"I-it's him...!"
"Oh no!"
It was Reed who wobbled out of the heavenly gates all alone. The doors slammed shut behind him. He said nothing as he took three slow steps away from the gates as they sealed themselves once again. He was trudging, which was quite a contrast to his usual elegance. But that didn't make him seem any less dominant or dignified.
"I-I don't believe this..."
"H-how did he come out of that place alive?"
The shock and horror were apparent in the eyes of those who saw him. They couldn't imagine how the evil being managed to enter the Pantheon and walk out of it with his entire body intact.
However, although he was on his feet, Reed was hardly fine. In fact, he coughed heavily and collapsed on his fourth step. The great evil fell onto all fours and heaved, dark blood splattering across the ground. His body was burning through his aura, demonic energy, and lifespan to keep itself running and whole. The muscles in his body bulged and twitched, and the swollen veins pumped blood through his body at an extremely rapid rate. The dark mage knight was certainly incapacitated.
Romina Lecandro was the first to give her command upon noticing his condition.
"All units! Charge!"
But her response came a second too late. A dry sandstorm blew out of nowhere and covered Reed.
"Chaos and Evil... I am here to escort you to my Abyssal Dunes."
Karpeios then whisked Reed back to his territory. Only a pool of dark blood remained on the spot where Reed had been. The allied forces lost their target and came to an abrupt halt. The battlefield turned quiet once again.
Tesilid gained some insight from this encounter, prompting him to ask his comrades once again, "Where is Allie?"
No one answered his question.
"Did she go in there?"
He was referring to the pure-white triumphal arch standing in the center of the battlefield. He could immediately tell it wasn't from this world. It had to be from the Divine Realm.
And having lived through so many Loops, he knew all too well what entering those gates would do to a Demon Lord. His ocean-colored eyes trembled like glass about to shatter.
Hilde, who was on the verge of bursting into tears herself, drew her breath to answer him but failed to make any sounds. That told Tesilid everything he needed to know.
"T-Tesilid!"
"Big Bro!"
Tesilid immediately sprang to his feet and ran frantically toward the gates of the Pantheon. They were sealed tight and could no longer function as an entrance or an exit. And since there were no handles to open them with, they seemed like an enormous wall which was impossible to breach.
The foolish man stood helplessly before the impassable wall. Tesilid knew the emotion that burned through his soul all too well because his god had made him feel powerless and hopeless time and time again. He slammed the gates in desperation.
"Allie! Ailette Rodeline! Answer me!"
The divine energy created sparks every time his fists struck the gates. Tesilid started losing his mind when he heard nothing back from the other side. He then placed divine aura over his fists in an attempt to bring the gates down.
"Allie, please! Say something! Allie!"
His fists were like battering rams. But this was the gate of the Pantheon, the gateway to the Divine Realm itself. It neutralized his divine aura, leaving him with nothing but the power of his body alone. The look in Tesilid's eyes changed when the gates didn't budge. He glared at the gates. Or rather, he glared at what lay beyond them.
Tesilid started pleading to someone else as his hands began to stain the marble-white gates with blood.
"Give Ailette Rodeline back!" He shouted blasphemously at the almighty being beyond his reach, "Give her back!"
But the gates did not budge. His god shunned him, as always.
"Why?" He choked on his emotions as his rage burned inside him. All the frustrations about his god, which he had always kept bottled up, finally exploded. "Why? Why do you always do this to me?!"
Wham!
"Why do you always take things from me? Why do I always end up getting betrayed or losing someone?" He kept slamming on the gates. "You could have allowed me this one thing! Just for once! I'm not even asking for much! So why do you do this to me?!"
Thud!
"Why won't you let me keep anything, not once?!"
Slam!
His desperate cry resounded amidst the heavy thuds until his voice eventually cracked. His battered hands slid off the gates, making a beautifully ornate relief of an angel engraved upon the doors burst into tears of blood.
"Damn you, God. Can't you ever have mercy on me?"
