Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou Zero - Volume 6 - Chapter 1

Chapter I: Total Warfare

To the people of the theocracy, the only thing notable about the public execution of the Liberators the church had caught was that it would further cement the victory the theocracy had achieved in the war with the republic. Death was the expected punishment for anyone who had aided the republic during the war. For the Templar Knights, however, this was a chance to reclaim their honor. They were hoping the rest of the Liberators would take the bait they’d set so they could thoroughly crush their greatest enemy once and for all.

But both the knights and the people were absolutely certain that today would mark a momentous day in the history of the church. The heretics who had plagued the theocracy for so long would be eliminated, and the glorious church would once more become the leading light of hope to humans all over the world.

Unfortunately for them, the Liberators proved to be a far larger threat than the church had ever anticipated. Quite literally too. The Liberators’ massive black battleship, which was shaped like a giant whale, was so large that it covered the entire capital city in shadow. The aurora beam it had shot out also obliterated the capital’s prized barrier, one of the very symbols of the theocracy’s absolute might. The barrier had been presented to God’s chosen people by Ehit himself, and in the theocracy’s long history, it had never once been penetrated.

The townspeople stared up in shock as fragments of the shattered barrier rained to the ground and a lone figure leaped off the massive battleship’s deck. As the figure drew closer, people were able to make out that it was a girl.

The light of the aurora had scarcely begun to fade when the girl wrapped herself up in a dazzling sky-blue sphere of mana. A moment later, a shock wave rocked through the city, followed by a voice that carried for miles.

“We are the Liberators! Those who fight against God’s will!” the girl bellowed as she floated unaided above the crowd, using neither wind nor magical barriers to support her. “Our ultimate goal is to free this world from God’s twisted games!”

Her gleaming white battle dress fluttered in the wind, the sphere of dazzling blue mana around her allowing her to utterly ignore one of the fundamental laws of nature.

“I am Miledi Reisen, the leader of the Liberators!”

Her transcendent, almost divine entrance made even the devout priests of the church momentarily think her beautiful. But her next words destroyed any reverence the members of the church might have inadvertently felt.

“And I am here to take the world back from you, Ehit!” she spat those words, as if disgusted by having to even say it, and pointed up at the peak of the Divine Mountain.

A clear declaration of war.

The common folk of the theocracy shivered in fear. Miledi’s very existence had overturned everything they thought they knew about the world. In their minds, heretics were weak, sniveling fools who could never hope to threaten the absolute authority of the church. After all, if anyone could threaten it, it wouldn’t be absolute anymore.

However, Miledi had just boldly stated that she would drag Ehit off his throne. For the first time in their lives, they began to doubt that the church truly was invincible.

“Blasphemy! Our Lord’s power is absolute!” a furious voice responded from one of the twelve pillars surrounding the execution platform. It belonged to none other than archbishop Kimaris Sintail. Despite the heat in his voice, the look in his eyes was as cold as ice. The only outward sign of his rage—aside from his voice, of course—was the slight frown on his mouth. He pounded his staff on the pillar he was standing on, and the thirty-three priests on the other eleven pillars followed suit. They, too, looked furious that anyone would dare question Ehit’s authority.

Another dazzling circle of light formed above the execution platform, looking just like an angel’s halo. It then began to revolve and grow in size until it dwarfed the priests casting it.

This was the strongest composite light spell, Divine Wrath, transformed into a circle rather than a beam. In this shape, it could strike in all directions at once, allowing it to execute everyone simultaneously. No one had ever managed to resist the destructive light of Divine Wrath. And now the priests had all been apostleified, were drawing a nigh-limitless supply of mana from the earth via the pillars they stood on, and were equipped with powerful replicas of the Seven Sacred Treasures.

“Death to all heretics!” one priest roared. A second later, the halo of light contracted. Then, there was a violent flash...and the city was smothered in light.

Kimaris had prioritized executing the prisoners over fighting Miledi, likely just to spite her. The joy in his eyes as he gazed up at Miledi made it clear he wanted to relish in her suffering. But a second later, his joy turned to confusion.

“You really do revel in death a little too much, Kimaris.”

There was a small plink from below that made Kimaris look down at the execution platform. The light of his Divine Wrath was slowly fading away into nothing. The priests and the leaders of the various nations gazed at the newcomer in utter shock, but Kimaris’s face was twisted in pure hatred.

“So you came after all.”

Kimaris had no idea how this man had made it there, but he wasn’t about to deny the reality staring him in the face.

“Laus Baaaaaaaaarn!”

Framed by the disappearing light of the Divine Wrath, Laus smiled. A second later, a pillar of jet black mana erupted from him and he hefted his similarly black warhammer. With one swing he blew away the remnants of Kimaris’s spell. But as he saw what was on the now-visible execution platform, his jaw dropped open.

The priests, civilians, and foreign dignitaries were similarly stunned. Partly because all the heretics were unscathed, partly because the archbishop’s strongest spell—further strengthened by the boons he’d received recently—had been completely countered, and partly because it had been Laus Barn of all people who’d stopped Kimaris, but none of those were the primary cause.

“Splendid. I do love to make a dramatic entrance. There’s nothing quite like having everyone’s eyes on you,” Rasul said as he drank in everyone’s stares.

“Oh my! I didn’t know you had an exhibitionist streak, Demon Lord. The truth is, I also—”

Before Lyutillis could finish her thought, Rasul interrupted her by saying, “Your Majesty, please don’t lump me in with you. I’m simply enjoying the shock on everyone’s faces; nothing more. This is perhaps the greatest prank I’ve ever played in my life.”

“Can’t you two act a bit more dignified?” Laus asked in an exasperated voice.

“You want me to be dignified? Very well, allow me to introduce myself, then!” Rasul replied in a rather refined voice.

“He he, if you say so, Lau-chan-san,” Lyutillis added.

A pillar of bloodred mana erupted from Rasul as he boldly declared, “My name is Rasul Alva Igdol! I am the Demon Lord!”

Lyutillis straightened her silvery-white hair and added, “And I am Lyutillis Haltina, the queen of the Haltina Republic!”

It wasn’t just members of other races who’d come with the Liberators, but their respective leaders had as well. As that realization sank into the people watching, the two of them said in unison, “We are not enemies of mankind! In fact, we have come here today to assist the Liberators!”

Panic began to spread through the crowd of spectators. The scene before them was so unbelievable that they refused to accept it as reality. Demons and beastmen joining forces was already an impossibility, so how could they be here to protect a group of humans? For that matter, how could they assist the Liberators?

“This is the future we fight for,” Laus said, his voice carrying over the mutterings of the crowd. “We’ll create a future where humans, demons, beastmen, and all the other mortal races can live together in peace!”

That was, of course, the very thing that the church claimed was a grave sin.

“Former Holy Templar Knights Commander Laus Barn is here today as a Liberator!”

Complete silence fell over the city square. For a moment, the entire city felt more like the middle of a snowy plain or an empty desert than one of the most populous places in the world.

The king of their most hated foe, the queen of the race they had persecuted, and the knight who used to represent the unwavering might of the church had all joined forces when they should have been mortal enemies. According to the church, that should have been impossible, so the fact that it wasn’t was another crack in their claims of absolute authority.

“How dare you bring such a despicable sight to the city of God!” Kimaris howled, his face twisted in sheer hatred. However, he couldn’t deny that the display was having its intended effect. The people’s faith in the church rapidly wavered. Whoever had come up with this sequence knew exactly what they were doing.

Seeing the hesitation spread through the crowd, Kimaris ruthlessly shouted, “Nothing has changed, you fools! Our Lord still wishes them dead. All units, attack!”

He unleashed another Divine Wrath at Laus and the others. The priests on the other towers worked in groups to do the same. Spears of light shot toward Laus and his comrades from all directions.

Lyutillis waved her Guardian Rod, prompting leaf-green mana to erupt from her.

“Breaching my defenses is as difficult as navigating the Pale Forest.”

Lyutillis specialized in support and protection over direct confrontation, and she was able to create a twelve-layered barrier instantly thanks to her evolution magic. The barrage of Divine Wraths slowly eroded her barriers, but she was able to continually cast more to maintain her defenses.

Rasul smiled fearlessly at the spells hurtling toward him and said, “Now then, let’s get this party started—Ignis!”

His bloodred blade appeared in front of him, and he used it to slice through a dozen Divine Wraths at once.

Meanwhile, Laus countered Kimaris’s Divine Wrath with one of his own, while swinging his warhammer at the ones cast by the lesser priests, dispersing them with the shock waves from his weapon.

“Go, Miledi Reisen!” he shouted. “You can leave this battlefield to us! Bring down Ehit and his minions, for the sake of our futures!”

At Kimaris’s command, the theocracy’s airships had begun charging toward Lac Elain. Their cannons trained on Miledi, and they opened fire as the church’s dragons took flight from the airships’ decks toward the Liberators’ flagship.

The common folk began to flee as explosions rang out above them, and Lac Elain glided into action once more. Miledi floated back up onto its deck as it blazed forward. A transparent barrier of light, looking almost like an eggshell, surrounded the submarine. The dragons’ breath and the airship’s cannons battered futility against the barrier. The cannon fire may as well have been a fireworks display for all the damage it did.

Obviously, the tens of thousands of knights who’d been stationed at the city’s various gates weren’t just going to stand back and watch as their capital was invaded. Lilith’s army launched a barrage of attacks up at Lac Elain, and she herself spread her silver wings to assault it directly.

“What?!”

Before she could go more than a few feet, a massive elliptical portal appeared above her and her troops, showering them with a deluge of black boxes. Those black boxes were the Dark Gates that Oscar had developed. And a similar deluge was falling on the knights waiting at the city’s other gates.

As the gates landed, the opened portals spewed out thousands of black-clad knights and magical beasts.

“Oh, shit! Everyone form—”

The knights began screaming before Lilith could even get out a single order. Even though they’d been apostleified, and granted relic replicas, they were still dropping like flies. The reason for that was because all the magical beasts were equipped with god-tier artifacts, and the black knights themselves were artifact golems.

The Templar Knights weren’t able to maintain any semblance of formation against the onslaught. Confusion reigned, which was hardly surprising considering three thousand magical beasts and artifact golems had shown up in their midst.

The eastern and western gates weren’t faring any better either. They, too, had been hit by surprise armies of beasts and golems. None of the forces stationed at the city’s gates were in any position to attack Lac Elain. And so, it continued its flight unimpeded.

Jets of mana spewed from the engines at the rear, and it accelerated significantly. One of the church’s airships moved into its predicted course to stop it, but Lac Elain plowed through it without even slowing.

Panic began to spread as the damaged airship careened toward the ground, its cannons firing wildly and barely even managing to graze Lac Elain. Worst of all, the airship was heading straight for the stands where the foreign dignitaries were seated.

The kings’ and dukes’ guards lined up in front of their charges, determined to try to protect them even when they knew it was futile. Fortunately, they needn’t have worried. The Liberators’ only enemy was the church, and they refused to let anyone not involved in their war die during the revolution.

“Divine Wrath—Overcharge.”

A blinding bolt of light swallowed the airship whole, shattering it into a thousand tiny pieces before it hit the ground. The knights who’d been charging to the plaza from the northern street stopped in their tracks as they saw the utter devastation that had been wrought with one spell.

Kimaris kept up his barrage of attacks, but even he spared a glance toward the stands where shards of the broken airship rained down incessantly.

A lone young man was standing amidst the falling wreckage. He was dressed in resplendent white armor and was holding his sword aloft.

In an awed voice, Velka’s king asked the young man, “Wh-Who are you?”

With his back turned to the king, the young man said in a confident voice, “Reinheit Ashe, the hero of this generation. I, too, fight with the Liberators!”

The foreign leaders and the theocracy’s citizens had thought nothing would be able to surprise them anymore, but they had been sorely mistaken. To think even the hero had joined forces with the Liberators. It seemed as though everyone under the sun was denying the church, and by extension, God’s supremacy. However, there was no time for the people to come to terms with this development, as events were progressing at a breakneck pace.

The Templar Knights who’d been stationed near the spectator stands rushed toward Reinheit, but two newcomers sent them flying before they even got close.

“It’s an honor to meet you, lords and ladies. I am one of the Haltina Republic’s generals, Sim Gato.”

“And I am one of the demon empire’s generals, Elga Insut. Fear not, for I am not your foe. We are here with the hero to protect you.”

“No way...” one of the members of the Grandort Empire’s party muttered. They were closest to the demon empire and had suffered far more at the demons’ hands than any other nation. Seeing Laus join hands with the leaders of two other races had been a huge shock, but it was no less shocking to see beastmen and demon generals working with the hero of all people.

“Is the world really about to change?” someone muttered. And he most likely was not alone in thinking that.

An army of knights descended upon the plaza, determined to snuff out this rebellion, and any hope of change, with it. But of course, Reinheit and his two friends weren’t the only people who’d descended to fight on the ground.

“Sorry, but this is as far as you go.”

“Ufu fu fu, how about we share a passionate hug?”

“You know, you’re probably the only person I know who can kill with hugs.”

Leonard, Jinglebell, and Kipson popped up next to Laus and sent the incoming knights flying.

Of course, Lyutillis had aid as well.

“At long last, I actually get to fulfill my duty.”

“Geh, I wanna go home. Can’t I just go stealth mode and leave this to you guys?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Earn your keep, you worthless rabbit.”

Craid, Sui, Valf, and Nirke appeared seemingly out of nowhere to protect their queen.

Lestina and a group of demons also showed up to guard Rasul.

“Mass-produced teleportation artifacts?” Kimaris muttered in annoyance. Looking around, he saw dozens of portals opening up all around the plaza, surrounding him and his priests.

Laus had thrown out as many Dark Gates as he could while fending off Kimaris’s Divine Wraths. And Liberators, beastmen warriors, and demon soldiers now poured out of the gates to protect the prisoners from the church.

“Tch! What are you fools doing! Don’t let them escape!”

To make matters worse for the church, portals had appeared on the execution platform itself, so the captured Liberators were being whisked away to safety. All Kimaris could do was grit his teeth and watch as his prey escaped from right under his nose. Despite the new strength he’d received, he couldn’t get even a single attack past Laus, Lyutillis, and Rasul.

A few seconds later, a large shadow blanketed the plaza.

“I hope you’re watching, everyone. This is the moment Miledi and her merry band of friends change the world!”

Lac Elain had passed over the square and was heading straight for the royal palace. Cheers rose up from the Liberators down below.

Miledi’s tone was bright, and she didn’t sound anything like the dignified leader she had upon her arrival. There was something inherently annoying about the way she talked, so it was hard to believe the two voices could really have come from the same person. The contrast only served to add to the confusion on the ground too.

“Damn you...” Kimaris growled. However, he knew there was nothing he could do. Still, he didn’t let himself dwell on that and refocused his attention on the enemies before him. Maybe he couldn’t stop Lac Elain’s advance, but if he could kill the church’s greatest traitor, the Demon Lord, and the republic’s queen, the battle might yet turn in their favor.

“Leave that battleship to the Three Pillars of Radiance! Focus on crushing the heretics here on the ground!”

At Kimaris’s command, the plaza devolved into a chaotic melee.

Up above, on Lac Elain’s deck, Miledi looked down at the receding plaza. Despite how cheerful she’d sounded just a second ago, her face was lined with worry. She didn’t even notice the ceaseless barrage of magic and explosions battering futility against Lac Elain’s barrier.

Oscar put a reassuring hand on her shoulder and said, “Don’t worry. Believe in your comrades.”

Miledi looked over her shoulder and saw the gentle look in Oscar’s eyes that rested behind his glasses.

“Hmph, I never doubted them for a second,” she responded with a grin, prompting Oscar to smile back.

“All right, all right, no flirting while we’re being bombarded on all sides!” Meiru said, walking over.

“Just how shameless do you have to be to make googly eyes at each other while we’re in the middle of a life-or-death battle?” Vandre added.

Oscar and Miledi gasped and took a few steps away from each other upon hearing that.

Sighing, Naiz said, “It’s a race against time now. We need to destroy that pillar in the cathedral before Ehit has a chance to pull something. Don’t forget that.”

“I-I know, I know! That reminds me, Nacchan, you sure you can’t just teleport in?!”

“I’ve been trying for some time now, but...it doesn’t look like I can. Sorry.”

The crux of the plan was to make it to the cathedral and destroy the Heavenly Pillar to hamper Ehit’s means of influencing Tortus. That was why the others were holding the church’s forces at bay while Miledi prioritized reaching the cathedral.

Had they been able to teleport straight there, it would have been easy, but something seemed to be blocking Naiz.

“Don’t worry about it. We knew they might be able to stop our teleports, remember?”

Miledi and the others knew Ehit treated everything as a game and cared only about relieving his boredom. Thus, they’d anticipated that he’d do something that would keep them from skipping the script he’d written for them.

Laughing, Meiru looked over at the palace’s central terrace, where Pope Lucifer appeared to be praying. An aura of pure white mana surrounded him.

“Then I suppose we just have to switch to plan B and take the church out in a frontal assault.”

“Yep. Don’t forget, once we make it to the cathedral, we have to destroy all routes leading to it.”

There were three ways to reach the cathedral from the palace. You could physically climb the mountain, take the lift, or use the teleportation circle in one of the palace’s rooms. Since most of the church’s forces were in the city to make sure the execution went smoothly, if Miledi and the others could make it to the cathedral and destroy the routes leading to it, they’d be able to take down the pillar undisturbed.

That was plan B, which they created in case directly teleporting to the cathedral proved impossible.

“Here it comes! All hands, brace for impact!” Salus—who was serving as Lac Elain’s captain—shouted through the speakers.

The palace in front of them began to glow. Or, to be more specific, the ostentatiously decorated skywalk at the edge of the palace began to glow. Its strange geometric shape was neither artistic nor practical. And that was because the skywalk was actually a magic circle that activated the large-scale anti-air spell, Holy Ray. It was an offensive spell on par with the defensive barrier that had protected the capital.

The Sacred Mountain was bathed in pale blue light, which flowed down into the palace. As the glow increased in intensity, the shape of the magic circle grew more clear.

There was no time for Lac Elain to dodge, but Miledi and the others hadn’t been planning on dodging to begin with. As the airships and church’s dragons quickly retreated to safety, Lac Elain continued plowing forward.

“Ha ha ha ha! Bring it oooooon!” Salus shouted, clearly getting pumped up.

Sparks began to run across the skywalk as the spell charged. The sparks slowly converged at one point on the circle, directly in front of Lac Elain. There was so much energy crackling in that spot that the very air was being vaporized. Then the spell fired, and for an instant, all was silent.

Holy Ray was so massive that it made Lac Elain’s main cannons look like pea shooters. It was as if the wrath of the Sacred Mountain itself were bearing down on the ship.

“Hah, don’t underestimate our defenses,” Oscar stated confidently.

“Purge the Black Barrier! Deploy all shields to our front!” Salus shouted at the same time.

The black armor that covered Lac Elain detached from the ship and reformed itself into an exceptionally thick wall in front of them. The massive aurora of light from the palace hit the shield and...passed right through it. Or so it seemed, anyway. In truth, the massive shield worked under the same principles as Oscar’s own Onyx Shields. The shield’s surface was merely one giant portal that teleported away any attack that hit it.

Just then, though, three beams of silver light rained down on Lac Elain from above. They were the disintegration beams fired from the apostles who had given Miledi and the others so much trouble before. The main shield could only just barely handle Holy Ray, so it didn’t have the power to also deflect those beams. The ship’s barrier and other defenses wouldn’t be able to handle such a strong attack.

“I knew you’d try that!” Miledi said with a smirk. She then created three palm-sized black spheres and threw them up at the incoming beams.

The balls she’d made so casually curved the beams’ trajectories, causing them to hit the plaza in front of the palace instead. More disintegration blasts rained down on the ship a moment later, but Miledi deftly took care of them all. She used gravity balls to redirect them to empty spots on the floor, rendering them harmless.

Eventually, the Holy Ray began to fizzle out. Lac Elain then plowed forward, ignoring the oncoming apostles, and the shield disassembled itself. The respective sections of black armor flew back to their positions on the ship and reattached themselves.

With their vision no longer obscured, Miledi and the others could see Lucifer’s surprise, as well as the utter disbelief on the faces of the Three Pillars of Radiance’s commanders. They had finally realized what Miledi was planning to do.

One of the Paladins leaped off the balcony toward Lac Elain. And at the same time, a veritable wall of magical missiles came hurtling toward the Liberators from the skywalk. Lac Elain trained all of its weapons on the assault and fired back with its own magical barrage.

The sight resembled two meteor showers colliding. The process repeated itself over and over as Lac Elain approached, and eventually, not all the spells collided with each other. Some scratched Lac Elain’s armor, while others blasted off parts of the skywalk. But despite the onslaught, Lac Elain didn’t slow down at all.

“Now there’s a standing ovation worthy of my magical genius!” Miledi shouted, laughing.

“Yahoooooo! Focus the barrier on the ship’s prow! Chaaaaaarge!” Salus shouted, and Lac Elain rammed right into the royal palace.

There was a deafening roar as the impact shook even the mountain behind it. Shock waves rippled out, spreading through the entire city.

Dragon riders and airships alike struggled to stay in the air as the shock waves buffeted them and the entire palace above the central terrace, including the throne room, came crashing down.

It was an incredible sight. It looked similar to what would happen if you drove a car into a house at full speed, except in this case the house was a palace and the car was a giant submarine that was bigger than a whale. Barely a third of it had embedded itself in the palace, even.

From a distance, it looked like a giant creature was taking a bite out of the mountain. It truly was a fantastical sight.

“They’re insane,” Strass, the commander of the Templar Knights’ second division muttered as he pushed some rubble off of him.

“That certainly isn’t something a sane person would ever do...” Morcus Creant, the commander of the Templar Knights’ fourth division replied, trembling a little.

The central terrace led directly to the palace’s largest room, which was the chapel. There, a thousand Holy Templar Knights had been waiting under Kaime and Selm’s command, but now they were all on the ground, groaning in pain.

Thanks to their apostleification, only a few of them had died, but most were no longer in any shape to move. Those who could were still stunned by the sheer insanity of what had just happened.

It took a lot to faze one of the church’s knights, but ramming a massive flying submarine into the royal palace was something no one would’ve ever expected.

“Tch, looks like the pope managed to run away. I was hoping he’d died back there,” Miledi said casually as she leaped off of Lac Elain’s deck. She then looked over at the chapel, where Lucifer was waiting behind a solid guard of Paladins.

A second later he disappeared, along with his guards. It seemed one of his Paladins possessed special magic that allowed them to teleport. They were most likely headed for the cathedral. Miledi had hoped to destroy the lift and the teleportation circle before anyone else got there, but it didn’t look like that would be possible. Nor could they chase after Lucifer, since now he’d be the one destroying those means of transportation.

More likely than not, going after him would just be a waste of time. Upon realizing that, Miledi made a snap decision.

“Nacchan.”

“Don’t worry, I know what you’re thinking. Go.”

Miledi would leave the palace to Naiz. At the very least, he’d be able to stop anyone else from destroying the lift and magic circle. Besides, he’d be able to fulfill one other very important goal while he was here.

As Naiz vanished, Miledi turned on her heel. She didn’t spare the remaining knights a single glance. Her disdain for them caused them to seethe with rage.

“Your antics have gone too far, Reisen,” the new commander of the Templar Knights’ third division, Vapla, said. He had ten swords strapped to his back in a circle, and he was known within the theocracy as the Sword Saint. He drew the two swords closest to his waist and closed the distance between him and Miledi in an instant.

“Seriously, you’re the Sword Saint?” Badd said with a shake of his head, blocking Vapla’s strike with his scythe.

“You...”

He’d moved so fast that no one had even seen him jump off the deck. Moving protectively in front of Miledi, he said, “Our leader’s busy. You’ll have to contend with fighting her second-in-command.”

“You’re the Knight Hunter.”

Badd’s mana-eating scythe, Egxess, suddenly wreathed itself in a black aura, and a second later, it launched a crescent-shaped shock wave at Vapla.

Vapla spun his swords like a windmill to deflect the attack and leaped back to gain some distance. The knights who’d run over to assist him backed away as well. At the same time, a fully armored Marshal was fighting another one of the knight commanders.

“Sorry, but you’re not getting past me!”

“Move, damn you!” Morcus shouted, trying to knock Marshal away with his halberd. However, Marshal simply activated his Diamond Skin and blocked all of the incoming blows.

“Die, you filthy half-breed!”

“Shut the fuck up, you bastard!”

A short distance away, Strass was fighting Shushu. He kept slashing at her with his double daggers, but she used her Repulse to keep him at bay.

“God, look at all these white-haired old farts. Disgusting.”

“Hey! My hair’s white too, you know, Chris?!”

Meanwhile, Chris and Kyaty were taking care of the grunt knights with their respective special magics, Vorpal Slash and Acceleration.

More and more of Miledi’s allies poured out of the ship. Three hundred Liberators—a full seventy percent of their total fighting force—and two hundred of the Melusine Pirate crew were now fighting in the chapel. They were outnumbered two to one by the knights, but they weren’t letting a single one get past them.

Now that it had unloaded its occupants, Lac Elain rumbled to life and started backing out of the rubble. The sky behind it was clear, much to the chagrin of the knights.

“Onee-sama! Leave the palace to us! Good luck with your fight!” Diene shouted as the submarine retreated.

“Diene... Thanks, I’ll come back soon! Chris, if anything happens to Diene, I’ll tear you limb from limb, you hear?!”

“What?!”

And with that, Miledi and the others were back in the air. But the moment they were clear of the palace, another disintegration beam bore down on them. It was much thicker and far more powerful than the ones they had faced earlier, so Miledi suspected the three apostles had combined their strength to fire it.

Kaime and the others looked relieved that the apostles had joined the fight. They were certain no one would be able to withstand the combined might of the three of them. So long as they barred the path forward, no one would be able to get past them. That, too, was one of the “absolute” truths of the church. However, Oscar just calmly walked in front of Miledi and deployed one of his Onyx Shields to take the blow.

Any normal artifact would have disintegrated in seconds, but even though the portal couldn’t disperse the entirety of the beam, the shield’s unbelievable sturdiness allowed it to withstand the attack.

“I won’t allow you to get in Miledi’s way.”

“Oh my, Oscar-kun! I can’t believe you’re flirting even in this situation!” Meiru said in a teasing voice.

“Aww, you’re such a lady-killer, O-kun! At this rate, I’ll fall for you all over again!” Miledi added cheerily.

“Is this really the time for jokes?” Vandre asked in an exasperated tone.

Meanwhile, the Holy Templar Knights, as well as the Paragons of Light led by Mulm, watched on in disbelief. Mulm had thought to bring his dragons back to slow Lac Elain’s advance, but now he was witnessing the might of three apostles being countered. Indeed, even the apostles were surprised by the turn of events. But to Miledi and the others, being able to hold their own against a few apostles was nothing special.

As the apostles momentarily recoiled in shock, Miledi’s expression went blank.

“Out of the way,” she said in a cold voice before raising one hand into the air.

A second later, she unleashed the spell she’d been working on while Oscar was defending her. The three apostles flinched as her blue eyes locked onto them. They abandoned their assault and tried to get out of the way, but their surprise dulled their reactions, so they were a hair too late.

“Heavencrush,” Miledi said in a quiet whisper.

A massive black ball of pure gravity appeared between the apostles, black sparks jumping across its surface. This was a far cry from the Heavensfall Miledi had used in the past. For one, it was big enough to swallow all three apostles at once. For another, its pull was so strong that they couldn’t hope to escape.

Even under Miledi’s expert control, the sphere was so powerful that its residual gravity broke off more of the palace, sucked up the rubble, and even gouged a hole into the Sacred Mountain. Had she not deployed multiple other gravitational fields to keep the sphere’s effect localized, it would have swallowed up the entire palace, all of Lac Elain, and everybody in it, including herself. The Paragons were lucky they’d kept their distance. Due to that, most of them were able to drop low to the ground and avoid being sucked in by the gravity sphere. The few that didn’t make it in time could only struggle helplessly as the sphere sucked them in and crushed the life out of them.

Several airships were caught in the gravitational field as well, and they were ripped apart before the sphere absorbed them. Naturally, the apostles were slaughtered as well, as they’d been the closest to the sphere when it had spawned.

“Today is the last day you get to look down on humans,” Miledi said, directing her words to the malicious puppet master pulling the apostles’ strings as she curled her fingers into a fist.

The sphere contracted in on itself, utterly obliterating everything that had been sucked into it, including the apostles.

“I don’t...believe it...” a knight muttered, his words carrying far in the ensuing silence.

The strongest of Ehit’s servants had been slaughtered with ease. Indeed, to the knights, this really was unbelievable. It made more sense to question their sanity than it did to accept the scene that had unfolded before their eyes.

Miledi Reisen’s power was so great that for the first time, the knights felt fear through their religious zeal and fervent fury. That, of course, worked out in Miledi’s favor, since it meant she had fewer obstacles to plow through.

“All right, Sal, Badd! I’m leaving everything down here to you two!”

“You can count on us. Go on ahead, Miledi.”

“Yeah, go wild up there!”

As always, Miledi switched gears so fast that the knights began to wonder whether she had a split personality. She went from looking like a regal ruler to a grinning clown in an instant.

