Geldwood

The Geldwood Church, often referred to as a cult by its opponents, is a corrupt religious and military institution that practices and upholds the Geldwood faith in the Other World. It is at minimum predominant in the Kingdom of Nyanild.

Faith
The Geldwood faith believes in the concept of salvation and shuns both necromancers and those who fraternize with necromancers, considering the latter's souls corrupted by association. Followers of the faith are expected to kill 'corrupted' fraternizers alongside necromancers on the spot, granting their souls salvation in death rather than making any attempt to cleanse them when alive.

Many members of the Geldwood Church wield magic, and the church offers itself as a place of refuge to those who possess the Evil Eye. The Geldwood religion additionally makes of a unique martial art, one distinctly recognizable as a Geldwood technique when practiced. Once branch of the Geldwood Church's lead holy arts deals with spiritual intervention, while another primarily focuses on physical healing, revitalization, and fortifying weapons.

Organization
In addition to employing priests, priestesses, hieromancers, and sorcerers, the Geldwood Church depends on a large military order of holy knights and holy soldiers to combat heresy, criminal syndicates, and otherwise defend the faith. Specialized subjugation units are deployed against 'monsters', and may be supported by other specific units such as observation units when carrying out their missions.

Known members and former members of the Church include:

Story
At some point following the collapse of the Byandy Empire one hundred years prior to the start of the series, a faction of Geldwood's holy soldiers encounter five young humans in the company of the necromancer Corpse God and kill the 'corrupted children' to "free their souls." The Corpse God takes his revenge "there and for a hundred years after," becoming an enemy of the Geldwood Church in the process. In the interim, he compiles research on the Geldwood Church's 'underbelly' of internal corruption.

Sometime in the latter half of those hundred years, the Geldwood Church grants Shagura Lugrid—a possessor of the Evil Eye—salvation and take him in as a holy soldier, all the while trying to hide the fact that a faction of holy soldiers burned both the villagers who persecuted him and the bandits who slaughtered his family to death. Shagrua spends many years fighting as a holy knight in service of the Geldwood faith, vanquishing cults and monsters alike to increasing applause.

The Corpse God's century of terror and Shagrua's years of battle culminate in a final Geldwood assault against the "world disaster"-class necromancer, with Shagrua and the rest of his subjugation unit invading the Corpse God's labyrinth to vanquish him once and for all. Though the Corpse God is able to easily counter most of the forces who attack him, he vanishes to Shagrua's sword; once the Church's observation unit confirms all traces of the Corpse God's soul have vanished as well, Geldwood celebrates his vanquishing as a great victory for the faith.

Shagrua, however, finds himself consumed with doubt after he encounters the Corpse God's journal and extensive collection of books in the Corpse God's laboratory, the former revealing the Corpse God's kind side and the latter including a number of essays exposing "the underbelly of the Geldwood religion." Upon returning to a Geldwood cathedral in the Kingdom of Nyanild, Shagrua spends several days tirelessly researching the Corpse God's claims in the cathedral library and verifying their truth.

Concluding that he can no longer follow the Geldwood faith, Shagrua asks Head Priestess Recuria Lofilardo to tell the Church he has been possessed by the Corpse God and then escapes the premises, taking with him journals as well as evidence proving the order's corruption. Following his assault on a number of the nineteen highest-ranked religious leaders of Geldwood, the Church formally expels him from the institution and orders its holy soldiers to pursue him at all costs. Although the majority of clergymen and priest soldiers nonetheless still consider Shagrua a hero, and Recuria strives to band them together under a new banner, some of the more pious followers cannot overlook his near mass-murder. Both admirers and non-admirers alike in the clergy begin referring to Shagrua simply as 'Calamity' as a result of the Church's upper echelons' maniuplation.

Once the Church learns that Shagrua has gone into hiding somewhere within Byandy Peninsula, the Church orders Recuria to investigate the land "in pursuit of bringing Shagrua to justice." This is a trap laid by one or more Geldwood higher-ups who cannot abide allowing Recuria—someone who distrusts Geldwood's upper echelons—to hold such an influential position within the Church. Thus, Nyanild aristocrat Lord Domdaal and roughly one hundred men are sent to intercept and ambush Recuria's ten-odd group during the journey.

Lord Domdaal and his soldiers thus confront Recuria's group in a abandoned village within the Nyanild Kingdom's northeastern borders, felling her trustworthy companions one by one until only she remains standing. The Geldwood ambush is itself intercepted by Utsurojuza, who washes away Domdaal's one hundred Geldwood soldiers—sparing Recuria's companions—kills Domdaal, and introduces himself to Recuria as an envoy and ally of the alchemist Pani. Whether any of the Geldwood soldiers survived remains to be determined.