Chapter 57: The Perfect Ambush
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The team leader of the Cleaners stopped examining the corpse as he heard the news.
He stood up and turned around to face the holy knight who appeared all of a sudden. He drew his brows together.
"What happened? Did the bishop send you here?" He questioned.
"That’s right. The bishop sent me to look for your troop. The bishop requested for your immediate return to the Church." The holy knight who appeared out of thin air spoke as she took off her helmet.
Behind the helmet was a lady with short black hair.
Under normal circumstances, Benjamin would be surprised to learn that there was a female member among the holy knights. He was not in the right mind to pay attention to that as he was tired and injured.
Although he did not know what had happened, the presence of the female holy knight and her delivery of message from the Church were very much good news to Benjamin as all the Cleaners’ attention was diverted away.
Benjamin found a leeway to distract the Cleaners’ suspicion and had more time to plan his next moves.
It definitely got him out of a jam.
He took this opportunity to recompose his mind and calm himself down.
He was very grateful to the female holy knight even though he did not know her name. Benjamin would love to worship her like Buddha if the she would be able to distract the Cleaners away from examining the face scarred man’s corpse.
"What happened, Christine?" One of the Cleaners asked.
The female knight held her helmet, walked towards the troop and sternly said, "The people from the Silent Academy had struck the Church again. This time they teamed up with that witch to attack the Church!"
"What!" Everyone was in shock.
What the heck?
Even Benjamin’s jaw dropped upon hearing such news. Did she say that the Church and the mages were fighting against each other? All of this was too sudden because even though the people from the Silent Academy and Michelle were rampant in their misdeeds, they would always do so in the dark and avoid the Church’s attention. It was impossible that they would attack the Church.
Benjamin believed that Michelle would not do something like this.
Since Michelle was ruled out as the culprit of the attack...... Could it be the Silent Academy? Did they finally produce enough mages to go against the Church after so many years of cultivation of strength?
Was this possible? Benjamin had seen their act on the "Introduction to Magic" and even met two of their stupid mages and he concluded that the Silent Academy could not possess such talent.
Benjamin was still in disbelief.
What did they think they were doing?
They actually attacked the St. Peter’s Church? Had they gone mad? There were rules for causing chaos like this!
Benjamin was very shocked upon hearing this news, and it was even more so of a total bombshell for the Cleaners. They looked at each other, at a loss for words.
The leader of the Cleaners regained his composure quickly after hitting the panic button.
"Everybody calm down, I will use God’s eye to get in touch with the Bishop to understand the situation better." He told the Cleaners while reaching his hands into his helmet as if he was going to take something out of the helmet.
Benjamin felt that the situation did not seem right.
The God’s eye?
Was it some kind of a long distance communication device invented by the Church?
Why would the bishop sent a holy knight to search for the Cleaners If the Church possessed such a device? Couldn’t the bishop just contact the Cleaners via the God’s eye? Sending the holy knights seemed to be unnecessary in this case.
Unusual. This whole encounter, from the beginning until the end, felt unusual.
Judging by the looks of the Cleaners, they seemed to recognise the female holy knight. They did not doubt the authenticity of the news as well. As a mage himself, he would understand the line of thoughts of other mages and came to the conclusion that it was impossible for the Church to be attacked by the Silent Academy.
What a joke! If the mages really did attack the Church, the storyline of this novel would come to a quick end after a few more chapters!
As he thought about the unusualness, his attention turned to the female holy knight who came with the news. He was surprised that the lady returned his gaze. Her expression seemed weird. It was as if she was trying to hint to him something. Her golden eyes’ gaze was as sharp as an owl’s.
Her gaze felt familiar somehow.
Golden...... eyes?
Benjamin had a lightbulb moment and had a very crazy theory in his mind!
Benjamin looked at her again and decided to change his mind. This theory was not crazy at all. In fact, it was the only accurate and logical explanation.
This female holy knight was actually Michelle.
Did Michelle... come to save him?