Finally freed from his paralyzing fear, Mulm raised his bow and aimed at Miledi.

“I won’t let you get any closer! Adra, get her!”

Adra faithfully opened his jaws and unleashed his breath at the same time that Mulm fired his arrow. It split into a hundred identical arrows as it streaked through the air toward Miledi.

“Go on ahead, I’ll take care of things here,” Vandre said, firing twice as many arrows back at Mulm and countering Adra’s breath with his own. He was holding a black bow, with dozens more floating in the air next to him. His faithful wyvern, Uruluk, was also there, clad in artifact armor.

“Thanks. Don’t take too long though, Van-chan.”

“We’ll be done in a flash. Taking care of these guys and destroying their means of transportation won’t take any time at all.”

Oscar held his fist out to Vandre, and Vandre tapped it with his own. Meiru patted Vandre on the shoulder as well, then a second later, Miledi reversed gravity. She, Meiru, and Oscar fell up toward the mountain’s peak at breakneck speed as a result.

“How many times do I have to say it, I’m not letting you leave!” Mulm shouted.

“You can say it as many times as you want, but that doesn’t mean you can actually back those words up,” Vandre said disdainfully, once again blocking Mulm’s assault. His skill with weapons was so great that he could shoot Mulm’s arrows out of the air with his own.

“Fine, then I’ll overwhelm you with numbers! Get him, men!”

Seven hundred Paragons of Light rushed up toward Vandre.

“Quality over quantity, huh?” Vandre mumbled as he stored his bow in his Treasure Trove, pulled out a tiny jewel tied to a braided cord, and threw it into the air. A second later, the white jewel emitted a dazzling light. Thinking it was just a simple attempt at blinding them, Mulm and the others shielded their eyes. But the light didn’t last long, and as it faded, the knights realized what the jewel truly was.

“Tch, so you teleported your disgusting beasts here?!”

Indeed, the jewel had been a portal that had allowed Vandre to call upon hundreds more of his armored wyvern familiars. They were grouped into squads of ten, with a Schnee warrior leading each pack.

“At long last, we can fight together, Van-sama!” Margaretta said as she rode the lead wyvern.

Vandre drew the greatsword at his back and hefted it onto his shoulder.

“Now then, I’m tired of seeing your ugly mug. Let’s see whether my wyverns or your dragons are stronger. I missed my chance to finish your measly beasts off in the last war, so this is as good a time as any to finish the job.”

“Hmph, we’ve grown far stronger since then!”

“And so have we.”

Vandre and Adra once again fired their breath at each other, signaling the start of the greatest aerial battle Tortus had ever seen.

Miledi and her friends zoomed up to the eight thousand meter peak of the Divine Mountain, blazing by the mountainside in an instant. With how powerful Miledi was now, it wouldn’t take even a minute to get everyone there.

Oscar had even made her artifacts that kept her supplied with oxygen and let her adjust the atmospheric pressure around her at will. Plus, there were no remaining obstacles in Miledi’s path, so the group was able to reach the cathedral without incident.

An impossibly steep staircase led up to the cathedral’s main entrance, which was flanked by beautiful pillars of white marble. A bird’s-eye view showed that there were fountains and a garden in the courtyard, despite the cathedral being well above the elevation plants could survive. Past the courtyard was the central temple, which was unbelievably grand. It was five stories tall and about two hundred meters in diameter. The temple’s four corners had hundred-meter tall towers and a large dome rose out of the center.

“Guess we arrived a little too late.”

“Yeah, our welcoming party got here before us.”

A squad of ninety Paladins was waiting atop the temple’s roof for Miledi and the others. At their center was Pope Lucifer, who was glaring directly up at Miledi.

“It doesn’t matter,” Miledi said calmly, unleashing a torrent of sky-blue mana. She ignored Lucifer and his Paladins entirely and instead focused her attention on the temple itself. Or more specifically, on the lone pillar in the center of the temple that allowed mortals to commune with God.

“Heavencrush!” Miledi roared, unleashing the spell she’d been charging the entire time they’d been flying to their present location. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to end everything in a single blow.

“Tch, I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.”

A rainbow-colored barrier appeared around the temple, blocking the same spell that had managed to obliterate three apostles at the same time.

“Miledi!” Oscar shouted, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her backward a second before a flash of light pierced the spot she’d been standing in. It had been fired from the holy lance in Darrion’s hands.

“It’s futile,” the young Paladin commander said in a booming voice.

“I, Darrion Kaus, shall never allow you to breach these sacred walls.”

Lucifer stepped forward and added, “Do you realize where you stand?”

His voice was gravelly, but surprisingly calm.

“Divine Crusade,” he said simply, raising his staff. The entire temple was bathed in a dazzling silver light...and a second later, he said, “Sanctified Purge.”

The light expanded outward, covering the entire mountain in a silver aura.

“Oh no! O-kun!” Miledi shouted.

“I’ve already activated my purge-countering artifact. But it’s still this effective at weakening us even with that up.”

“I’ll probably bleed my mana dry if I keep trying to counteract it with restoration magic,” Meiru added.

The weakening effect of Lucifer’s spell was far greater than what Selm had achieved with his replica staff. Part of that was, of course, because the main cathedral itself was an artifact that strengthened those who believed in Ehit and weakened heretics. Even when it had just been partially activated, it had been enough to stymie Naiz’s teleports. And to make matters worse, Miledi could feel a new threat materializing behind her. Turning around, she saw four new apostles appearing from rifts in the air.

The look Lucifer and the apostles gave Miledi made it clear that unless she fought and defeated them, this battle would not end. One way or another, Ehit would force the Liberators to play his game.

“Bring it on,” Miledi said with a fearless smile. At her signal, Oscar flourished his umbrella and Meiru split her saber into a snake sword.

In response, the apostles brandished their dual claymores and spread their wings. Darrion raised his shield and spear and the paladins behind him followed suit with their own holy weapons.

Lucifer waved his withered, decrepit arm with surprising force, turning his pristine white robes into a suit of gleaming armor. Smiling faintly, he said to Miledi, “Our Lord has been looking forward to this game. Do try to entertain him before you perish.”

“He’s had more than enough fun already. It’s way past his bedtime, so I’m here to put him to sleep,” Miledi replied coolly, signaling the start of the fight.

Meanwhile, back at the palace down below, a massive scream ripped through the central temple. A second later, there was a spurt of blood and a severed head flew through the air.

“Gah! Commander, your orders?!”

“Huh?”

The Templar Knights had just seen three apostles get slaughtered in the blink of an eye. The shock had caused them all to freeze up for a moment, which had been a fatal mistake. Dozens of Templar Knights were slain before the group regained their senses and remembered they were still under attack.

One of the division captains, Lelei Argeson, looked to Kaime for commands, but Kaime was still too shocked to have finished processing what had happened. She fired an arrow strengthened with her special magic, Arrows of Atonement, that whizzed past Kaime’s cheek and struck his assailant.

“Whoa! You’ve got one scary babysitter there, boy!” Badd said in surprise as he knocked the arrow away with a twirl of his scythe.

“B-Boy?! How dare you address me like that!”

Badd’s taunts finally snapped Kaime out of his reverie and he brandished his Holy Sword, charging at Badd.

“Commander, don’t fall for his taunts!” Lelei roared. However, her warning fell on deaf ears. Kaime’s face reddened even further in embarrassment as Badd easily parried his full-powered swing.

Losing himself in rage, Kaime unfurled his wings and unleashed a barrage of white feathers at Badd. Though his feathers didn’t possess any disintegration magic, each of them was still as powerful as a Celestial Flash, so they were quite threatening. And yet, Badd easily dodged the deadly downpour, his condescending grin only growing wider. Twirling Egxess like a pinwheel, he scattered the feathers while draining the mana in them. As he did so, he shouted to his comrades, “Looks like he can’t use his disintegration powers without some prep time!”

“Wha—?!” Kaime exclaimed, reddening even further.

Sui had already told Badd and the others about how immature Kaime was. Thus, Badd had figured if he provoked Kaime, he’d be able to find out just how much power Kaime could bring to bear in an instant, so he’d done just that.

“How dare you make a fool out of me!”

“Calm yourself, Commander! The battle has devolved into a melee, we need your orders to fight effectively!”

Lelei strode up to stand by Kaime and used her mana—which was now silver thanks to her apostleification—to create another arrow. As Badd stared at the mana-rich arrow, his expression turned grim.

Lelei loosed it, sending the arrow streaking toward Badd at the speed of light. Until now he’d acted like he’d been toying with his opponents, but Badd had to dodge it in earnest. He jumped to one side and deflected the arrow with his scythe. The arrow ended up slamming into a nearby pillar and blowing right through it with ease. Lelei’s arrow was clearly enhanced with disintegration magic.

“They need two to three seconds to charge their disintegration magic! You can tell they’re doing it when they concentrate their mana in one spot!” Badd shouted while dodging another barrage of Kaime’s feathers. Meanwhile, he kept an eye on Lelei’s arrow, which did a U-turn midair to chase him down once more.

Egxess let out a roar and a black aura surrounded it. The scythe almost looked frustrated that it had failed to absorb the arrow’s mana in one go.

“Eat it all this time, Egxess!”

The dark aura coalesced around the blade of the scythe, and Badd swung it right at the disintegration arrow, scattering it to the four winds. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Lelei fire a normal arrow of light while trying to calm her commander down.

Heh! Must be tough, having a brat as your commander!

Selm was Kaime’s vice-captain, and technically the second in command of the Holy Templar Knights, but since he wasn’t much better than Kaime in terms of maturity, Lelei was the one who really took charge most of the time. Swallowing her irritation, she desperately tried to get her inexperienced commander to actually act like a true leader. Under normal circumstances, Badd and the others would have loved to have had a pair of naive children serving as their enemy’s commander. After all, it meant the enemy’s movements would be easier to predict and outmaneuver.

Indeed, the current situation was favorable to the Liberators, since Kaime wasn’t giving any real commands, so the Holy Templar Knights couldn’t coordinate themselves. Meanwhile, the Liberators and pirates were working together seamlessly to push the isolated knights back and even defeat some of them.

The regular Templar Knights and their captains weren’t faring much better. Chris, Kyaty, and the other elites of the Melusine Pirate Crew were keeping Strass occupied. Howzer, Madame Jacqueline, Nadia, Solas, and Bakara were matched up with Morcus. And Marshal, Tony, Shushu, and Abe were taking care of Vapla.

It was honestly impressive that the division commanders were managing to fend off attacks from all directions despite how shaken they looked. However, they didn’t have any leeway to give orders to their men. Even a few words of encouragement probably would have been enough to shake off the despair the knights had felt upon seeing their apostles slain so easily.

Frustrated that they couldn’t even manage that due to their young commander having let the blood rush to his head, Lelei shouted, “Commander!”

“Tch, I know, I know! Noble knights of the church, hear—”

“Come on, kid, it’s way past your bedtime! Your dad’s come to take you home!” Badd interjected, making Kaime’s expression stiffen.

Even Selm, who was a good distance away, reacted to that. He’d been desperately struggling to fend off Snowbell, who was decked out in bikini armor and an overcoat, but his expression did a complete one-eighty upon hearing Badd’s taunts.

Lelei clicked her tongue in annoyance. In an attempt to shut Badd up, she charged up another disintegration arrow to throw at him. However, that turned out to be a mistake. As Badd had predicted, it took about three seconds for her to gather enough mana...and those three seconds were enough for Badd to get another taunt in.

“Well, I can’t blame you for wanting to run. You kids can’t hope to beat your daddy, after all!”

It was as blatant a taunt as they came. But Badd’s expression was just so smug, and the Barn siblings always had been prideful.

“Lelei! You’re in command here! You can handle these simpletons on your own!” Kaime exclaimed as he rushed forward with surprising force, unleashing a Celestial Flash in front of him. Badd dodged it like a matador dodging a bull, easily letting Kaime past him. Out of the corner of his eye he watched as Snowbell gracefully let Selm fly past them as well.

Letting the two brothers go was part of the plan. Even if keeping Kaime and Selm here would help turn the battle in their favor, the Liberators had unanimously decided that their father should be the one to handle them.

Snowbell gave Badd a flirtatious wink, which Badd dodged with even more desperation than he had Lelei’s disintegration arrow. Technically, a wink wasn’t really something that could be dodged, but Badd felt as though he had to dodge it anyway, or something horrible might happen.

“Disgusting. I knew we couldn’t trust the relatives of traitors!” Lelei screamed.

“Ha ha ha ha... Don’t you think it’s cute how easily they get baited?”

“Silence, Knight Hunter!”

Despite the heat in her voice, Lelei kept her cool. She was too seasoned a knight to fall for cheap taunts. She fired one disintegration arrow mixed with several regular arrows, while simultaneously using wind magic to amplify her voice.

“Devout knights of the church, I have been granted command of this battle! Overwhelm them with numbers! Show these heretics the might of God!”

Her voice was so loud that Badd scrunched up his face in pain. As expected, her command brought a semblance of order back to the knights, reigniting the fire in their eyes.

“Death to all heretics!” she shouted.

“Death to all heretics!” the knights replied in unison. They still hadn’t come to terms with the deaths of their apostles, but they had been reminded of their duty at long last, which gave them the resolve to fight to the end.

“Yikes. We only got...about fifty of them before they rallied,” Badd mumbled. He had been hoping to thin their ranks a bit further, so he clicked his tongue. The bigger problem, though, was that they hadn’t managed to kill any of the knights Badd had seen during the war with the republic, meaning most of the knights that had been slain were weaker Templar Knights that had been hurriedly promoted to fill the Holy Templar Knights’ ranks. And yet, they hadn’t even managed to kill a hundred of those weaker knights.

With their morale restored, the Holy Templar Knights quickly began pushing back the Liberators. That gave the regular Templar Knights commanders the leeway to bark out orders to their men.

“It’s time to swat these annoying flies!” Morcus howled, creating a powerful gravity field with him at the center. Howzer, Jacqueline, and Nadia started getting dragged toward him. This was his special magic, Entrapment. It allowed him to drag his enemies closer to him, preventing them from escaping God’s judgment. Once Howzer and the others had come closer, he swung his hammer and halberd at them, sending them all flying.

Groaning, the Liberators quickly got back to their feet. The fight was not going in their favor...and it wasn’t much better for the others either.

“Dammit!”

“Hah, just because you’re a little faster than other people don’t think you’re anything special, you mongrel.”

Kyaty and the others were having just as hard a time dealing with Strass now. Despite her speed, Kyaty was being toyed with. Every time she thought she had him, her daggers cut through empty air, and he was suddenly at her flank, attacking her with his sword and spear. That was all thanks to his special magic, Phantom Waltz, which allowed him to create realistic afterimages that messed with his opponents’ perception. Whenever Kyaty thought she’d dodged one of his attacks, the real attack came from a different direction, and Chris had to step in to save her. Ned and Mania had both taken serious injuries already and were out of the fight.

Marshal, Shushu, Tony, and Abe didn’t have it any easier either.

“Shit, so this is the famous Sword Saint?! For an old geezer, he’s pretty tough!”

“For a heretic, you sure are tough!”

Had it not been for Marshal’s special magic, he would have been cut down ages ago. His swordsmanship couldn’t keep up with Vapla’s at all, even with Shushu and the others’ attacks taking up some of his attention. And that was thanks to Vapla’s special magic, Ten Blades, which allowed him to control eight other floating blades with magic in addition to the two in his hands.

Cloris, Snowbell, and Arsel were all fighting against the rest of the Holy Templar Knights, but they and their men were sorely outnumbered. They all had artifacts imbued with evolution magic that multiplied their stats fivefold, but even then they were still outmatched by the knights and were slowly being backed into a corner.

This apostleification and the weapon replicas all the knights got made them stronger than we anticipated...

If they could just hold out until Miledi took control of the main cathedral, it’d have been Badd and the others’ victory, but without those evolution magic artifacts, they might not even have managed to survive for a few minutes.

Breaking out in a cold sweat, Badd surveyed the battlefield before activating his transmitter and saying, “Everyone, focus on staying alive! Adel, hurry up!”

They still hadn’t run out of trump cards. In fact, they hadn’t used a single one of them yet. Badd smiled fearlessly as the mad scientist Adel Lackman responded, “Don’t rush me! Magic’s more delicate than you fools will ever understand!”

“Yeah, yeah, my bad!” Badd roared as he glanced over his shoulder and saw Adel working furiously on something near the collapsed entrance of the temple. There was a black coffin-shaped object in front of him, and he was surgically pouring mana into it at various points. Several magic circles repeatedly flickered on and off on the surface of the coffin.

Badd switched his focus back to Lelei, but was, unfortunately, a moment too late.

“Gah!” he shouted, as he was knocked back at the speed of light and slammed into one of the temple’s pillars.

Shit, my vision’s spinning.

He’d hit the back of his head, hard. Though he’d managed to dampen the impact as much as possible with godlike reaction time, he’d still taken quite a blow. His brain was howling in pain.

So those are the Paladins I heard so much about, huh?

Indeed, it was not Lelei who had hit him, but a Paladin wielding a massive warhammer who had rushed out from the depths of the temple. On the breastplate of his holy armor was an insignia of a shield surrounded by a halo.

The Paladin was none other than Seys, the same man who’d defeated Vandre’s Uruluk with his Invisible Judgment.

“This is the end, Knight Hunter!”

Lelei unleashed another disintegration arrow at Badd while he was reeling from the impact of Seys’s hammer. However, an unexpected shield formed to protect Badd.

“What?!” Lelei shouted in surprise. A dark-gray liquid had spilled out of Badd’s pocket and solidified into a surprisingly sturdy shield. Badd chuckled as the arrow crumpled upon hitting it.

“Our synergist is the best in the world at making adaptable gadgets.”

Oscar had made artifact equipment for all of the Liberators, so even their clothes had multiple defensive functions and were made out of super-sturdy metal threads. The liquid that Badd returned to his pocket was the pinnacle of the defensive artifacts Oscar had distributed to everyone.

It was known as Metal Slime Batlam. Though it had no will of its own, it was a fusion of metamorphosis magic and creation magic that could harden automatically to cushion impacts and protect its user. Moreover, Oscar had come up with countermeasures for each of the trump cards the church had already shown.

“Commander Lelei, I have an urgent report! The effects of our debuff magic appear to be neutralized!”

“Gah, but we only ever showed that to the heretics once!”

In fact, Oscar had only ever heard about the debuff spell, not seen it, but he was such a skilled synergist that a secondhand account had been enough intel for him to work with.

The nape of Badd’s neck prickled, and a second later, he felt a burning sensation on his skin.

“Shit.”

A tendril of smoky, poisonous mana appeared from the other side of the pillar and attempted to envelop Badd.

“Vorpal Slash!” Chris shouted, cutting the pillar right above Badd’s head, nearly clipping him in the process. However, before Badd could complain, he saw a knight with a spear tumble away from right behind him.

“The Paladin that can use corrosion magic!”

Badd had read the reports on Torres. He hadn’t realized he’d let the dangerous Paladin get so close to him, so he quickly put some distance between them right after saying that.

Lelei clicked her tongue and trained her disintegration arrow on Chris. However—

“Impossible! No one but the Knight Hunter should possess a weapon that can absorb mana!”

Chris easily sliced the arrow in half with his blade.

“He he he, bet you didn’t think a pirate would have such a fancy sword,” he said, standing back-to-back with Badd.

Though technically, Chris’s sword let him cut through mana rather than absorb it, just like the Demon Lord’s sword, Ignis. All of the Liberators’ weapons had been enchanted to do the same. It was one of the many countermeasures Oscar had come up with for the apostles’ disintegration magic.

At that exact moment, a gentle beam of light rained down on Badd. It was a slightly lighter shade of orange than Meiru’s mana, and a second later, his wounds healed up.

“Thanks, Diene!” Badd shouted. Diene gave him a thumbs-up in response from her post next to Adel. In her other hand, she held a trident with an aqua-colored jewel set into its shaft. It was an artifact that had been made specifically for Diene, who could use renewal magic.

Things had been looking rather dicey for the Liberators for a moment there, but they steadily fought their way back to a stalemate with the knights.

Diene’s magic helped heal anyone who got injured, turning it into a battle of attrition.

“Hey, where’s my thanks? I saved your neck from that Paladin.”

“Whoops, sorry, Chris, but I’ve got a policy of never thanking dudes.”

“I see. No wonder all the ladies hate you.”

“Fuck you!”

Badd and Chris continued to insult each other as Badd absorbed Torres’s corrosive attacks with Egxess and Chris cut down every arrow Lelei fired.

“Quit playing around, you morons! Do you want me to blow you up?!” Arsel Blare, captain of the Esperado branch, shouted.

“Whaaat?! We’re sorry!” Badd and Chris replied in unison.

Arsel was one of the most intimidating members of the Liberators, and he looked exceptionally pissed. He was currently engaged in a long-range duel with Seys. His special magic, Explosion, let him blow up any location within his line of sight. However, Seys was also skilled in invisible ranged warfare and was fighting back with his own Invisible Judgment.

Arsel was trusting his Metal Slime Batlam to defend him, while continuing to bombard Seys and prevent the knight from attacking anyone else.

“Snowbell!” Badd shouted.

“Kyaty!” Chris said at the same time.

They needed the sturdy Snowbell and the speedy Kyaty to back Arsel up, or he’d be overwhelmed. And so, the two of them responded instantly. If Seys was given even a moment’s respite, he’d be able to lock onto someone and snipe them with ease.

With the Liberators both outmatched and lower in power, they couldn’t have Seys taking out their healer.

“Someone get that filthy dagon girl!” Lelei shouted, realizing who was the pillar of the Liberators’ defense.

“Hah, bring it on!” Diene shouted back.

“Hey, don’t antagonize her!”

“Don’t forget, we’re the ones who have to protect you!”

For a healer, Diene was surprisingly aggressive. Velinka’s branch chief, Odio Straff, who was one of the Liberators’ best barrier masters, desperately deployed as many shields as he could to protect Diene and Adel from the sudden flood of Celestial Flashes heading their way. Meanwhile, Eevee used her thorn-covered whip to keep the charging knights at bay.

“My, you pirates really have a strong-willed princess on your hands,” Adel’s butler, Henriette, said as he picked off isolated knights with his poisoned needles.

No normal twelve-year-old would have been able to maintain her composure with an army of bloodthirsty knights trying to kill her. And yet, there wasn’t even the slightest hint of fear in Diene’s eyes. Her resolve remained as unwavering as ever. But then, a second later, her face twisted in pain.

“Aghhh!”

An eerie wail could be heard from the depths of the temple.

Diene looked down and saw a red stain on her chest. She let out a small gasp of surprise, then crumpled to the ground.

“Diene?!” Adel shouted in surprise, prompting Odio and the others to turn around. They couldn’t understand how Diene had been hit with the barrier still functional.

“There’s... There’s one more knight who can use space-altering magic!” Adel turned to where he’d heard that wail from as he said that, and saw who the assailant was; a female knight standing in front of the altar. She was receiving treatment from the few Holy Templar Knights who specialized in healing magic. Actually, it was hard to be sure she really was a knight. Unlike the others, all she was wearing was a simple priestess’s robe, and her sole weapon was a small knife. That knife was covered in blood, as was the girl’s chest.

In truth, she was the Paladin Niety. She was in her late teens and covered in scars. Her wide-open eyes looked unnatural as well.

Niety’s special magic was Martyrdom, and that was what had allowed her to stab Diene in the chest. Her magic allowed her to share her own injuries with someone else.

Cackling to herself, her wide-open eyes trained on Badd next.

“Oh shit.”

Arsel took his eyes off of Seys for a second to fire an Explosion at Niety. His biggest Explosion yet was powerful enough to blow her and the knights healing her away. However, it also granted Seys the opportunity to get a hit in on Arsel.

Metal Slime Batlam got between the two just in time, but it wasn’t fast enough to harden, so the blow to the back of Arsel’s head instantly knocked him unconscious. Blood dripped from Arsel’s eyes and nose; the wound was fatal.

At the same time, Snowbell and Kyaty were sent flying. Without Arsel’s explosions to keep Seys at bay, he was free to attack everyone with impunity. Chris, Shushu, and Howzer were taken down a second later. Their defensive artifacts barely kept them alive, but they were in no position to keep fighting.

The stalemate that had held for the last few minutes was broken.

“Ha ha ha, looks like this is the end for you!” Morcus shouted, closing in on Jacqueline. Without Howzer’s backup, she stood no chance against him. She barely managed to avoid a fatal blow from the first swing of Morcus’s halberd, losing one of her arms in the process.

Nadia and the others leaped in to aid her, but Morcus simply used Entrapment to throw them off-balance, then sent them flying with a Celestial Flash.

“You fought well, for a bunch of heretics.”

“Gaaaaaaaaah!” Marshal screamed, charging at Vapla. Tony and Abe were already too injured to put up much of a fight, so Vapla left them to the other knights. Bringing all ten swords to bear against Marshal, he sliced right through the sturdy man’s Diamond Skin.

“Goddammit, just hit already!” Cloris screamed, advancing on Strass.

“Hmph, no filthy mongrel could ever hope to reach me.”

Cloris used a pair of detachable scissors to fight in a rather unorthodox manner, but even with her tricky attacks and Ned and Mania backing her up, she couldn’t land a single blow on Strass, while he kept countering her at every turn.

Kyaty was just as battered as she tried to fight Seys without Arsel’s help.

“Don’t underestimate pirates!”

A short distance away, Snowbell had been utterly defeated, their arm and jaw a bloody mess.

There wasn’t a single fighter on the Liberators’ side who was doing well. Swallowing the urge to throw in the towel, Kyaty forced herself to keep fighting. Ducking low, she circled Seys and swung a dagger at his back.

“Pathetic.”

An attack she’d thought had been coming from in front of her hit her in the side. This had happened over a dozen times now. Had it not been for her Metal Slime Batlam, she would have died ages ago. And after the pounding it had taken, her Metal Slime Batlam had lost some of its mass and thus its defensive potential. Indeed, even after blocking this latest attack from Seys, Kyaty could still feel her collarbone crack.

The girl landed on all fours like a cat, coughing up blood. She glared at Seys, but he just stared coolly at her, his eyes entirely devoid of emotion.

“This battle is over. I imagine you stayed here to buy time for Miledi Reisen, but your star of hope can’t save you.”

“Shut the fuck up! Miledi and the others will definitely—”

“I just received a report that Oscar Orcus was defeated.”

“What?”

“He was hit by an apostle’s disintegration attack. None of the Paladins have even been injured. It’s only a matter of time before Miledi falls as well.”

All strength left Kyaty’s limbs. She hung her head, her ears and tail drooping.

“That broke you, huh? Well, it’s for the best,” Seys mumbled as he hefted his warhammer. “Taste the invisible wrath of God, you—”

“Gya ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Analysis complete! Orcus’s artifact really is something else!” Adel’s grating laugh cut through Seys’s proclamation, and the usually calm knight gave him a look of surprise. A second later, he shouted, “Purge Reversal!”

The coffin that Diene had kept her hands on despite the hole in her chest emitted a powerful glow, swallowing the entire battlefield.

“What in the...?” Seys mumbled as he staggered backward, feeling some of his strength leave him. The Holy Templar Knights looked shaken as well.

“Looks like we bought enough time after all,” Kyaty said, baring her fangs in a fearless grin.

“Ngh...” Seys had thought telling her Oscar had been killed would break her, but that had been far from the case. But while that was unexpected, Seys quickly regained his composure. Even with his own stats lowered, he was confident he was stronger than the Liberators.

“Our advantage remains unchanged!” he shouted, rallying the Holy Templar Knights. His voice boomed through the temple, and the knights quickly regained their composure as well.

Unfortunately, their morale only lasted a few seconds.

“Forest Manifestor!” a beautiful voice called out, making the knights look around in confusion.

Everything around them was green. The temple had been overrun with greenery. Vines and weeds sprouted from the broken rubble of the walls and pillars. The seeds that had been spread through the battlefield grew into trees at an unbelievable speed.

“This...isn’t good. Burn the trees down!” Torres shouted in a panic, activating his own corrosive magic to hack away at the greenery. Unfortunately for him, it was too late. The queen of the forest ruled this battlefield now.

The plants sprayed a white mist into the air, bathing the temple in it...and that wasn’t all either.

“Unlimited Overdrive.”

The queen of the forest’s ultimate evolution magic reached all of the Liberators as well. Each and every one of them was enveloped in a bright green light.

“Phew, I almost died there—Revival Field!”

Even Diene, who’d been stabbed in the heart, was in good health once more. Despite the lethal wound she’d received, she’d remained conscious just long enough to cast revival magic on herself. And now that she’d been boosted with evolution magic, she was able to heal herself instantly instead of slowly. Moreover, evolution magic had allowed her to expand her magic into a zone that covered the entire battlefield and healed only her allies.

Arsel went from being at death’s door to fully healed in a second.

“How long are you gonna just sit there?! Get ’em already!” Arsel shouted to Badd as he used his Explosion to blow away Torres’s corruption mist.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s time for a massacre, Egxeeeeees!” Badd roared as he spun Egxess like a dervish, unleashing a total of three hundred black shock waves upon his enemies. Two hundred of them went for Torres, while the remaining hundred sought out the Holy Templar Knights.

