone?" the man asked.

Joseph approached the man with a stern face. He asked, "Why did you kill my wife?"

Joseph thought of his wife who had been torn to pieces. His wife had been an ordinary person. She had never done anything to deserve resentment, nor was she exceptional enough to be the target of Satanists. Therefore, when his wife died, Joseph had many doubts.

Why did his wife have to die? For what purpose did the Satanists kill his wife? He thought knowing why might relieve some of the confusion that had built up in his heart.

"She died because she was inferior. If she had been superior, she would have survived. That's fate," the man said.

"So you’re saying there was no reason."

Upon hearing the man’s answer, Joseph nodded. There was no hint of sadness on his stern face. Instead, he smiled widely. Wrinkles formed around his lips.

"I see."

Joseph's figure then disappeared from the man's sight. The man’s eyes darted around in an attempt to find him.

Within the space inside the Banquet that the man had created, he identified the positions of all superior creatures. All those who entered the Banquet were all in the palm of the man's hand. The problem was the fact that Joseph was not superior—instead, he was ridiculously inferior. The man belatedly realized where Joseph had disappeared to, but it was too late.

Crash!

Joseph grabbed the back of the man’s head and slammed it into the ground. The man trembled while his head was stuck in the ground. Joseph looked down at him and laughed.

"Thank you. I feel a little better. I thought it was my fault."

Joseph was the last successor of the Nazirite arts and was a capable clergyman. He often thought that his wife had died because of his success. If he had not been a clergyman, or if he had not been the successor of the Nazirite arts, his wife might not have died. He had spent years in self-blame and self-loathing because of that thought.

"So there was no reason at all. No reason whatsoever."

However, that was all a misconception. There was no reason for his wife's death. Joseph thought it was rather fortunate that his wife had simply died for no reason at all. It wasn't because Joseph was the successor of the Nazirite arts, and it wasn't because he was a clergyman either. She just happened to catch the eyes of a Satanist and unluckily met her end.

A tear rolled down Joseph's cheek.

"It seems I still don't feel good at all. I can't accept this."

Rip!

Joseph grabbed the man's arm and tore it apart. Black blood dripped from the man's forearm. Then, Joseph tore apart the man's other arm, which ripped off as easily as paper.

When the man screamed and tried to get back up, Joseph tore apart his legs.

The essence of the Nazirite arts was about abandoning all formalities, surrendering to wrath, and destroying everything that came into one’s grasp. The Nazirite arts revealed its true power the moment its user discarded their elegance.

"What is this?" the man uttered in despair at the sight of Joseph’s ridiculous power and resorted to using black magic.

Hands rose up from the pits of hell and reattached new arms and legs to the man. With his newly attached limbs, the man rose from his seat. Then he quickly took a few steps back in order to distance himself from Joseph.

"Are you scared?"

He thought he had definitely widened the distance between the two of them, but the man regained his senses only to find Joseph right in front of his face once again. The man's face twisted in terror as he frantically raised his hand. It seemed like he was about to perform another action, but Joseph did not give him a chance. His calloused hand was already gripping the man's head.

Just as Joseph was about to tear the man's head off, the sound of fingers snapping echoed.

Snap.

The darkness enveloping them dissipated.

Joseph looked around in confusion. His surroundings remained unchanged. The injured clergymen and corpses were still sprawled on the ground.

However, the demons and demonic beasts that had filled the surroundings, along with the man's figure, disappeared. Instead, a large black orb appeared in the corner of the cathedral.

Joseph ignored the voices of the injured clergymen asking for help and approached the black orb. He touched it with his finger.

Sizzle...

Smoke emanated from the point where his finger touched the orb, and his finger was charred black. Joseph withdrew his hand from the black orb.

"Did they escape inside?"

He could feel the strong presence of black magic from the black orb. It was clearly a different type of black magic from the Banquet.

The Banquet was an offensive black magic spell that invited others into a space where demons and demonic beasts lurked. In contrast, this seemed to be a defensive black magic that isolated the caster to protect themselves from others.

“He muttered some crap about superiority and inferiority... and yet the most inferior one is himself,” Joseph muttered and then clicked his tongue with a disappointed expression on his face.

He then walked toward Jin-Seo and Ha-Yeon. The duo had been trapped inside the Banquet and had been engaged in a fierce battle with the demon, but now they had suddenly returned to the cathedral and were puzzled.

"Are you hurt?" Joseph asked the two.

They shook their heads. Although the two had also engaged in a fierce battle within the Banquet, they were not injured.

Jin-Seo, powered by Ha-Yeon's blessing, almost overwhelmed the demon that formed from the body of the director from the Northern Crusader Order. Jin-Seo was rather regretful that she wasn’t able to completely exterminate the demon and thought it was unfortunate that they had left the Banquet.

At that moment, two people approached the three of them. They were Sung Yu-Da and Kim Chang-Won. They seemed to be looking for something. Upon seeing Jin-Seo and Ha-Yeon, they opened their eyes widely and rushed toward them.

Seeing Jin-Seo in good condition, Chang-Won exclaimed, "Jin-Seo!"