Realizing from Benjamin’s shocked expression that he had found out who she was, the holy knight---- or Michelle grinned at him. She shook her cuffs to reveal two hidden daggers while approaching two of the Cleaners from behind.
None of the Cleaners paid any attention to her as everyone was focusing on the God’s eye. She was just like an assassin who walked under broad daylight --- Nobody would expect an assassin during broad daylight as an assassin only lurked in the dark.
She placed both her hands onto two of the Cleaners’ shoulder like a concerned comrade and swiftly sliced their throat with the daggers.
Fresh blood spewed out of their throat as they collapsed.
"What are you doing, Christine!" The leader of the Cleaners was the only one who witnessed the murder and immediately paused with the God’s eye. The rest were facing away from Michelle. They turned back horrifyingly after hearing a groan as the corpses fell onto the ground.
They obviously could not comprehend what just happened but they did learn that two of their comrades had just died. They immediately pulled out their swords out of reflex and the swords started glowing with holy light as the Cleaners pointed their swords at Michelle.
However, there came a soft, low voice chanting a spell that caused the Cleaners to turn their back against their own will.
They quickly directed their attention at the knife scarred man’s dead body.
They saw Benjamin holding an ice needle and it was held against the leader of the cleaner’s neck. The leader of the cleaner had already been frozen in ice. He was paused in action while he was unsheathing his sword and could not move at all, as if he was a corpse in the chiller room.
While the Cleaners were distracted by Michelle’s ambush, Benjamin took the opportunity to summon the ice needle and assassinate the leader of the Cleaners.
He snatched the God’s eye from the leader of the cleaner’s while killing him. The God’s eye was a silver bead that emanated divine charm.
Benjamin turned to look at Michelle and had eye contact with her. He destroyed the God’s eye without any hesitation.
"No!" A few Cleaners bellowed in response to either, grief over the leader’s tragic death or the disrupted communication with the Church.
Three Cleaners, including the team leader were killed as quickly as a flash with team effort from both Michelle and Benjamin.
This surprise attack was just getting started.
While everyone was paying attention to Benjamin, Michelle threw away her daggers and sprinted to one of the Cleaners and attempted to strike him down from behind with her blessing sword.
The Cleaner could only evade her attacks as he was not prepared to retaliate. The sword managed to cut the armor instead of splitting his unshielded head into half.
A holy light emitted brightly as the sword and armor came clased into each other!
The collision of metals caused a piercing loud noise.
The sword Michelle was holding was broken into half and the broken half flew a great distance away whereas the Cleaner’s armor had a hole.
The Cleaner collected himself and howled frighteningly. He pulled out his swords and sought to cut Michelle into half!
Michelle swiftly evaded his attack and rammed into the Cleaner. Then, she stabbed the Cleaner through the hole of the broken armor with her broken sword.
A very loud scream was heard.
Michelle released the sword from her hand and quickly backed off in order to create distance from the Cleaners that were rushing towards her. The Cleaner who Michelle attacked stared at Michelle in shock as he clutched onto his broken armor.
After a while, he fell to the ground.
Each noise that came from the Cleaners’ armor hitting against the floor signified the victory to Michelle and Benjamin’s team work.
The whole incident from Michelle assassinating two of the Cleaners to Benjamin killing the cleaner’s team leader with his ice needle and then destroying the God’s eye to Michelle killing another cleaner with the sword happened as quick as lightning. The whole process took no more than twenty seconds.
The remaining Cleaners could not manage to save their comrades, who were killed by Michelle.
The Cleaners were not able to respond to all these lies, ambush, betrayal and death in this short amount of time.
However, no one could blame them as the synergy between Michelle and Benjamin were like long term partners even though they had only team up for the first time. These two took advantage of the cleaner’s distraction and ambushed them repetitively. They were helpless against these two.
However, they were more than capable to recover from this chaos within twenty seconds.
After all, they were the Cleaners, the Church’s elites and a mage’s worst nightmare. Due to their long term training they were able to strike back cohesively even though they had lost their leader.
The remaining Cleaners ignored Michelle and attacked Benjamin all at once.