The evolution-magic-powered shock waves tore through the knights’ holy armors, killing quite a few of them.

“Ngh, his movements are nothing like before!” Lelei grunted as she fired another arrow of light at Badd. However, it was far weaker than before. Badd simply batted it aside like he would a pebble.

Strass was being pushed back now as well.

“Ngh, so this is the power of the Pale Forest’s mists?!”

“Hah, you finally showed an opening!”

The mists interfered with Strass’s Spectral Waltz, making it easier to spot the real version of him. He stumbled over a tree root, and Cloris pounced on his momentary weakness. She split her scissors into two blades and slashed wildly at him. One blade cut through only an illusion, but the other sliced Strass’s upper arm.

“Hah, a scratch like this won’t even—”

“Lash out—Pain Enhancer!”

Strass shrieked in pain as Cloris’s special magic, Pain Manipulation, ate into him. She could use it to both dampen the pain of her allies and magnify the pain of her foes. And thanks to Lyutillis’s evolution magic, she could make even scratches feel like torture.

“Now’s our chance!”

“Quit scurrying around, you cockroaches!” Mania exclaimed as he created a barrage of flaming spears and flung them at Strass. A group of knights rushed forward with shields to protect their captain, but Ned sent them flying with his fists.

Realizing he was in a pickle, Strass turned to Morcus for help. However, Morcus was in a pinch as well.

“He he he, what an ugly fucking face. He looks like an ogre who just got done rolling in dog shit,” Nadia said as she ducked under Morcus’s halberd swing and hit him with a palm thrust.

“You really go all-out on the insults once you have the upper hand, huh?!”

“You bet your ass I do, Bakara! At least this guy deserves it!”

“Did the evolution magic enhance your cussing ability too?!”

Morcus hadn’t expected a simple palm thrust to do much to him, especially with his holy armor equipped, but he found himself coughing up blood.

“It finally worked! That’s what you get, you fucking piece of shit!”

Even though Nadia’s job was healer and she was literally a doctor, she was fighting on the front lines rather than staying with Diene...and the reason for that was that Nadia Piscott was a master of unarmed martial arts. Moreover, she incorporated healing magic into her fighting style. She overhealed her opponent’s organs, causing them to work so hard they destroyed themselves.

Her special magic, Mana Penetrator, allowed her to directly apply mana to her patients’ bodies to heal them more effectively, but it also let her bypass her opponents’ defenses to destroy their innards. Before, the effects of the knights’ holy armor and their apostleification had kept her own magic at bay, but now that Morcus’s stats had been lowered and hers boosted through evolution magic, she could actually make use of her ability.

On top of all that, Bakara was using his special magic, Quicksand, to ruin Morcus’s footing, while Solas threw a barrage of scalpels at him. All of those scalpels were coated with Solas’s specially made poison, created with his special magic, Toxic Excretion.

Suffice it to say, Morcus was in no position to help Strass. So instead, Strass turned to Vapla, but he was also similarly occupied.

“How are you so hard?!”

“Hah, and you call yourself the church’s Sword Saint?!”

None of Vapla’s swords could touch Marshal. His own swordsmanship and armor protected him from most of the slashes, and those that got through were stymied by his Diamond Skin. Marshal truly did live up to his title of Unbreakable Shield.

Furthermore, now that Shushu, Tony, and Abe had been healed by revival magic, they could rejoin the fray.

“Die, you bastard!”

“Oh snap, Shushu’s lost it. Abe, make sure you don’t get in her way!”

“Don’t need to tell me twice. No way I’m dying to friendly fire after coming this far!”

Tony and Abe took care of the surrounding knights, while Shushu helped push Vapla back.

“Match your timing with mine, Jacqueline!”

“Of course, Howzer-sama!”

Meanwhile, Howzer and Jacqueline came over to help finish Vapla off. Jacqueline’s wind magic blew away the two swords at Vapla’s back, leaving him wide open. Howzer then leaped forward and swung down at the man’s unguarded back with his prosthetic arm.

“Ngh!”

“Tch, I can’t believe you parried a blow that heavy!”

Vapla blocked Marshal’s claymore with one of the swords in his hands while parrying Howzer’s blow with the other. But while his godlike skill kept him alive, fully redirecting such heavy blows was impossible, so his left arm paid the price.

“At this rate... Gah! Lelei, bring out our trump card!” Vapla exclaimed as he recalled the two blades Jacqueline had blown away and nursed his damaged left arm.

“But if we do that—”

“Look at our current situation! We can’t afford to hold anything in reserve now! Unless we destroy that coffin, we’ll lose!”

“R-Roger!”

Vapla glanced over at the coffin-shield Adel was holding. Now that Adel didn’t have to devote his entire attention to the coffin, he was firing off artillery blasts of powerful composite magic.

Lelei quickly realized that unless they did something about the coffin and recovered their stat advantage, they wouldn’t last. Even if it meant unveiling a trump card that was a double-edged sword, they had to crush it instantly

Lelei gave the signal, and one of the Holy Templar Knights ran over to the temple’s far wall. He started pouring mana into a magic circle that had been hidden by a tapestry. The pillar closest to that wall soon began rotating upward into the ceiling like a screw. The hole it left behind was actually a staircase leading down.

“Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

The roar of a waking beast reverberated through the temple. When Badd and the others saw what walked up the staircase, they all broke out into a cold sweat.

“What the hell is that...?”

“Hey, is that really one of the church’s sacred beasts? It looks more like a fucking monster.”

The creature was shaped roughly like a human, but it didn’t look anything like one. For one thing, it was three meters tall. Moreover, its skin was a grotesque mixture of flesh and bits of armor that appeared to have fused with the thing. Its fingers had been replaced with wicked metal claws, its legs were prosthetic, and there were two pulsing red stones in its body, one on its forehead and the other in its chest. And to cap it all off, boiling white magma spilled from its mouth.

“Vice-captain— I mean, Araym! If you have any pride as a knight left, then kill those heretics!” Lelei shouted, pointing to Adel. Chris and the others had fought Araym once on the western seas, and they looked utterly shocked.

Araym Orcman had once been the vice-commander of the Holy Templar Knights, but he looked nothing like his former self now. The only similarity at all was that the white magma resembled his Divine Blaze special magic.

“Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

It was hard to tell whether Araym’s roar was a response to Lelei’s command.

“Wha—?! Wait, vice-captain, don’t—”

But a second later, it became clear that it wasn’t. The stone on his chest pulsed, and he swiped at the knight who’d activated the magic circle with his right hand. His metal claws ripped through the knight’s armor like paper.

“L-Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaausssssssssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhh!”

There was nothing but rage left in what remained of Araym’s mind. He’d devolved into an unthinking, unfeeling beast, but his hatred for his former commander remained.

With another howl, he opened his mouth and unleashed a torrent of magma into the temple. It destroyed everything in its path, whether that was plant life, Liberators, or even Holy Templar Knights.

None of the Liberators’ Metal Slime Batlams were able to protect them. Because the magma was liquid, it was able to flow through even the tiniest cracks in the Batlams’ shields and utterly liquefy flesh in seconds. Screams of knights and Liberators alike filled the room.

“Get the fuck out of here, you monster!” Kyaty shouted, climbing up onto the creature’s shoulder and sticking a dagger right into its right eye. Perhaps this thing had been Araym once, but after fusing with so many artifacts, it was now nothing more than a mindless beast. Chris was able to handle Seys on his own, so she’d gone to take care of this new threat.

“Lauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuss!”

“Ugh, that’s gross!”

The creature tried to swat Kyaty like a fly with its claws, but she was faster. Leaping straight up, she somersaulted through the air, created a gravity platform with her artifact boots, and kicked off it to go straight down and stick her remaining dagger in the creature’s left eye.

“Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

“Are you kidding me?! He’s still not dead?!”

The creature unleashed another torrent of magma, and Kyaty leaped away right in the nick of time. As she landed on all fours, she pulled two more kukri knives from the sheaths on her thighs.

She kept her back low, like a cat, as she prepared to continue her battle with the creature formerly known as Araym.

“Die! I kill...heretics...traitors!”

“Hah, good luck! No one can keep up with my speed!”

It seemed the creature still had a modicum of sanity left, yet it left the daggers stuck in its eyes as it breathed another gout of magma.

“I’ll take care of this guy! Diene, focus on healing everyone!”

“Okay!”

Diene had been overawed when the creature had appeared, but Kyaty’s words reminded her to try to save as many of her comrades as possible.

Kyaty accelerated and accelerated until both her body and mind were at their limits. She had to watch out for those razor-sharp retractable claws as well as the magma balls the creature was spitting at her. But somehow, she managed to dodge them all and slip in for an attack every time the creature left an opening.

To everyone else, she simply looked like a white blur. She leaped around the battlefield, always staying one step ahead of her quarry. Now that she’d been boosted with evolution magic, there really wasn’t anyone who could keep up with her speed.

Unfortunately, the creature was quite formidable as well. Or rather, it didn’t care how many of its allies died to friendly fire, so it didn’t take the knights’ positioning into account as it blindly struck at Kyaty.

“I can’t believe you brought out something like that. At this rate, you’ll all be killed by him too,” Badd said to Torres and Lelei in an exasperated voice.

Eyes bloodshot, Lelei retorted, “If that’s what it takes to slaughter you heretics, then it’ll be worth it! The Holy Templar Knights do not fear death! Martyrdom is an honor! We won’t stop until you kill every last one of us, or we’ve eradicated you all!”

“Yeah, I figured.”

Had they been willing to surrender, Badd would have accepted it, but he’d expected them to fight to the death.

Suddenly, Diene cried out in surprise, and Badd glanced back to see what had happened. It didn’t take long to find the cause.

“Another apostle, huh?”

There was a giant pillar of silver light outside, and the shock wave it had created had caused Diene to stagger backward. Someone was fighting with an apostle high up in the sky. Chances were it was Vandre.

Badd couldn’t help but wonder how Vandre was faring. He knew his job was just to keep the Holy Templar Knights occupied, but...

“Hmph, can any of your comrades handle an apostle without Miledi Reisen?” Lelei asked triumphantly. She was certain only Miledi could pull off a trick like killing three apostles instantly with a single spell. And since Miledi was gone, Lelei was certain this battle was won now that an apostle had joined the fray.

However, Badd just grinned fearlessly.

“Oh, they can. We wouldn’t have come here if they couldn’t. Every last one of our ancient magic users is a bona fide monster. Isn’t that right, Naiz?!”

A second later, an earthquake rippled across the battlefield. Looking back, Lelei saw that the creature they’d brought out had been slammed into the ceiling. Furthermore, its legs had been cut off and they dropped to the ground with a sickening crunch.

“H-Hey! You nearly got me with that attack too!”

“Uhhh... Well, even if I had hit you, Diene could have patched you back up.”

“What, so you can chop me to pieces because Diene can put me back together? I thought Meiru was the sadist, not you! Don’t let her rub off on you!”

Indeed, it was Naiz who had effortlessly taken care of the creature, and in the process nearly made mincemeat out of Kyaty.

“How’d things go, Naiz?!” Badd shouted.

“All good! I’ve teleported all of the prisoners out!”

That had been Naiz’s other objective aside from destroying the means of quickly reaching the main cathedral.

All of the prisoners had, of course, been heretics. They hadn’t been Liberators, just small-scale heretics the church had captured beforehand and hadn’t even deemed worthy of execution. Most of them had been used as test subjects or tortured for information.

When Miledi had heard from Laus that was what happened to heretics that didn’t get executed, rescuing them had, of course, become one of her top priorities. While he’d been at it, Naiz had also secured Licoris and Debra. Naturally, neither of them had wanted to go, but Laus cared about them as well. This way, Laus could fight without worry.

Another shower of silver beams flashed high up in the sky. Seeing that, Badd growled, “In that case, go wild up there! We can handle things over here!”

“Gotcha.”

“Ngh, wait!” Lelei shouted, but of course, Naiz had no reason to listen to her. He opened a portal and vanished without a second thought.

“All right, boys, we’re in the homestretch now! Give it all you’ve got! It’s time to bring down the church once and for all!” Badd shouted.

“Hell yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” everyone screamed in reply, sounding overjoyed. More than a few Liberators had perished, and they were still at a numerical disadvantage. And yet, their spirits remained unbroken.

“Martyrdom is the greatest honor a knight can hope to achieve! Take as many of those heretics down with you as you can!” Lelei shouted in reply, and the knights cheered as well.

Unfortunately for them, there was a wide gulf between those who fought for survival and a better future, and those who fought to die, clinging to the past.

Meanwhile, in the sky above the palace, five hundred gleaming white holy dragons did battle with six hundred wyverns decked out in armor black as pitch.

Though Mulm dearly wished to end Laus’s life with his own hands, he was loyal to his duty. As the commander of the church’s most mobile unit, he knew it was his job to lead his men to the main cathedral as soon as possible. And that duty was especially important now that Miledi Reisen had shown that she could defeat apostles with ease.

Mulm had hoped to overwhelm Miledi with numbers and, if possible, kill her to raise the church’s morale, but he hadn’t even been able to reach the cathedral, let alone fight Miledi.

“Impossible, impossible, impossible, impossible!” he shouted over and over in a mad rage as he fired his bow as fast as he could. Every arrow he loosed was a disintegration arrow, and though he needed to rely on the power of his Sacred Bow, he could fire them without needing to charge up like Lelei. And each of them were, of course, aimed at Vandre, who had sprouted dragon wings to help him fly.

“I’m tired of seeing the same trick over and over,” he said lazily, batting all of the arrows aside with a twirl of his massive black greatsword. The move greatly resembled the way Badd twirled his scythe to block attacks. The sword was all Vandre needed to both defend and attack, since it had the ability to cut through mana like all of Oscar’s artifacts.

“Adra!” Mulm shouted.

“Graaaaaaaaaaaah!”

With a vicious roar, his prized dragon unleashed its breath at Vandre. Adra’s breath was more powerful than ten knights casting Divine Wrath at once. However, Vandre didn’t even bother dodging.

“Uruluk, Batlam!”

Instead, he simply called to his two strongest familiars for aid. Uruluk completely ignored the attack heading for his master and fired his own breath at Adra from the side. Meanwhile, Vandre’s muffler, which was actually Batlam, expanded into a large shield to deflect the aurora blast.

Because Adra had to stay still to fire his blast, Uruluk’s hit him dead-on. Screaming in pain, Adra spiraled away toward the ground. There was a huge hole in the dragon’s stomach, and blood rained down on the palace below.

Mulm quickly healed Adra with magic, but he couldn’t help gritting his teeth in frustration. The guardian of the capital, the church’s strongest dragon, wasn’t even able to put up a fight against Vandre and his familiars. Adra’s breath had never once reached Vandre, and he’d been seriously injured multiple times now. Even though Mulm’s apostleification had also buffed his dragon, and Adra was far tougher than he’d been during the war with the republic, the battle before them seemed hopeless.

“What are you doing?! Seal their movements!”

“We’re trying, but they’re too tough!”

“And too fast!”

All of Vandre’s wyverns boasted jet-black artifact armor crafted by Oscar, as well as evolved scales that were too tough for the Paragons’ dragons to pierce. A barrage of concentrated attacks on one spot could still punch through the wyverns’ scales, but they were so fast that even getting one direct hit was difficult. Plus, the armor healed their injuries over time.

“Quit whining and fight! We have the advantage in numbers, so overwhelm them!” Mulm exclaimed. He was normally a mild-mannered commander, but right now, he didn’t have the energy to hide his frustration. Resigned, ten of his knights tried to surround Uruluk.

“We won’t let you get in Van-sama’s way!”

But like every other time they’d tried, Margaretta blocked them off. Getting in between the knights and Uruluk, she fired an unbelievably powerful barrage of flaming spears at them. And at the same time, she raised her jet-black bow at the knights and fired a barrage of arrows as well. Each arrow was made of the hardest alloy transmutation could create, and enchanted with every auxiliary magic effect known to man, including soul magic to hone in on enemies. To make matters worse, the wyvern Margaretta was riding also fired its dragonbreath at the knights, and that breath was also enhanced by the artifact jewel ensconced in its helm.

Two of the knights weren’t able to dodge in time and were sent crashing to the ground together with their dragons. Any time any of Mulm’s men tried to attack Vandre, the Schnee warriors got in their way.

Margaretta’s handpicked squad was composed of only elites. Since they were mostly half-breeds, they had the physical toughness of beastmen that allowed them to withstand the strenuous aerial maneuvers their wyverns could pull off, while also possessing the magical aptitude of demons. Additionally, they had the magical skill they’d been forced to acquire due to the experiments they’d endured, and a slew of world-class artifacts crafted for them by Oscar. All of them were focused on protecting Vandre, leaving the rest of the knights to his wyvern familiars. That way, they were able to make up for the numbers disparity against Vandre, which was shrinking by the moment as more and more knights fell.

Shit. If only the unit on the ground was free to help the Holy Templar Knights.

Mulm glanced down, but his unit of divine wolves was still stuck battling Kuou’s own pack of ice wolves. They, too, were being pushed back by Vandre’s familiars. Of course, they wouldn’t have been of any use in an aerial battle, but if they’d been unoccupied they could have gone to assist the Holy Templar Knights in the central temple.

While Mulm was distracted, Uruluk roared and unleashed another blast of dragonbreath at him. Adra managed to twist away just in time, but the breath had just been a feint.

“Can you really afford to look away right now?” Vandre asked calmly from behind.

“Shi—” Mulm gasped as he looked over his shoulder to see Vandre’s greatsword coming down on him. He crossed his wings in front of him to block the attack, and lucky for him, those white wings were sturdy enough that they could withstand even the space-cutting effects of Vandre’s sword. However, they couldn’t blunt all of the impact, so Mulm was knocked off his saddle. He righted himself midair and fired a barrage of white feathers up at Vandre, while also unleashing a disintegration arrow at him.

“He’s too fast...” Mulm muttered in awe as he watched Vandre use his own wings to maneuver and dodge the feathers by a hair’s breadth while slicing the disintegration arrow in half with his sword. Spinning like a top, Vandre then flew over to Mulm’s flank. He was clearly far more used to flight than Mulm was.

Seeing the sword coming for his neck, Mulm reflexively raised his bow to block. But just then, Vandre’s movements slowed and he let out a small groan. Taking advantage of the opening, Mulm danced out of the way. Breathing hard and covered in sweat, he looked over at the person who’d saved him from an untimely demise.

“My thanks, Besshu-dono!”

“I’m sorry, Van-sama!” Tordretta, who looked like a mini Margaretta, shouted at the same time. She was another one of the Schnee squad leaders, and she’d been facing off against Besshu and his Seraphic Eye, which could cripple anyone he looked at with numerous debilitating status effects.

Feeling despondent about her failure, Tordretta hurriedly launched her lightning-enhanced boomerang at Besshu to break his eye contact with Vandre.

“No need to panic, Tordretta! We’re wearing them down, so don’t worry!”

“Got it, Van-sama!”

Tordretta beamed, then turned back to Besshu and shouted, “But I’ll get at least one hit on you! This is for Van-samaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

Her squad bombarded Besshu from all sides while she launched herself at him to grapple in melee range.

“I’m not dead, you know...?” Vandre muttered under his breath.

Thanks to Adel reversing the debuff spell the knights were using, as well the Schnee clan’s innate magical resistance and their wyverns’ ability to zip around at high speeds, Tordretta and the others were just barely managing to keep themselves safe from the effects of Besshu’s Seraphic Eye, but Vandre was worried she might lose that edge if she lost her cool. There was no need for her to force herself to take Besshu out anyway, since their plan to whittle down the knights was working.

Infuriated by how unperturbed Vandre had acted throughout the fight, Mulm shouted, “You damned heretic, you think we’re beneath you?!”

“Ain’t that obvious?”

Upon hearing that, Mulm was so angry he couldn’t even speak. Vandre idly rested his greatsword on his shoulder, watching Mulm go red in the face with rage.

“It’s not worth losing any of our forces in this preliminary skirmish, so we’re taking it easy,” he stated, taunting Mulm even further.

That finally caused Mulm to snap and he screamed, “Adraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

Mulm unleashed a massive burst of mana, which was immediately absorbed by Adra, who then unleashed a blistering breath attack at Margaretta’s squad.

“Graaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Mulm was willing to kill his own comrades to take some of Vandre’s men down, but Margaretta had been expecting this attack, so she directed her squad to quickly descend out of the way. Thus, the burning light of execution fell only on Mulm’s comrades, vaporizing dozens of knights in an instant.

Meanwhile, Uruluk flew over to Adra’s flank and used the second special magic it had gained thanks to Lyutillis’s evolution magic, Shock Wave Bellow. Its roar was empowered by supersonic vibrations that ripped through Adra’s innards, forcing it to stop its breath as blood spurted from its eyes and nose. Adra then swiveled to face Uruluk and charged at lighting speed.

Mulm’s rage seemed to have affected Adra as well, and the dragon wasn’t thinking clearly. Surrounding itself in an aura of pure white light, Adra attempted to tear out the neck of the wyvern that had interrupted it so often.

“Raaaaaah!”

“Gaaaaaah?!”

Uruluk neatly somersaulted out of the way of Adra’s charge, then slammed its tail—which was coated in spiked armor—into Adra’s head. The blow was enhanced with Uruluk’s mana conversion ability, as well as by the force of Adra’s own charge, since it had basically run right into the spikes.

The force of the blow was too much for Adra’s scales to absorb, and its skull was practically crushed, its eyes popping out of its head. Going limp, the dragon barely managed to keep itself airborne. Though it was barely clinging on to life, and its pride kept it from letting itself fall, Adra was clearly defeated. This was the end.

“Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Uruluk took after his master, and like Vandre, he had no mercy for his foes. Thus, the wyvern gathered all of the vast reserves of mana stored in his artifact armor near his jaws.

“Adra! Get out of the—!”

Before Mulm could finish his warning, Uruluk unleashed his most powerful breath attack yet at Adra. Flames hot enough to scorch the very air punched through Adra’s stomach. The force of the blast sent Adra careening into the Divine Mountain with enough force to break off massive chunks of it. But before the rocks could fall onto the palace below, they were vaporized from the heat of Uruluk’s breath.

After the burning beam of breath finally dissipated, Mulm could see that an entire section of the mountainside had been turned to glass...and Adra’s corpse was embedded within it, a gaping hole in its stomach.

“Impossible...” he muttered in disbelief. His shock left him wide open, and he didn’t even notice that Vandre had flown far above him. What returned him to his senses, however, was seeing Besshu go flying past him, one of his arms missing.

“Gah!” the paladin shouted, blood streaming from his gaping wound.

“I did it!” Tordretta shouted jubilantly, seemingly unconcerned with the holes in her shoulder and thighs. Vandre wished she hadn’t pushed herself so hard, but he smiled at her nonetheless. He then looked down at Mulm.

“Now then, I think it’s time to end this. If my hunch is right, she’ll be here soon, so I can’t be dealing with you guys and her at the same time.”

“You bast—huh? What the—?”

Once he finally looked up, Mulm realized how much trouble he was in. Vandre’s wyverns had surrounded the Paragons of Light. More than two hundred of the sacred dragons had been killed, while only forty of Vandre’s wyverns had died. On top of that, all of the Schnee warriors were alive and well.

Of course, the dragons still outnumbered the wyverns three to one, so it wasn’t a perfect encirclement or anything. However, it was enough to keep the Paragons penned in...and Vandre was above it all.

“See ya,” he said lightly, dropping his sword down at the grouped mass of Paragons of Light. Mulm watched in confusion as it came to a stop in the middle of them.

Meanwhile, Margaretta and the others took out pale black twelve-sided crystals and raised them into the air.

This isn’t good... Mulm thought as a chill ran down his spine. “Everyone, scatter!”

Unfortunately, the cage was completed before anyone could move.

Beams of light shot out of the greatsword toward the twelve crystals Margaretta and the others were holding. Magic circles appeared on the surface of the crystals, and then they too shot out beams of light toward each other.

The five hundred dragons and their riders were now trapped in an icosahedron.

“Commander, we can’t leave!”

“A barrier? Concentrate your breath attacks at one point!”

However, before Mulm and the others could even try to escape, the second part of the spell activated...and the space within the barrier began to warp and the barrier itself began to shrink in response.

“Are you planning on crushing us to death?!” Mulm shouted.

“Oh, come on, I know you’re not that weak,” Vandre replied.

This wasn’t just a simple barrier. Vandre knew that enough disintegration attacks would be able to break it with time, so shrinking it until it crushed everyone would take too long. However, the spatial distortion inside the barrier began to spread from the center, swallowing up any knights it touched.

This was the domain-creating artifact, Monster House. Essentially, Oscar had created a type of Treasure Trove with the sword as its locus. He’d filled the space inside that Treasure Trove with tens of thousands of monsters, which the knights now had to fight.

“I know I said we were fighting with quality over quantity, but I lied,” Vandre said with a boastful grin. At the end of the day, war was all about numbers.

Mulm tried to shout something, but he too was swallowed up before he could. There was a limit to how many living things that space could accept at once, so Vandre had needed to thin the Paragons’ numbers first, but once that was done, he’d been able to take care of the rest all in one go.

At this point, the Paragons of Light had been more or less eliminated. The church probably hadn’t been expecting to lose one of their three pillars, so Vandre expected powerful reinforcements to come and try and balance the scales. And naturally, his prediction was right on the money.

“I knew you’d come!” he shouted as a beam of silver light streaked toward Margaretta. Vandre then stepped into the line of fire, causing the apostle that had fired the beam to scoff.

“People evolve, but I guess dolls can’t do that, huh?” he said, and Batlam opened its mouth wide to swallow the beam whole. The slime’s mouth glowed with a thin film of light as it absorbed the disintegration attack. Batlam then opened up a second mouth and fired the beam right back at the apostle.

There was a gate made of chains inside the part of its slime where its second mouth was. Since Batlam was made of liquid, he could disassemble and reassemble the gate at will, allowing him to both defend and attack with just one portal.

The apostle cut at the beam with her hand, dissipating it with ease. Then, she descended until she was level with Vandre and cocked her head. It was strange seeing human-like mannerisms coming from an emotionless doll.

“Our Lord isn’t very happy with how this game is playing out.”

“And so we’ve come to crush one of your pieces,” another apostle added as it appeared out of thin air, next to the first one.

Ehit wanted to see the Liberators struggle, so there was no fun in watching the church get one-sidedly pummeled. Thus, he’d sent two apostles to crush Vandre and punish Miledi by giving her a taste of despair.

Both apostles readied their blades, exuding waves of silver mana.

“Van-sama!”

“Stay back, Margaretta!” Vandre roared as he held out a hand to keep the Schnee warriors from coming to his aid. He wasn’t telling them not to get involved because he was worried about their safety, but because he had a more important job for them. Smiling fearlessly, he said, “Go help the others fighting at the gates! The western gate especially needs air support! Once that’s done, help the civilians evacuate!”

Looking around, Margaretta realized Vandre was right. The Schnee elites were needed at the gates, or the fighting would spill into the entire city.

Obviously, it pained Margaretta greatly to leave her beloved master to fight two apostles alone, but she believed in him. Ever since they were little, Vandre Schnee had always been charging forward, and never once had he encountered an obstacle he couldn’t overcome.

“Good luck!” she shouted as she led Uruluk and the other wyverns away. Vandre gave her a thumbs-up in response.

One of the apostles raised a hand toward the retreating group.

“So, how many of you have Miledi and the others demolished so far?” Vandre asked in a mocking tone, stopping the apostle’s hand. Its empty eyes turned to Vandre, seemingly aghast.

“I bet the fight’ll get a lot more fun if you let us reach her, you know?” he added with a grin.

“That’s enough from you,” the apostle said, firing a barrage of feathers at Vandre.

“Kuou, retreat! If you get a chance, meet up with Badd and the others to help them out!” Vandre shouted. In response, the wolves that had been fighting on the various rooftops, terraces, and open-air corridors of the castle howled in assent. More than half of the divine wolves had been slain, so it was easy enough for Kuou’s pack to dodge any stray feathers and head for the temple.

Batlam protected Vandre while he barked out orders, and once he was done, he was able to turn his full attention onto the apostles.

It was time to go all out. There was no need to hold back any longer. Here and now, he was going to prove that Vandre Schnee had what it takes to kill one of Ehit’s strongest warriors as well.

“Die, Vandre Schnee.”

While Batlam protected Vandre from attacks from above, the second apostle dropped below him and fired another disintegration beam at his back. Vandre barely had time to glance back before the blast hit him square in the back. However—

“You die.”

“Ah!”

Luckily, the wings sprouting from his back were more than enough to protect him from the apostle’s attack. The moonsilver scales coating the wings glinted in the sunlight. And a second later, Vandre transformed.

“Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

With a mighty roar, he dissipated the disintegration beam.

“That form...” one of the apostles muttered, retreating a dozen or so meters to not get caught up in the roar’s shock waves. The apostle raining down attacks from above stopped momentarily as well.

Batlam stopped acting as an umbrella shield for Vandre and instead wrapped himself around Vandre’s chest like a breastplate, for Vandre’s transformation this time wasn’t the same as his usual ones.

