When I got closer, I noticed that this young man was crying and holding something.
A corpse... The youth was holding the top half of a mangled corpse of what seemed to be a woman. He was embracing the woman while crying in a crestfallen manner. Most of the organs and blood from this corpse had already fallen out of the woman and were on the ground below.
This woman was probably someone important to this youth.
At this time, however, the eyes of the youth instantly shifted towards me, the wind suddenly began blowing. I felt the burning embers of hatred impacting my body, it seems that these feelings are a mix of sadness and rage.
As I thought this, the young man abruptly laid down the corpse and began to moan in such a way as a beast.
As this happened both [Phased Array] and [Intuition] began to sound a violent alarm.
When this happened, I thought "Oh... Dangerous", changing my posture to a defensive stance while at the same time securing the safety of Dhammi-chan.
The young man's gaze turned back to the female corpse on the ground, and drew the blade from his waist.
His eyes remained vacant, as if all meaning had been struck from him. It is not the eyes of one who has lost his mind, but lost the will of life.
That said, something abnormal had begun to take hold of this youth's mind.
A dirty, thin black magic began to swell around the youth's body.
When this magic was released, the speed of the youth increased greatly.
I recognized one of the youth's jobs right then and there [Job-Berserker].
I have this job too, so I might be able to defend well enough.
The youth charged, running similar to that of a beast, his intentions obvious.
He wanted to kill me.
His blade comes near neck and is guarded with my Gauntlet.
Once this happens, something flowed into my mind:
[Night's Child has has invoked (Heretical Retribution)]
[Following hostile action against one under [Heretic Awakening] Night's Child has declared [Ending of Arguments]]
[Until confrontation between two aware of the Truth of Their names, Night's Child's abilities will be increased by three hundred percent]
[Unique Divine ability [Heretical Retribution] will last until the conclusion of conflict]
These words abruptly appeared in my brain.
As this occurs, another impact is felt on my Gauntlet.
It's too late to just dodge, I made my attack.
The conflict was over in less than five seconds.
[Conclusion has been reached]
[Divine ability [Heretical Retribution] Released]
[Night's Child has obtained victory]
[Gods of which blessings pertain have granted a reward to the champion]
[The following item will be received by Night's Child]
[Sunlight's Soul Sword [Hisperion] has been granted] I wanted to say a few things about that anouncement, especially the result, but the young man was collapsed in front of us.
His physical capacity is probably higher than normal. It's crazy how it had increased so dramatically, the amount of time the power could be maintained wasn't that great though.
His attacks were strong, but they were simple and easily dealt with. Since this was the case, it was a simple matter to handle him without killing him.
To begin with, the young man had already suffered considerable damage and was quite unstable.
Even though the [Heretical Retribution] had been activated with enhancements with several abilities and my Silver Arm's power, I couldn't hold back too much as a precaution. Too many variables leaves me with little room for that much mercy.
Regardless, I wanted to avoid killing this youth.
So, I reached out with my silver arm and struck him heavily in the abdomen. After the connection, the already injured youth didn't remain standing for long. In that berserk mode, he was ignoring all of his wounds. His body gave way quickly and he fell unconscious.
I mended his more severe wounds, but decided to leave his limbs broken to avoid more conflict. It was decided between myself and Dhammi-chan to wait until he awoke.
That said, we didn't have to stay put, both myself and Dhammi-chan set out to start processing the corpses and materials within the village.
Since the bodies weren't fresh, we set out to make graves for the dead.
In this world, those who die can become skeletons or zombies if their corpse is left in the open. Even in war, if a body isn't dealt with, it will become a zombie or skeleton.
I did loot some meat as the cost for the service, the rest was buried.
It only took roughly fifteen minutes to do this.
I clasp my palms together and pray for them.
On top of the meat, I also decided it would be best to recover any usable goods such as the tableware and such.
This village was already seriously ruined. If it remains in this state, there is very little chance of it being used again.
Fortunately, there was at least some daily products to be salvaged.
I was somewhat pleased that we managed to replace our daily living products without cost; it's fairly important to maintain these.
That said, after everything was collected and the corpses were buried, only another twenty minutes had passed.
I was in the middle of cleaning myself off when the youth stirred. I'll admit that I was caught off guard and jumped in reaction.
I was expecting some form of attack, but his body seemed to have slowed greatly and a great deal of his hostility was absent.
It seems that I'm being ignored as he rambles about not getting to say his last goodbye. He also seems to be ignoring the fact that he was embracing the upper half of that woman's corpse.
All of a sudden, the young man was crying again.
After he had settled down a bit, I managed to drag out the youth's story.
To summarize the information I was given, the youth is a simple commoner that had been born to this village. He was born with [Blessing of the God of Sunlight].
News of his blessing eventually got out, and a messenger came to the village demanding the youth. They were given less than a month to send him. He was to be allowed to enroll in a school that trained knights and strategists of one of the Princes of the Empire.
In this world, a particular strength that creates great warriors depends on their blessing. There are different levels from transcendence to mediocre.
The youth told me of a scale of measurement of how powerful one's blessing could be.
There seemed to be [Blessing Retention], which is a weak blessing that doesn't always grant abilities. The scale goes up to the levels of [Blessed Demigod], which gives many abilities to the extent of one being a prophet to their god. There are also cases of [Divine Blessings] that are much more rarer than usual blessings. These grant the holder greater power, faster abilities, and much more force.
I omitted the 'in' because they don't really matter to me personally. All of our members have the rarest class of Blessing anyway.