Alpheos' lips trembled.
Even he, who usually dealt with situations by smiling, found it difficult to manage his expression.
'What? Ashes?'
His face twisted mercilessly at the boy's self-introduction.
"What the hell are you doing right now?"
Alpheos glared at Martinez, Ashes, with a growling voice.
Is he joking right now? Ashes? He should at least try to cover his eyes and pretend a little.
"Are you trying to antagonize someone from the same order now?"
"Same order? I don't understand what you mean. Do I look like someone from the order?"
"This isn't a joke. How many people in this city can handle such a vast divine power and sacred flame!""Well, the world is wide, and Tirna is a very large city, so such a person could exist."
"Is that so?"
Osian also chimed in, taking Martinez's side with a sneer.
Alpheos furrowed his brow and gave orders to the priests and paladins.
"Fine, if you want to hide your identity until the end, you can die nameless for all I care. Change formation. From now on, defend this passage as much as possible."
Alpheos decided to stage a siege in the large passage connecting the underground to the outside.
His sense, which was outstanding in battle, was telling him something.
The knight and paladin in front of him have no intention of retreating.
They will move forward even if it means burning their own bodies.
Then all that was left for Alpheos was to buy time until additional support arrived.
"You will never break through here. No, you'll die here before that."
"We'll see about that."
Osian equipped the Starlight sword in his right hand and Storm Shield in his left.
Martinez also held a massive golden mace made of sacred alchemy in his right hand and a huge golden cross in his left.
They were just two in number.
But their momentum was overwhelming the more than twenty priests and paladins.
Even the paladins who had prepared with devout hearts and resolve felt their lips parched and their mouths dry.
Have they ever been this tense before?
One of them was even spreading an enormous amount of sacred flame that only the order's top experts could handle.
'Could the headquarters have noticed this already...?'
It was natural for such anxious thoughts to plague their minds like a plague.
"Everyone get your act together!"
Alpheos shouted. He realized his subordinates were already shrinking.
"If they came from headquarters, they would have revealed their identity! The fact that they didn't means this is clearly a sudden, secret operation! Without those two, no one would know about this!"
"B-but..."
"Or do you want to go back to how things were before? Don't forget what we prepared ourselves for."
The paladins nodded with hardened faces at Alpheos' blazing gaze.
The priests lined up behind them were the same. Though weaker compared to the paladins, they were not unaware of the severity of the situation.
They knew the feeling of being cast aside. That's why, knowing it was inhumane, they still participated in this operation.
In the end, everyone here was an accomplice. There would be no distinction between who dies and who lives.
Live together, die together.
They had become an inevitable community of fate.
"How troublesome."
Osian muttered lightly while watching the enemy's resolute determination.
If they had pushed forward with this momentum, they could have easily swept them away, but now it was too late.
Like a cornered rat trying to bite a cat, their expressions became heavier and more solid than before.
'A twisted faith?'
No, what they were showing was no longer even faith.
They did this not for God or any reason, but simply to make themselves stronger.
But no matter how wrong their intentions and methods were, the power they possessed was real.
Until Martinez came to help, Osian couldn't easily break through their offensive.
'Different from the enemies I've fought so far.'
The enemies Osian had fought were a disorganized mob.
Most were gangs or groups, and at most, some soldiers might be considered slightly strong.
But the paladins were different.
Though individually weaker than Blood Brotherhood, Lupona or the creeping sisters, they moved with perfect coordination.
Weapons enhanced by sacred magic, bodies hardened by long training and divine power. Add to that the protection and support of priests, and Alpheos' systematic commands.
As if that wasn't troublesome enough, they were also receiving a 'choir' home buff that amplified divine power.
Strong individuals grouped together, creating a feeling like a massive mountain standing before him.
'And those eyes prepared to die.'
He had to admit it.
As a collective, Alpheos' paladin order had reached a certain realm.
'Paladins are originally strong in one-on-one duels, but gathered like this, even I would have a hard time.'
This was fundamentally a matter of compatibility.
It would have been easier if this were a single massive monster or a superhuman with this combined power.
Still, it wasn't completely hopeless because he had a reliable ally on his side.
As if reading his thoughts, Ashes turned to Osian and asked,
"Do you have a strategy? That..."
As Martinez pondered what to call him, Osian smiled and said,
"Call me Wandering Knight, young Ashes."
"...Wandering Knight. Is there a way to break through them?"
"A way to break through? It seems you want some brilliant strategy from me, but there's just one."
"What is it?"
"Direct confrontation."
It was not a joke in the slightest but Ashes read the sincerity in Wandering Knight's eyes and nodded.
"Hmm. That might be better. I haven't thought of anything else either."
Yeah. If you really wanted to compare, Martinez was from a similar school.
Some would even say he was more reckless than Osian, who thinks while solving cases.
In a way, they were a well-matched pair.
"Sometimes the simple is more certain than the complex. Now is that moment."
"Yes, I agree."
"Let's go then. Ashes."
"Yes. Wandering knight."
They stepped forward simultaneously.
Alpheos, entirely tense, shouted,
"They're coming! Prepare!"
As Alpheos shouted, he aimed his gun at Osian and Martinez.