“Is that your dragon form?” one of the apostles asked, a hint of surprise entering her voice.

Like with his normal transformations, gleaming moonsilver scales covered Vandre’s entire body. He also had his sharp claws, tail, and powerful jaw. However, he was nowhere near his normal size. While he had grown a little, he was still the size of a relatively large human at two meters tall. Moreover, he still stood on two legs and was shaped roughly like a human rather than a dragon.

This was the final form of his dragon transformation, the humanoid dragon form. In this form, he could take full advantage of both his draconic resilience and strength, as well as his martial arts skills that he could only use as a human. After discovering that the true nature of his metamorphosis magic allowed him to manipulate organic matter, Vandre had settled on this as his final form.

The most shocking thing of all, however, was how everything from his scales to his wings had metallized. Vandre had physically fused with the defensive artifact Oscar had made specifically for him. As he was now, Vandre was made of the hardest substance in the world, hence why he could take disintegration beams without worry.

“Let me tell you something.”

One of the scales on his chest glowed, and he pulled two greatswords out of thin air. They were similar in design to the apostles’, except for the fact that they were jet-black. Both were, of course, Oscar’s make.

Vandre swung them to either side, imitating the way the apostles swung theirs before starting a fight.

“Miledi isn’t the only ruler of the skies!”

There was a boom followed by a shattering noise as Vandre created a magic platform and leaped off it with such force that it broke. By the time the apostles had realized what had happened, Vandre’s sword was swinging up at the apostle above him.

The apostle cartwheeled out of the way and summoned her own two blades. She swung horizontally at Vandre with one of them, wreathing her blade with disintegration magic.

Fortunately, Vandre’s own blade was made of azantium and enchanted with magic-absorbing effects, so he could block without worry.

At first, it looked like the two were evenly matched in strength as Vandre met the apostle’s blade with his own.

But then, Vandre deftly parried the apostle’s blade away, ducked under her second sword, and thrust at her with his own second blade. The apostle backed away in time to dodge the thrust, but then Vandre grabbed her leg with his tail and drew her back in while opening his jaws wide.

“Ah!”

The apostle crossed her swords in front of her to try to block the breath attack he unleashed. However, because Vandre had her by the leg, the breath didn’t blow her backward, and the apostle took the full impact of the breath. She desperately fired off disintegration attacks to keep the breath from freezing her, but they did almost no damage to Vandre’s scales, and she failed to break free.

The second apostle launched her own disintegration attack while closing in on him, but Batlam just opened his chain gate and absorbed it.

“I’ve seen that trick already,” the apostle said calmly.

“So what?” Vandre replied, unperturbed.

The disintegration attack had been a feint; the apostle suddenly accelerated to triple her speed, then swung diagonally down at Vandre. He crossed his own blades above to block, and before the apostle could follow with another attack, he beat her back with his wings.

“Ngh... Those are swords too?!”

Indeed, the scales on Vandre’s wings were all mini enchanted blades. They had the effects of Oscar’s old magic sword series, and also had the ability to cut through mana.

Despite how tough an apostle’s body was, she came away from the exchange covered with cuts all over her body.

“This is nothing!” the two apostles shouted in unison, burning a ton of their mana to raise their stats.

The first apostle, who was almost completely frozen by Vandre’s breath, cut off her own leg to escape and used brute strength to unfreeze herself. She then created a magic circle with her feathers and launched the strongest lightning spell there was at Vandre. Meanwhile, the second apostle flew up and unleashed a scattershot barrage of disintegration blasts.

“Now it’s getting interesting,” Vandre muttered to himself, dropping his altitude to dodge the barrage. Beating his wings, he manipulated the icy wind he had created to bolster his own speed.

The two apostles chased after him, pinning him from either side.

The trio flew around the Divine Mountain, clashing over and over. Vandre weathered the assault as best he could, trusting in his natural armor and using his entire body as both a sword and shield. He even managed to get a few counter hits in.

However, as the minutes passed, the apostles began to notice something.

“He’s using our sword techniques...”

“Did he learn them during the fight?”

The apostles had thought it strange that he’d copied their mannerisms when summoning his weapons, and that his weapons were almost identical to theirs. But until now, they hadn’t realized the true meaning behind Vandre’s choice.

“The best way to learn a martial art is to practice it in combat.”

Of course, facing two apostles at once was no easy task. Though Vandre himself was still unhurt, his scales and Batlam had taken quite a beating.

For the briefest of seconds, the apostles paused their attacks in shock, and Vandre took that moment to catch his breath. At the same time, he attached the handles of his two swords together.

“Your swordsmanship never evolves, so you won’t even be able to touch me now,” Vandre said with a sneer, prompting the two apostles to charge at him.

Vandre twirled his new weapon, batting aside the swords of both apostles. This was the next level of their fighting style he’d come up with after analyzing the apostles.

He twirled his dual-bladed staff-sword in one hand, making footholds for himself with ice magic and darting this way and that all the while. He made full use of his wings and his now free bare hand to attack while defending with his staff-sword. Sometimes he even called forth other weapons to wield in his off-hand.

His combat style was a pure work of art. The two apostles had no way of getting past his guard, much less defeating him. In fact, they were the ones getting pushed back now.

As the cold realization that they might actually lose began to set in, a newcomer arrived on the battlefield, sealing their fate.

“Sorry I’m late,” Naiz said, teleporting in behind the apostles so smoothly that the space around him didn’t even warp.

The first of the apostles instinctively wrapped her wings around herself, which turned out to be the right call because Naiz’s Void Fissure hit her a second later. The impact knocked her out for a brief second, and when she came to, she realized she was falling. She tried to beat her wings, but realized they weren’t there.

That was far stronger than expected.

The apostle quickly created another set of wings and reoriented herself, but she could tell she’d taken some serious internal damage.

Meanwhile, the second apostle had lost her arm to Vandre’s slashes while she’d been protecting herself from Naiz’s second Void Fissure.

“Hmm, looks like it works now,” Naiz said, admiring his handiwork.

“It’s a shame you can’t kill them instantly with it,” Vandre said with a sigh.

“Miledi’s first attack only worked because Oscar held them in pace and they didn’t know what was coming. Now that they’re on their guard, it won’t be nearly as easy.”

“Yeah, but...”

“Mhm. With Lyu’s evolution magic, it’ll be a different story. I’m a little miffed that I wasn’t able to take them out in one attack myself.”

“Sounds like you need to train harder.”

The two apostles glared at Naiz and Vandre as they bantered with each other. The second apostle then flew over to where the first was. The two had finally completed their spell. A giant silver sun appeared above Naiz and Vandre.

“Now then, the hostages are safe and Badd has things under control in the castle. Let’s meet up with Miledi,” Naiz stated, unconcerned by the spell looming over him.

“Yeah, let’s put an end to this,” Vandre replied, and the two stood back to back. A flicker of worry went through the apostles’ minds, but they remained confident in their spell.

“A pawn that won’t dance as desired must be eliminated,” the two apostles said in unison, sending their spell of utter annihilation down on Vandre and Naiz. It was as huge as a blast from Lac Elain, but it barely went a few meters before it was stopped by an invisible wall. However, that wall didn’t feel like it was offering any resistance. The spell felt like it wasn’t being impeded, and there was nothing it was touching, but it still didn’t advance any further.

Confused, the apostles glanced around, attempting to glean the cause.

“A barrier? Perhaps a spatial one?” one of them said. She did indeed spot a spatial barrier around the sphere of silver light, but a spell like theirs, which was made up of a composite of different magic types should have been able to break through such a barrier.

“Wait, it’s not reaching the barrier?”

Indeed, the apostles’ spell could have easily destroyed Naiz’s barrier if it touched it. However, it wasn’t.

Making a snap decision, the apostles charged at Vandre and Naiz, their swords held out in front of them like lances. If their spell wasn’t working, they’d have to attack the barrier themselves.

But they, too, were stopped just before it. It didn’t feel like they had hit a barrier, nor did it feel like anything had actually absorbed the impact of their charge. No, it felt more like they were still moving, but in reality, they weren’t. No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t reach the barrier.

“Impossible...”

For the first time, the apostles were so shocked that it showed visibly on their faces. They had finally realized what was going on.

This was Naiz’s domain-creating spell, Infinite Corridor. The true nature of spatial magic was that it manipulated boundaries. Upon understanding that, Naiz had come up with a spell to expand space indefinitely.

Right now, Naiz was endlessly expanding the distance between the apostles, their spell, and his barrier. Fast as the apostles were, they couldn’t cross the thousand kilometers between them and the barrier instantly. And the longer they took, the more open they left themselves.

“Hm? Ngh! What’s this?”

Dark tendrils started spreading through the apostles’ porcelain-white skin. It was as if their veins had come up to the surface, but they looked a much darker red than blood. Something was invading their bodies.

No, not something, someone, one of them realized.

“A monster.”

“That’s right. How does it feel to be on the receiving end of your own inhuman experiments?”

Vandre had taken the same race-fusing experiments that Rasul had been forced to perform while being possessed by one of Ehit’s friends and tried seeing what would happen if he did the same to an apostle. This was one of Vandre’s new spells, Invasive Ruin. Both of Vandre’s swords were coated in a mixture of Vandre and Batlam’s fluids, and any wound he caused with the swords would cause those fluids to start invading the opponent’s body. The fluids themselves were a living, thinking chimera that could act on its own.

Of course, on autopilot, the chimera wasn’t strong enough to invade an apostle’s body, but if Vandre had time to concentrate and use metamorphosis magic to strengthen it, then that was a different story altogether.

“I was hoping to beat them in a sword fight just to prove I’m better, but oh well,” Vandre said with a shrug. “Destroy them, my familiar.”

He snapped his fingers, and the two apostles’ chests exploded.

“How—?”

“We’re un—!”

With their cores destroyed, the apostles’ wings vanished and their bodies began to crumble into nothing.

As they faded away, Naiz and Vandre said, “You lost because you can’t grow.”

“You lost because you didn’t put in any effort.”

Both of those were things only mortal species, who struggled and fought for what they had, could understand.

A few seconds later, the two of them heard a massive thud from the ground below. Looking down, they saw an absurdly huge metal pillar standing at the city’s southern gate. At the same time, the two apostles Laus had been fighting vanished.

“Hey, Naiz. We’ve gotta step up our game. That crazy guy just beat two apostles by himself,” Vandre said in awe. Though, a little bit of frustration at his own inability to do the same leaked into his voice as well.

“I-I mean, he had evolution magic helping him out, so...” Naiz replied, his voice trembling.

A few minutes ago, at the capital’s central plaza, the priests and the city’s citizens alike were reeling from the shock of seeing Lac Elain slam right into the palace. They were also literally reeling from the physical shock wave the impact had caused.

The knights had stopped in their tracks, and even Kimaris looked over his shoulder in disbelief.

The leaders of the various nations began to doubt the sanity of the Liberators. But then, they watched as three apostles descended and Miledi slaughtered them in an instant. If they’d been stunned before, after that, they were utterly nonplussed. Kimaris and the other priests especially took a lot of mental damage.

While most of the captured heretics scurried to safety, three remained behind to watch the spectacle.

“I bet my idiot son came up with that ridiculous kamikaze attack plan.”

“Miledi’s sure turned into a terror since I last saw her. I know she said she’d beat up god for our sake, but I didn’t think she’d actually do it...”

“Those two are definitely the Liberators’ biggest problem children. But man, am I glad to see them stick it to the church like that! Give ’em hell, you two!”

Even though Karg, Baharl, and Rigan were as badly wounded as the other captured Liberators, they’d stuck around to watch. Snapping back to his senses, Kimaris turned to glare at them.

“Get going already!” Laus shouted, rubbing his temples in exasperation.

Shrugging, they offered Kimaris one last grin, then jumped through the portal. And with that, the rescue operation was officially complete. The Liberators cheered, while Kimaris’s eyelids twitched in barely concealed rage. But of course, the surprises weren’t over yet.

Kimaris didn’t even have a chance to express his rage before the next stage of the Liberators’ blitzkrieg tactics began.

“Lyu!” Laus shouted, glancing over his shoulder.

“Mmm! It’s ready! I can go at any time!” Lyutillis exclaimed, her eyes sparkling as her best friend poked its feelers out from behind her shoulder. She’d actually had her cockroach friends all infiltrate the city ahead of time to spread the seeds of her new ability for her.

“Do it!” Laus shouted, prompting Lyutillis to wave her Guardian Rod.

“Domain control—Forest Manifestor!”

A wave of green covered the battlefield. Roots erupted from the flagstones, trees grew out of buildings at an impossibly fast pace, and branches spread to form natural lattices over the city streets. The newly formed forest spread out for five hundred meters in all directions, creating a circle within the plaza around the execution platform. The trees grew to be far larger than the nearby buildings, going up as high as a hundred meters.

Kimaris watched as the trees created a natural barrier surrounding the plaza. This was almost as unbelievable to him as a giant airborne submarine crashing into the theocracy’s palace. And because he was so preoccupied with watching, he didn’t notice that he and his priests had been cut off from the people who’d come to watch the execution...nor did he notice that Laus was coming for him.

“My Lord Archbishop!” one of his priests shouted.

“Ngh!”

Laus leaped toward Kimaris with blistering speed.

The archbishop realized his mistake too late, but another figure stepped in to defend him. There was a resounding crash of metal against metal as Laus’s mace crashed against the newcomer’s shield. Laus then realized he recognized the person who’d stopped him.

“You’re that Paladin, Ajeen, aren’t you?”

Laus didn’t know where Ajeen had come from, but it didn’t matter. Even if Ajeen tried to stab Laus with his divine spear while Kimaris readied a spell using his sacred staff, he couldn’t lose his cool. Because right now, Laus’s priority was making sure he took the fight somewhere without innocent civilians.

“Time to go,” he said simply.

“Ah!”

The space around Laus began to twist like a whirlpool, dragging Ajeen and Kimaris toward him. This was one of Oscar’s forced teleportation artifacts, Summoning Circle. It created a three-meter wide gate that sucked everyone nearby into it, teleporting the user to a specified location within a few kilometers. It looked like a small, transparent glass bead, and could only be used once, but it was still quite powerful. Kimaris and Ajeen didn’t even notice when Laus smashed it to complete the teleport, let alone have the wherewithal to stop him.

As he vanished, Laus threw several Summoning Circles into the massed crowd of knights in the plaza, grabbing close to eighty percent of them as well. They’d all bunched up, which had made things a whole lot easier for him.

“All right, everyone, let’s get to work!” Rasul shouted, purposely drawing attention to himself.

“To the walls! Don’t let the Templar Knights get close!”

Of course, that was just his way of announcing to the knights where the true battlefield would be.

“Don’t you dare hurt any civilians! I, Demon Lord Rasul, shall not allow anyone to fight within the city streets!” he exclaimed, raising his voice to make sure the panicking civilians heard him.

“We aren’t here to conquer! I swear on the name of the Haltina Republic that we have come only to defeat the wicked church who stands in the way of a peaceful future! Proud beastmen warriors, be sure to only point your claws at our enemy!” Lyutillis proclaimed right after, announcing her own intentions to the populace.

It was clear that both of them were speaking more for the benefit of the people than their own allies. Though the speeches also caused the five hundred or so remaining knights and the few remaining priests to return to their senses. They couldn’t allow these inferior races to keep spouting their nonsense, after all. And they especially couldn’t allow Lyutillis and Rasul’s words to resonate with their citizens.

However, instead of focusing on them, both Lyutillis and Rasul turned their backs to the remaining knights.

Rasul took his army with him to the eastern gate, while Sim led the republic’s beastmen to the west gate. Finally, Lyutillis took her group of liberators to the south gate. They flew off immediately, not even sparing a glance at the remaining knights or priests.

The knights had been gearing themselves up for a fight after those speeches, so they were flabbergasted by the sudden development. Left behind in a plaza bereft of everyone but civilians and foreign dignitaries, the knights burned with shame and humiliation.

Hearing the sounds of battle in the distance, one of the priests shouted, “A-After theeeeeem!”

He was the highest-ranking priest left behind, so the knights hurriedly obeyed, running after the retreating Liberators, demons, and beastmen.

As they left, the leaders of the various nations exchanged glances, then all took in deep breaths. They sat down where they were, content to watch how this revolution played out from the sidelines.

At the eastern gate, ten thousand Templar Knights were facing off against a combination of armored familiars and autonomous golems that numbered around three thousand. Because of how pressed for time the Liberators had been, Oscar and Vandre hadn’t been able to make enough soldiers to outnumber the knights, but they’d at least made sure the familiars and golems were strong enough to handle apostleified knights. Moreover, because they’d been teleported into the middle of the knights’ formation, the golems and familiars were doing a good job of wreaking havoc among the ranks. The knights had lost a good twenty percent of their forces, while only ten percent of the golems and familiars were down.

While the ratios were somewhat close, in absolute terms, it meant thousands of knights had died at the hands of just a few hundred constructs and familiars. Part of that was because the knights were still shaken by seeing their barrier destroyed and having a battleship rammed into their palace.

Habeel, the vice-captain of the Templar Knights’ second division, had been given command at this gate, but the speed of events had left her unable to give out satisfactory orders.

“Strass-sama...probably won’t be able to help, will he?”

She knew that her beloved captain had been assigned to the palace to guard the pope. Of course, if he did show up, she would have gladly handed command over, since she was just the acting commander.

Acting commander or not though, she had no excuse for not leading the men while no one else was around. Until Strass showed up, she needed to preserve as much of her forces as possible.

“No, that’s not right! We need to achieve victory here so we can rush to his aid immediately!”

The enemy was already in the palace. If anything, they needed reinforcements more than Habeel did. Habeel realized confusion was still clouding her thoughts, and she smacked her forehead with the handle of her sword. That helped sort out her thoughts, and she quickly started barking orders to her men.

“Battalion commander, you’re in charge of holding the gates! I’m leaving five thousand men in your care!”

“Huh? Oh, yes, ma’am! Understood!”

After a brief moment of confusion, the battalion commander saluted. With that, the other officers started regaining their senses as well... Meanwhile, Habeel spread her wings and rose into the sky.

The quality of the individual members of the Templar Knights varied a lot. All of the Holy Templar Knights had mastered the art of flight immediately, but only sixty percent of the regular Templar Knights could fly, while only forty percent of them could do so while fighting. Indeed, even Habeel wasn’t great at it. She simply hadn’t had enough time to practice.

Desperately trying to control her wings, Habeel rose into the sky and rained feathers of light down on the battlefield. The screams from below told her she’d hit many of her own knights, but it had been a necessary sacrifice. Finally able to look up and away from the battle, she shouted, “We fly to the palace’s aid! I need three thousand men who know how to fly to come with me!”

Thus far, the knights had just been trying to kill the foe in front of them, but having concrete orders breathed new life into them, boosting their morale. Shaking off the fear that had seeped into them after Miledi’s explosive entrance, they spread their wings and took to the sky.

A few more than three thousand flew up, but a few of Vandre’s familiars could fly and many of Oscar’s golems fired barrages of enchanted daggers at the rising knights, so ultimately, a little less than three thousand actually joined Habeel. Still, once they were above the walls, which were a good fifty meters tall, they had an easier time dodging the attacks from below and shaking off the few fliers who could pursue.

What kind of madman uses such valuable magic swords as artillery? Habeel thought to herself in disbelief. Of course, she didn’t know Oscar was the kind of man who could mass-produce them. Not only that, but all of the golems had Treasure Troves to draw an endless supply from. Plus, Oscar’s swords had been upgraded with spirit magic to hone in on enemies, making them an utter nightmare to deal with. And of course, he’d decked out all of Vandre’s familiars with mass-produced artifacts as well. Oscar’s crafting abilities truly knew no bounds.

As far as Habeel was concerned, however, the creator of these golems was a scoundrel of the highest order. But while she wasted time cursing out Oscar in her head, another fifty knights dropped thanks to his creations.

“Martyrdom for the cause is the greatest honor a knight can earn! Forward, men!”

Rousing her men, Habeel flew straight toward the palace. However, as they approached the walls, a voice rang out.

“If you wish to pass, you’ll have to kill me first!”

There was a loud boom, and a bloodred blade shot out from above the ramparts. Habeel barely had enough time to dodge, and there was not nearly enough to tell her men to follow suit. A score of her knights tumbled to the ground, blood spurting from lethal wounds.

“Rasul-sama, please don’t jinx yourself like that!”

“Oh, sorry, Lestina. It was just one of those lines I wanted to try saying at least once.”

“Your Majesty, please don’t let your guard down.”

A group of people was standing atop the walls. They all had dark skin and pointed ears.

“Demons!”

“That we are. We fight with the Liberators, and are here to pass divine...err, actually, I guess demonic judgment on the church. Oh, we’re not here to kill all humans or anything, though. Our only foe is you, the church. That’s important, so you better not mix it up.”

It sounded more like Rasul was talking to himself than to Habeel. Habeel didn’t care either way, however, since she had bigger things to worry about.

“Such power...and that blood-colored mana...”

She felt overwhelmed just looking at the double helix spiral of mana radiating from Rasul.

It can’t be...

“I am the Demon Lord, Rasul Alva Igdol. Until the Liberators’ revolution is over, I’m afraid I cannot let you pass.”

He looked quite imposing, standing there atop the city walls. It almost felt like the Demon Lord was the true ruler of the theocracy, which, of course, was all part of the plan.

Step one was to ensure the safety of the citizens. Since almost all of them were gathered in the plaza, the easiest thing to do was to simply leave. Step two was eliminating the enemies already in the plaza. By moving Kimaris and the majority of the knights out of the city, the remaining troops belonging to the church would have no choice but to follow. Step three was reversing who was attacking and who was defending. The demons and the beastmen would use the capital’s walls against its own knights, preventing the armies stationed there to guard the gates from reentering the city.

Normally, the majority of a nation’s forces wouldn’t have been stationed outside the city, but everyone had believed the capital’s barrier would hold, and that the bulk of the fighting would happen on the plains outside. Of course, they hadn’t blindly believed the barrier would hold forever. Against seven ancient magic users, they had expected it to break eventually, but the plan had been to wear down the Liberators’ forces as much as possible while their ancient magic users focused on the barrier. No one had expected the barrier to go down in a single attack, and for the Liberators to just pass the Templar Knights by as they charged toward the palace.

Spotting the barrier protecting the plaza, Habeel realized she’d been played from the very start. Gritting her teeth, she shouted, “How dare you track your demon filth into our holy capital. Pay for your sins with death, Demon Lord!”

She could atone for her own shameful mistakes later, defeating the enemy before her came first.

“This is a perfect chance to defeat the Demon Lord! Kill him at all costs!”

Mana surged from the apostleified knights as they readied to do as their vice-captain commanded.

Rasul flourished his sword in an overly dramatic motion and said, “I shall protect the people of this city!”

He was driving home the fact that their positions had been reversed. None of the knights pointed out that he’d been the one to invade the city first, or that he really had no grounds to be claiming to be a hero. Not because they didn’t want to, but because they were too angry to speak.

Elga, who was standing next to him, gave Rasul an exasperated look and said, “Your Majesty...you really don’t need to go that far.”

Unable to bear the taunting, the knights charged with Habeel at their head.

“Death to all heretiiiiiiiiics!”

They weren’t even thinking straight anymore.

“All right, shoot them down,” Rasul replied casually, and the two thousand five hundred demons he’d brought with him began their assault.

A wall of magical shock waves bore down on Habeel and her knights. Naturally, these shock waves were enhanced with mana-cutting capabilities, as well as evolution magic-endowed artifacts.

“Ngh, it can cut right through my holy armor?!”

Not even apostleification and divine relics could save the knights from an assault of this magnitude. The knights were utterly overwhelmed by the multicolor rainbow of magical shock wave attacks. For the first time, they realized why demons had been the race to unify the southern continent, despite having a much smaller population than humans. They were unable to advance even a single inch against this barrage.

“Mwa ha ha ha, slaughtering the church’s knights is so much fun!” Lestina shouted as she fired flaming spear after flaming spear into the knights.

“Please try to word things more diplomatically, General Lestina,” Elga said, firing off his own lightning barrage all the while. Each of their attacks was sure to kill at least one knight, sometimes more, yet somehow, Rasul was doing even better.

“You monsters! Do you wish to turn the capital into a bloody battlefield that badly?! Have you no shame?! Well, I, Demon Lord Rasul, shall not let you lay a hand on the populace!”

“Your Majesty, please rein it in a little. This is getting excessive.”

“Hm, you really think so? Why not join me, Elga? It’s pretty fun.”

“I made the right decision, coming to look after you.”

“Hey, what is that supposed to mean?!”

Even though he was joking around, with every swing of his bloodred demon blade, Rasul launched a shock wave that was sure to kill at least a few knights. It almost looked like they were being sucked into it to get their heads chopped off. Rasul’s magic shock waves were more like guillotines than anything else.

Habeel tore at her hair as she realized she wouldn’t be able to break through their defenses. Of course, she had never stood a chance. She was up against the demon empire’s strongest elites, warriors whose abilities were on par with the Holy Templar Knights. Even apostleified, regular Templar Knights simply couldn’t hope to complete. And it was precisely because they were hopelessly outmatched that Ehit had sent reinforcements to balance the scales.

“I command you in the name of Eddy Marker—stop moving.”

“Oh?” Rasul mumbled as he stiffened up for a second. Part of the wall underneath him bulged out, and a warhammer shot up from the protuberance, aiming straight at Rasul’s head.

“Your Majesty!” Elga shouted, coming to his lord’s defense just in time. He blocked the hammer with his halberd, but the force of the blow was so great that the parts of the wall he was using to brace himself cracked. Looking down, he saw a giant arm that had seemingly fused with the castle walls holding the hammer. The hammer itself also appeared to be made out of stone.

“Uwoooooooooooh!”

With a defiant battle cry, Elga pushed back the warhammer, using his specialty, body strengthening magic, to buff himself. Looking down, Lestina saw a Paladin looking up at them from the roof of one of the buildings hugging the wall. Long black hair covered her eyes, giving her a gloomy air, and she was holding a staff aloft.

“You!” Lestina shouted, drawing her dual blades. However, that turned out to be a mistake.

“Don’t move!”

This knight possessed the special magic Divine Edict. It was a subset of spirit magic that interfered with the target’s consciousness, forcing them to obey the caster’s orders.

“What?!”

Lestina had been planning on launching herself off the side of the walls, but with her movements temporarily impaired, she found herself losing her balance and almost falling instead. A blast of disintegration magic headed straight at her, but a pair of strong arms grabbed her by the waist and pulled her back to the wall. Looking up, Lestina saw Rasul readying a score of shadow spears to launch at Eddy.

“Remember what Elga said, Lestina. Don’t let your guard down.”

“O-Okay...” Lestina mumbled, blushing when she realized she was resting in Rasul’s arms.

“This isn’t the time for lectures, Your Majesty. We’ve got a tough opponent on our hands here.”

As Rasul put Lestina down, he realized Elga wasn’t referring to Eddy, but the other enemy who’d appeared. Looking down, he saw that the ground around the castle walls was wriggling and jutting out in unnatural ways.

After a few seconds, a thirty-meter tall golem burst from the earth. Its body was metallic and seemed to be made of transmuted ore.

This was the special magic Divine Giant. The golem was actually a massive suit of armor that covered the knight who’d cast that magic, Paladin Outar. He hefted his massive warhammer, planning on smashing right through the city walls. Though they had been designed to defend the capital, they were now preventing his fellow knights from fulfilling their duty.

“How convenient that I got to be the one to face this enemy,” Rasul said with a smile as the Treasure Trove on his pinky began to glow.

What happened next came as a complete surprise to not just the knights, but even to Rasul’s own soldiers. A huge armored golem the same size as Paladin Outar’s Divine Giant—Oscar’s Shadow Emperor—appeared behind the golem and suplexed him. The resulting shock wave from Paladin Outar’s hundred-ton body hitting the ground buffeted enemies and allies alike. Habeel and her knights were knocked out of the air, while a few of the demon soldiers stumbled over the walls and had to find handholds to desperately cling to.

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha! What do you guys think of my moves?! Amazing, right?! I wish I could show this to Oscar Orcus! I bet he can’t control his Shadow Emperor this well! I’m still the best actual user of artifacts!”

In a way, it was fitting for the Demon Lord to be cackling while a giant dust cloud rose into the air and everyone else struggled to recover from the physical and mental shock of what had just happened. Mind control or not, it seemed Rasul had been rather peeved when Miledi had claimed that Oscar the artifact maker was better than Rasul the artifact user.

“Hmm, borrowing this from him was the right call, it seems,” Elga mused.

“Indeed, your wisdom knows no bounds, Rasul-sama!” Lestina added, showering him with praise.

The Liberators had known about the golemifying Paladin thanks to the information they’d gleaned from the train attack, and Rasul had correctly surmised that if that Paladin was going to show up again during the decisive battle, it’d have to be outside the city gates where he’d have enough resources to craft his golem armor. That was why Oscar had decided to loan his Shadow Emperor out to one of the teams handling the gates.

Rasul had volunteered immediately to be the one to hold on to it, claiming, “I know how to use that thing better than anyone else. I did see it slice through my own castle walls firsthand, after all.”

