Running across a green pastry plain, a group of people comprised a few paladins along with three men dressed in clerical outfits, seemingly fleeing the faraway column of fiery smoke.

As they finally stopped to catch a break, one of the men asked the others, "Did we lose him?"

None of them could answer the man's questions as they all simultaneously glanced toward the place they had been fleeing, the same dreadful expression on their faces.

"Who was that!? Was that the faceless one?!" A short and chubby priest asked his fellow clerics .

The outfit the man wore, in comparison to the others wearing priestly outfits, suggested he held the rank of high bishop, the next highest clerical rank before the rank of archbishop, which meant that the man, despite his rather unimpressive features, remained a rather high-ranking personality.

The distant smoke seen towering into the sky came from their base, one of the many churches' bases, led by the high-bishop Harrison, a cleric under the direct authority and order of the high-bishop Ezekiel.

This meant that any affront to that base would be met with retaliation from the Archbishop himself; however, the base was unexpectedly attacked earlier in the morning by a single man, a man powerful and confident enough to take on an entire church base on his own.

The high bishop fled without fighting because, despite his high rank, his title, and the pride that went along with it, he understood what was going on on the continent.

"Lord High Bishop, was it really a good idea to have abandoned the base like that?" One of the paladins asked.

He had no doubt that he had made the right choice, but still, he was frustrated by having to run tail between legs.

The man's question gave the high bishop the opportunity to let someone else feel the anger he held within. "Do you think I want to run like a rat like I did?"

"No… Sir."

"Then shut the hell up. "If you're brave enough to risk your life, return to the fortresss and fight him; let's see if you can do better than two full-fledged archbishops."

Despite the church's attempt to cover it, the recent news of what happened to Lady Archbishop Karen Caelus and Archbishop Durant didn't miss reaching High Bishop Harrison's ears with the convenient rank he held.

There was something that came back to the continent, and it already claimed the lives of two archbishops in the span of less than two months. Harrison was well aware that, despite his position, he was nothing in comparison to the archbishop. The moment his fortress was under attack, he felt his life was threatened, so, refusing to make a bet that could cost him his life, he made his call and took the immediate decision to flee.

"I'm regrettably sorry, Sir," the Paladin profusely apologized.

"Humph."

Feeling slightly better, Highbishop Harrison said, "In any case, we'd better get mov—," but he couldn't finish his sentence before he was cut off by a loud crashing noise behind them.

Hearing the commotion, the group dreadingly turned in the direction of the commotion to see a dust-filled screen, within which they heard a voice that made every single hair on their body rise, saying,

"Found the rats," a playful voice rejoiced.

Before the Paladin could react, something darted out of the dust-filled smokescreen. It happened so fast that the only thing they noticed was the crash, then a sight of blood.

A moment after the initial confusion, what came out of the smoke was plainly apparent to them: it was a man, armored from head to toe, holding in his hand a giant sword. The paladin closest to the armored man, who had appeared to be whole the second before, was now stiff and, most importantly, headless, with blood gushing out of a faucet.

His head fell off, rolling in a slow demi-circle on the ground before coming to a halt, a final clueless expression on his face.

"Bastard!" The other Paladins exclaimed, seeing their comrade's fate, before charging at the armored man.

"Brave, aren't we?"

Unfazed, the armored man swung his sword, which he, in the middle of the swing, turned into a large swordstaff, cleaving all the approaching paladins in a single motion.

When they saw this, two of the three clerics clung to their primal instincts; only the high bishop had already given up, standing motionless, knowing it was hopeless, as evidenced by what happened next.

The armored man simply threw his swordstaff, impaling and killing one of the two escaping clerics on the spot, before charging toward the other, whom he impaled from the back through the chest, using only his hand. As if that wasn't enough, the armored man lifted the man above his head before literally splitting him in half, bathing in the poor man's blood and his insides.

"Aaaah! This is it! I've almost forgot how it feels," the armored man exclaimed, clearly pleased with himself, while the high bishop Harisson collapsed on his knee and puked his guts out.

"Oi, oi, oi, what's happening?" "Are you okay?" The armored man inquired, as if genuinely concerned about the high bishop's well-being.

Mustering all that was left of his strength, guts, and courage, the HighBishop asked, trembling, "W-What do you want from me?"

"Hum, you don't seem to recognize me."

Though confused, the high bishop still screamed, trembling at the armored man, "I have nothing to do with what happened to you, faceless one!"

"Aye. It seems there is a little misunderstanding here."

"Huh?"

"I am not the faceless one," the man announced, removing his helmet and revealing a face that the high bishop right away recognized. "I am nothing but a mere yet devout servant."

The high bishop recognized the man, as he, in his younger days, had heard of that man's stories.

Born as one of the children of light, he was responsible, before being apprehended by the church, for the butchering of the entire village, among whom were his own parents, but it wasn't all that he was imfamous for. The Highbishop came to know that because, as a child, the man managed to kill on his own several envoys of the church sent to deal with him, earning him the calling of "Corpse Sower" or "Corpse Feeder." Because among the sea of corpses he left behind in those days, one could distinctly recognize his little child's bites upon his victims' flesh.

That child's existence once sparked strange, unfounded rumors that he grew stronger by feasting on his fellow nobles.

It overall made a lot of noise back in the days, but it all stopped when the "corpse feeder," at the age of eleven, was finally apprehended by no one else but one of the fourteen, who'd developed a keen interest in him, only to announce that he was taking the boy into his own personal custody.

The truth was kept hidden from most, but those high-ranking enough all knew that the corpse feeder was taken in by one of the fourteen as his own son.

Having been one of those sent to deal with the fourteen, the high bishop immediately recognized the "corpse feeder."

"You... you're supposed to be dead."

"My death was grea—let's just say I was dead, but I was reborn. I am a new man now."

While Harisson always felt that one day the Fourteen who made that decision would come to regret it, thirty years passed, and that was never the case. The corpse feeder in the care of that fourteen acted like a decent human being, living a life like any noble, in fact, living a life with and among nobles of the highest rank, as his position as Fourteen's son permitted.

"You… Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what?" The corpse feeder asked back, slowly approaching the high-bishop.

"Why are you atta-"

It was then that it finally dawned on the high bishop. As hard as it was to accept, it was obvious that the corpse-feeder changed upon entering the Fourteen's custody.

Though his initial guess was that the corpse-feeder betrayed them to retrieve his old bloodthirsty roots, the high bishop realized that there was also a possibility that this was not the case.

They were betrayed. The church was betrayed, not by the corpse feeder, but by one of its Fourteen.

"Do you know what the difference is, High-bishop Harrison, between simply killing someone and killing someone in the name of a true, literal, and existing God'"

Still stuck in place by his earlier realization, the high bishop, unable to utter a word, simply shook his head.

With a smile on his face, the corpse feeder reached out with both hands onto the high bishop's neck and lifted him into the air, revealing, "Nothing."

"You know who I am and who my father is; you know I will kill you, but you have the opportunity to choose how painful your death will be. I just need you to tell me where they are and who has them?"

The high bishop, gasping for air, inquired, "Where are... what?"

Increasing the grasp he held onto the man's neck, the corpse feeder revealed, "You know what I'm talking about? I need the remnants; "the mother" needs them. I know you're supposed to be the guarding Kine, but you weren't; your fortress was empty. So where are they? Where are Kine's, Djeem's, and Sora's remnants?"