The imperial capital had already descended into chaos. The frenzied Red Archbishop was wantonly attacking everything in sight, and the ones suffering the worst under his assaults were none other than the Church’s own believers. The great Lord Bishop had unleashed towering rage upon these loyal followers. No matter how they knelt on the ground begging and pleading for God’s forgiveness, nothing could stay Elisa’s hand even slightly.
Most of the other injured people had merely been caught in the fallout.
The major magic guilds of the capital, mercenary regiments, black-armoured guards, gold-robed men, city guards, and national guards all rushed to the scene. They evacuated the surrounding crowds and tried to stop the rampaging Elisa.
The believers dared not fight back against his attacks. They could only wail miserably while enduring them.
“The wrath of God shall burn away all evil!” Elisa roared. At his level, even a casual word could summon immense power of faith. Endless flames of wrath materialised in mid-air and poured down like a flood breaking through a dam, sweeping over those pitiful believers.
The believers hastily used holy words to resist the persecution of the punitive fire. Those who reacted too slowly were instantly reduced to ash. “God, why do you punish us? We are your most faithful followers!” Their anguished howls of grief and indignation echoed along the entire King’s Avenue.
“Sinners!”
Elisa’s hair and beard flew wildly. His withered finger pointed at a believer kneeling on the ground. Suddenly, terrifying vine tentacles sprouted from the earth like venomous snakes encountering prey, swiftly coiling around the believer’s body.
But at that moment, several thunderous explosions boomed in front of the believer. The dreadful snake-like vines were reduced to ashes. Ye Chui’s figure descended from the sky and stood protectively before the pitiful believer. He turned slightly, looking coldly at Elisa, and said to the believer, “Your god has already abandoned you.”
“No, God would never abandon his faithful followers…”
“But right now your bishop is attacking you, and the one who saved you was me.”
Ye Chui cut the believer off. He looked at the crazed Elisa and suddenly shouted loudly to everyone around, “Elisa has just killed His Majesty the Emperor! He is trying to seize control of imperial power and reduce every person of the Star Empire to slaves of the Church! Now he even intends to destroy the capital and slaughter everyone in it. Stop hesitating, everyone. Join me and take him down!”
Many people present were already furious, yet they had not attacked Elisa earlier because he was the Church’s leader in the Star Empire. Attacking him meant becoming complete enemies with the Church, a pressure they could not bear. However, after hearing Ye Chui’s words, the expressions of those who had been wavering began to soften.
Elisa was now so insane that he was killing his own people. Perhaps, just as Ye Chui said, he truly intended to massacre every soul in the capital. There was no need to doubt, doubt the Church’s resolve. In the five-thousand-year history of the Kaslot continent, they had carried out many similarly brutal acts. Slaughtering a single city was nothing to them. They had even wiped entire nations off the map with a wave of their hand. Later generations simply never recorded those dark deeds in the histories. Only the truly powerful learned of the Church’s cold and ruthless past through perilous adventures in forbidden places.
“Father!” From a tall building nearby, Bart, the eldest son of Guild Master Sherar of the Flower Village Guild, looked expectantly at his father. He had been knocked unconscious by Ye Chui that morning and harboured immense anger, yet now he wanted to stand beside Ye Chui and fight together.
Sherar’s expression, however, remained hesitant. How could a figure like a Red Archbishop become so crazed? He could not believe anyone could control him. Still… something felt wrong about the current Elisa, so he decided to stay put for now.
His two sons, however, could not wait. Bart was impulsive but at least obeyed his father’s will. His second son, Evans… almost the instant Bart finished speaking, a resounding shout rang out beside them. “Someone’s pulling down my zipper!”
Accompanied by a cyan dragon shadow, Evans, who had been modified by Ye Chui, drew the sword Dragon Ichimonji. With a mighty roar full of spirit, he leapt from the tall building, turning into a phantom as he charged straight at Elisa below.
“Evans!” Sherar’s face changed in shock.