Oscar hadn’t taken kindly to the implication that Rasul could use his artifacts better than him, but he had conceded that Rasul would be able to handle it better than the other teams at the gates. Had Outar shown up at the southern or western gates, Rasul would have had to head over there, but luckily he had come right to him. Just then, Rasul saw two flashes of silver light, one above the palace and another above the southern gate. It seemed the apostles had descended.

Unfortunately, watching the advent of the apostles left him momentarily distracted.

“Sacred spear...grant me your strength—Divine Wrath - Overcharge!”

A white flash streaked down the main street, hitting the eastern gate from the inside. Though the capital’s gates were built from the sturdiest materials known to man and enchanted to deflect magic, they were completely blown apart by the attack, which was wreathed in a layer of disintegration magic.

Turning, Rasul saw Paladin Ajeen standing at the far end of the main street. It seemed he’d come from the southern gate to reinforce the numbers here.

“Now’s our chance! Hit them from above and below at the same time!” Habeel shouted, determined to get the invaders off her walls.

Though Oscar’s Shadow Knights and Vandre’s familiars tried to hold the knights back, now that they had recovered from their initial shock, they couldn’t be stopped, especially since they didn’t fear death and rushed at the familiars and golems in coordinated groups, holding them off just long enough for some of their allies to slip through. As a result, a full thousand knights were able to slip through the gates.

“Ajeen-dono! Please blast a hole into that tree in the central plaza as well! We can use the citizens as hostages to slow the enemy down!”

Habeel had absolutely no compunctions about sacrificing her own people. She firmly believed there was no greater purpose than slaying heretics, and that those who lacked the power to fight should consider it an honor to give their lives for the cause.

“It’s just as we feared,” Rasul said as he manipulated the Shadow Emperor to throw his massive tower shield over to the main gate, blocking any more knights from passing through.

“Lestina, stop those knights! Protect the civilians! Elga, you take care of that Paladin!”

“As you command!” the two of them said in unison, Lestina taking her squad to chase after the knights while Elga jumped down to solo Ajeen.

“Steel yourselves, my brave companions! The decisive battle is upon us. Hold nothing back. Fight with everything you’ve got! Show these church fanatics the pride of the demon race! Today, we make history!”

Deafening cheers answered Rasul’s speech.

At the same time, Outar sucked in the dust cloud around him and rose to his feet. Pure white mana rose off of him like steam. What’s more, Habeel, Eddy, and the Templar Knights started radiating white mana as well.

In response, Rasul brandished his blade and declared, “It’s time for a bloodbath—Ignis!”

His own bloodred mana flared up, eclipsing the mana of all the knights combined.

At the western gate, another fierce battle was unfolding. However, at least half of the battle was taking place within the walls, on the western main street. After all, the gate had already been breached.

“Tch, you bastards!” Valf, who was holding down the western main street against the knights, shouted.

An old couple could be seen cowering by the window in the building behind him. The knights in front of him kept firing Celestial Flashes at him, heedless of the civilians behind him. In fact, they were doing it precisely because they knew Valf wouldn’t dodge. They smirked as they bombarded him with magic.

Valf crossed his arms in front of him and his Metal Batlam deployed over his leather armor to absorb the blows, but that alone wouldn’t be enough.

“Uwoooooooooh!”

Thus, he activated his special magic, Float Field, right as the Celestial Flashes were about to hit him to redirect them upward into the building’s roof. Float Field let him manipulate gravity in a small area around him for a brief period, which gave him just enough time to divert the Celestial Flashes. However, he wasn’t able to get them all, and the few that hit him sent him careening through the window and into the building.

“E-Eek! G-Get out, you filthy beast!”

“Please save us, Templar Knights!”

The husband threw a vase at Valf, while the wife pleaded with the knights to help.

“Don’t you get it? Those knights are the ones trying to kill you!” Valf exclaimed as he kicked away the ruins of the window frame, blocked the vase, and stalked over to the couple.

“Wh-What are you going to do to us?”

“Protect you, obviously!”

Valf scooped the couple up into his arms, ignoring their shock, and ran to the corner of the room. A second later, a white flash shot through where the couple had been standing.

The wife gaped at the knight who’d attacked her, but the husband seemed to understand what was going on.

“I-If...my life can be of use to an honored knight, then I have no regrets,” he said in a trembling voice, praying to Ehit that his martyrdom would be swift.

Shaking his head, Valf whipped out a Summoning Circle out of his pouch and said, “Don’t be so eager to die, old man. You should live a long life together with your wife.”

The couple blinked in confusion, then actually looked at Valf properly for the first time. He was around their son’s age, and while he looked a little imposing with his brow furrowed, he didn’t actually appear all that scary. At the very least, he wasn’t anything like the bloodthirsty monsters the church said all beastmen were. In fact, he didn’t even look all that different from a human, aside from his wolf ears and tail. The wife opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, Valf teleported the two of them away.

“Stay put in the central plaza for now. You’ll be safe there. Sorry for getting you mixed up in our fight.”

That was the last thing the couple heard before they found themselves standing in the crowded plaza. For a while, the two of them said nothing. They’d seen a knight, one of the respected pillars of the church, try to kill them. Meanwhile, it had been a beastman soldier, who’d saved them with an apologetic look on his face. Things would have been so much simpler if they could’ve simply pretended the past few minutes hadn’t happened.

Looking around, the couple saw many other people warping into the plaza as well. Some of them looked furious, others terrified, but most simply seemed confused, just like the old couple.

As for Valf...well he was in a bit of a pinch.

“Gah!”

A scattershot of rubble assailed him. He’d escaped the old couple’s house just before it had been crushed, but then the rubble had seemingly come to life of its own volition and chased him down.

“Commander!”

“We’re here to help!”

Two bearmen warriors jumped between Valf and the storm of rubble, blocking it with their Onyx Shields. Using the time they’d bought him, Valf reoriented himself and, while coughing up blood, charged at the knight flinging rubble at him.

“I’m tired of your shitty magic!”

“Too bad, ’cause I’m not gonna fight you up close,” the vice-commander of the Templar Knights’ fourth division, Bittle, said, his eyes glinting from behind his helm. He then waved his arms like a conductor, and the rubble maneuvered around the bearmen to hunt down Valf once more.

Bittle’s special magic was Telekinesis. He could wrap his mana around anything he could see and control it remotely. It couldn’t be used directly on living creatures with their own mana pools, but it was still a powerful ability. Doubly powerful now that he’d been apostleified, of course. In fact, he was partly the reason the western gate had fallen so quickly, since he’d been able to remotely unlock the gates and throw them open. However, that alone wouldn’t have been enough to overwhelm the defenders. There was one other reason the gate had been overrun so quickly...

“God provides us mortals respite...and his absolute might grants us tranquility.”

Paladin Diese. He was blind and had been spouting sermons ever since he’d arrived at the battlefield. Everywhere he went, the beastmen warriors in the vicinity started trembling and their teeth started chattering.

Diese’s special magic was Doomsday Sermon. When he activated it, everyone around him was struck by a crippling terror. They didn’t see hallucinations or anything, they were simply assailed by an inexplicable fear. And even with the debuff reversal that Adel had activated, this fear couldn’t be nullified. It was because this fear had slowed the beastmen down that the knights had been able to break through so easily.

“Don’t falter, men! This battle will decide the future of this world! Fight with everything you’ve got!” Sim shouted, trying to bolster his warriors’ morale. At the same time, he stomped the ground, activating his special magic Shock Wall to try to knock Diese away.

Had his attack landed, Diese would have been sent flying. But of course, if he could get his attacks to land, the knights wouldn’t have made it this far in the first place.

“Only in Ehit’s bosom are we safe.”

Diese struck his staff against the ground and a white dome-shaped barrier appeared around him. The barrier was made of disintegration magic, so Sim’s shock waves couldn’t break through it.

It must take a lot of mana to activate that barrier, or he’d keep it permanently active, but...

Incidentally, Diese’s blindness arose from the fact that he had no eyes at all. His eye sockets were empty. And yet, it seemed like he could see attacks coming anyway. Sim kept hitting him with shock wave attacks to try to slow him down, as well as burn through his mana, but it was taking time.

Meanwhile, the knights had already advanced a good hundred meters into the city. Nirke’s aerial division was thankfully making sure the knights didn’t just fly over everyone, but Sim was still forced to split his troops more than he’d like to cover all of the side streets and alleyways. As a result, the unit guarding the main street was continually getting pushed back. It was only a matter of time before they were overwhelmed.

This is supposed to be a short, decisive battle, but if we can’t even hold out for the short amount of time it takes for our leaders to win, then we’re doomed.

Beastmen were by no means weak, but the majority of them unfortunately lacked the ability to use magic. Their superior physical strength was their main asset, and they could only take full advantage of it when fighting in the dense forest. When fighting on a battlefield where the opponent could freely use magic, they were at a clear disadvantage.

Sim understood that intellectually, but he’d never felt it as keenly as he felt it now. His soldiers had a plethora of powerful artifacts to protect them and to provide them with enough offensive power to duel even apostleified knights, but it simply wasn’t enough.

“Waaaaaaaaah, do we really have to fight without Her Majesty’s magic to help?” Sui wailed, her voice seemingly coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. She managed to throw her voice like that using pure skill too.

“You’re just gonna have to deal with it! Badd and the others need her help way more than we do!”

Lyutillis needed her Forest Manifestor’s fog and greenery to cast evolution magic on others over a long distance. Naturally, she’d sent her fog over to Badd and the others first, as they were the ones who were fighting the Holy Templar Knights.

But of course, Sui didn’t care about who needed the help more, since she just wanted her life to be easier.

“Haaah, Her Majesty’s so freaking useless!”

“Hey, don’t insult our queen!”

“Please, she’d probably love being insulted. Honestly, any respect I had for her vanished the moment I learned about her fetishes.”

“Th-That may be true but— Oh, screw it!”

Sim stomped angrily on the ground, pulverizing the Templar Knights advancing toward his position. While it was true that his beloved queen had some rather problematic inclinations, Sim was still loyal to her. That aside, it was solely thanks to Sui that the beastmen hadn’t collapsed completely already. She’d already slain hundreds of knights by herself. Her skills as an assassin were coming in handy on this battlefield.

Outside of the Pale Forest, her unique talents made her the strongest beastman. Her accomplishments were so overwhelming that it was hard for Sim to complain when she badmouthed the queen. Unfortunately, soon enough, Sui was faced with a crisis so pressing she didn’t even have time to insult her queen.

“How terrifying. Everything I see is so very terrifying,” Diese said in a sad voice. In fact, that was why he’d gouged out his own eyes. Though, that had only made his hearing better.

“What terrible sounds. Such evil must face Ehit’s divine punishment.”

No matter how hard he tried to drown out the noise with his sermons, Diese couldn’t help but hear his enemies’ heartbeats.

“Doomsday Sermon!”

Fear the end of the world...and through your fear, prevent the end.

Diese focused his magic, targeting Sui and Sui alone with it.

“Uwaaa...” Sui roared as she appeared in the middle of the battlefield, swaying unsteadily. Her eyes were unfocused, and she seemed to be shrinking away from something.

“Get that rabbitgirl!” Bittle ordered.

“Shit! Everyone, protect Sui!” Sim shouted in a panic.

The knights all rushed toward Sui, determined to take this opportunity to eliminate the greatest threat to their lives. The beastmen hurriedly ran over to Sui to defend her, but then another Paladin swooped down onto the battlefield.

A barrage of white feathers and a few well-aimed Celestial Flashes scattered the beastmen. Shrieking in fear, Sui instinctively threw herself to the side, narrowly avoiding a sword swing to the neck. It still grazed her though, drawing blood.

Turning around, as she rolled, Sui saw the same female knight she’d fought during Laus’s rescue. Fira, the user of the special magic Stigmata, which made all wounds she inflicted never heal. Like everyone else, Sui was protected by a Metal Batlam, but Fira had managed to weave through its defenses. Had Sui not dodged, she would have been decapitated.

Sui’s fear turned to despair as she realized how hopeless her situation was. After all, Sim and Valf wouldn’t be able to get to her in time. Meanwhile, Fira’s started to glow brighter and brighter as she charged a powerful disintegration attack.

Rattled as she was by Diese’s magic, Sui couldn’t help but think this was the end for her. She crouched down, cradling her head, feeling more afraid than she ever had in her life.

“Make sure not to hit our allies! Fire!”

Just then, a barrage of magical missiles and breath attacks rained down on Fira. She deflected them with her sword, retreating to a safe distance. Another burning hot breath attack targeted Diese, who was forced to put up his barrier and thus cancel his Doomsday Sermon.

“Thanks for the assist!” Sim shouted, looking up to see Margaretta leading a flock of wyverns. The mere sight of her was enough to make the beastmen’s morale explode. They let out a resounding cheer that shattered the nearby windows.

Meanwhile, Fira decided to take Sui down even if it cost her life as she charged into the magical barrage. But just before she reached Sui, she instinctively came to a halt.

“Sui, are you okay?!” Sim shouted, running over as well. “Take a second to—”

“Ke he he...”

Strange laughter interrupted him, and the fur on his ears stood on end. Sui slowly, surely rose to her feet, and all the knights in the vicinity stopped moving as well.

“Everything scary deserves to die,” she said in a flat voice, her neck tilting at an impossible angle. She was grinning, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. In fact, she looked a little like a psychopath. Then, with another ominous laugh, she vanished from sight. This wasn’t her usual stealth that took a few seconds to activate either, since she disappeared instantly.

“B-Behind you!” Diese shouted, sounding panicked for the first time. Fira instinctively slashed at the air behind her, but unfortunately, Diese had warned the wrong target.

“Vice-captain Bittle!”

“Huh?!”

Bittle felt a heavy weight on his back and Valf, who he’d been fighting, stared at him in shock. Suddenly, Bittle felt a searing pain on both sides of his neck.

“Give me your head,” Sui said, and suddenly, Bittle’s world flipped upside-down. He only realized what had happened a second later, when he saw that he was looking down at his body. It was missing a head, and there was a blood-smeared rabbitgirl with knives in both hands standing behind it.

Sui kicked Bittle’s corpse away, then advanced on Fira without even bothering to hide. Fira charged at her head-on, and this time Sui was able to block the swing with her Metal Batlam. Then, before Fira could jump away, Sui spit some green liquid at her.

“Gaaah, is that acid?! You little—”

“Come, let’s melt together. Ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke!”

Half of Fira’s face sloughed off. An acid that corrosive should have harmed Sui as well, but for whatever reason, she looked perfectly fine as she pushed Fira down, cackling.

Fira launched a feather barrage that bloodied Sui pretty badly, but she ignored the damage and took a bottle out of her Treasure Trove, catching it in her mouth. Then, she bit down on it and kissed Fira on the lips.

“Mmmpfh?!”

Sui had poured more of the acid down Fira’s throat, and white smoke poured out of both of their mouths.

It was a truly grotesque, terrifying sight. As Sui looked up from Fira, who had fallen unconscious and was frothing at the mouth, everyone, foes and allies alike, involuntarily started backing away. But Sui wasn’t done yet.

“All scary things must die!” she cackled again, looking even more deranged because parts of her face were also damaged by the acid.

“You’re the scariest thing here!” everyone shouted simultaneously. It seemed Diese’s fear-inducing magic had been so effective that it had driven Sui off the deep end.

Regardless, thanks to Margaretta’s timely assistance and Sui’s sudden power-up(?), the western forces were able to rally once more.

A different battle raged on in the skies above the palace.

“Three ships are attempting to slip past our port side! They’re heading for the central plaza!”

“Hah, just as we expected! Shoot them down!”

Lac Elain was currently embroiled in a fierce struggle for aerial supremacy with the theocracy’s airships.

Salus barked out commands from his seat on the bridge, which his crew hurried to obey. Powerful magical cannons then fired from both sides of Lac Elain.

Six ships had been trying to get around the flying submarine, three on each side, but the cannons hit them all in the stern, shooting them down. It looked like they would crash into the buildings down below, but just before they did, the magic contained within the cannon shells activated, slowing the airships’ descent. They were being buoyed by the same barrier that held Lac Elain aloft.

“Mikaela!” Salus shouted.

“On it!” she replied, her eyes shut tight with concentration. She was sitting on a hastily built chair that was set next to Salus’s, panting heavily, with sweat pouring down her forehead. She was using her Soul Sight to make sure there were no civilians in the vicinity of where the airships had crash-landed.

“Tim! Sector 4, block 5!” Mikaela shouted.

“Roger!” he replied.

Tim Rocket was currently waiting on standby in the ship’s bottom hatch. The hatch was open, giving him a bird’s-eye view of the capital. And as soon as he heard Mikaela, he sent out his Isoniol Eagle, which was enhanced by his special magic, Animal Harmony. It had a communicator ring attached to its leg, allowing Tim to communicate with it over long distances. The eagle also had Summoning Circles held in its beak, which it dropped on a family fleeing from where one of the airships was falling, transporting them to the central plaza.

Together, Mikaela and Tim were in charge of evacuating any citizens that might get caught in the cross fire.

“Commander, they seem to have changed objectives!”

At first, the airships had tried to head to the Divine Mountain, or to the city walls to aid the knights fighting there, but now they were focusing on taking Lac Elain down and trying to make their way to the central plaza.

“They must want to destroy the dome and let the citizens loose into the city...” Salus muttered.

Either that or just take them hostage outright.

So long as it was done in the name of Ehit, the church was able to justify all sorts of heinous acts.

“It really does feel like we’re the defenders and they’re the invaders, doesn’t it?” Salus mumbled as he shook his head, returning his attention to the task at hand.

“Turn her around! We’re heading to the central plaza ourselves!”

“B-But, Commander, if we do that, the plaza will become a battlefield!”

“We’re too outnumbered to stay here! It’s only a matter of time before some of those airships manage to slip past us! And once they start firing on that plant barrier, it’s over! We need to get there first with Lac Elain and deploy our barrier as far as it’ll go!”

If the church started firing on the tree, the citizens would scatter, which would be the biggest blow to the Liberators as they’d have to dedicate a lot of manpower to protecting a scattered populace. The crew shivered as they imagined the knights firing on their own people.

As Lac Elain hurried to the plaza, the airships following it started aiming at the big tree. It seemed they’d realized what Salus’s plan was, and were hoping to shoot the tree down before he could get the barrier up.

“Send out the Black Barrier! Turn us sideways to use the hull as a shield as well!”

The barrier split off from the main body of the ship and deployed itself around the tree as Lac Elain turned sideways to cover as much of the dome as possible.

A second later, a hundred airships fired their cannons at Lac Elain.

“Brace for impact!” Salus shouted, prompting everyone to grab onto something as Lac Elain shook violently. Though, a few people weren’t able to grab onto anything and were thrown into the wall or the floor.

Plumes of smoke rose from the ship’s starboard side, which had taken the hits, and the hull creaked ominously. Half of the mana stored in the ship had been used up, and about forty percent of the weapons and outer armor were severely damaged. Against all odds, though, Lac Elain was taking on the entirety of the theocracy’s fleet by itself.

“We’re still kicking! Deploy the barrier! Protect the central plaza!” Salus shouted, ignoring the blood trickling down his forehead. The crew sprang into action in response, and the glowing barrier surrounding Lac Elain morphed into a pillar shape and expanded to cover the entire plaza.

“Holy shit, you look like a mess. Captain, you okay?”

Three men ran onto the bridge, looking worried. Shirley, who’d been manning one of the guns until now, got to her feet upon hearing the man’s voice.

“Dad!”

“Shirley...why are you here?”

“Are you kidding me?! That’s the first thing you have to say to me?! You idiot!”

She’d obviously come because she was worried about Rigan. The rest of the crew gave him an exasperated look. The other two who’d come in with Rigan were Karg and Baharl. All of the prisoners who’d been rescued at the plaza had been teleported into Lac Elain.

The Liberators had chosen Lac Elain in case the church had found some way to track where the Dark Gates teleported people. And while Oscar had managed to increase their range significantly, it was still possible the church would be able to send pursuers after the escaped prisoners. In that sense, Lac Elain was the safest place to send everyone. Moreover, Oscar had built a new medbay for everyone so their wounds had been at least somewhat healed.

Rigan ran a hand through his tousled hair and replied, “Sorry. But as you can see, I’m right as rain. Thanks for coming, Shirley.”

“No problem.”

There was more they wanted to say to each other, but there was still a battle going on. Thus, Shirley wiped away her tears and returned to her post.

“So, what’s the situation?” Baharl asked, leaning against the back of the captain’s chair. It seemed standing was still an ordeal for him. However, his pride as Andika’s boss wouldn’t allow him to lie down while there was a battle going on.

“We’re slowly getting pushed back,” Salus said calmly.

“Sounds pretty bad.”

“We knew the odds were stacked against us from the start. All we have to do is hold out until our leader’s blitzkrieg attack is done.”

Salus ordered his crew to start firing back at the airships, looking completely unfazed by how bad the situation was. Just then, another huge impact rocked the ship. Baharl almost toppled over, but Karg and Rigan supported him.

“Ngh, what was that?! What happened?!”

“Damage to the ship’s stern! No, wait...part of the stern has been completely obliterated! There’s an apostle attacking us!”

“So there were still a few left, eh?”

Salus didn’t think he’d been too optimistic with his estimations, but they’d already slain three apostles, and he’d been hoping the third would be the last of them. Knowing there were more made him want to throw his chair across the bridge.

However, the situation just kept getting worse. Going pale, Karg and Rigan said, “Hang on, isn’t that another one over there?”

“And there’s another in the palace...”

The bridge’s walls, floor, and ceiling were all transparent, so people on it could survey the surroundings. And everyone saw that apostles had appeared above the palace...and in the sky above the southern gate.

“Four of them...? Gah, concentrate your fire on the apostle! We have to defend this barrier with our lives!”

There were two apostles above the palace, one to the south, and one that was attacking the ship’s rear. Had Oscar not significantly upgraded Lac Elain’s defenses, the ship would have been full of holes already.

“Karg-dono, please repair as much of the ship as you can! Rigan, Baharl-dono, help evacuate the injured from the damaged sectors!”

While Oscar’s defenses dampened a lot of attacks, some still managed to pierce the hull. And of course, every time that happened, some of the crew got injured.

Rigan and the others nodded, but before they could head off—

“Captain!”

The apostle circled around to the front of the bridge. Her beautiful, emotionless eyes looked straight at Salus. She then pointed her sword at him, silver light gathering at its tip.

I ain’t going down that easily!

The transparent walls started to darken as a Metal Batlam began covering them. Salus deployed numerous spatial barriers in front of the bridge as well, just as the apostle’s disintegration attack hit it. The shields held, in part because Oscar had been extremely meticulous about defending it as much as possible. Furthermore, thanks to Oscar’s Skynets, Salus and his crew could still see what was going on outside even with Metal Batlam covering the bridge.

Metal Batlam was quickly eroded away by the disintegration attack, and a huge amount of Lac Elain’s mana reserves were used up in regenerating the spatial barriers to keep the beam at bay.

“We’ve lost sixty percent of our defensive mana stockpile, as well as sixty percent of Metal Batlam’s volume!”

“We can only keep the barriers active for another twenty seconds!”

“In that case, use fifteen seconds to charge the main frontal cannon! We’ll blast that apostle out of the air!”

Just as Salus said that, the apostle was indeed blown out of the air. Everyone on the bridge stared in shock, as they had yet to fire the cannon. But then Laus showed up, and everything became clear.

“Laus-dono!” Salus shouted, overjoyed. It seemed Laus had sent the apostle flying with his mace.

Baharl, on the other hand, simply grew more confused.

“Hang on! If you’re here, then who’s fighting over there?!” he shouted, pointing to the south. Indeed, it appeared that the figure fighting the apostle to the south was also Laus.

As Metal Batlam receded into the ship, Laus Two turned to the apostle that was flying back to them and swung his mace again.

“Did it just extend?!” Karg exclaimed as he watched the mace stretch.

“And now it’s bending?!” Rigan shouted, wide-eyed, as the mace bent like a whip and coiled around the apostle.

With a dismissive flick of his wrist, Laus Two threw the second apostle over to the south, giving the Liberators on the bridge a thumbs-up with his free hand. He then kicked off against the air and hurtled south after the apostle. The apostle righted herself midair and tried to counter with a barrage from her wings, but Laus Two simply batted the feathers aside and continued raining blows down on her.

Enjoying the reactions of Karg, Rigan, and Baharl, Salus leaned back into his chair and said, “Phew, looks like we survived.”

He returned to dealing with the airships still firing on them, while Mikaela discovered a group of knights heading to the tree, so he dispatched a unit to take care of them as well.

After a few minutes, Baharl and the others finally recovered from their shock and turned to go complete their tasks.

“Do you think Oscar and the others are okay?” Karg asked, a worried frown on his face.

Unfortunately, communication with the group at the summit had been cut off, so there was no way to know how they were faring.

Salus smiled gently and replied, “I don’t know, but all we can do is believe in them.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Baharl and Rigan smiled as well. Then, the trio left the bridge.

At the southern gate, the Templar Knights had long since recovered from the golems and familiars’ surprise attack, for it was Lilith Arkind who commanded the unit at the southern gate.

While all of the other captain-class knights had left their second-in-command in charge of the gates so they could be part of the palace procession, Lilith Arkind had begged to be assigned to the front lines, and her decision had paid off.

However, just as she began directing her men to surround and eliminate the golems and familiars, Archbishop Kimaris and Paladin Ajeen appeared in the middle of the battlefield, dueling Laus.

While she was shaken by Laus’s sudden appearance, she had been raring for a chance to fight him. Thus, she directed her men to support Ajeen’s offense as Laus focused on Kimaris.

Unfortunately for her, Laus’s strength was far greater than she’d remembered. Plus, before she could reorganize her battle lines, the knights who’d been posted at the central plaza teleported in as well, and Lyutillis joined the fray along with her royal guard and a select group of Liberators.

While there were far more knights than there were beastmen, the arrival of Lyutillis meant the knights were the ones at a disadvantage. She immediately deployed her mist and cast evolution magic on her allies.

Because the Guardian Rod was a piece of Uralt, Lyutillis could use it to deploy the forest’s mist anywhere. While the mist wasn’t thick enough to fully obscure the knights’ vision, it was limited enough that their formation ended up in shambles.

The remaining golems and familiars were buffed a significant amount with Lyutillis’s arrival as well, and they mounted a devastating counterattack. As things stood now, Lilith couldn’t even get close to Laus.

“Out of my way, small fry!” she shouted impatiently, sparks flying off her body.

“Sorry, but I’m afraid you’ll have to deal with me if you want to go any further, Commander—no, Lilith Arkind!” Reinheit said resolutely, standing in her way.

Lilith needed to return to her troops to take command and assist them. And more importantly, she needed to reach Laus so she could slay him personally. And yet, she couldn’t seem to shake off Reinheit Ashe, a knight who by all accounts was as mediocre as they came.

“Traitor! How could the Holy Sword choose you to be the hero! I can’t believe it!” she roared, converting her rage into electricity and using superparamagnetism to accelerate her movements and circle behind Reinheit in a flash.

However, Reinheit blocked her lightning-fast sword slash without even turning around. He’d easily parried all of her attacks so far. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get past his ironclad defenses. It was like she was fighting a wall. And to make matters worse, she was losing in the magic department as well.

“Celestial Flash!”

“Celestial Flash!”

Their two spells collided, but after only a few seconds, Reinheit’s pushed straight through Lilith’s.

Is this the difference between a replica and the original?! Lilith thought, grinding her teeth in frustration. She couldn’t believe her replica Holy Sword was so much weaker. Though, what really scared her was Reinheit’s impeccable swordsmanship. It was hard to imagine he’d been an average knight just a few months ago. They’d been fighting for only five minutes, yet Reinheit had already started analyzing Lilith’s swordsmanship.

Is this the strength of a hero? Is this the power of someone chosen by the Holy Sword? Why was he, the traitor, chosen instead of one of Ehit’s loyal soldiers?! Lilith couldn’t help but agonize over that fact.

“I have to slay Laus Barn with my own two hands!”

“Sorry, but Laus-sama is currently disciplining his children. I won’t let any outsiders interfere with his family matters.”

Kaime and Selm had flown over just a few minutes ago as well. They were currently fighting Laus a short distance away. Even from here, it was obvious they were trying to kill him, but Laus was so much stronger than them that it didn’t feel at all like a death match.

It really did look more like an argument between a father and his sons. Of course, that only served to make Lilith even angrier. Her thoughts and feelings were a complete mess. All she knew for sure was that she wanted to make Laus suffer. Then, she wanted to make him beg for forgiveness and—

“Fine, no more holding back,” she mumbled. Her voice was calm, but there was fury in her eyes.

“Thunderclap - Finale.”

Lightning enveloped Lilith, and the roaring thunder drowned out all other noises. She’d transformed into an avatar of electricity. This was the ultimate technique she’d devised after her apostleification. She looked as intimidating as a real apostle in this form, but Reinheit forced his trembling legs to stir awake and summoned up all the courage he could muster.

“Holy Sword, grant me strength—Limit Break - Overload!”

If Lilith had brought out her trump card, it made sense for him to use his own. Responding to the will of its wielder, the Holy Sword began to glow so brightly that it seemed as if it was made of pure light.

