Chapter 21 - Battle Behind the Orphanage ①
The priest went to the backyard to investigate after hearing a sound like someone repeatedly pounding on the door.
Since many of his comrades had been dispatched to purify the Revenants that appeared in the east, there were only five people in the church, including the Archbishop.
The sound came from the door on the path leading down from the church's backyard to the communal cemetery, which was barred after sunset. Since the townspeople knew this, it was unlikely that anyone would be coming or going. He told his colleagues he was going to check and went out with a lantern.
The sound of pounding on the door was irregular, as if someone were striking it with brute force. Feeling suspicious, he decided not to unbar the door and instead tried to peek outside through a small window. Since a bonfire was lit above the door tonight, he should have been able to see outside.
Suddenly, a hand thrust through the small window. At the same time, a stench of rot wafted in.
The fingers thrust inside were a color that could not possibly belong to a living human, and the nails had peeled off. That hand gripped the opening and began to shake the door, as if intending to tear it off.
The priest reflexively fell onto his backside, but he managed to regain his grip on the lantern, climbed the stairs of the nearby breastwork, and looked at the situation on the other side of the door. There, he was horrified to see a swarm of Revenants trying to break down the door. He ran through the backyard, tripping several times, and fled back to the church.
At the church, they divided the tasks to take countermeasures. First, they had to prevent an intrusion. Just in case, the three priests remaining in the church who could use purification magic were sent to the back gate. This was to build a barricade so the door wouldn't be broken. They also had to notify the town guard and the orphanage that stood adjacent to the backyard. The remaining two were the Archbishop and his secretary, and those two split up to spread the word of the situation.
In the church's backyard, the three priests began building a barricade in front of the door to the stairs leading to the communal cemetery. They blocked the door with a cart loaded with a large amount of firewood they had prepared for emergencies and drove several stakes around it so it wouldn't be pushed in. The door was already on the verge of being destroyed, but they managed to finish just before the Revenants could invade. The wall surrounding the backyard also served as the town wall. Its height and thickness were sufficient. They thought that as long as the door was blocked, they would manage somehow.
Once enough stakes had been driven in, one priest took a lantern and moved it repeatedly in a large circle. As if in response, a small light moved in a circle in a second-story window of the church.
"The Archbishop has been informed. With this, all the doors of the church will be barred. We shall defeat as many Revenants as we can here."
The Archbishop had given instructions to flee toward the orphanage without overextending themselves once the gate was blocked, but they too were priests who could use purification magic. They intended to be as useful as possible to protect the town and the church. Above all, the Archbishop could not use magic to purify Revenants. In fact, he couldn't even use [Holy], which could at least deal damage. If he were attacked by Revenants, he wouldn't stand a chance. For their part, they wanted the Archbishop himself to flee.
The three priests gathered in one spot, knelt, and prayed to the Goddess, the object of their faith, for the safety of the Archbishop and the town.
"Let's defeat them one by one using purification magic. With the three of us, we should be able to take down fifty or sixty of them."
The other two nodded at the voice of the priest with the lantern, who was likely the eldest. One of them then climbed the stone steps to the west of the door.
The stairs leading to the communal cemetery were built along a cliff, but they ended abruptly in front of the door. Beyond that, it was a sheer drop, and anyone who climbed up would face an outer wall that turned at a right angle at a distance no ordinary human could possibly leap across. It was a mechanism designed to attack intruders trying to enter through the door with magic or arrows.
From atop the stone steps the priest had climbed, he could see the Revenants swarming in front of the door. Occasionally, an individual pushed out from the crowd would fall, but a Revenant wouldn't stop moving just from falling from a height of about three stories. They would likely be in a state where some part of them was incapacitated compared to before they fell, but they would surely climb back up.
The priest thrust his right hand toward the Revenants, finished his incantation, and released the purification magic. Three Revenants were enveloped in light and crumbled away. This was because the purification was complete. Seeing that his magic was fully effective, the priest's face lit up with joy, and he proceeded to purify them a second and third time. Meanwhile, the remaining two built two large bonfires to illuminate the area so the status of the door could be seen from the church.
When the priest atop the outer wall completed his sixth purification, he saw several Revenants climbing up, pushing the others aside. To his surprise, those Revenants were armed. Bones were exposed in various places, and decayed flesh clung to them, but perhaps because they were relatively fresh individuals, the meat felt somewhat raw. They were likely the corpses of soldiers who died in the previous war. Soldiers whose identities were unknown had been buried together in one place out of necessity. Perhaps because they were buried deep enough, they hadn't completely turned into skeletons.
"There are armed soldier Revenants!"
The priest atop the outer wall shouted toward the two priests standing before the barricade illuminated by the bonfires, and then purified two more.
Seeing an armed Revenant about to throw an axe, he managed to purify that individual. Before he could breathe a sigh of relief, an arrow flew with a sharp sound and pierced his left shoulder. The two in front of the barricade rushed to the middle of the stone steps, dragged the fallen priest down, and pulled out the arrow.
The barricade was gradually being destroyed by the Revenants with axes.
"At any rate, let's do something about the ones with bows and arrows," said the priest who had signaled the church with the lantern.
Magic cannot compete with bows and arrows. The range and rate of fire are different. Furthermore, a fired arrow was overwhelmingly faster than a released spell. In a forest with many obstacles or a chaotic melee where friend and foe were mixed, it might be different, but to counter a group of archers on a battlefield, one had to either keep protecting with arrow-warding magic or strike first with offensive magic of overwhelming destructive power that surpassed even high-level spells. Naturally, only a handful of people could use such magic. At the very least, they could not.
The other priest told them to wait a moment and brought a single plank he had intended to use as material for the barricade. Since the door had been broken, it was now useless.
"Let's use this as a shield. I'll take this and act as a decoy, so aim for the ones with bows."
As soon as he said that, the priest whose shoulder had been pierced snatched the plank and suddenly stood up.
"I'll be the decoy, so you two do it."
An arrow flew immediately.
The remaining two took aim from the shadow of the breastwork and released magic in quick succession. The moment the two's magical power was exhausted was almost the same moment the priest holding the plank was pierced by several arrows that had penetrated the wood, finally ending his life. The priest who acted as a decoy with the plank fell down the cliff without a sound. However, his sacrifice was rewarded by the fact that they had defeated at least all those carrying bows and arrows.
The remaining two fled toward the orphanage.