Elisa immediately noticed Evans and recognised how dangerous he was at that moment. If that slender sword wreathed in a dragon phantom struck him, he would suffer massive damage. So he decided to act. He swiftly raised his withered right hand. Points of starlight burst forth. [Holy Word: Sleep]. With a crack, Evans plummeted from the sky and fell unconscious to the ground.
Ye Chui, standing nearby: “…”
Well, that was very Genji.
Seeing Evans lying on the ground, Sherar and Bart could no longer stand by. They immediately leapt down to his side, warily facing Elisa and preparing for battle.
The Flower Village Magic Guild’s intervention also prompted the other magic guilds and mercenary regiments to step forward, ready to face this terrifying Red Archbishop together.
At that moment Elisa fell silent. His mind, still controlled by the Crimson Witch, remained utterly confused, yet he vaguely sensed something amiss. Something was manipulating him, forcing him to act against his own heart and faith. He had to wake up. He had to wake up… But as he forcibly tried to drag his will from the chaos back to order, a blue-haired phantom suddenly appeared before him. It was a rather delicate-looking yet somewhat comical girl who kept giving him a thumbs-up, as if constantly saying: Trust me, just trust me… oh my goddess.
Elisa let out a mad laugh. His eyes swept across the people gradually encircling him: Ye Chui, the core members of the magic guilds and mercenary regiments, the gold-robed men, the black-armoured guards, the soldiers… The believers who had once loyally stood by his side now dared not approach him.
“Are you all going to betray me?” Elisa said in a low voice.
The words puzzled everyone, but only Ye Chui understood their meaning. The Crimson Witch had scrambled Elisa’s perception. Believers appeared as enemies in his eyes, while people of the empire appeared as his own followers. Now his “followers” were surrounding him with hostile intent.
Yet his faith would not waver in the slightest.
“Very well. Then you shall receive divine punishment and perish beneath the glory of God!” Elisa roared madly. He looked like a withered old man, yet at this moment he seemed a ferocious, bloodthirsty warrior. White radiance poured from the sky and enveloped him like a bolt of lightning made of light. Countless people moved at once, attacking Elisa with everything they had.
But every attack was blocked by a barrier of holy light. A terrifying spatial gate slowly cracked open above Elisa’s head.
“The Spirit of Faith! That’s a Spirit of Faith!” someone cried out in alarm.
“Spirit of Faith?” Ye Chui had faced these terrifying Church warriors before. When he first ambushed and killed the Church priest named Jamil, Jamil had summoned one. They were spiritual warriors created by the Church, formed from the souls of believers who died with absolute loyalty to the faith. They were similar to undead or guardian spirits.
Driven by faith, they were one of the Church’s most fearsome trump cards.
Almost every Church priest possessed Spirits of Faith as protectors. As the leader of an entire nation’s Church, the number of Spirits of Faith under a Red Archbishop’s control was beyond counting. It was an army of faith power!
From the spatial gate opening above Elisa’s head, figures bathed in holy light crawled out one after another. They looked like desiccated corpses wearing tattered, decaying believer robes, their faces hideous, like skeletons wrapped in dried, rotting flesh.
Their numbers were nearly infinite!
A horrific melee instantly erupted.
With a wave of his hand, Ye Chui unleashed the advanced magnetic spell [Ten Thousand Magnetic Force]. Countless weapons and pieces of metal flew into the air under his control, then whooshed continuously towards the Spirits of Faith still pouring madly from the spatial gate.
Longswords, shortswords, kitchen knives turned into a storm of metal. Facing Spirits of Faith was no longer as difficult for the current Ye Chui as it had been in the past. Under his magnetic magic, almost every weapon he launched could instantly cripple a Spirit of Faith. Yet those dreadful things kept surging endlessly from the gate like cockroaches in a rotting room. They could not be cleared out.
After all, this was a Red Archbishop’s trump card, the method of a powerhouse capable of destroying an entire nation!
The magic guilds, mercenary regiments, black-armoured guards, gold-robed men, everyone began fighting the Spirit of Faith army.