“Out of my way, Hero!” Lilith shouted, charging toward him all the while.

“You’ll never get past me! I swore to protect Laus-sama, so I will!”

Light and electricity collided, signaling the start of a battle that would go down in history.

Meanwhile, Lyutillis had parked herself in front of the southern gate. She’d deployed a barrier to keep anyone from entering the city, but after summoning the fog and using her evolution magic, she’d started concentrating on something and hadn’t budged an inch.

“Kill the queen at all costs! If we can’t get rid of the fog or her evolution magic, we won’t stand a chance!” Kimaris shouted, hiding behind a knot of knights all holding up tower shields to defend him. For added defense, all of the knights had also coated their shields with disintegration barriers.

He was so wary because he understood better than anyone just how dangerous the man guarding Lyutillis was. In the past, he’d been the church’s strongest knight, but now he was its strongest foe.

Kimaris had managed to dispel the fog in a small area around him with his staff, and there were a thousand five hundred knights with him. The rest were busy dealing with the golems and familiars. The one good thing about this situation was that he had Ajeen with him, as well as the two people who would probably be the most effective deterrent to Laus, Kaime and Selm.

“Diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie, Laus Barn!” Kaime shouted, a look of pure hatred on his face as he charged.

“We’ll get you this time!” Selm exclaimed as he unleashed a disintegration barrage at his father.

They’d grown significantly stronger since the battle at the stream on the outskirts of Entris. However, it wasn’t nearly enough.

“Calm down,” Laus said simply. He then blew away Selm’s disintegration blast with a single swing of his mace, while catching Kaime’s sword with his prosthetic arm. After that, he simply flung Kaime back with a flick of his wrist.

“I’m here to talk with my kids. Don’t interfere.”

“Nnnnnngh!”

Ajeen had tried to stab Laus with his spear, but he swatted it away easily with his mace. He then blasted Ajeen with Soul Shock. Had he not been apostleified, he would have been knocked unconscious, and as it was, the attack still staggered him.

Another unit tried to swoop down on Lyutillis from the air, but he shot them all down with a hundred Celestial Flashes.

“Overwhelm him with numbers! Maneuver around him! The only other enemies you have to deal with are a pack of mongrel beastmen!” Kimaris shouted, and his knights tried to flank Lyutillis from both sides as a result. They knew most of them would die in the assault, but they didn’t mind, since they would be martyring themselves for their god.

The problem was, Laus wasn’t the only guard Lyutillis had, so even if a few of them managed to get past him, that wasn’t enough.

“It’s time to show your worth as royal guards! Don’t let them lay even a finger on Her Highness!” Craid shouted, and the five hundred guards he’d brought with him roared defiance at the church’s knights.

“Compared to the Holy Templar Knights, these guys are chumps! Don’t go chickening out on me now, guys!”

“All right, my pretty knights. March into my waiting arms!”

“Fuck, just when I thought I was free of Snowbell, it turns out there are more of these weirdos. Why must I be cursed like this?”

Leonard and the founder of the sect of cross-dressing burly men, Jinglebell, were here as well, with a hundred Liberators in tow. As was Kipson, the former Andikan outlaw who’d been forced to become Snowbell’s disciple. He’d come with another thirty of Andika’s best fighters as well.

Leonard’s powerful Heartbreak Shot was enough to stop any knight in their tracks, while Kipson and his Andikan friends had mastered the art of running away thanks to their terrifying experiences with Snowbell’s hugs, so they were able to run circles around the knights.

Jinglebell had absolutely no affinity for magic despite being a demon, but they had trained themselves to the point where they could destroy anything and everything that got in their way with their muscles. Their punches were as hard as steel, and the lascivious way in which they stared at the knights struck fear into their hearts.

“What the hell is this monster?!”

“Run! Who knows what’ll happen if he gets a hold of you!”

Even the knights willing to martyr themselves were afraid of what was in store for them if Jinglebell grabbed hold of them. Considering Jinglebell was just wearing bikini armor and a coat, they were probably right to be scared. Though it wasn’t any of the knights who’d issued that warning, it was Kipson. He’d been so traumatized by Snowbell that it was a conditioned reflex to warn everyone. The other Andikans looked similarly terrified.

“Excuse me? Do you want a hug as well?” Jinglebell asked with a playful wink, licking their lips.

“No thank you! We’re sorry, ma’am!” Kipson and the others replied in unison, then started attacking the knights with such vigor that it was as if they’d all cast Limit Break.

However, Kipson and his men soon found themselves hard-pressed. There were simply too many knights. Thankfully, no new ones seemed to be making it into the arena that Kimaris had created, but even then, there were too many for them to handle on their own.

“Devote every last scrap of your lives to Ehit! Fight with everything you have until your dying breath!” Kimaris shouted, and his knights responded. And not just in spirit either.

Kimaris’s special magic was Death March. Whoever he cast it on was able to continue fighting until their body had quite literally been torn to shreds.

So long as Kimaris’s magic was active, actually killing a knight was nigh-impossible. They could keep going even after they lost limbs, were stabbed through the heart, or even had their heads bashed in. In fact, some of them kept going even when their heads were cut off.

I expected this to happen, but still... Laus thought as he kept Kaime and Selm at bay. He was, of course, fully aware of what Kimaris’s special magic was. He’d told the Liberators as well, so they had been prepared to fight a horde of undying zombies, but the problem was Kimaris’s magic was able to affect so many more people than before. It was for that very reason that Laus and Lyutillis had chosen this gate as their battlefield after rescuing the hostages.

“Don’t think you can just ignore me!” Kaime shouted, trying to split Laus’s head open with a disintegration slash right as he dodged a shield bash from Ajeen. And at the same time, Selm cast Binding Chains of Light to try and keep Laus in place.

To Kaime’s utter surprise, his sword slash did indeed cleave Laus in two.

“What the—?!” Kaime uttered as he staggered backward in surprise, with Selm and Ajeen looking shocked as well.

“I wanted to save as much of my mana as I could, but I suppose I’ll have to go all out.”

“We need to slay Kimaris as fast as possible, after all.”

As Laus was cut in two, he morphed into two identical Lauses with the same voice, appearance, and equipment.

This was the spirit magic Shadow Soul. It allowed Laus to make mana-based clones of himself that shared his base soul, making each clone as powerful as his main body. It was the new ability Laus had unlocked upon coming to understand the true nature of spirit magic, which was that it affected the immaterial qualities of living creatures.

The second Laus turned away from Kaime and charged at Kimaris’s guards, Ajeen chased after him, determining that it would be more dangerous to lose Kimaris here than Kaime.

Laus didn’t bother to stop him, since he figured his clone would be able to handle things by himself and turned back to face his sons.

“Kaime, Selm.”

“D-Don’t say my name!”

“You’re just a filthy traitor!”

Seeing their faces filled with hate made Laus’s chest tighten up in pain. And yet, he didn’t avert his gaze. He was the one who’d sent them both to the church when they were still young, after all. They were like this because he’d been too cowardly to fight against Ehit’s will.

“I’m sorry,” he said simply, and Kaime and Selm sucked in deep breaths.

“I’m sorry I was a failure of a father. I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. I’m sorry I abandoned you.”

“Who cares about any of that?! You should be apologizing for betraying Ehit!”

“You don’t get it at all, do you? Do you really think we want you to be a father to us now?”

Kaime and Selm glowered at Laus, then launched another series of attacks at him. He blocked them all with ease, frowning.

“True. I don’t deserve to call myself your father after all that’s happened. However...”

Laus caught Kaime’s blade on his mace, and Kaime faltered momentarily when he saw the determination in his father’s eyes.

“I didn’t betray Ehit,” he said.

“What?”

“It’s Ehit who betrayed humanity. He sees people as nothing more than pawns on a chessboard to be moved around as he pleases.”

“That can’t possibly be true! He loves those who worship him. Besides, even if that is true, if that’s what he wants, then we should accept his will.”

“That way of thinking is misguided, my children.”

Kaime and Selm clicked their tongues and leaped backward. They then deployed their wings and hit Laus with a feather barrage from both sides.

Gritting his teeth, Laus twirled his mace to knock down the feathers. He wasn’t getting through to them. He knew overturning years of persistent brainwashing wouldn’t be easy, but that was no reason to give up.

“I want you two to live.”

Even if they disavowed him, Laus wanted his sons to have a future.

“You two would give your lives for Ehit if he asked you to, right?”

“Obviously. What better way to show our faith?”

“Martyrdom is an honor.”

“Well, I don’t want you to die.”

Kaime and Selm blinked in surprise. They thought Laus would have tried to convince them through some more complicated logic than just that. In fact, they began to wonder if this Laus clone was even the real Laus.

Annoyed, they fired disintegration beams at him.

“It’s not just Ehit who’s the problem. I don’t want you dying for anyone else’s sake, no matter who they are.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t need your permission to do anything!”

Kaime fired off a giant Celestial Flash as Laus dodged the disintegration beam. Laus knocked it back with a mana shock wave from his mace, then turned to Selm, who was trying to charge a powerful spell. Using his mace’s unique ability to stretch and bend at will, he knocked Selm back without even having to close in.

“I want you guys to understand... Kaime, Selm! Understand what it means to live for yourselves!”

“Wh-What kind of nonsense are you—?”

“People weren’t born to serve god! They were born to seek happiness!”

“Serving Ehit is our happiness!”

Never before had Laus looked so desperate. His earnestness seemed to be getting through to Kaime and Selm, and he could see a tendril of doubt worming its way through their hate and anger.

“If that’s what you truly wish to do of your own free will, I won’t say anything. But you didn’t choose this path, did you? You were forced to join the church. Faith was the only option available to you! Everyone should have the right to choose their future, but because of Ehit, our choices have been taken away from us!”

Free will. The ability to choose one’s course in life regardless of the circumstances of their birth. That was a right that all creatures should have had.

“Kaime, Selm. Is there anything in your life that you’ve truly been able to choose for yourselves?”

The two of them stopped moving, as if bound by invisible chains. They looked as though they’d finally realized something.

“Shut up! Shut up! How dare you say that?!”

“I’m tired of hearing your stupid lectures!”

They once again bared their weapons at Laus, but now they looked more like kids throwing a tantrum than warriors trying to kill him.

There was still more Laus wanted to say to his sons, years’ worth of things he’d failed to tell them when he should have. But before he could, a beam of silver light came shooting down at his clone.

Kaime and Selm reflexively looked to see what was going on and saw that Kimaris’s defensive formation had crumbled and Ajeen had been sent flying. His shield was in pieces, and one of his arms was hanging limply by his side as he staggered to his feet.

That silver beam of light had stopped Laus’s clone just before he’d crushed Kimaris’s head with his mace. And of course, that beam had been shot by an apostle.

Tears of gratitude streamed down Kimaris’s face as he looked up at the apostle, and his knights’ morale rose exponentially. The apostle then turned to Ajeen and said, “Aid the eastern gate.”

He saluted and ran off at once. Meanwhile, tiny particles of white light suddenly appeared all over the battlefield.

“Kimaris-sama, we’ve successfully dispersed the mist!” one of the bishops shouted.

“Well done!”

Indeed, the mist was beginning to vanish wherever the particles showed up. While Kimaris and the knights had been fighting, the bishops had been spreading disintegration particles everywhere to attack the mist. And with the mist gone, Kimaris was able to expand the range of his special magic. All of the knights that had been defeated by the golems and familiars awkwardly rose to their feet like zombies.

“Shit...” Leonard muttered, cold sweat pouring down his back.

“It’s not over yet, Leonard. Have faith,” Craid said resolutely. He was covered in blood, one of his arms was broken, and a third of his royal guard had been slain. But even so, he remained steadfast. No matter what, he would stand and protect his queen.

Leonard chuckled and raised his fists, bolstered by Craid’s determination.

“That’s right. We still have our trump cards left too!” Jinglebell said with a wink.

“Yeah, but if they don’t come out soon, we’re gonna get overwhelmed,” Kipson replied, panting heavily.

“Fear not, for the wait is over,” Lyutillis said in a clear voice that rang across the battlefield.

Leonard and the others grinned, watching as Lyutillis opened her eyes, her verdant green mana spiraling up to the heavens. Her burst of mana was so huge that the knights who’d been cheering the arrival of the apostle all fell silent.

She smiled in a way that Craid and the others had never seen before as she started the incantation for Forest Manifestor. It was at once fearless, bewitching, and arrogant.

Lyutillis waved her Guardian Rod with an elegant flourish, and with an earth-shaking rumble, trees started to grow in front of the southern gate. However, unlike the trees that had sprouted up around the central plaza, these weren’t just passive barriers. Their iron-like roots writhed like tentacles, and their branches scooped up their queen, taking her high above the city walls.

There were ten of these trees in total, and the moment Lyutillis closed her eyes, they started surging with mana.

“Enchanted Forest Manifestor,” she declared, pointing her Guardian Rod toward the ground. A second later, pointed roots shot out of the ground underneath the knights, skewering them where they stood, thick branches lashed out like whips, and razor-sharp leaves cut through the knights’ armor.

Oscar, Laus, and Vandre had worked together using creation, metamorphosis, and spirit magic to create a special variety of seed that Lyutillis had then grown into a new species of monster—Enchanted Trents—using the powers of her Guardian Rod.

While their physical abilities were impressive, their real strength was in the fact that their special magic was Mana Absorption. They could suck out mana from the ground and use it for themselves, or give it to Lyutillis. And with the mana they provided her, Lyutillis was also able to cast a regular Forest Manifestor all the way over at the palace five kilometers away.

“This changes nothing,” the apostle said in an emotionless voice, heedless of her panicking allies. She began gathering silver light in her hand, assuming that regardless of how powerful Lyutillis’s monsters were, they could still be disintegrated.

“Please, do you really think this is the full extent of what I spent all that time preparing?” Lyutillis said with an almost condescending grin. It seemed she still held a grudge toward the apostles for harming Uralt.

“I’m not skilled at direct combat.”

But no one is better than me when it comes to supporting my comrades!

“Unlimited Overdrive,” she said, directing her mana toward the Liberators fighting at the palace. Of course, she’d also prepared a surprise for her enemies.

“Core Seal!”

Ripples of green mana spread out from Lyutillis, swallowing up Kimaris and his knights.

“This is...” the apostle mumbled, furrowing her brow slightly. She could tell everyone fighting for the church had suddenly been weakened immensely.

The reason evolution magic could raise people’s stats was because its true nature was the ability to manipulate the fundamental information coded into living beings. For example, it could add one to someone with a power stat of one, making it two. And of course, it could also obviously do the reverse and reduce the power stat of something. However, reducing something was infinitely more difficult than increasing it, which was why it had taken Lyutillis time to analyze and overwrite the information of all the church’s knights. Even then, it was something that could only have been managed by someone with prodigious skill.

“Now then, I think everyone’s been brought back to the strength they were at before being apostleified,” Lyutillis said with a smile.

“It matters not. As soon as I kill you, everything will return to normal,” the apostle replied, firing off a disintegration beam.

“Sorry, but you’ll have to go through me first,” Laus said, moving in front of Lyutillis and holding out his prosthetic arm. Sky-blue mana swirled around it, and he flicked two metal fingers upward, creating a localized gravity field around his arm that redirected the beam up into the sky.

“Don’t get so cocky,” Laus said. “I can take as many of you on at once as I have to.”

The apostle turned and saw that one of Laus’s clones was beating down her compatriot who’d been attacking Lac Elain. She then turned back to Laus, who was making a “bring it on” gesture with his prosthetic arm.

“What’s wrong? Getting cold feet?”

The apostle narrowed her eyes, looking vaguely annoyed.

“I shall dismember you and present your limbs to my lord as a gift,” she said, and with a single flap of her wings, she charged toward Laus. He leaped off from his perch, meeting the apostle head-on.

“I can take care of the archbishop and his minions! You just focus on the apostles, Lau-chan-san!”

“If you call me that in front of Kaime or Selm, I’m going to kill you!”

Meanwhile, Laus’s main body was still keeping Kaime and Selm busy.

“Brother, the apostles are struggling! We have to at least keep his main body here or they’ll be overwhelmed!”

“Got it! I won’t hold anything back!”

Laus cast a sad gaze upon his two children. He’d known a brief conversation wouldn’t be enough to change their minds, but it still hurt.

Still, he believed that his words must have had at least a little impact, so he tightened his expression. No longer could he face Kaime and Selm as a father; he now had to fulfill his duty as a Liberator.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t talk for longer, but it looks like time’s up.”

His obsidian-black mana swirled around him with such force that Kaime and Selm staggered backward.

“I know I’m being selfish. You can hate me for this if you want.”

Laus could no longer bear to see his precious children in Ehit’s clutches, regardless of what they wanted.

“Limit Break, stage one.”

“Huh?”

Kaime and Selm blinked in surprise as Laus’s mana pulsed. Both of them had thought the only way Laus had been able to overpower them, crush a contingent of apostleified knights, and break Kimaris’s defensive formation all at once was because he’d already been using Limit Break. Of course, they knew evolution magic had been boosting him as well, but that alone shouldn’t have been enough, especially seeing as he was fighting on even ground with two apostles with just his clones. If he’d somehow been managing all of this without even using his Limit Break, then he truly was...

“A monster...”

“There was a reason I was hailed as the church’s strongest knight.”

Kaime and Selm had been hoping that if they just dragged the fight out, eventually, Laus would exhaust himself and leave himself vulnerable like he had during that fight in the valley.

“How can this be happening?!”

Selm looked up at Laus in terror, futilely firing a barrage of feathers at him. Kaime desperately raised his sword, but before he could even launch an attack, Laus struck.

“Soul Purge!”

Laus ran over to Kaime and Selm faster than the eye could see, put a hand on each of their foreheads, and knocked their souls out of them.

In their soul forms, Kaime and Selm watched their bodies slump to the ground.

“The Liberators will take care of you. We’ll talk again later.”

Laus made sure to gently place them both on the ground. They wanted to respond somehow, but they couldn’t find the right words, so they simply looked down at their own unconscious bodies.

“For now, just watch. I hope after we accomplish what we came to do, you’ll both...” Laus mumbled as he looked over his shoulder at his sons’ soul forms. “...you’ll both see that there’s so much more to the world than the church.”

As he watched Laus depart, Kaime unconsciously touched his forehead where Laus had placed his palm. As a pure soul, there shouldn’t have been any sensation, but for some reason, it felt warm.

Meanwhile, Selm watched as Kimaris desperately tried to keep reanimating corpses even after losing his apostleification, while the Liberators fighting him watched each other’s backs and kept their comrades safe.

Before long, it became too painful to keep watching Kimaris, and he and Kaime turned to look up at the sky. There really was nothing they could do except watch now.

“Has his Limit Break grown more powerful than before?” one of the apostles muttered.

The two of them were fighting two Laus clones, both of which had gotten the same power boost the main Laus had when he’d used Limit Break stage one.

Before, Laus had possessed eight stages of limit break, with the final stage multiplying his stats by five, but now his very first stage was as strong as the standard Limit Break spell, which tripled someone’s stats, and he had ten total stages, with the tenth multiplying his stats by ten.

“Limit Break, stage three.”

Quintupling his stats was as easy as going into stage three now, which didn’t even put that huge of a burden on him.

“To think he could reach Overload status with such ease.”

The third and final Laus rose up to join his clones, and the apostles switched targets to him. One fired a barrage of feathers at him, while the other launched a disintegration beam.

Laus’s clones blocked both attacks while he hefted his mace and went after the apostle who was firing feathers. His mace stretched outward at blistering speed, and the apostle had to raise her claymore to block it. However, the force with which it stretched was more than she’d initially anticipated, so she was sent flying.

Laus sent his two clones to finish her off, while he turned his attention to the one firing the disintegration beam. By the time she realized she was under attack, Laus was already right in front of her.

“Such unbelievable speed,” she whispered.

“Don’t talk, or you’ll bite your tongue.”

Laus swung his mace so fast it looked like a blur even to the apostle’s enhanced eyesight. Fortunately, her claymores were large enough that she could block even if she couldn’t tell its exact position, but the force of the blow numbed her hands.

“So evolution magic and spirit magic combined have made you this strong...? Ngh!”

“I told you you’d bite your tongue.”

Laus’s next blow landed right on the apostle’s head, and shock waves radiated from the point of impact. However, the apostle didn’t crash to the ground because Laus whirled his mace around and hit her chin from below before she moved more than a few centimeters.

The apostle’s body was tougher than most things, but even she couldn’t withstand successive concussive blows like that. Still, even as her vision blurred, she managed to launch a feather barrage at Laus.

“Hmph!”

However, Laus wasn’t fazed. He simply swung his mace, converting the massive amount of mana within it into booming shock waves that ripped apart the feathers.

By the time the apostle’s vision had finally cleared up, she realized Laus had rammed his prosthetic arm into her stomach. She doubled over as a combination of mana shock waves and the Void Fissure spell that Oscar had baked into the arm obliterated her innards. Plus, the punch was strong enough to tear apart her battle dress as well.

Eyes glinting with something akin to desperation, the apostle dropped her claymores and grabbed Laus’s shoulders. She wrapped her wings around them both, determined to annihilate Laus with a disintegration suicide bomb.

“Hmph!”

However, Laus headbutted her so hard that she let go of him and stumbled backward. Then, not giving her even a second to recover, Laus followed up with a front kick that hit her right in the stomach, where her armor had already been shattered. As she sailed backward, the apostle tried to recall her claymores, but Laus chased after her and shattered her wrists with his mace.

Like his arm, Laus’s mace was enchanted with spatial magic. That, combined with his own superhuman strength allowed him to damage even the apostle’s ridiculously sturdy body.

“You’ve surpassed all human limits.”

“Oh? So even without a soul, you’re capable of feeling emotion?”

Laus could see the impatience, and the fear, on the apostle’s face now. He then smashed her face in with his mace.

The apostle’s neck let out a sickening crack. She futilely lashed out with a kick, but Laus just grabbed her foot with his prosthetic arm and snapped that as well. Realizing she was in mortal peril, she tried to fly away.

“Not so fast.”

Laus knew just how powerful an apostle could be. Given free reign of the skies, she’d be able to keep her distance and pepper Laus with ranged attacks, hence why he’d decided that once he closed the distance with one, he wouldn’t let them escape no matter what.

“Uwooooooooooooh!” Laus let out a roar that could be heard throughout the entire city as he launched a series of devastating blows on the apostle. He was attacking so fast that she didn’t even have a chance to counterattack. There was no finesse to his techniques, nor was he adding any complex magic to his attacks. He was simply converting his soul into power and bludgeoning the apostle—the very symbol of Ehit’s might—to death through brute force.

“Gak!”

“Die!”

Pretty much every bone in the apostle’s body was broken at this point. Her limbs were all facing the wrong direction, and her spine was bent at a precarious angle.

There was another “Die!” in the distance, and one of Laus’s clones threw the second apostle over. She was in as bad a state as the first. No, actually, she was even more damaged, since she’d had to deal with two Lauses at once. The apostle the main Laus had faced was still trying to get her wings out and fire off more feathers, but the second just let herself be flung around like a battered rag doll.

The two apostles crashed into each other midair, and as they hurtled to the ground, Laus flew directly above them.

“Limit Break, final stage!”

For just an instant, he activated his strongest Limit Break, then swung his mace down with all the might he could muster. He enlarged it as much as possible while swinging it, hitting both apostles with a literal metal boulder. The two of them were too weakened to deploy a disintegration barrier, and they were sent careening into the city’s main street.

“Hmm, I guess I only needed the third stage of limit break, really,” Laus mused as he looked at the mangled corpses of the apostles in the crater their collision had created.

He brought his mace back to regular size and recalled his clones. But he knew there was no time to rest, and he hurried back to where Lyutillis and the others were fighting. As he approached the battlefield, though, he saw that Kimaris and his bishops were all trapped within the enchanted trents’ roots, and most of them were dead.

He turned to Lyutillis, who puffed her chest out proudly. Laughing, he looked over the battlefield to see how everyone else was faring. The Templar Knights were still fighting, but they were sorely weakened and the Liberators had a clear advantage. Leonard and Craid would be able to take care of things easily.

However, as Laus turned back to Lyutillis, he heard someone call out to him.

“Why...? Why...?”

Looking over his shoulder, he saw Lilith staring up at him with a pained expression on her face. There was a deep gash in her chest, and she was clearly on the brink of death.

Reinheit was standing behind her, gritting his teeth. He was the clear victor, but he’d refrained from dealing the final blow, probably to let Lilith have this one last conversation.

She fell to her knees, but she kept her gaze fixed on Laus. There was no will to fight left in her.

Ignoring the battle raging around him, Laus went to Lilith and knelt in front of her.

“Why...? Why did you betray us...Laus-sama...?”

“Commander Lilith...”

Coughing up blood, Lilith stretched out a hand, as if searching for something. Her eyes couldn’t see anything anymore. Trembling, she shook her head and reached out further.

Laus tenderly grasped her hand and replied, “I’m sorry, Lilith, but I couldn’t bring myself to abandon what mattered most to me.”

The light disappeared from Lilith’s eyes, and the strength left her hand. Laus had no way of knowing if she’d heard his final words, or what she’d felt toward him in those very last moments. However, he couldn’t help but think that if he’d chosen to fight against fate sooner, she might have been one of those people Laus Barn would have considered too important to abandon.

With a twinge of regret, Laus gently closed Lilith’s eyes.

“You shouldn’t have been born into this country.”

Lilith was already dead, but for some reason, Laus felt that he heard her say that. From any other knight, those words would have been an insult, but for some reason, Laus didn’t think Lilith meant it as one.

“You’re right, I shouldn’t have been,” he said with a small, sad smile on his face.

“Laus-sama,” Reinheit said, walking over.

“Reinheit, you’re in command now. Keep the citizens...and my sons safe until I return.”

“Yes, sir!”

Reinheit put as much confidence into his voice as possible in order to reassure Laus that the capital would be safe in his absence.

“Lau-chan-san!”

“How many times do I have to tell you to stop—?! Ugh, whatever! Let’s go, Lyu!”

Laus slung Lyutillis over his shoulder and leaped up into the air. Leonard, Craid, and the others all flashed him fearless smiles as he flew off to join Vandre and Naiz at the palace.

Eight thousand meters up, at the peak of the Divine Mountain, the sky around the Holy Cathedral was filled with numerous black spots. There was also a torrential downpour of enchanted swords striking it. That was the opening salvo Oscar and Miledi unloaded on Lucifer and his Paladins.

Most of the Paladins spread their white wings and flew out of the way of the barrage. However, Lucifer and four of his bodyguards, each of whom was carrying a sacred shield replica, stood their ground.

“Consecration!”

“Celestial Fortress!”

“Shield of Retribution!”

“Divine Protection!”

The Paladins deployed their respective special magics, one which created a spatial barrier, another which created a zone that dampened the impact of all attacks, yet another which reflected any attacks that hit, and a final one that simply buffed the defenses of everyone nearby, to protect the pope, while also relying on the natural sturdiness of their sacred shield replicas.

Oscar’s rain of enchanted blades hit the roof of the cathedral a second later. And at the same time, disintegration beams headed toward Miledi and the others from four sides.

Miledi redirected them all using her gravity spheres, sending them toward the Paladins who were trying to fly up to them. However, those Paladins were much faster and more skilled fliers than the other knights. They easily dodged out of the way of the beams and fired off their own counterattack.

Large blades of light shot toward Miledi, accompanied by spears of light that were specialized for piercing over raw damage. There was also a deluge of light arrows and several shock wave attacks. Each of those spells was insanely powerful, a result of Lucifer’s Divine Crusade buffing a group of already powerful apostleified Paladins. The combination was almost as strong as evolution magic.

“This might have actually been kinda tough if we didn’t have your artifacts!” Miledi shouted, her sky-blue mana surging around her. Thanks to the evolution magic and debuff-repelling artifacts Oscar had made for everyone, Lucifer’s Sanctified Purge wasn’t wearing them down at all.

“Asura!”

Miledi knocked down the Paladins and their spells with one wide-area gravity field.

“Your Sanctified Purge doesn’t seem to be doing much!” Meiru shouted as she circled around to cover Miledi’s back. Her whip-like snake scimitar lashed out at the Paladin trying to skewer Miledi from behind with his spear.

“That hurts, you know?” Meiru said as the spear went straight through her chest. However, the Paladin barely had time to blink in surprise before Meiru’s sword decapitated him. She recognized him as the knight who’d had the teleportation spell which had helped the pope retreat to the Holy Cathedral.

“Thanks, Meru-nee. Are you using your new skill?”

“Sure am. Though it’s rather nauseating how badly it makes my vision blur.”

Meiru had been able to preempt that surprise attack thanks to the new restoration magic spell she’d learned, Future Sight. The true nature of restoration magic was the ability to manipulate time, and once Meiru had realized that, she’d learned how to see a few seconds into the future.

“By the way, Oscar-kun, that attack broke through Metal Batlam’s defenses.”

“I see... It seems the Paladins have been buffed so much that Metal Batlam alone can’t fully block these attacks,” Oscar mused, swinging his gauntleted hand.

“Are those metal wires?!”

“They’ve been enchanted with spatial magic as well!”

