A Powerful Martial Artist Reincarnates as a Nun Knight

The island of Menorca steadily grew larger on the horizon as time elapsed. The jovial chatter and laughter among the St. Maria’s passengers and crew gradually hardened into tense apprehension the nearer their approach.

“It seems we can no longer turn back now.”
“Best we remain vigilant. No telling what may transpire.”

The St. Maria’s passengers exchanged such hushed remarks with grim expressions, finally realizing the island glimpsed ahead represented no mere uninhabited rocky outcrop – but an established city-state replete with harbors and urban sprawl.

Contemplating their intent to raid this settlement with a single vessel prompted more than a few dry mouths and second thoughts. Yet having proceeded this far, retreating proved equally unviable. They had irreversibly committed themselves.

However, their trepidation ultimately proved premature.

Clutching an antiquated longspear whose azure blade bore intricate silver inlaid patterns, the youth Conra gazed toward Menorca’s harbors and ships before uttering the incantation he had memorized at dawn:

“Salmerkaikh an fasra a fasan ey khuriaban na masa mara…! (Verdant kin flourishing upon the maternal sea’s embrace!) Feyaul arna eidris agh karaigierkha ge’ara khnapakha…! (Rugged, craggy visages emulating carnal flesh!)”

As Conra’s melodic intonations resonated, the spell matrices stored within his cranial sockets activated in response to his lyrical summoning – their unleashed forces naturally propelling swirling eddies tossing the boy’s hair and garments.

“Fas suvas (Proliferate)! For (Propagate)! Geb mo naimad (Ensnare my foes)!”

Fwazuk! That dazzling flare signified the spell’s targets and vectors solidifying as its released matrices manifested their full potency.

“Look, the sea is turning black!”

As onlookers exclaimed, the oceanic expanse progressively darkened under Conra’s sorcery – the submerged kelp and barnacle colonies rapidly multiplying and overrunning everything.

Within moments, the exponentially burgeoning kelp fronds entirely entangled the anchored ships, immobilizing them. Meanwhile, the proliferating barnacles not only encrusted hulls but soon clogged every navigational oarlock, ensuring those pirate vessels remained completely inoperable.

With their most feared threat – the potential launching and maneuvering of warships – comprehensively neutralized, dismantling those encrusted maritime impediments would require arduous, protracted efforts the pirates currently lacked any opportunity to undertake. Sophia’s group had no intention of permitting them that luxury.

Meanwhile, Hildegard had prepared her own complementary measures – specializing in celestial mysteries relating to divine realms. Swiftly intoning a litany of invocations and hymns, she beseeched blessings from the heavenly messengers, huntresses, warriors, battlemaidens, arbiters and personifications of victory:

“Glory resides within Asgard’s celestial courts! Sacred warfare’s judgment upon sinners manifests across Midgard’s mortal realm!”

As Hildegard’s concatenated prayers and hymns intensified, every passenger and crewmember aboard the St. Maria felt transcendent benefactions permeating their very beings.

“I’m overflowing with vitality!”
“My body, my weapon – they feel so light!”
“My senses seem heightened too! That distant island appears vividly clear, as if right before my eyes!”

Surging with emboldening self-assurance akin to ascending multiple tiers toward apotheosis, the St. Maria’s human occupants swelled with profound, resounding confidence.

At that precise juncture, despite still remaining a considerable distance offshore, the fully prepared Sophia, Hildegard, Ezio and Conra abruptly leapt forth from the ship’s deck.

Spearheading their aerial trajectories, Hildegard and Ezio accelerated into sprinting dashes before launching skyward like fired projectiles – propelled by the compounded momentum of their running starts and leaping thrusts.
Yet their altitudes fell somewhat short of spanning that entire intervening distance, resulting in arcing descents toward the water’s surface midway.

However, as the two impacted those waves, explosive eruptions of radial spray coincided with their rebounding skyward exactly like Ezio’s previous ‘water-stepping’ technique – repeatedly bounding from one splashing footfall to soar onward once more.
Iterating this cyclical process numerous times enabled them to eventually reach Menorca’s harbor.

Following their trajectory, Conra ascended far more elegantly streamlined compared to Hildegard and Ezio’s forced imitations using astral musculature manipulation.
Having received Sophia’s formalized lightbody instruction alongside internal cultivation methods, his motions flowed with erinbounding principles synthesized into an indigenous kenpō style – bounding with an undulating gait evocative of wind-riding levitation interspersed with leaping salmon-like propulsions.

Despite departing slightly afterwards, Conra reached their destination virtually simultaneously by expending considerably less force repelling off each watery impact.

Observing her companions’ maritime charge from the St. Maria’s deck, Sophia gradually levitated like an uplifting feather before abruptly manifesting high above – already soaring overhead surveying Menorca’s harbor from an aerial vantage.

