PATH OF THE STAR HUNTER

Taking his eyes off the strangely purple night sky, Desmond was greeted by Kyuru, who had woken up at some point and was now just looking at him calmly as she floated mere inches from Desmond’s face.

“I woke you up?” Desmond asked with a slightly guilty expression.

Kyuru shook her head gently, her amethyst eyes still staring at Desmond intently. There was a complicated gleam within that gaze, somewhere between concern and empathy; Kyuru was having a hard time not knowing how to support Desmond.

Having gained some sort of sixth sense when it came to sensing the faery’s emotions, Desmond reached out his hand, caressing Kyuru’s face and ruffling her hair in the process. It wasn’t until the bliss returned to Kyuru that Desmond let her alone before heading to sleep.

The headache was still there, and Desmond began to feel the weight of stress, both physical and mental exhaustion, and the lack of rest; Desmond had undoubtedly had a busy couple of weeks.

At the end of the day, Desmond was a human being. The ongoing work, the constant struggles, the responsibilities, and the conflicts and conspiracies that he had recently been through had left him exhausted beyond the point where he was healthy.

The same applied to his mind, which had operated endlessly, and his body, which had gone through various injuries and traumatic experiences. In short, Desmond desperately needed a break or a way to release some stress, something that didn’t seem like it was going to happen in the foreseeable future.

All these emotions, all this exhaustion, was something Kyuru could quickly feel, hence her concern for Desmond, but she didn’t know what to do about it.

.....

Helping him with his current mission seemed impossible as Kyuru was not someone with excellent combat prowess or political abilities. When it came to assisting Desmond with stress, Kyuru blushed at the mere thought.

God knows the fairy must have been having obscene thoughts, but not that one could be blamed either; Desmond had proven that this was his preferred method of stress relief on more than one occasion.

However, Kyuru was both physically and emotionally unable to satisfy Desmond in this way, so her mind turned to other ways to help her life mate.

Desmond took off his armor with a weary expression on his face, the sparkle in his blue eyes had dimmed quite a bit, and even his natural charm was nowhere to be found; Desmond just wanted to be able to sleep peacefully.

As the holy priestess’s personal knight, Desmond had obtained a reasonably well-appointed room. The bed in Desmond’s room had a beautifully carved wooden frame, a remarkably comfortable mattress, and silken sheets as soft as a lover’s caress; however, none of that was helping Desmond fall asleep.

Cecilia’s situation and Katya’s words kept running through Desmond’s mind, repeatedly, like a looping videotape, all sorts of possible scenarios and deductions running through his mind, but there wasn’t even a single course of action that pleased Desmond.

Perhaps, there was one, but Desmond didn’t want to think about it, with the image of the frail Cecilia replaying inside Desmond’s mind; there was no way Desmond would make that choice.

His train of thought looped back to the start, and Desmond nearly went through a second round of the same thing when a lovely warm lullaby reached his ears.

Kyuru, who had now expanded into her child form, had leaned against Desmond’s chest at some point and, with a loving expression, had begun to hum a cute tune.

It mainly was Kyuru just using her voice to create a relaxing and warm atmosphere. Still, sometimes the fairy integrated some words into the melody that, for some unknown reason, was not automatically translated by the hunter’s book.

An unknown language, in a strange song that Kyuru had learned from an unknown source; Desmond was certainly very curious about it, but his mind soon grew hazy just before he was pulled into the dream world.

Kyuru looked at Desmond’s sleeping face, a faint smile on her lips; it seemed that Desmond would have a good night’s rest; Kyuru couldn’t be happier about it.

Still, the melody didn’t stop. Maybe it was because she was back in Serafia, her homeland, that Kyuru was in a somewhat nostalgic mood, so she kept humming that song full of good memories until she was the one who fell asleep.

On the other hand, while Desmond and Kyuru fell into a deep sleep, other people on the church grounds were having quite a busy night.

Deep and sheltered on the church grounds, a luxurious mansion stood out without harmony with the design of the buildings around it. Even by the church’s lavish and perhaps slightly ostentatious standards, this mansion was going a step too far.

Even the last rock used in constructing the said mansion was a costly material. Some materials that were not even suitable for construction were used to show the opulence and power of the mansion’s owner.

Outside the mansion, guarding it, there were almost two dozen paladins perfectly organized and trained to keep the estate owner safe at all times. Although in most cases, these paladins only served as decorations or fulfilled some errands for the mansion owner since no one really dared to attack the place.