As four apostles tried to close in on the group, they were stopped dead by Oscar’s web of metal wires. They were extremely fine and enchanted with both Refraction and Perception Inhibitor, so even the apostles hadn’t noticed them at first. Moreover, because they were enchanted with spatial magic, they could be locked in place at any time, so once you got entangled in them, it was impossible to get back out.

Unfortunately, after a brief moment of surprise, the apostles started radiating disintegration magic to destroy the wires. Even with all the reinforcement Oscar had put into the wires, it took them only two seconds to melt them. However, those two seconds were more than enough for Miledi to finish casting her ultimate spell.

“Heavencrush.”

Four spheres of pure black destruction appeared in the four cardinal directions, one to an apostle. The apostles started groaning in pain as they tried to resist the crushing force of overwhelming gravity. And lucky for them, Lucifer’s Sanctified Purge was weakening Miledi just enough that the apostles weren’t instantly flattened.

Miledi furrowed her brow in frustration.

“What irksome magic,” Darrion said, thrusting his spear in front of him. He was the first Paladin who’d managed to escape Miledi’s Asura. Four beams of light then shot out of his spear, each one hitting one of Miledi’s Heavencrushes.

“Are you serious?!” Miledi shouted as she watched her spheres disperse. Darrion had wiped them out so thoroughly that it almost seemed like she’d canceled the spell herself.

“Miledi-chan! Oscar-kun!” Meiru shouted, running over to the two of them. “Torrential Bulwark!”

She then summoned up a wall of water just as bolts of lightning appeared out of nowhere. The flashes were so bright that the trio was momentarily blinded, and the boom of the thunder left their ears ringing.

Pure water was a perfect insulator, so Meiru’s wall actually made for the best defense against the lightning attack. But while it could keep the electricity out, it couldn’t absorb the full force of the impact. Thus, the water was blown away by the lightning blast, but not for long.

“Tetragrammaton!”

Meiru was able to instantly restore the barrier with restoration magic, but the sheer power of that attack left her a little stunned.

“Future Sight sure is helpful!” Miledi said with a smile.

“Yeah, but that was cutting it a bit close,” Oscar replied.

“Indeed. It’s been a while since an attack scared me that badly. I won’t be able to use restoration magic if their attacks shock me unconscious, you know?”

As the three of them bantered with each other, the Paladins finally started making their way up through Miledi’s Asura. And at the same time, dark clouds gathered in the sky above, the wind picked up, and lightning lanced through the air. A storm was brewing.

“I’ll keep the explanation simple,” Oscar said as he watched the knights start to wreathe themselves in mana. Quite a few of them had special magic that transformed their bodies, similar to Lilith and Zebal. Several knights were turning into ice, or flames, or wind, for example. Among all the flashes of white mana though, Darrion’s mana stood out as it glowed golden.

“The reason your Heavencrushes were destroyed was because of his special magic, Golden Rule,” Oscar explained.

“What’s that?” Miledi asked, prompting Oscar to frown as he analyzed the data his glasses were giving him.

After Lyutillis had mastered evolution magic, he’d added the ability to analyze all information he saw to his glasses with her help. While it wasn’t as accurate as Lyutillis’s magic, it still told him enough.

“It’s special magic that lets you copy your opponent’s magic.”

“Now that’s just cheating!”

“Wait, does that mean he can use our magic as well?”

“I’m not sure how well he’ll be able to wield ancient magic right after copying it, but yeah. At the very least, he can cancel out our spells. The one silver lining is that he can only copy one type of magic at a time.”

Miledi stamped her foot midair, while Meiru massaged her forehead. Unfortunately, there was more bad news to come.

A pillar of silver light shot up from the Holy Cathedral. Lucifer had finally made his move. While the barrage of enchanted swords had turned the cathedral’s roof into Swiss cheese, Lucifer and his four bodyguards remained unharmed.

“Are you telling me that’s still not enough to stop it?” Oscar muttered. His goal with that barrage had been to destroy the Holy Cathedral and put a stop to both Divine Crusade and Sanctified Purge. But if all that damage wasn’t enough to cancel those spells out, it meant there was a core somewhere powering them.

Meanwhile, the storm roiling above grew even stronger, with hail-filled twisters descending from the clouds and yet more lightning splitting the sky.

“Here it comes!” Meiru shouted as another blast of lightning came down. They knew if they stayed in one place they’d get focused down, so Miledi and the others split up in three directions.

“That’s Stormlight, Lucifer’s special magic,” Oscar explained. “It lets him—”

“Control the weather, yeah! You can tell just by looking at it!” Miledi shouted, interrupting him.

“Men like to explain things to people, Miledi-chan! You’ll make Oscar happy if you let him lecture you!” Meiru said with a grin.

“Now you’re just teasing me, aren’t you?!”

Sadly, that was all the joking around they could muster. Miledi was swiftly surrounded by a contingent of Paladins, and they’d all finished preparing their disintegration attacks.

“Don’t underestimate me!” Miledi roared as she pulled several superdense metallic black balls from her Treasure Trove, which then started spinning around her at dizzying speed.

This was one of her new techniques, Satellite Blitz. By making a bunch of superdense objects orbit her at high speed, she could defend and attack simultaneously. After all, any knight who got too close to her would be sent flying by the balls.

Unfortunately for her, Darrion and two of the apostles were both fast and dexterous enough to slip through Miledi’s defense net. She blocked the lightning above her with a Spatial Severance and quickly flew away to safety. She knew she wouldn’t be able to handle Darrion in close combat, especially not if he had apostles backing him up. And so, she took off her three shawls and let them loose into the wind. The first billowed out like one big wave, the second coiled around Darrion, and the third coiled around his spear. While he was preoccupied with them, Miledi dueled the two apostles in the air. One blue streak and two silver streaks darted through the storm, evading lightning strikes and tornadoes.

As she watched Miledi fight out of the corner of her eye, Meiru shouted, “Damn, I’ve had enough of this!”

She was currently facing off against the group of knights that had turned themselves into fire, ice, and wind. None of her attacks were hitting while the knights were freezing, burning, and cutting her up in quick succession. But even as she coughed up blood and suffered third-degree burns, she kept using restoration magic to undo all the damage.

“Preserve your mana!” one of the knights shouted. “She doesn’t have much combat potential. Just keep killing her until she’s down for good!”

Meiru seethed upon hearing that and replied, “Oh, I don’t have much combat potential, do I? Why don’t I invite you to my domain, then?! Aerial Sea!”

That was Meiru’s domain-creating spell. It summoned a sphere of water that was three hundred meters in diameter in the air, swallowing up the ten knights facing off against her and the one apostle who’d been heading her way. The knights were left at the mercy of the extreme water pressure and high-speed currents within the sphere. Honestly, it was amazing they didn’t just die immediately. On the other hand, the apostle didn’t feel any pain and thus kept blasting away at the water with disintegration magic, though Meiru simply regenerated it every time.

For a while, the two of them looped as the apostle destroyed the sphere and Meiru instantly regenerated it.

“Oooooo-kuuuuuuuuuuuun!”

While that was happening, Miledi was still struggling to fend off the two apostles and keep clear of the lightning strikes, as Darrion had managed to get rid of the shawls as well and had joined in the chase.

Miledi had to contend with disintegration attacks from two sides at once, and whenever Darrion saw an opening, he used his special magic to cancel out her gravity magic. Her Spatial Severance was nearing its capacity limit as well, with all the bolts it had taken.

“Do something, O-kun! I’m kinda in a bind here!”

“Well, I’m preoccupied too! Do something with your spheres or something!”

Miledi’s black spheres were more than just superdense lumps of metal. Oscar and the others had already seen before that the church had ways of interfering with their ancient magic, so of course they’d come up with countermeasures. Those spheres were one such thing. If someone managed to interfere with Miledi’s casting or disrupt the control of her mana, she could still cast gravity magic through the spheres by using them as focal points.

“Why are you so cold, O-kun?! I thought you loved me!”

“Shut up! I’ve got a lot going on, okay?! Save it for later!”

It was true that Miledi was able to deftly manipulate her orbs to keep Darrion at bay while also taking out more shawls to slow him down, but even if she didn’t actually need his help, she still pouted as she zoomed past him.

Even though she was ostensibly the one being driven into a corner, Miledi still had time to flirt with Oscar, a fact that irked Darrion quite a bit. As he lashed out in anger, his spear miraculously managed to dodge Miledi’s spheres, her shawls, and even the defense of her Metal Batlam and graze her side.

“Ngh, you bastard! I bet you wanna strip me with that spear and do all sorts of nasty things to me! You pervert! Eek, a pervert’s tearing my clothes off!”

As annoying as Miledi was acting, she was still firing off hundreds upon hundreds of spells each second to keep all of the lower-class Paladins at bay and also dealing with Darrion and the two apostles at the same time. Darrion couldn’t help but be impressed, though he was also still pissed off.

Oscar was so used to Miledi’s screaming that it didn’t even distract him as he focused on his task.

Come on... Where is it?

He was sifting through the massive amount of data his glasses were giving him as fast as possible. He’d summoned ten of his upgraded Shadow Knight Lords to protect him while he worked. They were, of course, completely autonomous thanks to the spirit magic and metamorphosis magic they were enchanted with. There was one other new skill he was utilizing as well. Namely, Dance of a Hundred Blades. He had a hundred of his enchanted blades flying around him, attacking any knights that got close. These were special blades that were enchanted with autonomous flight magic, spatial magic, and the ability to cut through mana. And yet, even with a hundred of these insanely strong swords, he wasn’t able to fully push the knights back.

“Even with my artifact armor, I’m still in a pickle. These guys sure are tough.”

Oscar’s left shoulder had been petrified, while his entire right side was paralyzed all because one of the knights had a petrification-type special magic and had looked at him for a few seconds. And at the same time, Oscar’s blades were slowly being taken down and any knights he managed to injure got healed by other knights with healing special magic. However, it wasn’t any of the knights that were the biggest threat.

“The same trick won’t work twice,” the apostle said as she cut through the threads Oscar tried to trap her with. She was easily able to get through his swords and his Shadow Knight Lords to head straight toward him.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty of new ones up my sleeve.”

Oscar blocked the apostle’s downward swing with his umbrella and grabbed her second claymore with his gauntlet as she went for a side slash. His artifacts’ ability to devour mana and their extremely reinforced, super-compressed composition allowed them to just barely hold back the apostle’s claymores. Furthermore, his metal threads, Metal Batlam, and his Ebony Coat all helped boost his strength to the level where he could match the apostle, while his upgraded glasses’ perception-enhancing abilities allowed him to keep up with her speed.

The apostle seemed momentarily taken aback that Oscar had been able to block her attacks head-on, which proved to be her undoing. The sleeves of Oscar’s Ebony Coat extended to grab the apostle’s arm and push her sword away, while he unleashed mana shock waves from his umbrella to force her back. And once she was on the defensive, Oscar slashed diagonally up at the apostle.

There was an ear-splitting screech as his umbrella made contact with her.

“Ngh. How—?”

“Nice. Looks like I can cut through even your ridiculously tough body.”

The apostle quickly put some distance between her and Oscar. There was a deep gash that started at her right shoulder and ran all the way to her left side.

Oscar had used a super high-frequency chainsaw to cut through her skin. When he’d slashed his umbrella it had morphed, and the outer two ribs had transformed into mana-eating bladed chains that rotated at an extremely high frequency.

Upon seeing that the apostle had been injured, Darrion immediately turned around and shouted, “Focus on taking down Oscar Orcus first!”

In a way, Oscar was the most dangerous opponent for the knights. Unlike Miledi or Meiru, he didn’t rely on magic or martial skill to fight. All of his strength came from the artifacts he’d created. And as a result, the cathedral’s Sanctified Purge didn’t weaken him as much as it did everyone else, though, on the other hand, he was far easier to kill than either Miledi or Meiru. He was the biggest threat, but also the one that was easiest to neutralize.

At Darrion’s command, three of the Paladins gladly threw their lives away to open a hole in the Shadow Knight Lords’ defensive formation for Darrion to rush through. And of course, the injured apostle took advantage of that opening as well.

Miledi fired off a series of insanely powerful lightning spears to try to back Oscar up.

“You just sit there and watch while your comrade dies,” Sone said, moving in the way of the spears and using his special magic, Purge Territory, to dismantle them. Naturally, he wasn’t strong enough to completely disperse Miledi’s spells and was sent flying by the spears that had made it through, but he was able to keep Miledi from helping Oscar. And worse yet, because Miledi had taken the time to fire off such powerful spells to try to help Oscar, she’d given one of the apostles enough time to break through her shawls and close in on her.

Miledi quickly used her spheres to defend herself, but they weren’t enough to fully block a barrage of disintegration feathers at point-blank range, so she was cut in numerous places. Thanks to Metal Batlam, she didn’t suffer any serious injuries...and she knew Meiru would be able to heal her up soon, but she hadn’t been able to help Oscar.

O-kun!

Her gaze met his. Darrion’s spear passed through Oscar’s defenses and stabbed him in the side, but he wasn’t fazed at all.

It’s fine. I’ve found what we’re looking for... Oscar thought. And even if he didn’t say anything, his gaze told Miledi everything she needed to know.

A second later, Oscar was sent flying downward as Darrion pulled his spear back and used his shield’s mana shock waves to blast Oscar away.

Oscar had used his metal threads at the last second to lock Darrion in place and reduce the force of his shield bash, but even so, any normal person would have had their body shattered by the blow. Plus, the apostle added in her disintegration beam to really make sure she got him. And yet, Miledi wasn’t worried in the slightest.

I’m counting on you, O-kun! Miledi screamed internally. She had absolute faith that he would return.

I know this was part of the plan, but man...I really don’t want to do that again... Oscar thought to himself as pain lanced through him.

“I didn’t think Longinus would be that strong!”

He held up his umbrella to block the apostle’s follow-up disintegration beam. The force of the beam sent him flying even further, and he crashed into one of the Holy Cathedral’s towers.

“Gah!”

Cracks radiated out from the wall and Oscar’s breath was driven from his lungs, while blood spurted from the wound on his side. Metal Batlam had absorbed a lot of the shock of the impact, but it still hurt enough to nearly knock him out.

Gritting his teeth, Oscar made sure to keep his umbrella up to prevent the disintegration beam from killing him.

“I won’t stop until you turn to dust,” the apostle said simply.

“Perfect.”

Pinned to the wall as he was, Oscar had nowhere to run. His umbrella was nearing its limits as well and was starting to crumble apart. Oscar kept bringing fresh materials out of his Treasure Trove to transmute emergency repairs, but he wasn’t able to keep pace with the rate of disintegration. However, the excess girth of the beam that the umbrella couldn’t cover was hitting the walls behind Oscar and slowly eroding them. The moment his umbrella gave out was the exact moment that the wall crumbled, so Oscar was sent flying into the cathedral.

“You’re awfully tenacious. I didn’t think there would be anything left of you after that,” the apostle said, following him into the cathedral. However, once she made it inside, she didn’t see Oscar anywhere. There was a hole in the floor though, which made it clear to her where Oscar had gone. The tower had a total of twenty floors, and the apostle was currently on the seventh one. Two floors down was the door leading to the central shrine.

“You’re wasting your time,” the apostle mumbled. She assumed Oscar was just trying to buy time to heal. She quickly flew through the hole to stop him, but to her surprise, the hole went all the way down to the ground floor, where Oscar was waiting for her. She figured he would have tried to leave the cathedral, but he’d decided against it.

“Have you finally given up?” she asked, wreathed in silver light.

Oscar said nothing. His back was resting against the wall and he had no umbrella or other shield. He had one hand on his wound and his eyes were closed.

Taking his silence as acquiescence, the apostle thrust one hand forward.

“You were a decently entertaining pawn,” she said, firing a disintegration beam right at Oscar’s heart.

“Perfect, it’s all done,” Oscar said in a light tone. He seemed not to have heard the apostle’s words at all as he thrust his gauntleted hand forward.

“Wha—?”

The apostle’s eyes widened in genuine surprise. Her ultimate attack, which could destroy anything and everything, had just been nullified. Oscar’s gauntlet had shot out a beam of sunlight that had completely countered her own.

“Thanks for your help, by the way,” Oscar said, adjusting his glasses with his free hand. His gratitude was genuine.

“Did you incorporate my disintegration magic into your artifact?!”

Oscar simply shrugged in response. Though that was, of course, exactly what he’d done. It was the true power of his gauntlet, after all.

The true nature of creation magic was the ability to manipulate all inorganic matter, including minerals and metals that possessed magical properties. In fact, when he made new artifacts with Miledi and the others’ help, he had them use their magic so he could imbue it into the material he wanted. And when he’d realized the fundamental concept behind what he’d been doing, Oscar had realized he could theoretically do the same with his enemies’ magic.

Of course, it hadn’t been easy. Absorbing an opponent’s magic in the middle of combat and then recreating it took an immense amount of skill. But luckily, Oscar Orcus was the greatest synergist who had ever lived, so of course he’d managed it. His umbrella’s mana-absorbing ability had allowed him to siphon some of the disintegration beam that had been hitting it, and his glasses had let him analyze all of the information stored in that mana, then recreate it with his gauntlet. And as a result, his gauntlet was now capable of using disintegration magic.

“You have stolen the divine power granted to us by our lord.”

“You mad?” Oscar asked, sinking into the wall behind him. He transmuted a hole exactly his size and shape, and then transmuted the wall back into place after moving through it.

“You won’t escape me!”

“I think I will, actually.”

As he said that, Oscar vanished completely into the wall. The apostle fired a disintegration beam at it, but—

“It’s not disintegrating?!”

Just as she shouted that, the room began to rumble. She then heard a high-pitched screeching noise coming from all sides.

The walls suddenly all transformed into rotating blades. Even the floor and ceiling did, forcing the apostle to hover in the air. The stairs leading to the next floor were all blades as well. Then, the entire room was bathed in a golden glow and it started to shrink.

The apostle tried to blow open a hole in one of the walls with disintegration magic, but it failed to do anything again.

“You coated the entire room with disintegration magic?”

She realized her disintegration magic was being offset by disintegration magic, so instead, she pulled out her claymores and tried to cut through the walls. Unfortunately, the rotating blades rebuffed her swords, and even if her slashes could have broken through, Oscar would have just repaired them with transmutation.

This was his ultimate domain creation skill, Toy Box.

“You and your master love games, right? Well, how about a death game? Let’s see if you can get out of this.”

“Oscar Orcus!”

It was only now that the apostle realized that this had all been part of Oscar’s plan. Her scream was filled with such rage that it was hard to believe the apostles were normally emotionless. That scream was the last sound she ever made too, since the box quickly closed in around her.

Oscar didn’t even bother personally confirming the apostle’s demise. His glasses told him all he needed to know, and he really didn’t want to see such a gory sight.

Oscar turned on his heel and started running deeper into the cathedral. Now that he had the strongest weapon in hand, it was time to destroy the source of all their troubles.

Meanwhile, the battle in the skies was heating up.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!”

“God, you’re like a cockroach! Just die already!”

Miledi had lost all of her shawls, over half of her spheres, and was covered in numerous shallow wounds. On the other hand, Meiru’s Aerial Sea had finally been destroyed for good and she was getting stabbed over and over again.

“Dance! Dance to please Lord Ehit!” Lucifer shouted in ecstasy. He figured this battle was as good as won.

Hundreds of lightning bolts rained down on Meiru and Miledi, the wind grew so strong it was difficult to even draw breath, and hail pelted them from all sides like a storm of bullets. Both of them were constantly bathed in sunset-orange light, and it was only a matter of time before Meiru ran out of mana, which she needed to keep healing them.

One of the apostles was poised to launch a perfect ambush from behind one of the tornadoes, but right when she was about to charge at them, something happened.

“Huh?!”

She turned to look down at the Holy Cathedral in shock, as did the other two apostles.

“I-Is something wrong?” Lucifer asked in confusion, thinking the apostle was looking at him.

Darrion and the others stopped their attack as well, worried about the sudden shift in the apostles’ behavior.

“He took our magic.”

“Oscar Orcus!”

Miledi and Meiru grinned upon hearing that, and a second later, the silver light that had covered the cathedral vanished.

“What?!” Lucifer shouted, shaken.

Darrion and the others looked down at their own bodies, frowning as they experimentally clenched and unclenched their fingers.

“Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, see how the tables have turned! Hey, old man, how does it feel knowing you just got owned?! You were totally winning a second ago, but now you’re about to get smacked down, you clown!” Miledi shouted, grinning.

“You’re really in high spirits, Miledi-chan! I almost never see you act this annoying!” Meiru said as she clapped her hands together, smiling just as widely as Miledi.

Both Divine Crusade and Sanctified Purge had been dispelled.

“Don’t get cocky. This simply puts us on an even playing field,” Darrion said in a calm voice, seemingly unfazed. His job remained the same. He would fight, and die if necessary, for Ehit. The other Paladins were similarly calm.

“True. This is precisely the battle that Lord Ehit wishes to witness! Let us see if you’re worthy of being his chosen pawns!” Lucifer proclaimed as he spread his arms wide and once again started raining thunder down on Miledi. Darrion, his Paladins, and the remaining apostles all charged her as well.

However, right before they reached her, Miledi used her Dark Key to teleport to the Dark Gate Meiru had. Oscar teleported to it as well a second later.

“Meiru, can you still do this?”

“You bet. Leave it all to me.”

Oscar blocked the apostles’ disintegration beams with his own, while Miledi used her remaining spheres to stymie Darrion and his knights. Meiru, on the other hand, simply closed her eyes and concentrated while her comrades bought her time.

“Domain Creation - Stagnation!” she shouted a few seconds later, opening her eyes. A sphere of orange light then spread out from her, stopping Darrion and the three apostles in their tracks. Or rather, slowing them down so much that it looked like they’d stopped. In truth, they were still moving at a normal person’s walking speed, but considering the superhuman velocities everyone had been fighting at before, they may as well have been at a snail’s pace.

Stagnation was a spell that slowed down the flow of time for anyone Meiru chose within a fifty-meter radius.

Darrion narrowed his eyes and activated his Golden Rule. By changing the magic he was copying from Miledi’s to Meiru’s, he would be able to break out of this spell. Unfortunately, he was a second too late. Oscar now had gauntlets on both hands, and he fired disintegration beams out of both at Darrion. Darrion barely had time to bring his shield up to block, but even the vaunted Sacred Shield couldn’t stop disintegration magic, the strongest magic that Ehit had granted to only his perfect creations.

Darrion groaned in pain as his shield, and his entire left arm, turned to dust. However, the split-second his shield had bought him still had value. The remaining three apostles closed in on the group from left, right, and below.

“Meiru, it’s the one below us,” Oscar said, analyzing the three apostles with his glasses. Meanwhile, Miledi fired off high-level magic to either side to keep the remaining two apostles at bay while also defending against Lucifer’s thunderbolts.

Meiru stretched out her snake sword, coiling it around the apostle below.

“This won’t stop me,” the apostle said mechanically.

“Revival Reversal.”

“Ngh!”

The apostle’s left arm suddenly vanished, her armor was mostly torn off, and half of her body was covered in painful burns.

“It’s nice to meet you, Hearst-san. Goodbye.”

Indeed, this apostle was the same one who’d eaten a meteor back in the desert so long ago. Meiru had brought her old wounds back with Revival Reversal. As Hearst momentarily froze from the pain, a huge amount of dirt started falling toward her.

“Tetragrammaton.”

Meiru then used restoration magic to restore the dirt to its original form—a massive boulder made of sealstone. Oscar had deliberately broken this boulder so that Meiru could use it like this later and trap someone inside.

“Uwoooooooooh!”

With a spirited yell, Sone charged toward Meiru, blocking the spells Miledi threw at him with his Purge Territory. Darrion charged forward as well, his spear glowing brighter than it ever had before, and the rest of his Paladins followed behind him. Half of the knights were stopped by Oscar’s five remaining Shadow Knight Lords, while Oscar intercepted Sone personally, his glasses glowing faintly.

Hmph, I’ve already seen that trick. And if I know it’s coming, it can’t do a thing to me... Sone thought. He was already aware of Oscar’s glasses’ blinding flash. Closing his eyes, he relied on his other senses to keep track of his surroundings. He knew that if he could just get close enough, he’d be able to trap both Meiru and Miledi in his territory, even if it cost him his life.

Arrogantly thinking he’d gotten one up on Oscar, he continued forward...only to be hit by a surprise attack.

“Soul Shock.”

“Huh?!”

Caught off-guard, Sone lost control of his mana. His eyes flew open in surprise just in time to hear the words he’d been dreading.

“Super Glasses Beam.”

A blinding flash hit Sone in the eyes. He tried to fall back and heal, but for some reason, his consciousness seemed to be growing as dim as his eyesight. Right before he died, he realized through another knight’s telepathy what had happened to him.

Oscar’s new and improved beam didn’t just blind, it was a destructive ray of pure power. Moreover, that energy wasn’t coming from magic, but rather from hyper-focused sunlight. Part of Oscar’s glasses frames had actually been turned into a storage device to hold light and heat. He could only fire off this super beam once, but as it didn’t rely on magic Sone couldn’t guard against it with his Purge Territory.

Only a man as innovative as Oscar Orcus would have come up with the idea of firing sunlight from his eyes.

“Holy crap! Your glasses are super scary, O-kun!”

“Even worse, your naming sense is utterly awful, Oscar-kun.”

“Shut it, you two!”

“Heeey, Oscar, you never told us about that ability! Can our glasses do that too?! If not, when are we getting the upgraded versions?!”

“Naiz...I can’t believe you’ve become a glasses fanatic too!”

“That was amazing, O-chan-san! Glasses really do have the power to rule the world!”

“Don’t forget that this is a battlefield, you guys. Calm down.”

As soon as Sanctified Purge had been dispelled, teleportation to the Divine Mountain had become possible again, so Naiz, Vandre, Lyutillis, and Laus had all made their way over. Laus sighed and slapped Lyutillis on the back, reminding her to use her evolution magic on everyone.

“I-I didn’t know you had a sadistic streak, Lau-chan-san—Supreme Ascendance!” Lyutillis exclaimed, casting her strongest evolution magic spell on Miledi and the others.

“Fight! Fight for Lord Ehit! Show him a crusade that shall go down in history!” Lucifer shouted in a crazed voice, making Darrion, the remaining knights, and the two surviving apostles’ mana surge.

“Sorry, but this is the end of the line for your pathetic god,” Miledi said in a deadly-serious voice. She then raised one hand into the air and a spiral of sky-blue mana shot up toward the heavens. It pierced the dark clouds, sending them scattering, and seemingly illuminated the entire world.

“Pope Lucifer. Don’t think that the skies belong to you.”

“You insolent little—!”

With her debuffs gone and Lyutillis’s evolution magic enhancing her strength, Miledi was far stronger than Lucifer.

“Stop her even if it costs you your lives! There is no greater honor than martyrdom!” Lucifer screamed.

“Knights, fight until your last breath!” Darrion commanded.

A second later, they all charged at Miledi. But unfortunately for them, they wouldn’t even be able to reach her. After all, unlike the last time Miledi Reisen had challenged Ehit, she wasn’t alone. Now she had six comrades to guard her back...and they weren’t going to let Darrion and his ilk lay even a finger on her.

Oscar fired off blast after blast of disintegration magic while also spreading his metal wires around to trap the knights. Meiru expanded the range of her time-slowing zone, catching an apostle and ten knights with it. Naiz also deployed an expanding space corridor to keep the other apostle from approaching, while hitting a few other knights with spatial explosions. Vandre took care of any knights that managed to slip past the others, while Lyutillis erected a manifold barrier around Miledi.

Darrion used his Golden Rule to copy Lyutillis’s evolution magic to power himself up even further, but he had to contend with Laus, who was powered up by both evolution magic and his own Limit Break’s final stage.

Miledi easily managed to counter Lucifer’s magic, and sunlight shone down on Tortus once more.

“Starfall.”

The name of Miledi’s spell was an apt descriptor. A swarm of meteors rained down, glinting in the light of the sun.

“Watch out above you! Retreat!” one of the apostles shouted. Unfortunately, that warning was pointless, since Oscar and the others had the knights and apostles trapped in place.

A second later, a meteor storm that Miledi had quite literally pulled out of space hit the Divine Cathedral. Friction had reduced the meteors to little more than fist-size, but at the speed they were going, that was still enough to do serious damage. There was an ear-splitting boom as the meteors obliterated the cathedral and the knights protecting it. And naturally, Miledi had perfect control over each of those meteors, so none of them even came close to the Liberators.

Darrion switched over to copying Naiz’s spatial magic and was able to erect a spatial barrier strong enough to protect him from the meteors. However, that took all of his attention, so he wasn’t able to stop Naiz from reaching through his barrier with spatial magic and hitting him directly with a Voidshatter. Naiz was strong enough that barriers were meaningless against him now.

Miledi’s meteor storm felt simultaneously endless and instantaneous. Regardless, once the barrage ended, there wasn’t a knight to be seen. Even Darrion and the two apostles had been sent spiraling to the ground.

Miledi let out a long breath, enjoying the cool breeze on her face.

Slowly, the dust cloud around the Divine Cathedral began to fade.

“Miledi, look at that,” Oscar said.