He asked Jin-Seo if she was hurt, about what had happened inside, and various other questions filled with concern. Jin-Seo answered each question one by one. The long interrogation ended with Chang-Won stating that it was a relief that Jin-Seo was unharmed.

On the other hand, the atmosphere between Sung Yu-Da and Ha-Yeon was a bit chilly.

"I'm fine," Ha-Yeon said curtly.

“That’s a relief,” Sung Yu-Da replied.

They didn't bother to engage in a lengthy conversation. Sung Yu-Da's question of whether Ha-Yeon was okay was met with a brief "I'm fine" from Ha-Yeon. The conversation between the father and daughter was so dry that it was hard to believe they were family.

However, that didn’t mean that Sung Yu-Da was not concerned about Ha-Yeon. Sung Yu-Da trembled as he looked at her daughter. Tears welled up in his eyes as if they could fall at any moment. Joseph believed that even though Sung Yu-Da didn't show it, his worry for his daughter was probably the same as Chang-Won's.

He felt a strange sense of melancholy as he watched the father and daughter having a conversation. Joseph also had a daughter. It had been several years since he last saw her, so he could hardly remember his daughter’s face.

"..."

Joseph silently stared at them and then called the nearby priesthood and hospital in order to handle the deceased and treat the injured.

Sung Yu-Da approached Joseph.

"Inquisitor Joseph, can you explain what happened inside?"

"As you may already know, during the award ceremony, a Satanist executive named Lust appeared. The damage is as you can see."

"Executive?" Sung Yu-Da repeated Joseph's words and tilted his head.

He recalled the black substance that had surrounded the cathedral. It was clearly created by black magic, but its potency was much too weak to be considered an executive’s black magic.

If his hastily casted blessing of purification had been powerful enough to create a gap in that substance, then its potency must have been similar in strength to the black magic of an ordinary Satanist and not an executive.

Above all, the number of injured clergymen was too small.

Sung Yu-Da had once battled the Satanist executive named Greed long ago. At the time, the damage had been so severe that an entire village completely disappeared. Even considering that Joseph was present at the scene, the damage was too minor for a Satanist executive to have appeared. That was not the only thing that Sung Yu-Da was confused about.

"Did you not see Sun-Woo?"

Sun-Woo had entered the cathedral together with them, but he suddenly went missing. Upon hearing his question, everyone looked at Sung Yu-Da.

However, there were only corpses and clergymen groaning in pain within the cathedral. There were no signs of Sun-Woo.

***

Just before Joseph was about to kill him, he used a different black magic spell to narrowly escape death. The black magic spell was named Sheepfold, and it was a technique that trapped oneself in a space that resembled a black egg.

Inside the spell, the man pounded the ground and lamented.

"Damn it, damn it...!"

It was strange. Surely, there was no one superior to him among the clergymen. In his view, Joseph was an infinitely inferior being compared to himself. Yet, he almost met his end at the hands of such an inferior being. He could not accept that fact.

Then, the man felt a presence. There was a strange being wandering around in the Sheepfold where no one except himself, demons, and demonic beasts could enter.

The man looked up. A boy with a young face was approaching him. His face seemed familiar for some reason.

"..."

He wondered where he had seen that face before, and then he remembered the photo that Jun-Hyuk had shown him. It was one of the two people whom Jun-Hyuk had warned not to touch. He didn’t know when he had seen the boy in the photo, but when he saw him in person, the boy's gaze felt a bit unsettling.

He didn’t know how the boy had entered the Sheepfold. A normal Romanican clergyman would not be able to touch the demonic energy surrounding the Sheepfold, let alone enter it, as the energy surrounding the Sheepfold would melt away one's flesh just by touching it.

He must have made a mistake while casting the black magic spell and the boy had been able to enter the Sheepfold as a result.

"You must be quite unlucky. How pitiful," the man said with a smirk as he looked at the boy.

In this dire situation, he didn’t have the leisure to keep his promise to Jun-Hyuk. He got up and approached the boy, wanting to vent his anger.

"There is no one here to help you. This space was created only for me."

At that moment, without even listening to the man's words, the boy said, "Bossou."

Chills instantly ran down the man's body.

From the boy's seemingly ordinary body, there seemed to be an incomprehensible sense of superiority.

Splurt!

In the blink of an eye, the boy's hand pierced the man's heart. The man held his pierced chest and looked at the boy holding his heart in his hand.

His heart was still beating. The boy looked at the extracted heart and said with a somewhat displeased expression, "Hmm... about 0.3 of Jun-Hyuk."

"What?"

"No, never mind..."

Boom!

The boy clenched his fist, and the man’s weakly beating heart finally burst. Despair filled the man's eyes.

The boy continued, "You’re not on the same level as Jun-Hyuk."

Sun-Woo looked at the man who had collapsed on the ground. He realized that the man wasn't a Satanist executive. He was just a Satanist imitating an executive.

"The real executive..." Sun-Woo mumbled and raised his head.

Up in the pitch-black sky, two giant eyes curiously gazed down at Sun-Woo.