Sacred slug rounds with holy water on the bullet surface and divine magic imbued the double-barreled shotgun.
It was a special ammunition that consumed significant time and divine power to create, typically avoided except against special enemies.
But Alpheos judged this was not the time to be conservative.
After holding the special rounds between his fingers, Alpheos indiscriminately fired at the approaching Osian and Martinez.
-Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
The process of shooting the shotgun, pumping, ejecting the cartridge, and reloading took less than a second, flowing like water.
The speed was so fast that the single-shot shotgun looked almost like a machine gun.
Alpheos' shooting skill was almost divine.
Even a strong warrior, or even an armored unit, would find it difficult to break through such an offensive.
But what Alpheos was facing now was not some 'moderate' strong warrior.
One was a knight handling ancient, now-lost powers.
The other was the paladin of the century, who had became the 13th Judge at a young age and could use all three [divine praises].
Swooosh!
The wind whirled. A wind impossible to appear in an underground, disconnected from the outside.
-Swoooosh.
With that wind, a golden field stretched from the underground passage to the passage where Alpheos stood.
"What is this...?"
The golden ears of wheat swayed. Yellow powder drifting in the wind beautifully embroidered the entire underground passage like fireflies.
The special rounds fired by Alpheos crossed the golden wheat field, turning into ordinary ammunition with their divine power depleted.
Unable to penetrate the greater divine power, the divine energy in the bullets had vanished.
Despite this, the kinetic energy in the bullets was not negligible, but at least Martinez and Osian were not people who would care about such things.
"Let's go."
With Martinez's mumble, the golden wheat field split left and right.
Crossing the wheat field was a knight wearing a snow-white armor with a snow-white sword in hand and a snow-white cape fluttering behind his back.
Streaming a gaze filled with starlight from the sky, Osian easily pierced through the bullet rain.
Bullets without divine power could never pierce the Starlight Armor.
As Osian approached in an instant, Alpheos felt a chill down his spine.
The pressure he hadn't felt when firing concentrated fire from a distance.
Simultaneously, some sentences from ancient texts suddenly flashed through his mind.
Why did the ancients say never to face a knight head-on?
Alpheos had thought this was a limitation and problem from a barbaric era without established combat systems.
But experiencing it directly, he realized that wasn't the case.
"Block!"
Alpheos gritted his teeth and shouted.
The moment the order fell, paladins stepped forward. They stood in front with shields as large as their own torsos. The shields interlocked without a gap, transforming into a wall.
Divine power imbued the shields, and a massive barrier-like shape appeared above them.
The paladins gritted their teeth. They were prepared that no one could break through, no matter who the opponent was.
Osian, now approaching, saw the barrier and instead increased his speed.
At that moment, the paladins' eyes widened in surprise, and Osian thrust his Starlight Sword.
It was an ultimate thrust focusing all strength on a single point.
Flickering starlight burned intensely and pierced the golden barrier.
-Kwaaaang!
With a massive impact, light exploded.
The golden field was swept by the shockwave, laying down before returning to its original state.
The paladins gritted their teeth and injected divine power into their shields. It felt like massive rocks were crushing them.
‘Retreat! Please retreat!’
Despite the paladins' wishes, Osian did not withdraw his thrust sword.
Although he would be feeling the same repulsive force, Osian pushed the Starlight Sword even deeper, as if nothing was wrong.
At this rate, an equally matched struggle would continue unless one side exhausted first.
But Osian had a reliable ally right now.
-Whoooosh.
Golden divine power was drifting in the field rode the wind like powder.
It drew a flow in the air, then began seeping into Osian's armor everywhere.
Amid the flickering and colliding light, some paladins clearly saw Martinez's divine power being added to Osian's Starlight Sword, burning even stronger.
-Flash.
The pure white starlight responded to the divine power.
The two powers did not push each other away. Instead, they mixed together, becoming stronger as if following the will of their masters.
Golden starlight descended in the order's underground, unnoticed by anyone.
The starlight was warm and beautiful, yet also ruthless and merciless.
-Crackle!
The barrier the paladins desperately tried to protect split helplessly in half under the starlight.
A path opened in a defense they thought would never be breached.
"S-stop!"
The priests lined up behind gritted their teeth and activated sacred magic.
What would have been impossible before was now possible, thanks to the 'choir's' blessing, allowing them to manifest more powerful sacred magic faster and more accurately.
Golden divine power began to rise on the path Osian had split, trying to create a new wall.
"Your turn."
Before Osian's words finished, a gray shadow burst from behind him.
Focused on Osian rushing at the forefront, they had forgotten the existence behind him.
Ashes, Martinez, swung his golden cross toward the sacred magic about to be completed.
-Kwaching!
With a clear sound, the divine power barrier shattered like glass.
Martinez didn't stop there and swung the mace in his right hand wide.
Though called a mace, its size was closer to a pillar more than three times larger than Martinez's own body.
As the massive mace swung, paladins were flung away with their shields.
The formation didn't just crack but completely collapsed.
Martinez leaped into the center and raised his sacred flames.
The Divine Judgment Discipline.
The Fire of Purification.
The apocalyptic fire that burns only sinners and evil consumed the paladins.