The physical incorporation she had forsaken as a side-effect of her fourth primordial binding enabled Sophia to forgo cumbersome ambulatory processes like ‘traveling’ between points of origin and destination. Instead, her lightbody translocation techniques simply produced the ‘arrival’ without any transitional ‘movement’ – analogous to the Sword of Epiphany’s quintessence of striking the target directly without intermediate motion.

Hence, despite launching last, Sophia reached the harbor first – treading the empty air with peerless serenity before deeply inhaling as her eyes flickered azure.

What followed represented her signature primordial lion’s roar technique – the very same prodigious exhalation she had consistently agonized over deploying.

“―――――!!!!”

Without further preamble, Sophia unleashed her deafening bellow – its thunderous sonic detonation reverberating like an eruption from countless simultaneous bells and gongs, an inconceivable eruption from a human vocal apparatus that shook the entire harbor panorama.

Scarce could endure that shockwave’s colossal resonance without collapse. Every pirate in proximity instantly crumpled, bleeding from ruptured tympanic membranes alongside severe concussive trauma that left them convulsing dazedly upon the ground.
More disconcertingly, Sophia’s roar inflicted additional psychosomatic damage upon any harboring ill intentions – inducing agonizing metaphysical vertigo alongside internal injuries.

The harbored vessels alongside local pirates never stood a chance, most rendered immediately comatose or thrashing in torment after that single overwhelming exhalation.

With Hildegard, Ezio and Conra promptly converging in its devastating wake, what possible resistance could the pirates offer?
Even the few elites who somehow endured remained too debilitated to effectively retaliate – struggling against such irresistible adversaries despite their already brutally compromised state proved patently futile.

Within moments, the quartet had secured the harbor before rapidly advancing inward across the isle interior, leaving the St. Maria’s impending passengers and crew to finalize securing the port’s rear areas and facilities.

The route leading from the docks into the town center had swiftly become obstructed by pirate reinforcements responding to the disturbance. Yet Hildegard and Ezio unhesitatingly plunged directly into the heart of their concentrated formations.

“Orra-aaahh!”
Tuk-kwak, Tak-kwak, Kwagagak!

Spearheading their group’s advance, Hildegard’s whirling halberd scythed in every direction – systematically dismantling the pirates’ barricades while disrupting their lines of resistance. Any whose movements she constrained instantly fell prey to Ezio’s pulverizing follow-up blows and grappling restraints fluidly constricting in her wake.

“Humph!”

Bizarre, seemingly nonsensical stances preceded his dizzying barrages of bonejarring strikes and smothering submissions, robbing the pirates of all combative capacity as Ezio flowed from one devastating technique to the next.

By the time the St. Maria docked and passengers disembarked, the only tasks remaining involved subduing scattered pirates left splayed everywhere alongside securing the port’s infrastructure and captured vessels – prompting unanimous astonishment at the quartet’s unstoppable momentum conquering Menorca.

“We’ve certainly heard tales of the Church’s Paladin prowess, but witnessing it firsthand is utterly terrifying.”
“Look there! They seem to have already seized half the town’s districts!”
“Hahah, behold the pirates strewn about like garbage!”

Aside from a few aberrant reactions, the passengers and crew previously psyching themselves for intense combat found their duties reduced to mere cleanup once the quartet had swept through – simply restraining scattered incapacitated foes, confiscating any lucrative valuables encountered and appropriating vessels alongside harbor facilities for their own usage.

In this rather anticlimatic aftermath following their tense anticipation, they trudged through areas the foursome had already subjugated – restraining any fallen pirates, uncovering concealed treasures, and normalizing occupied ships alongside port structures. Any seized riches would receive equitable redistribution once the situation finalized.

Eventually, after the Paladin vanguard secured most districts while finally assaulting Lord Haidrine’s inner citadel, an unprecedented wavefront emanated outward from that central keep – its unfamiliar oscillations rippling across Menorca’s entirety.

“Ughh, this wavefront…? Ughh…c-could it be…?!”

One passenger – an experienced veteran dungeoneer – blurted out in dismayed realization as that wavefront passed. For they had just witnessed Menorca’s very atmosphere, celestial bodies and cosmic alignments transmute before their eyes.

The afternoon sun darkened into perpetual night while the stellar constellations now arrayed into antiquated prehistoric configurations from eons past.
More disconcertingly, entire fleets of sunken wrecks began languidly surfacing from the depths, gurgling forth as eerie siren songs washed across the waters.

The implications proved self-evident, prompting the ashen-faced dungeoneer to cry out tremulously:

“The entire island…has become a sealed dungeon realm?!”