Remesia.
The true name of the god of Repose. And the name the “hierarch” used as a cover.
I looked at Tarsha.
And there, behind her usually warm golden eyes, I found something entirely different.
‘Ah...’
My mind went cold, every thought swept clean away. But thanks to the countless bizarre crises I had survived, my instincts moved faster than fear. I managed the one action that mattered: I threw myself sharply backward, tearing open the distance, and shouted at once:
“Parco! Sanity!”
But no answer came.
Had Parco frozen from shock too?
No—I understood the answer before I even turned my head.
Parco was staring at me with vacant eyes.
“I don’t want... to do this. I don’t want to. Why do you always... make me...”
His body sagged. Trembling lips, convulsions running through his whole frame. Nothing remained of his ever-reliable cheerful smile and gestures. The gaze of a dying man already standing at death’s threshold.
Honestly, that shocked me even more than what had happened to Tarsha. Parco had taken Sanity countless times while treating people. His resistance to mental control should have been higher than anyone’s, so why...
“Gu, Gunther...”
Only Blanc remained.
She was looking right at me. Her huge golden eyes were full of terror, trembling feverishly.
For a moment, suspicion clawed into the back of my skull.
Tarsha and Parco had both been fine, then changed in an instant.
So Blanc too...?
No.
There was no time to hesitate.
I trusted my instincts.
“Blanc, to me!”
The moment I held out my hand, Blanc grabbed it without delay. I felt her warmth.
Crash!
At that same instant, the window shattered into pieces, and a massive shadow burst inside.
Wuuuuun!
<Seren Mayra>.
The autonomous shield.
It began spinning, cutting us off from Parco and Tarsha. I could never have imagined things unfolding like this. My breath caught.
In the mirrored surface of the shield, my comrades had become strangers.
Parco was still half-conscious, muttering to himself, while Tarsha silently watched us with unconcealed interest.
That gaze.
It was too much like the way a child ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) looks at an ant crawling across the floor.
‘No more...’
There was no more time.
Scooping Blanc up with me, I practically launched us out of the room. Neither Parco nor Tarsha tried to stop us.
We had barely run a few steps before Blanc started bombarding me with frantic questions.
“W-what’s happening?! Did they get hit with Brainwashing?! When? How?!”
“I don’t know. First we get out of here, then we think.”
“G-get out? Where? What about Parco and Tarsha?!”
I looked at Blanc.
In battle, she was always mature beyond her years, but whenever her friends were in danger, she unfailingly lost her composure. Even now, the fear of losing her comrades was literally locking up her movements.
So there was only one thing I could do for her.
“We’re going to save them. Trust me.”
Amazingly, that single sentence was enough.
Blanc’s ragged breathing gradually began to steady.
“...Let go. I’ll run on my own. I’m faster.”
“Glad to hear it.”
And we tore through the corridors of the inner castle.
“......”
Silence.
But that silence itself was suspicious.
A huge commotion had just erupted—why was no one coming? Just a short while ago, knights and soldiers had been everywhere, keeping watch on us.
Wuuuuun.
Reflexively, I spread my perception in every direction. Dense mana seeped through the walls and ceiling... only to slam into heavy resistance.
It felt like touching thick mud.
Mana with a value exceeding 60 couldn’t pierce through and scattered uselessly. If Blanc hadn’t been looking at me, my face would have twisted with frustration.
“Gunther! Where are we running?”
“For now, out of the inner castle. We’ll hide in the manor where there are lots of people.”
“O-okay.”
My thoughts raced.
Tarsha... no, Remesia, had exposed herself.
Why?
What reason?
The answer came on its own.
‘Because she’s certain of total victory...’
At the very least, this castle was already entirely in her hands.
‘But how the hell?’
The questions multiplied one after another.
‘Does the Repose cult’s Brainwashing even work like this? Normally victims just lose their minds and move like puppets.’
If not, then this was a completely broken ability.
The Repose cult’s Brainwashing was usually mass-scale and fast. The price for its lack of strict conditions was the inability to perform delicate, precise control.
But the Tarsha and Parco I had just seen looked exactly like Morphesia’s mimics.
Every emotion, every intonation, every movement—everything remained unchanged.
This phenomenon was completely outside game logic.
What variable had entered the equation?
And on top of that, why was Blanc fine unlike the others?
Why hadn’t Sanity worked...
Smack!
The sharp pain of slapping myself across the face drove the confusion from my thoughts.
Now was not the time to cling to questions with no answers—that was the road to defeat.
I had to decide quickly what to do and move.
One thing was certain.
‘Rem is dead too.’
Surely she had been eliminated first—either by traitors or by those under Brainwashing.
If Rem had died, then all information about me and the squad had gone directly to the main body.
That was why this bastard had been able to imitate Tarsha so flawlessly.
That meant there was nothing left to gain inside the inner castle.
We had to leave immediately.
“Gunther! Over here!”
Blanc and I turned our heads at the same time.
Servan was peeking out from a half-open door. His face was deathly pale as he desperately waved us over.
“There’s a secret passage only the direct heirs know about. Hurry!”
Blanc moved in relief toward him, but I caught her by the scruff of the neck in an iron grip.
“Servan calls me Sir Moonless.”
“H-hiiik!”
Without looking back, I sprinted away.
Behind us, sharp mocking laughter stabbed into the corridor.
“A-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
I didn’t know everything about Brainwashing, but one thing was common knowledge: it easily infected those whose spirits were vulnerable.
Servan, shattered by grief over his sister’s death, was the perfect target.
‘Head Kylis too, then...’
Ah.
The moment that thought fully landed, I froze involuntarily.
