PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

Finishing off the sandwich in his hands, Desmond stretched his waist lazily and took another look out the window. The nine holy knights, followed by two dozen men, were already marching into the tower. Checking the countdown in the hunter’s book again, Desmond smiled bitterly. The countdown was drawing close, but with an army charging up the stairs in their direction, heading straight out of Serefia was no longer an option.

“It seems like a bad prank or something premeditated.”

Desmond commented quietly. As far as Katya’s future-seeing abilities were concerned, Desmond didn’t dare make assumptions.

“Is it that bad?” Concerned, Cecilia asked, believing Desmond wasn’t very optimistic about his chances of leaving this place alive.

Unexpectedly, Desmond shrugged nonchalantly and responded with a mocking tone. “For us, it doesn’t make much difference. In the end, I’ll just have to bury those nine idiots here.”

Cecilia still didn’t understand how Desmond proposed to deal with nine holy knights by himself. Still, the confidence in his words convinced Cecilia not to ask any more questions and to hope for the best.

The sound of armored boots hitting the stone floor echoed through the corridors of the otherwise abandoned tower, making everyone aware that the holy knights were fast approaching.

Desmond just put his sword away and looked at Kyuru. “Kyuru, I hope you can give me a hand. I’m still not good enough with the wind.”

.....

Kyuru was probably the one who understood Desmond the best besides Claire. She spent a lot of time around him and had seen him do more than one crazy thing. Watching as Desmond pulled a small device out of nowhere and related it to what he said earlier about turning this tower into a tomb, the face of the fairy became somewhat complicated.

“I guess we’ll go out the window.” Putting on a helpless expression, the fairy replied.

Desmond took Cecilia by her waist and, without any courtesy, scooped her up into his arms princess style before walking to the window frame and answering the faery with a bright smile. “Of course, we will go out the window. I don’t want to be buried with those idiots.”

Kyuru could only helplessly shake her cute little face. She pursed her lips in an adorable pout, not buying Desmond’s smile at all. As much as Kyuru loved Desmond, even she had to accept that the way Desmond talked about the death of others was quite disturbing.

Flapping her butterfly wings, Kyuru flew up to perch behind Desmond, hugging him and wrapping her delicate arms around his neck. Once she had a firm grip on Desmond, Kyuru gathered a tremendous amount of wind mana around her, forming a pair of translucent greenish wings behind hers.

As some wind currents clung to Desmond’s torso like safety straps, Kyuru warned. “I’m warning you, we won’t be able to fly very far with this.”

“As long as we’re out of this tower, we’ll be fine. To be honest, even I am afraid of what is about to happen.”

Although his words said one thing, the expression on Desmond’s face said something else entirely. There was an expression of wild amusement on his face. At the same time, his right hand, clutching a remote control device, trembled with excitement.

If someone from the military saw the device in Desmond’s hands, this person would tremble with concern. This was most certainly a military-grade remote detonation control, but that wasn’t the main problem. The problem at hand is that there was no way of knowing how many explosive devices were linked to that trigger.

Only Desmond knew how many explosives were linked to the remote detonation device in his hand. It must be noted that Desmond had a ton of alchemical grenades in his possession, whose explosive power was no slouch compared to C4.

In her attempt to generate an improved version of the alchemical grenade, Sasha had produced a large number of standard alchemical grenades, studying the process in great detail and looking for possible improvements. Therefore, Sasha ended up with a warehouse full of alchemical grenades ready to be used.

Sasha never believed that Desmond would take all the damn alchemical grenades from the storage room and take them to Serefia just in case. Yes, it was true that victory loves the prepared. Still, sometimes Desmond went a step further than just being prepared and was just being paranoid. Although that last was debatable, taking into account the current situation.

Whatever the case, Desmond speculated that sooner or later, the church would make a move on Cecilia, which would most likely happen in this tower since they never left it.

Due to his cautious nature, Desmond had set up half a ton of explosives around the tower. While these wouldn’t be enough to kill the holy knights, they were still more than enough to demolish the building itself.

It should be noted that Desmond had not planned to use the explosives; these were only there if they had to be used as a last-minute measure. In fact, Desmond had hoped that after the thirty days, he would be able to talk to Cecilia and take her out of this world. So demolishing the tower would only serve to fake her death and screw the church up a bit while he was at it.

This wasn’t even one of the most drastic measures in Desmond’s arsenal since, at least, this one wasn’t meant to be used. On the other hand, Desmond just gave up on his plan to assassinate the high priest and other high church members because the security around these people was too thick.

Under the premise that: the dead do not tell stories. Desmond had the idea of ??putting anyone who opposed Cecilia ten feet underground under darkness. Still, he was forced to change his mind due to the impossibility of such a plan.

Even poisoning said people turned out to be a fruitless endeavor. Since, like many other people with an uneasy conscience, the higher-ups in the church were pretty paranoid about this sort of thing.

In any case, this was all in the past. Given the current state of affairs, exchanging all those explosives for the lives of nine holy knights was a deal Desmond would make without hesitation.

Placing a foot on the window frame, Desmond caught a glimpse of the expanding shadows of the holy knights advancing down the hall out of the corner of his eye. Jumping decisively with Cecilia in his arms, Desmond spun around in midair just in time to see the leader of the holy knights look back at him from the room’s doorway.

“See you later, son of Laezir.”

Initially, the leader of the holy knights, Xaiver, found Desmond’s escape ridiculous, believing that Desmond would end up dead or injured after jumping from this height.

However, it was not the wings behind Desmond that changed the knight’s countenance but the victorious smile on his adversary’s face. A chill ran down Xavier’s spine, every fiber of his being screaming alert; he was one step too late.

BOOM!

Dozens of explosions shook the tower from its foundations, with fissures spreading rapidly to its top. One after another, the explosions blew entire building rooms to smithereens.

As an expert in demolitions, Desmond didn’t randomly place the bombs around the building; instead, these were set to target the structural weak points of the tower. Ensuring the tower fell to pieces and became a tomb for the people inside.

The tremors shook the holy knights preventing them from having a firm posture and thus snatching any chance of escape. Structural damage to the tower soon caused the entire floors of the building to collapse.

The nine holy knights were preparing to take defensive measures. They were trying to get out of this cursed tower when eight alchemical grenades hidden in the corridor exploded in unison. From the beginning, Desmond had timed the explosions to trap these people in the epicenter of this concentrated explosion.

The raging fire and tremendous explosive power of eight alchemical grenades detonating in such a closed space were enough to destroy the mana defenses of the nine knights. And collapse the floor they stood on. Falling at high speed, being hit by gigantic pieces of debris, only to be buried by hundreds of tons of stone. The holy knights were never to see the light of day again.

Soon, one floor after another collapsed. After barely a dozen seconds, the entire tower had turned into a gigantic pile of burning rubble. Once one of the largest towers, the sanctuary and residence of the holy priestess now lay in ruins.

It was a great irony that the tower collapsed from one moment to another in the same way that the love and trust that people had for the woman who lived in it did. Like Cecilia’s reputation in the city, the tower was now in ruins.

As Desmond said earlier, he had turned the entire tower into a tomb. No one would have expected Desmond’s meaning to be so fucking literal. Even now, Cecilia couldn’t believe her eyes. The holy knights had long been symbols of the church’s power and invincibility, but Desmond had slain them all in a single day.