The Ultimate Devourer

An war that has been ongoing since creation

Mirato was serious as she suddenly leaped towards me at a speed I couldn't react to. Before I realized she had disappeared from where she previously was. Aratas had already grabbed her by the wrist and pushed her away from me.

Both of my hearts were beating extremely fast as I clutched my chest and realized blood was seeping out of the location where one of my hearts was.

Aratas snorted and pointed towards my wound, healing it instantly using his holy fire.

Aratas pinned Mirato to the wall as he glared at her and said:

"You think that keeping up our noses and not nurturing our own set of cannibals would give us an advantage during this bloody war?!"

He gave her a tight slap on the face, making her red eyes start trembling even more as crystal clear tears started to drop from her eyes down to her cheeks, wetting her face and clothes as they continued to slide down.

Mirato knew there was nothing she could do against Aratas. The Paladin was the peak physical and magical profession of the Church, and only the very talented and pious would be trained in the ways of the paladin.

Aratas only acted this way because he knew that if they wanted to keep their Church's existence, they would need to resort to drastic measures. It was just that Mirato couldn't accept such things due to her moral constraints.

I looked at the two arguing silently as I continued to clutch my chest, and I realized that Aratas must have recognized my cannibalistic features from the immediate moment he saw me, but he still recruited me as his squire because he had already been thinking about nurturing a cannibal for his Church.

I wasn't sure if I could be considered lucky or not.

After a little more time passed, Aratas let go of Mirtao before saying:

"You can let the Cardinal know about my decision. I'm sure he won't say anything about it."

Mirato glared at me and Aratas before nursing her wrists and leaving.

Aratas pointed at the runic stone before all of my information was deleted from it.

"Come with me."

Aratas opened a door that led towards a long corridor that stretched on for a while, going underground.

I followed him as we made our way down the corridor, Aratas then said:

"I'm sure that as a former commoner, you don't have any idea what I was talking about with Mirato, so I'm going to bring you up to speed."

He pointed toward different murals painted on the corridor as he explained:

"Our five Churches have been at war since time immemorial, I'm not sure why, as it's never mentioned in the ancient scriptures that I have read, but it looks like the generational hatred had always been given down from Cardinal to Cardinal, leading down to this everlasting war that only stops when we are invaded by foreign races."

Aratas sighed as he put a hand on one of the murals and continued:

"The talk about bringing cannibals into the fold of our war efforts had been put on the back burner for too much time, the other four churches had already shown signs of nurturing their squads of cannibals and it's time we took things seriously, I can see from the weak signs that you exude that you have only eaten one person, and I can guess that person was my previous foolish squire."

I couldn't help but nod. There was no reason to lie since everything had already been seen through.

Aratas nodded at me and then said:

"I'm not sure what made you eat him, but I guess it was just the primal instinct shouting from your body after you have been cornered and injured by him, this is how most cannibals are born on the battlefield as I had to fell some of my comrades that went down this path when I was younger."

"However, your reason doesn't matter now. I can see that you are a rather resolute person from the way you carry yourself, combined with the fact that you have live combat experience makes you the best prototype for our Church's cannibal squad!"

We finally reached the catacombs of the Church. The room we were in was dimly lit by torches that were hung on the walls, but when Aratas waved his hand, the torch's light increased in intensity, lighting the whole place up, leaving no darkness behind.

After the room lit up, I could now see that these catacombs were also prisons as multiple people could now be seen between the cold iron bars of enclosed space, keeping them jailed together along with having their arms and legs tied to the wall behind them with iron manacles.

The prisoners' eyes opened with anger and disgust as they saw Aratas and shouted:

"You damned pig, let us out this instant! You only got lucky when your Church caught us."

Aratas shook his head as he ignored their insults before saying:

"I guess you must know the reason why I brought you down here, right Minato?"

I looked at the prisoners, and I could sense that even though their strength was weakened by the prisons that kept them together, they were still way out of my league.

"Do you want me to eat them?"

Aratas shook his head as he said:

"Not them in particular, but you are right, they are one of the stronger prisoners we have here, and with your meager talent I'm not sure if you would be able to digest them with your current strength, there is also the fact that you don't have any battle style knowledge, so I'm not going to make you start with these martial masters, they might be weak on the surface, but they have quite a lot of knowledge on martial arts and weapon fighting.

From what I saw when I thought you the basis sword techniques of our Church, your brain is rather slow as well, so we need to expand its abilities through continuous devouring before you would be able to withstand and also get the memories of those here properly."

I couldn't help but feel that things were going a little bit too well for me as we went further into the prison of the Church to find the appropriate 'meals' for me.

Was there such a thing as a free lunch in this world? Surely not, which meant that I was going to pay dearly for the help that Aratas and the Church were giving me now...

But without the initial strength and with no talent to speak off, there was nothing else that I could do, so I had to gamble on their help.