Netori: Stealing The Hero's Party!

"You shall be the dead god's warden!" To this day, I'm haunted by those words. Once an angel of the heavenly order, now a servant to a dead god's legacy and a fraudster keeping the delinquents at bay.

I must uphold the pretense of his grace, Lantherm was his name. In his death I praise him, I spread his words, and even offer the women whom I'd taken up as family to his false chosen. All so no other god can even hope to take root on this land and to continue the streak of misfortune that the council had cursed this land with.

But alas, faith runs thin when miracles are scarce. Thus, the nuns died and I was forced to revive them to their former appearance. At night, however, I kept them locked for the longer I used my magic to keep up the farce, the more it drained me and not just through mana.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

"I'm not gonna let you ruin everything I've done for this land!" Pulling the arrow out of my hand, I crushed it between my fingers before throwing it towards the elf who'd fired it. Blinding by my radiance, the pack of heretics couldn't see a thing. "Embrace death and perhaps I'll show you mercy." Find your next read on empire

Stretching my hand towards the elf, I turned my fingers into sharp roots that could tear through her flesh like paper. But right as blood was about to splatter through her body, a sharp feeling in my stomach took away my vision.

"UGAHHHHH!" The agony of being blinded hit me like nothing ever has. I could feel the cold touch of a bladed gutting me like an animal and the warmth of my body slowly fleeing away. "M-my eye…y-you pest! You stabbed me!"

Though my body surged with pain, somehow, my mind didn't succumb to insanity. Something was wrong, beyond wrong, I wasn't supposed to lose so what exactly was happening? At least not until I saw a glimmer in the dark, the glimmer of jewelry. It wasn't that I had gone blind, but these pests were using something to consume my light.

"I'm asking again," brought to my knees, darkness embraced me. Yet I wasn't yet done, I wouldn't go out without a fight, not after spending so long defending a grave that shouldn't have existed in the first place.

"AS IF YOU CAN MAKE ME TALK SO EASILY!" Popping eyes over every inch of my skin, I poured mana through every pupil to see through the dark and figure out what was happening. Although tinted a green shade, my vision returned in the dark and I quickly unleashed sharp vines protruding from my body at every single person standing against me.

'What?!' Dodging everything swiftly as if they could see without a fault, none of my blows even managed to hit a single one of them. Growing angrier by the moment, I sprouted sharp roots beneath their feet and stabbed them through the sole of their feet.

"SHIT!"

"AGHH!"

"WHAT THE FU-FUCK?!"

Their screams of agony ran in my ears like prayers. With a smile, I planted my hands against the ground and conjured more wooden spikes that would emerge through the ground and impale them even if the heretic were to escape to the highest spot of the lighthouse.

The horror in their eyes as they noticed the spikes emerging from the ground, filled my heart with glee, but then it happened, a slash through my throat that sent my head flying through the floor.

Although alive in both parts just as much as a whole, my body fell to the ground and bled my silver across the floor.

"I wanted to avoid killing you since I need some answers, but you left me no choice," as the darkness retreated, I was picked off the ground and made to face the mage who'd chopped my head from my torso. Staring at the many eyes still writhing in my flesh, he peered into my memories.

Like a cockroach that had nested inside an ear, I could feel the pest probing through my skull, until he found exactly what he was looking for.

Standing before the council of gods, their bodies silhouetted in my memory, the mortal stood beside me witnessing their decree towards Lantherm. To this day it pained me to watch the most joyous of gods tearing his own heart out of his chest, only for the council to abandon his hand and throw me as its warden.

"Lantherm…He's dead?" Whispered the boy the moment his eyes opened to the real world again.

"What?!" Gasped the blue-haired girl beside him.

"Wait a second, what the hell did you see in him?!" Rushing towards us the dark elf of their group grabbed the boy by his shoulder, the fair elf did the same right after.

Staring at my face for a while longer, the boy held anger, disgust, and a look of sheer disappointment. He knew of my crimes, the fact that I've allowed this land to be corrupted so much. Thankfully, my vision was the first of my senses to go, so I didn't have to see his disappointment any longer.

Throwing me away like some trash, I could hear him turning away from me to converse with the others. The secret of the island was out and these pests were about to ruin years of my hard work to keep it a secret. Just hearing him reveal everything that he'd seen in my memory to the others, I wanted to die sooner and sooner for my purpose in life had been squandered completely.

"What are we gonna do about the nuns?" I heard one of the girls whisper and in response, the boy answered the last word I ever got to hear.

"Use them to prove that the god of this island is dead, maybe then Athenia can start gaining influence in this place as well?" With my hearing finally gone, my mind drifted to the darkness.

Being an angel I would never truly die, but with my body gone and my purpose unfulfilled, I couldn't be revived for my soul has been sullied with incompetence.

'Perhaps, now I'll get to meet Lantherm.' Were the last of my thoughts, beyond that I never met that damned god of light.

Note: Mini-arc of arc 3 ending, major events of arc 3 about to begin!