Elisa stood beneath the spatial gate, wrapped in holy light that made him untouchable.
Elisa was still under Akuya’s faith (shortened to: idiocy) control. If Ye Chui truly wanted to kill him, he could simply summon Akuya and use her as a shield. But he had to put on a show of desperate battle.
Ye Chui thought of the undead army in the Realm of Death. He could have Celti open the gate to the Realm of Death and summon an undead army far stronger and more numerous than the Spirits of Faith, but that would be unwise. The undead army belonged to the Age of Gods. Revealing it could cause severe consequences. He quickly dismissed the idea. Leaping into the air and dodging several charging Spirits of Faith, he already had a better plan for this situation. “When it comes to clearing mobs, you still need the Avengers…”
Moments later, a terrifying roar drew everyone’s attention. All the combatants saw a massive green figure rocket into the sky. He began smashing Spirits of Faith at a rate of almost one per punch. His defence was astonishing, unafraid of the dreadful claws of faith power. His strength was utterly terrifying. When he pounded the ground with both fists, huge cracks split the earth. He could grab a Spirit of Faith and swing it around like a hammer. His gorilla-like form and fighting style shocked everyone deeply.
He was nearly naked, with only a tattered pair of shorts around his waist bearing the emblem of the Whatever Guild.
Immediately after, a bolt of lightning crashed from the heavens. With a crackle it struck the spatial gate, scattering explosive electric light that turned the emerging Spirits of Faith to ash. Bathed in thunder stood a man wearing strange armour and a red cape, wielding a lightning war hammer. On the back of his cape was a “clown face” totem from the Whatever Magic Guild.
Bart, who used a bow, had climbed a tall building and was constantly firing arrows at the faith powers with perfect accuracy. Soon, however, he noticed a man in tight black clothing marked with the Whatever Guild emblem standing on a nearby building. His arrows were even more precise, hitting their targets without the slightest deviation.
At a corner of King’s Avenue, a group of innocent civilians huddled together in terror. Several corpse-like Spirits of Faith were roaring and charging towards them. In his confused state, Elisa’s summoned Spirits of Faith treated all life as enemies. Terrifying attacks were about to fall upon these defenceless people, but then a man in a white-and-blue uniform dropped from the sky. He held a round shield, blocked the attacks, and with powerful physical skill knocked the Spirits of Faith to the ground.
The original star pattern on the round shield had been replaced by a majestic husky face.
High in the air, a strange armoured figure hovered, continuously firing beams of light or small explosives to intercept the Spirits of Faith. A circular device on his chest glowed brightly, containing immense energy.
The face of an alpaca from the Whatever Guild emblem was clearly printed on it.
There were also a female warrior in tight black clothing who excelled at close combat with leg techniques, a person who could instantly grow giant or shrink to ant size, a person clad in fierce armour like a war machine, a person wrapped in a red-and-blue uniform leaping between buildings and using some kind of web attack, a person with puppet black wings on their back flying and attacking from the air, a cold-faced person with one metal arm, a person with extreme speed and silver-grey hair… All of them bore the emblem of the Whatever Magic Guild.
The strange heroic spirits Ye Chui had summoned attracted a great deal of attention, and these heroic spirits indeed proved extremely effective against the Spirits of Faith. After a period of fighting, they gathered together, roared, formed a circle, and struck a series of cool poses. The majestic, rousing BGM (PS: assemble) activated automatically.
Forming a circle and posing before battle is just common sense.
Summoning the full set of magical Avengers would consume a huge amount of points, but at Ye Chui’s current level, the points gained from fighting enemies were also considerable. Killing a single Spirit of Faith granted him a large number of points, so he was not worried about running out. With the magical Avengers’ assistance, the army of Spirits of Faith no longer seemed so terrifying to everyone else.
“Next…” Ye Chui’s gaze turned coldly towards Elisa, who was still wrapped in faith’s radiance. To completely annihilate the army of Spirits of Faith, Elisa himself had to be dealt with!
