CH228

Ben acted fast, jumping away and putting his barrier up again, only to immediately turn to see just what happened. Behind him was the apostle Felth, broken spear in hand and a look of confusion on his face as he struggled to understand why his attack failed.

Ben did though and couldn’t be more grateful to his past self for adding all of the defensive enchantments he could to his jacket. He couldn’t be sure if it would have stopped the demigod, but against a warrior of normal strength it seemed to do its job perfectly, keeping the spear from skewering him in the surprise attack.

“Surround him!” The apostle called out, moving past his first failure in favour of another attempt. “We can’t let this act go unpunished!”

The priests nearby shook themselves free of their shock, ready to attack him the moment his barrier went down. They were all assuming he was powering it through his own mana, not relying on a tool powered by a mana crystal, and with barrier magic being rather mana intense they wouldn’t need to wait long as two others went to Ather’s side to begin healing him.

Felth knew he couldn’t allow something so disgraceful to be revealed to the world and was willing to act to ensure it stayed hidden. The boy had come to them alone and challenged a demigod to a fight, it would be no surprise for him to end up dead doing such a thing, and the shame of killing someone so much weaker would be better for Ather than the shame that would come to losing to a complete nobody, but as he stared at the boys face, spears pressed against the barrier, waiting for it to go down, he couldn’t help but feel his stomach sink as he watched him break into a deep, wide grin.

Damn, guess he’s mad.

<I’d like to remind you that you didn’t just attack the son of his god, but his son as well.>

Don’t care. Hey Myriad, you gods have all sorts of dumb rules amongst yourselves that you have to obey, surely there’s something that keeps apostles from murdering each other in cold blood if they don’t like the way a fight where both parties consented to ended, right?

<Well, you’re certainly right about that. As much as I don’t like what happened, you didn’t act beyond the laws of the land, nor against the rules of Eneth’s faith. This action is completely unacceptable.>

Exactly what I wanted to hear. He thought as he began laughing. He couldn’t help it, things couldn’t have worked better for him if he’d tried.

“Silence!” Felth yelled. “Enough of that disgusting look, do you not see your situation? Face your death with some dignity!”

“Oh Felth, buddy, the best part of this is you don’t know how badly you just fucked up,” He told him, continuing to laugh as he pulled out his card, hiding everything on it but one very important title and holding it out for him to see. “You just decided to murder a fellow apostle, and while I don’t know about your god, mine’s been watching this whole time.”

The words were small but clear and in an instant the fire left the man’s eyes, the broken spear fell from his hands as he understood the gravity of just what he’d done. “Wait, everyone back off, I didn’t know-”

“You think I care?” He said, cutting him off as joy sparkled in his eyes. “Would it have been okay to murder me if I wasn’t an apostle? I’ll remind you that your idiot over there challenged me first, I just decided to give my own a bit later on. I didn’t do anything to break the rules of your people’s duel, but you still decided to kill me. Don’t you all worship a warrior god? Is this an approved way to act? Honestly, I can only imagine what the fallout of this is going to be.”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“…What do you want?” He asked, defeat plain in his voice. He knew he was in the other apostle’s hand, he needed to act while doing his best to mitigate as much damage as he could.

Surprisingly though, Ben’s request seemed mostly reasonable, at least it sounded so to him.