Today’s night was no different. It was a quiet and relaxed watch shift as it had always been for the mansion guards, something that would be very different if it weren’t because the estate was designed not to let out a sound.

Inside the main room on the third floor of the mansion, on a bed, dozens of times more luxurious than the one used by Desmond, a deplorable and sinful act was taking place, carried out by who is supposed to be the most sacred person within the church beside Cecilia.

High Priest Samuel, an older man in his fifties, tall, slightly obese, and unattractive, was generally seen as a man of faith while wearing his elegant golden robes. Samuel now found himself naked on his knees over the bed, ravaging a young woman beneath him non-stop.

The poor girl was barely fifteen or sixteen years old; she was beautiful, with soft and delicate skin, blonde hair, blue eyes, and a curvaceous figure. The torn nun’s robes on the floor beside the bed were enough to clarify the girl’s identity.

And it didn’t take the best detective in the world to realize that the girl wasn’t enjoying what was happening. There were many abuse marks on the girl’s body, all recent; tears kept falling from the girl’s eyes; with an expression of pain, shame and fear looked at the man above her.

The expression on the girl’s face, accompanied by a slight trace of blood on the sheets that marked the girl’s recently lost innocence, did nothing but excite the man who was abusing her even more. In seconds, the man had finished inside of her as an expression of crazed depravity filled his gaze.

Samuel, the high priest, was still recovering from the aftertaste of the orgasm he had just had when someone knocked on the door of his room. For a moment, Samuel’s expression darkened to a terrifying degree, however remembering that only one person would dare to interrupt him at this moment; the face of the high priest relaxed.

“Pass.”

While the woman in the room was still sobbing quietly, her crotch covered in Samuel’s dirt and her own blood, a man entered the room with calm steps.

The man only looked at the girl for a fraction of a second; there was no pity or pity in the man’s gaze; instead, it was a hint of disgust and indifference. The man seemed to disdain the specific tastes of the high priest more than the abuses committed by the man.

The one who entered the room was none other than Nayel, the leader of the holy knights and the strongest man under the church’s orders. He was known for his cold temper and liking for minor children; Nayel was a bastard of the same caliber as Samuel, and only his tastes were different.

Of course, this reputation was only known to the core members of the church, who had their own secrets or reasons to tolerate the atrocities committed by Nayel. Some of these people were even pleased with Nayel’s tendencies, making him easier to control and predict.

Samuel was, of course, one of these people. Having found Nayel’s bizarre hobbies, Samuel took the opportunity to blackmail and bribe the man into placing him under his command, something that eventually cemented Samuel’s aspirations to become a high priest.

In a certain way, this pair of monsters and predators owed each other their achievements and current positions, so they could even be considered friends and iron allies, which kept the other church members on the edge who feared Nayel’s personal strength.

Although slightly annoyed at being interrupted, Samuel let the matter drop when he finished listening to Nayel’s report on the meeting in the afternoon. An expression of hate and insane malevolence completely filled the countenance of the supposed holy man, and Nayel just sighed inside.

Looking at the young nun trembling fearfully still covered in dirt, Nayel was quick to notice the physical similarities the girl shared with Cecilia, for golden eyes aside, the girl on the bed looked like a younger version of the holy priestess.

This was probably the age Cecilia was when Samuel’s obsession with her peaked, though Samuel never managed to lay hands on her due to various events. The man had not gotten over her yet as this was not the first time Nayel had seen similar girls visit this mansion.

“Damn, that bitch gets her own guardian. Why can’t she just drop dead on her own, and she saves me the trouble?”

Complaining vulgarly in his fat and sweaty, still naked body, Samuel just glanced at the girl behind him, and without much thought, he snapped his fingers, creating a blade of radiant mana that decapitated the girl.

“They never stay clean.” Samuel added with disgust and disdain.

“She doesn’t look any cleaner now.” Nayel responded with irony.

Not bothering to continue with a matter that seemed insignificant to him, Samuel pushed any thoughts of the dead girl to the back of his head.

“For now, we will just watch the moves of the rest of the bishops and cardinals. It doesn’t matter if they don’t make a move soon; however, our allies in the east are planning a small entertainment event for the festival of candles.”

Nayel nodded; it didn’t seem strange to him that Samuel already had a plan of action since that was his forte, while Nayel’s forte was on killing. And so on, with a corpse still fresh in the room; two men with sinister hearts smiled calmly as he engineered the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of people.