“Hm?” Miledi mumbled as she looked in the direction Oscar was pointing and saw a single moving figure among the rubble. Then, she swiftly flew over to it.

“N-Ngh. Ha ha...”

It was Lucifer. He was broken and battered, but he was still crawling his way out from under the rubble.

“Y-Y-Y-You dare look down at me...you heretic?”

The majesty he normally exuded was nowhere to be found.

“Lord Ehit i-i-is absolute. Y-You’ll learn that soon enough,” he cackled madly.

Miledi waited quietly for him to finish, then asked, “Do you really believe all people are nothing more than Ehit’s toys? That it’s a sin to live as we please?”

“O-Of course it is! It’s the greatest sin there is! Pawns like us c-c-can only find happiness by...moving...as our god...wills...”

Ehit was absolute. People were nothing more than his possessions. Therefore, he was free to do whatever he wished with them. Their prosperity, their downfall, their tragedies, they were all nothing more than entertainment to appease his boredom. Mortals did not have the right to free will. The pope of the Holy Church breathed his last believing that to the very end.

“I see. Well, that’s why we’re tolling the bells of revolution,” Miledi muttered, then looked up at the sky. Her comrades had already gathered at the entrance to the cathedral’s inner sanctum, as the multicolored barrier surrounding it remained completely intact. Naiz had already tried using spatial magic to break through, but he’d been unsuccessful.

“Lyu, you’re better at appraising than anyone. What are you getting from this barrier?”

“I’m not sure. It doesn’t fall under any category of ancient magic. All I’m picking up is this strong will that says, ‘nothing shall despoil this sanctuary,’” Lyutillis replied, shaking her head in confusion.

“It’s fine!” Miledi replied with a grin as she held out a hand toward the barrier. Mana swirled around her. There was more of it than anyone had ever seen before, and she was controlling it with perfect precision.

Oscar and the others placed their hands on Miledi’s shoulders and back, then started transferring their mana to her, praying fervently for her success.

“Let’s do this—Heavencrush!”

A huge black sphere swallowed the inner sanctum whole. Black sparks shot out of it, causing the air around it to crackle, and it sucked in all of the nearby rubble, as well as a good chunk of the mountain itself.

Miledi wasn’t able to fully control a spell of this magnitude, so Naiz was forced to put up a spatial barrier to protect everyone. And yet, the multicolored barrier refused to break. It was clearly made from something beyond mortal understanding.

“Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Miledi shouted, her cries echoing through the sky above the Divine Mountain.

If this didn’t work, nothing would. However, no one present even considered the possibility of failure. They all believed in Miledi...and they all wished for revolution from the bottom of their hearts. And so, they shouted together with her, hoping that their determination had the power to change the world. They fervently prayed for a future where everyone could live as they pleased, a future where everyone would be free to live in harmony if they so chose, a future free from Ehit’s shackles.

“It’s time to liberate this world!” all seven of them shouted at once. And in that instant, they felt linked to each other in a way that had never happened before. They were so perfectly in sync that their wills melded into one. And they could feel that singular will give birth to something new.

At that moment, they all grew keenly aware that they would succeed.

“Breaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!”

Cracks started to show along the multicolored barrier. Whatever will was sustaining it seemed to be losing against that of Miledi and her friends.

Eventually, there was a fierce gust of wind and Miledi’s Heavencrush shrunk. The inner sanctum, along with the rest of the cathedral, got sucked into it and was ground into dust.

After the Heavencrush vanished, all that remained was a caldera on the surface of the mountain.

......

......

......

For a few minutes, no one said a word. Miledi and the others’ heavy panting was the only sound that could be heard. They all felt like they’d lost more than just their mana and stamina. Every form of energy that powered their body had been depleted, leaving them more exhausted than they’d ever felt before.

Miledi looked quietly up at the sky. The marble pillar that connected Ehit to the world had been destroyed. Thus, his control of their world had been severed.

So, what’re you gonna do now? Miledi thought. Come down and fight us directly? Well, we’re not gonna run, so do your worst! Or what, can you not do anything anymore now that your pillar’s gone?

It was possible the pillar really had been that significant, considering how heavily it had been guarded. Though if that wasn’t the case, Miledi was still ready to fight.

Oscar and the others stood beside Miledi, their wills just as strong as hers. Enough time passed that everyone caught their breath...but nothing happened.

“Does that mean...it’s over?” Laus asked, looking unsure.

After a few more seconds, Miledi finally turned back to face her comrades.

“Ha ha ha, we did it!” she said with a smile, throwing both hands into the air.

Oscar and the others exchanged glances, then smiled back at her and gave Miledi a series of high fives.

Down below in the palace, the battle between the Holy Templar Knights and the Liberators was nearing its end.

Most of the captains and vice-captains had been slain, and the two Paladins, Torres and Seys, finally showed an opening when they looked up at the sky, dumbfounded.

“Surprised that all your comrades are dead?” Badd asked, decapitating Torres with his scythe.

“You finally showed an opening,” Chris said, slaying Seys in the same moment.

The only captain-class knight left among the Holy Templar Knights was Lelei, but she was heavily wounded, had lost her weapon, and was struggling to command the two hundred knights remaining under her command.

The Liberators had lost a considerable number of men as well, and most of them had fully depleted their Metal Batlams and other defensive tools, but their morale was far higher. Exhausted as they were, their will to resist Ehit to the very end continued to give them strength.

Just then, a voice rang out across the battlefield, saying, “Everyone, this is Miledi Reisen, the leader of the Liberators, the anti-church resistance group.”

Badd and the others grinned upon hearing that.

Meanwhile, the remaining knights looked desolately up at the sky through the hole in the castle walls. There, they saw...

On the eastern side of the city, Lestina and her personal troops were protecting the trees around the central plaza.

“These guys are such a pain,” Lestina muttered as she cut down another knight. No matter how many of them she took down, more just kept on suicidally charging forward, screaming about their devotion to Ehit and their love of martyrdom.

“General, we received a message from the Liberators! There’s a family of three nearby that failed to evacuate!”

“What?!”

Just then, Lestina spotted a couple and their young daughter sprinting out of an alleyway. They must have thought the central plaza was safe, which was why they’d come this way. Unfortunately, with Lac Elain’s barrier up, it was impossible to get inside. Moreover, the knights were still looking for opportunities to take civilians hostage and use them against the Liberators.

“Get them!”

Two of the knights chased after the family. For a moment, they thought aid had finally come, but then they saw the madness in the knights’ eyes and their hope turned to despair.

Of course, they’d obviously been taught to give their lives for Ehit if necessary, just like every other citizen, but the couple still huddled protectively over their daughter.

“God, what a pain!”

There was a boom and a blistering wave of heat erupted before them, causing the parents to hug their daughter even tighter. But while they shut their eyes, the little girl saw what was going on through the gap in her parents’ arms. A blazing demon was standing in front of the family, protecting them from the knights’ attacks with her flaming twin swords. Meanwhile, the demon’s subordinates pincered the knights and took them out.

Panting, Lestina took a Summoning Circle out of her Treasure Trove and turned back to the family. The girl could clearly make out Lestina’s flaming red hair and dark skin.

“So pretty...” she muttered.

“Hm?”

Lestina had expected the girl to react with fear, confusion, and disgust like every other civilian she’d saved until now. She was so surprised by the girl’s praise that for a moment she forgot to activate the Summoning Circle.

While Lestina was frozen, the girl untangled herself from her parents’ arms and ran over. Lestina staggered backward, looking more shaken than she had when fighting the knights. The girl then took a small rock out of her pocket. It was a perfectly ordinary stone, though it was vaguely shaped like a heart.

“Here!”

“Wh-What?! What are you planning?!”

“Thank you for saving me, pretty lady!”

The girl took Lestina’s hand and placed the rock in it.

Lestina stared at the rock in confusion. She felt like she should say something in response, but couldn’t think of what. After glancing around awkwardly, she finally said, “H-Hmph. I’ll take the present, but don’t misunderstand! I’m still a proud member of the demon race! I feel nothing for you puny humans!”

She blushed with embarrassment and didn’t even notice the pointed stares her subordinates gave her.

Are you really gonna say that to a kid, General?

Just then, Miledi Reisen’s voice rang out across the battlefield.

“Woooooow!” the young girl said, looking up at the sky.

Miledi and her six companions were hovering above the north end of the capital’s central plaza, the sun and the Divine Mountain at their backs. The fact that all seven of them were translucent made it clear to Lestina that they were projecting holograms of themselves from somewhere.

“We have vanquished the pope, his Paladins, and even God’s Apostles.”

The commotion in the plaza died down and even the knights who’d been trying to break their way in stopped to listen to Miledi’s words.

“What does vanquish mean?” the little girl asked.

“It means she beat the bad guys,” Lestina explained, deciding to wait a little before activating the Summoning Circle. For some reason, she wanted to listen to Miledi’s speech with the girl by her side.

Around the same time, the battle at the east gate was winding down.

“Haaah, haaah, thanks for coming to the rescue, Hero.”

“Haaah, haaah, and thank you for the assist, General Elga.”

Reinheit and Elga were both on their knees, the corpses of Ajeen and Eddy lying before them.

“Can you stand?” Reinheit asked.

“Ha ha, I’m afraid these old bones are at their limit.”

Elga was severely wounded. Reinheit’s healing magic had closed up any fatal injuries, but he wouldn’t be able to walk for quite some time. Reinheit himself was covered in injuries as well, his armor was completely destroyed, and the aftereffects of using Limit Break had him struggling to stay upright.

“I never thought the day would come where the hero, of all people, would be lending me his shoulder. I guess it was worth it to live this long.”

“I also never imagined I’d be fighting side by side with a demon general.”

The two of them smiled awkwardly at each other. It would take a while before either of them could move, but fortunately, they wouldn’t need to.

“Oh, it looks like the battle’s over already,” Elga said, looking up at the sky.

“Thank goodness you won...Miledi-san.”

Reinheit gazed up at the hologram of Miledi and the others.

“People of the world, what did you feel as you watched today’s events unfold?”

Elga and Reinheit breathed sighs of relief as they settled in to listen to Miledi’s speech.

Outside the east gate, Rasul had finally overpowered Outar.

“What is that...?” Habeel muttered as she looked up at the sky. At the same time, Outar and the Shadow Emperor both crumbled away.

Smiling, Rasul replied, “An artifact called Skynet, apparently.”

“Sky-what?”

“Skynet. It lets you project your appearance and voice over long distances. I imagine you must realize what this means?”

Habeel narrowed her eyes in confusion, but then a second later, the realization hit her and she gulped.

“What did you think of the way the church’s knights fought...and Pope Lucifer’s words?”

Habeel’s blood ran cold as she realized everyone across the world must have been watching everything.

She stared at Rasul, praying he would deny her suspicions, but Rasul simply shrugged and said, “I’m sure all the countries, cities, and even villages around the world are in an uproar right now. After all, they saw the whole thing from beginning to end.”

That was the true purpose of the Skynets Oscar had developed. Miledi had wanted a way to broadcast their fight with the church to the whole world. She’d wanted everyone to hear the bells of revolution.

“I have to stop her!” Habeel shouted, flapping her wings. But before she could go more than a few meters, Rasul’s bloodred sword blocked her bath.

“Don’t waste your life. Just sit there and listen,” Rasul said, still smiling. And unfortunately, all Habeel could do was glare at him.

In the sky above the central plaza, the church’s airships had stopped attacking Lac Elain. Salus was taking advantage of the lull to watch Miledi’s speech from the bridge.

“All that running about was worth it,” Salus muttered.

In order to broadcast the battle to the whole world, the Liberators had first had to set Skynets in every major population center. Of course, they’d put some down in the theocracy’s capital as well, and the citizens had all been watching through the Skynet in the plaza.

“Us mortals are Ehit’s pawns, so we shouldn’t complain regardless of what he wants to do with us. Can any of you truly accept that philosophy?” Miledi asked.

Of course, many of the capital’s citizens hurled insults at her when she said that. Their faith in their god was unshaken, and the mere insinuation that they should turn their back on him filled them with rage. But at the same time, many of the people in other countries were heeding Miledi’s words, and there were even a few within the theocracy itself that seemed like they were being swayed.

“I know I can’t! And that’s why I want to change the world!”

Most of the other nations’ leaders looked like they’d come to a decision as well. And upon seeing their resolve, Salus breathed a sigh of relief and settled back into his chair.

“Good luck, Miledi,” Mikaela said. A second later, Salus whispered the same.

“Do you really think we’ll be able to change the world?” Sui asked as she walked over to Sim, who was still keeping an eye on the remaining knights. Now that things had calmed down, she’d returned to her usual self.

Miledi was explaining how the battle between humans and demons had all been instigated by Ehit, and that there was no reason for them to fight each other.

Sim smiled wryly and replied, “Who knows. If the world was that easy to change, someone else would have done it by now.”

“Huh?”

“But if you don’t take action, then you won’t be able to accomplish anything. The real battle is just beginning, but that doesn’t mean it’s a lost cause.”

“Oh, count me out for that battle. I’m tired of working.”

“That’s fine,” Sim said, patting Sui on the head. She’d already done more than enough, and he was honestly grateful for all her hard work.

“I’m not asking you to throw away your beliefs,” Miledi said. “But...”

Her earnest voice echoed all over the world. Every person on Tortus waited with bated breath for her next words. They could tell her speech was from the heart, and not a bunch of rehearsed platitudes. Her heartfelt words grabbed the people’s attention far better than any pre-written speech could have.

“Won’t you please at least part ways with a history that was written for us by a god who doesn’t even care about our lives? Our history should be created by our own choices, don’t you agree? Wouldn’t you—?”

I wonder what the remaining knights will do... Sim thought warily. While the Schnee clansmen had shown up to reinforce the beastmen, they were all in pretty sorry shape. If the fight resumed, victory would come at a heavy cost.

Back at the Divine Mountain’s summit, Miledi sucked in a deep breath.

“Wouldn’t you like to be free to choose your own path in life?!”

After screaming her heart out, Miledi fell silent. She’d said everything she needed to. She’d explained who the Liberators were, what they’d done, and what their goals were. The question was, had her words resonated with the people?

Did my words change anything inside them?

Miledi looked up at the sky, her expression tinged with worry. Feeling a gaze on her back, she turned around and saw her friends all gazing warmly at her.

It’ll be okay... their eyes seemed to say.

Of course, there were still some pressing matters that needed to be addressed. If the Templar Knights refused to surrender, Miledi and the others would need to fight them to the death, and if they did surrender, they’d need to be imprisoned in the palace. They also needed to invite all the various nations’ leaders into the palace to hold a meeting about how humanity would move forward, then figure out what to do with the capital’s citizens. Fortunately, some of those questions had been answered in a secret meeting Miledi had held with the various world leaders ahead of time.

Forgetting for a moment that the world was still watching her, Miledi slapped her cheeks to psych herself up. However, just as she was about to take the first step toward a new future—

“I order you in the name of Ehit—shut your mouth,” an androgynous voice said, and Miledi’s mouth shut of its own accord. She glanced around in surprise. Oscar and the others tried to call out to her, but they couldn’t speak either.

“I order you—kneel.”

Everyone’s knees buckled, then their heads started lowering into a bow. A force so powerful it chilled Miledi and the others to their very cores was forcing their bodies to act against their will. And yet, they refused to kneel. Everyone in the world was watching them right now, so the one thing they couldn’t do was kneel before Ehit.

“Uwoooooooooooooooh!”

With a scream, Laus’s pitch-black mana surged and he freed Miledi and the others from Ehit’s control. Then, they all glared up at the sky.

“Ehit!” Miledi spat.

It seemed Ehit didn’t need that pillar to manifest in the world after all. He’d clearly been waiting for Miledi to make her speech before coming down and forcing her to kneel in order to humiliate her as much as possible.

A silver storm brewed in the sky above, looking both wondrous and terrible at the same time.

“How boring. You failed to meet any of my expectations,” Ehit said in an apathetic voice. “What an utter disappointment.”

Ehit had wished for a desperate struggle that ended in tragedy and despair, he wished to see Miledi and the others experience the loss of everyone important to them. But in the end, they had proven too strong for that outcome.

“It seems this era is a failure.”

The way Ehit felt about all the struggles the Liberators had faced thus far was the same way a child felt about a game they were really interested in setting up, but then tried playing and found it wasn’t all that fun.

Miledi seethed at the utter callousness in Ehit’s words.

“If you don’t like how things went, then come down here and fight us, you bastard! We’ll show you how strong mortals can be!”

“Just how strong mortals can be?” Ehit asked in a curious voice. “Hmm, I see. Very well,” he said, his apathetic tone replaced by clear amusement.

Miledi suddenly felt as though she’d made a huge mistake.

“Please, show me how strong you are, you pawns who’ve seen too much and grown too powerful.”

Even though he’d had the symbol of his power destroyed and his primary pawns annihilated, Ehit still acted as though Miledi was completely beneath him. And because he found Miledi unworthy of his attention, he wasn’t even going to face her personally. A god didn’t need to personally duel unruly pawns to put them in their place, after all.

No, Ehit would simply test Miledi and the others. He would show the yapping dogs who their master truly was.

“Struggle until your last breath. Appease my boredom for as long as you can.”

“What are you...?” Miledi trailed off, while Oscar and the others gaped openly.

God’s Apostles started pouring out of the silver vortex in the sky. And not just ten or twenty either. No, there were tens of thousands of them, enough to cover the entire sky.

“Lyu-chan!”

“I know! Supreme Ascendance!”

“Heavencrush!”

The same sphere that had obliterated the pillar appeared in the center of the apostles. Five hundred apostles were crushed immediately.

Miledi and the others had planned for a situation like this. Honestly, they’d expected that Ehit would send an army of apostles down once his pawns had been defeated.

Still, even an army of a thousand apostles could be dealt with so long as they knew where they were coming from. Miledi would simply obliterate them all with a powerful gravity spell. Not even apostles could avoid the power of gravity magic. And if there were more than a thousand, Miledi would keep on using the same spell until they were all crushed.

Unfortunately, they didn’t just spring out from one location.

“Shit! He can send them out from anywhere?!” Oscar shouted as he analyzed the information coming into his glasses. He had built a Skynet into his lenses, so he could see what was going on below in the capital, and he saw another swirling silver vortex had appeared right above the palace.

“Nacchan! We need to get to where Ehit is! We have to go through that vortex!”

“I’m trying to get us there! But...shit! I’m sorry.”

The frustration in Naiz’s voice made it clear that even after understanding the true nature of spatial magic—the ability to manipulate boundaries—he still couldn’t push his way into Ehit’s domain.

Laus couldn’t sense any souls on the other side of the vortex either. Lyutillis couldn’t appraise what the vortex was even made of, nor could Miledi find any way to destroy it. Whatever it was, it was beyond even ancient magic.

Miledi and the others’ expressions stiffened. They definitely hadn’t underestimated Ehit’s power. Had it not been for the public execution, they would have spent as much time as they could gathering information on him and ways to beat him. However, they’d believed that at their current level of strength, they had a good chance of defeating him. Only now did they realize how naive they’d been.

Still, Miledi fought on valiantly, exclaiming, “What, too scared to fight us yourself, Ehit?! No one will follow a god who hides away and lets his puppets do all the fighting for him! There’s no future for you if you don’t fight us!”

“You seem to be under a grave misunderstanding,” Ehit replied with a mocking laugh. “I am the future.”

Ehit was the arbiter of all prosperity and decline, of all creation and destruction, in all of its forms.

“It is I who should ask you, Miledi Reisen. Do you have a future?”

Ehit’s second vortex was poised to spill an army of apostles into the capital and slay every innocent citizen left within it. Miledi bit her lip so hard she drew blood.

Oscar gently laid a hand on her trembling shoulder and said, “Miledi. We’ve already accomplished our main objective.”

His composed voice helped Miledi calm down.

“We’ve saved who we came to save and delivered the message we came to deliver. Isn’t that right?”

Oscar was speaking sense, but that didn’t make this situation any less vexing. Miledi sorely wished to take Ehit out here and now. However, so long as they had no way of reaching his domain, they couldn’t stop him from spewing out apostles and turning the city into a battlefield. Even at their current level of power, Miledi and the others wouldn’t be able to kill all the apostles while protecting the citizens...and it would go against the Liberators’ creed to sacrifice innocents for their cause.

“We’re retreating!” Miledi shouted, the order reaching everyone thanks to the Skynets.

“You got it. Does plan 2 sound good to you, Miledi?” Salus asked. He, too, had realized the necessity of retreat, and so he was already primed to leave.

Plan 2 had been created with precisely this scenario in mind, so it was the perfect choice. Miledi and the others would serve as bait together with Lac Elain, while everyone else scattered to the four winds via Oscar’s Dark Gates.

“Remember, my princess, this isn’t the end. I’m looking forward to our eventual reunion,” Rasul said.

“Your Highness, leave the beastmen to me. Miledi-dono, if we both survive this ordeal, let us meet again,” Sim said.

“Yo, Miledi, that was a pretty good speech. We did what we came here to do. I bet you the world’s definitely gonna change after this, so you can run with your head held high, all right?” Badd said.

Laus confirmed they’d all left via soul detection magic, while Miledi dispelled her Heavencrush.

“This isn’t the end. We’ll be back to kill you before you know it!” she shouted.

However, the only reply she received was Ehit’s echoing laughter.

Salus was overseeing the retreat from the main deck of Lac Elain.

“How much longer until our retreat’s complete?!” he shouted as he watched an endless army of apostles pour through the silver vortex.

While the knights were cheering on the arrival of the apostle swarm, the citizens looked quite scared of what they were seeing.

“We’re all good here. Everyone’s pulled out!”

The Liberators had planned this retreat in advance, so everyone had already been ready to escape via the Dark Gates.

“All right, prepare to teleport!” Salus shouted as he started propelling Lac Elain toward the palace. He knew the airship wouldn’t be able to protect the central plaza from this many apostles, so he was trying to put as much distance between Lac Elain and them as possible.

“Our barrier’s been demolished! We only have twenty percent of our mana left!”

“We’ve lost seventy-five percent of our outer armor! The whole ship’s riddled with holes!”

“We’ve lost an engine! At this rate, we’ll be sunk!”

Just as things were starting to look dicey, a huge black sphere swallowed up the silver vortex. At the same time, a series of explosions and massive hammer swings knocked away all the apostles near the ship.

Miledi and the others had arrived to save the day. Unfortunately, that meant they’d left the vortex up above unattended, so an army of apostles so large they looked like a massive cloud was descending from the eight-thousand-meter high peak of the Divine Mountain.

“Hurry it up, old man!” Miledi shouted.

“I know, I know! How much longer?!” he shouted at one of the techs.

“One moment... Mana charge complete! We can teleport at any time!”

“All right, let’s go!”

Lac Elain picked up speed and charged at the royal palace. However, Salus wasn’t planning on ramming it a second time. The teleporter activated just before they hit the walls, creating a spatial distortion in front of the ship’s prow.

Miledi and the others served as the rearguard, allowing Lac Elain to fly through the portal. The view from the bridge suddenly showed new scenery, telling Salus that the teleportation had been successful. They’d gone three hundred kilometers north of the Divine Mountain. If they could fly just another fifty kilometers, they’d be able to reach the ocean and dive.

Many of the airship’s outer walls had been destroyed, exposing the inner rooms to the elements, and black smoke was pouring out of the engines, but it was still functional. As Lac Elain limped its way toward the ocean, Miledi and the others suddenly appeared on the bridge.

Miledi was clutching her chest, worried about the comrades who were still in the middle of retreating and grieving the loss of those who hadn’t made it. She was also lamenting her own weakness, as well as the fact that she hadn’t even been able to touch Ehit.

“You could stand to look a little happier, you know?” Salus said gently.

The Liberators’ plan had more or less succeeded. They’d rescued their comrades, revealed the truth about Ehit to the world, destroyed the myth that the church was untouchable, and delivered the Liberators’ message all across Tortus. Though obviously, Salus also knew it was only the older folk like him who could keep a positive outlook in this situation.

For a while they flew in silence, allowing everyone to come to terms with the turbulent series of events that had just occurred. Unfortunately, they didn’t have much time to rest.

After a few minutes, Miledi suddenly turned around and shouted, “Sal! They’re coming!”

The bridge was immediately back on high alert.

“Prepare the teleporter!” Salus shouted.

However, the tech screamed back, “We can’t! We don’t have enough mana!”

“We’re moving to retreat plan 2-2!”

“Got it! Get ready!”

Lac Elain creaked ominously, and Salus gingerly patted his armrest, muttering, “Hold out just a bit longer for us, please.”

Looking out the window, he saw a series of silver comets chasing after the airship. Over a thousand apostles were heading their way.

“Are they after Lac Elain?!” Oscar shouted.

It did indeed look like they were targeting Lac Elain over Miledi and the others. Or rather, they were after the passengers inside the airship.

“Ehit really is one nasty fucker!” Vandre shouted, transforming into a full dragon and protecting Lac Elain’s rear while he fired off breath attacks at the apostles.

Naiz created a spatial expansion barrier, while Meiru cast a slow zone around the apostles to delay their attacks. Miledi and Oscar used gravity and disintegration magic respectively to thin out the apostles’ numbers, while Laus created as many clones as he could to wreak havoc among the apostles’ ranks. The whole time, Lyutillis cast evolution magic on everyone to support them, of course.

Unfortunately, Miledi and the others were still exhausted from their earlier battle, and they couldn’t produce as much firepower. Whatever they had done to destroy the inner sanctum’s barrier had taken something out of them that still hadn’t recovered. If they let their guard down for even a moment, their defensive line would be breached. They didn’t even have the resources to spare on repairing Lac Elain.

“Hold out just a bit longer, everyone! We’re almost to the ocean!” Miledi shouted, prompting everyone to rally for one last push. No matter what happened, they would protect their comrades on Lac Elain.

A dozen minutes passed, during which enough shots got through that Lac Elain lost its flotation power and started slowly losing altitude.

“Commander, we’re within effective range!” the lookout shouted as the ocean came into view.

“All right, everyone, abandon ship!” Salus shouted.

Everyone used a Dark Gate to perform an emergency escape. They were all teleporting to a second ship that was hidden in a rocky reef near the coast. It wasn’t just Lac Elain Oscar had modified, he’d also upgraded another ship—the Melusine.

However, the Melusine was only a third as large as Lac Elain, meaning it was quite cramped with everyone on board. Desperate times called for desperate measures though, and this plan required using Lac Elain as bait to facilitate the Liberators’ escape.

“Miledi, we’ve all escaped!” Salus shouted, prompting Miledi to turn to Laus. Laus, in turn, used spirit magic to confirm that there was no one left on Lac Elain, then nodded to Miledi.

“Time to get out of here!” Miledi shouted.

Oscar and the others all congregated around Naiz. A second later, he teleported them all to safety. And as they left, a barrage of silver beams ripped through Lac Elain, putting an end to the storied submarine-cum-airship’s long history.

Meanwhile, Salus, Miledi, and the others waited with bated breath on the Melusine’s now metal-coated deck to see if the apostles followed. The northern ocean was filled with shallow reefs for a good one hundred and twenty kilometers or so, meaning they couldn’t dive with the Melusine and had to pray the apostles didn’t find them. In the distance, they could see Lac Elain going down from the concentrated barrage of a thousand apostles. Salus sighed sadly as he watched the home he’d spent half his life in get destroyed.

Eventually, Lac Elain was completely eviscerated and the barrage stopped. Everyone was praying that the apostles would simply turn and leave, but then Mikaela said in a strained voice, “They’re coming. They found us!”

“Sal, full speed ahead! We need to get clear of the shallows and dive!”

“Miledi...”

“Don’t even think about finishing that sentence, Sal!”

Miledi knew exactly what Sal was about to say. The apostles had targeted Lac Elain obsessively, meaning that they’d almost certainly go after Salus and the others again, which meant that Miledi and the others would be able to escape while Salus served as bait.

Everyone on board was more than willing to throw their lives away for Miledi, and that scared her more than anything. After all, she didn’t want anyone dying for her sake. But at the same time, she realized that all of the ancient magic users were nearing their limits.

“There’s no way I’m letting you guys die,” Miledi said, glaring at the oncoming horde of apostles.

Panting, Oscar and the others lined up next to Miledi. They would stick with her to the very end.

“Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

Just then, a series of roars rang out and thousands of beams of light shot toward the apostles.

Everyone stared on in shock while Mikaela shouted, “Those are...dragons! A flock of dragons is coming in from the east!”

Miledi and the others turned eastward to see an army of dragons five thousand strong advancing on the apostles.

“No, wait. Those are—!”

As someone who shared their blood, Vandre could tell immediately that they weren’t just dragons, but rather transformed dragonmen.

“We have come to aid you at the behest of our king. I am one of Astlan the Dragon Kingdom’s generals, Grice Schnee.”

As the wave of breath attacks pushed the apostles back, an ice dragon with beautiful indigo scales flew down to the Melusine and introduced himself.

“Schnee?” Miledi asked as everyone turned to face Vandre.

Grice also looked at Vandre with his slit-like draconic eyes and said in a gentle voice, “I cannot have my grandson dying here. Please hurry and retreat from this battlefield.”

Everyone was bursting with questions—Vandre most of all—but one thing was for certain. The Liberators wouldn’t lose any more of their members today.