Slowly turning my head, I looked at Blanc.
“W-what is it, Gunther?! I’m scared!”
“Blanc. Listen to me carefully.”
Apparently she heard the full seriousness in my voice, because she immediately straightened.
“Yes. Tell me.”
“Do one thing for me.”
A deep breath.
“It’ll be hard, and you may not understand why, but you absolutely must do it.”
Blanc nodded slowly.
***
Gunther escaped the castle alone and headed straight for the residential quarters of the manor.
Under the influence of every stimulant and buff stacked on him, his body shot forward like a bolt of lightning.
Soon the boundaries of the Barkel manor came into view—the center of House Barkel’s lands.
A vast residential zone where homes, farms, stables, and market rows all blended together.
The place where the largest crowds in this region gathered.
“......”
And the scene unfolding there was exactly what I had expected.
“This way, please.”
“Over here, please.”
Soldiers and knights with anxious faces were leading the residents deeper inside one by one.
Gunther recalled that Kylis had previously redeployed troops for the “blockade” of the territory.
Now it was clear that the same thing had been happening everywhere.
The purpose of the gathering was obvious.
The forms differed, but the principle was the same.
If the Cult of Abundance offered flesh to its god, then the Cult of Repose took the mind.
‘Because Brainwashing is strengthened by brainwashing others.’
Right now, control was concentrated on the family leadership and those with power.
All that remained was to complete the process by using the ordinary residents.
A slaughterhouse for the spirit was being built.
Wuuuuun!
Beyond the manor’s outer walls, the black barrier began blooming open again.
Only belatedly did Gunther realize that his status window had not displayed a single message for some time now.
No tips.
No warnings.
No support from the three gods.
That meant that despite his high resistance to status effects, the Brainwashing had already begun reaching his perception.
‘Still, it would be strange if they didn’t target me.’
Yet there was no trace of confusion left on Gunther’s face.
The situation was already irreparably ruined, and there was only one way to fix it.
He had reached that conclusion, and from that moment onward an icy calm settled in his heart.
Now that I’m prepared to die, all that remains is to follow the plan I already decided on.
Grab as much as possible and carry it into the next life.
The only comforting thing was that the hierarch of Repose, for some reason, was not targeting Gunther directly just yet.
‘Probably because the full takeover of the manor isn’t complete.’
There was almost no time left.
In that sliver of time, he needed to gather as much information as possible.
The locations of the Brainwashing magic circles.
The hidden followers of Repose concealed in the manor.
The route by which the hierarch completed control.
The speed and radius of Brainwashing spread...
As always, he needed to probe the enemy’s strength.
Gunther’s gaze, sweeping over the surroundings, turned frighteningly cold.
...Yes, as I expected, but the board has been played with terrifying precision.
‘This problem can’t be solved just by running around.’
The “best method” surfaced instantly in his mind.
Or rather, he wasn’t sure it was the best.
It was simply the best he was capable of right now.
But he had to do it.
Gunther drew in a deep breath.
He distinctly felt mana rise all the way to his vocal cords.
And he shouted:
“EVERYONE, LISTEN!!!”
The eyes of the entire manor turned toward Gunther at once.
Those who had not yet fallen under Brainwashing.
The remaining soldiers, the knights, and above all the ordinary residents.
Those at the bottom of the hierarch’s priority list...
The weak.
Gunther roared at them with everything he had:
“House Barkel has fallen before the Cult of Repose! If you follow them, you’ll lose your minds and stop being yourselves! You’ll become the kind of people who hurt your own loved ones with your own hands!”
At this blatant act of sabotage, the hostility of those already brainwashed surged sharply.
Fast approaching footsteps could already be heard.
But in that crowd, exactly what he needed appeared.
The desperate eyes of people ready to seize even a straw of hope.
It was only natural.
Any sane person understood the situation was abnormal.
But alone, no one would dare act.
Herd instinct.
The pressure of armed soldiers.
Invisible fear.
But if someone broke the dam...
If someone pushed them...
They could move.
Gunther shouted, hoping his voice would reach even the outermost edges.
“Come with me! If you don’t have the strength to fight, I’ll protect you!”
He bellowed as though spitting out his own blood.
“So just take one step! One step toward me!”
Gunther believed.
Believed that human beings, by nature, longed for freedom and feared losing themselves more than anything.
Even with swords and spears ahead, courage still lived in people—the courage to step forward.
Clink.
The enthralled warriors had already surrounded Gunther.
There were many of them.
Even under Brainwashing, knights and soldiers instinctively formed battle formations.
Reinforcements were converging from every direction.
He had been identified as a “danger factor.”
At the moment Gunther’s hand tightened harder around the sword hilt...
Step.
At first, it was a tiny sound.
A small boy broke away from the formation and hesitantly moved toward Gunther.
Step-step!
The child’s doubtful footsteps grew faster and faster until he broke into a run.
And behind him came the thunder of thousands of feet.
Like a tsunami, the human tide began to move, and the manor shook.
The movements of those under Brainwashing froze.
They could not kill the residents.
Those people were precious offerings to their god.
In that chaos, Gunther clenched his fist tight.
He couldn’t see it, but he had no doubt the following lines had appeared in the air:
[Class effect “Commander” activated]
[The transcendent Charisma stat seizes the will of the crowd]
[The number of commanded targets has increased drastically. Additional stat bonuses are applied]
[Lead the impossible battle to victory]
Gunther raised his sword.
It was a declaration of intent—to protect the weak and stand against evil.
On this land where the knights had vanished, someone had to take their place.
.
.
.
“Hm-m.”
Remesia scratched her forehead.
“I’ll be taking this one with me.”
