Chapter 78 Evil-Favored Knight

The pink radiance slowly dimmed.

Scattered magical particles broke apart into points of light and faded from the air.

Ingram looked away from the two figures frozen by [Hold Person].

Neither Xia Nan nor Alton possessed a class level.

Without the physical enhancement that came with one, if they had failed to resist the spell at the moment it took hold, breaking free again in a short period of time would be extremely difficult.

Ingram no longer paid them any attention.

Blood and scraps of flesh clung to his fingers.

He did not seem to notice.

He crouched beside the ritual array, took the cemetery keeper’s severed head in both hands, and carefully placed it at the top of the waiting skeleton.

Exactly where the skull belonged.

The old man had never been a necromancer.

The ritual book Ingram had given him had contained no real spells either.

He had only been an ordinary person.

One strike from the mace had killed him.

The guards escorting him had taken a little more effort.

Still, compared with Ingram, who was already standing on the threshold of gaining a class, they had been far too weak.

Two blows?

Three?

He could not remember.

It hardly mattered.

Whoosh…

A breeze stirred the fallen leaves.

The flesh covering the cemetery keeper’s head began to collapse.

Skin and muscle melted away like mud dissolving into water.

The bones beneath trembled.

An invisible force seemed to be gathering above the ritual array, building pressure, trying to pull the scattered skeleton together.

“Don’t rush,” Ingram murmured.

His blood-slick hand closed around the iron haft of the flanged mace at his waist.

Crack-splat!

The weapon tore through the air.

The mace struck Tim’s head.

Flesh and bone burst apart like smashed fruit.

The completely undead Tim, already stripped of consciousness, fell backward.

His shoulders ended in an empty stump.

Ingram’s expression did not change.

If anything, a trace of disgust appeared in the depths of his eyes.

Someone who gambled with his family’s safety and his own future…

Someone who ignored an obvious, enormous danger because of one pathetic shred of hope…

Someone who willingly stepped into a whirlpool he knew could swallow him whole…

Such a person did not deserve sympathy.

Just thinking that he had once shared the same air with people like that made Ingram feel sick.

“I hope there are fewer people like that in Mengzhong City.”

Golden divine radiance surged across his palm.

Squelch!

His glowing fingers pressed into Tim’s back.

Under the power of the Sun God, the undead-corrupted flesh hissed and eroded away.

Ingram pushed deeper without hesitation.

The thick muscles in his forearm tightened.

Then he pulled.

Hard.

Creak!

The sickening sound of bone separating from flesh echoed through the trees.

Blood splashed across Ingram’s handsome, sharply defined face.

In his right hand…

He held Tim’s entire spine.

A drop of blood slid down his cheek and made the skin itch.

Ingram instinctively wiped at it with his free hand.

All he accomplished was smearing half his face red.

He did not care.

He crouched again.

Using the human skeleton as his guide, he placed the vertebrae vertically down the center of the ritual array.

The shape was almost complete.

The air changed.

The wind around the clearing suddenly grew stronger.

The bleached bones lying on the ground began to shake violently.

“Just one more piece.”

Ingram straightened.

Then his gaze drifted, almost against his will, toward the skeleton’s right hand.

It was noticeably smaller than an ordinary person’s.

Slimmer.

Almost two sizes too small.

One final step remained before everything he had planned came together.

And for a moment, scattered thoughts and broken images rose through his mind.

A garbage-strewn alley.

A broad, towering figure deliberately shoulder-checking a destitute drunkard to the ground, leaving several pages of a leather book behind.

An inn room glowing with lamplight.

A man in a sheriff’s uniform rushing past with several guards while, in the roadside shadows, a vaguely human silhouette writhed with the aura of undeath.

A broad, gloomy cemetery.

A blond man gently setting a leather-bound book and a bone whistle on the steps outside a small cottage…

And then that night.

Rain pounding from the sky.

Thunder rolling overhead.

A crude tent covered in patches.

Ingram standing in front of it with a cold one-handed hammer clenched in his fist.

“Joey…”

His gaze went still.

For the first time since he had entered the clearing, something complicated crossed his otherwise emotionless face.

It vanished quickly.

But he remembered.

He remembered tearing aside the rag that served as the tent flap.

He remembered Joey’s terrified, bloodless face.

The small, thin body trembling uncontrollably in the cold.

“Lord, forgive me.”

Ingram had been quick.

Clean.

Joey should not have suffered much.

“I hope you’re born into a good family in your next life.”

“Don’t be like you were in this one, when even filling your stomach was a problem.”

“And don’t become like me…”

The twisted skeleton assembled from pieces of different people shook more violently.

Ingram straightened.

Then he turned toward the edge of the clearing.

Toward the small figure wrapped in pink light.

The Halfling.

A heretic.

The pages Ingram had torn from the leather book had stated the condition clearly.

The more devout the heretic’s faith, the stronger the ritual’s effect.

When Ingram had first met the little fellow two days earlier, he had paid Alton almost no attention.

He certainly had not considered him a target.

After all, Halflings had a rather unusual way of getting along with their deities.

“Devout” was not usually the first word that came to mind.

But Alton worshipped the Goddess of Luck, Tymora.

And according to the scene described by Ingram’s informant at the Bagful of Gold, this Halfling was clearly no ordinary believer.

“Then it can’t be helped.”

Ingram drew the dagger from his waist.

He lifted it slightly.

Aimed at Alton’s soft, vulnerable neck.

The skeleton was complete.

The ritual needed only one final step.

Fill the symbols carved into the array with the blood of a heretic.

Then the plan Ingram had prepared for so long would finally be complete.

[Divine Smite].

[Divine Sense].

And [Swarm Proliferation], which he had discovered beneath a cultist’s bed two years ago.

Those three combat techniques and skills, together with the final requirement:

“Plan an undead sacrificial ritual and personally kill the summoned creature.”

Once all of it was done, he would gain a class level.

He would finally become a true class holder.

A variant of the Paladin class.

[Evil-Favored Knight]

Truthfully, Ingram knew very little about the class itself.

If the priest at the church had not generously told him part of what he knew after Ingram turned over [Swarm Proliferation], Ingram would never even have heard of that particular Paladin variant.

And even after learning how to qualify for it, Ingram had not intended to pursue the class.

The Paladin had a clear advancement path and broad practical value.

The Evil-Favored Knight did not.

Its future path was much harder to find.

Then came the promise.

That night, the priest had spoken to him about Mengzhong City.

If Ingram successfully obtained the class, the priest would write him a letter of introduction.

With it, Ingram could leave this frontier town and take up a position in Mengzhong City.

And Mengzhong City was almost the closest place to the Lord on the entire Aifala Continent.

How could he refuse?

Cold metal pressed into his palm.

Ingram tightened his grip on the dagger.

The short blade swept toward Alton’s throat.

Then…

A faint sound came from beside him.

Small.

But unmistakable.

Ingram’s eyes shifted.

The black-haired young man on the other side of the clearing was still wrapped in the pink glow of [Hold Person].

Yet his body…

Was trembling.