But right when the man in despair had reached the peak of his blasphemous ways, he was granted a miracle of mercy quite unlike anything his god would bestow upon him. He stood in shock as the gate of the Pantheon creaked open. And unlike the way they had previously spat Reed out, the doors opened wide this time and cast their holy light outward.
It took a while for Tesilid's eyes to adjust to the brightness, but he soon noticed a figure drawing closer to him through the blinding light. Once the shape crossed the gates, it slowly leaned forward. Tesilid outstretched his arms and received the body before he could even realize what was happening.
Slam.
The gate of the Pantheon slammed shut again, then vanished altogether. Only after the light faded did Tesilid see whom he had in his arms. It was a pink-haired woman, her eyes closed. To his immense surprise and relief, it was Ailette Rodeline. Tesilid immediately checked her breathing and pressed his ears to her chest to check her heartbeat. She was alive.
"Thank goodness..."
This was the first time any god had shown him mercy.
"Allie... Ailette."
Tesilid looked at her in disbelief at first, but he soon hugged her tightly as if he would never let her go again.
"It's Her Eminence!"
"She is back!"
"God has sent Her Eminence back to us!"
"Praise be to God! Thank God for His mercy!"
People approached the Divine Emissary to check her condition for themselves, but Tesilid didn't want anyone to see her at this moment. He kept Ailette's face buried in his arms and spoke directly to Grand Duke Heathfenrir.
"We must return to your castle."
He could feel Ailette's temperature rising due to the Holy Fever, which was likely to be much worse than usual after she went through demonization. The grand duke's castle would be the best place for her to get any rest. Saintess Muriel didn't seem pleased with his idea but didn't say anything about it.
So, an agreement was reached in silence.
"Yes, leave the area first and take her there. I'm counting on you, Grandson-in-law."
"Thank you."
The light of the teleportation stone wrapped around Tesilid and Ailette and took them away. The sun was finally rising from the eastern horizon. The new moon passed, and the night came to an end. The catastrophe was over.
The Penalty Period
Doomsday, the great catastrophe that started from Walpurgis Night, was finally over. Every nation on the continent of Serentra had to come together to restore and repair following the catastrophic damage they had suffered. They rebuilt buildings and facilities in their capitals and mourned their dead. Unfortunately, the requiem never stopped because people continued to die from the poison that had leaked out of the dungeons.
Things weren't so bad in Feronsa and Vilhelon, the capitals of the grand duchy and the kingdom respectively, because they both managed to contain their dungeon bursts early on. Meanwhile, Fanel, the capital of the holy kingdom, and Gehenid, the capital of the republic of magic, had been completely ravaged by the demonic forces. The instability in the capital cities made the citizens aggressive, which soon led to security concerns.
Things were particularly bad in Fanel. The Vatican's idea to save itself by activating the Sacred Place Establishment artifact had completely backfired. Many of the holy kingdom's subjects were abandoned outside due to the lack of space in the Vatican. The growing anger and mistrust against the religious order turned people away from them.
To make matters worse, the Vatican was ignoring their complaints. It was partly because they were still dealing with the changes in hierarchy caused by the dark mage knight's attack, but it was also due to their habit of blaming the people's sentiments as a simple lack of faith. It so happened that the Vatican was tasked with something they themselves deemed more important than consoling the people. Namely, they had to heal people suffering from respiratory diseases.
Lung failures caused by dungeon drains couldn't be cured by the healing skills of a priest or through the effects of a healing potion. Only those who awakened Tier 8 divine power could heal people with such conditions, but there was only one person other than Ailette Rodeline who was that powerful. Saintess Muriel Phylise. As such, Muriel traveled to each of the capitals to anoint the sick, and, naturally, this did wonders for her reputation.
The problem was that she had too many patients to heal. Therefore, the Vatican set an order of patients to be treated. They decided to treat people according to the strength of one's faith, but the measure by which they determined said faith was extremely secular in nature. It came to a point that the patients' survival was due to be decided by the amount of their financial offering to the Vatican.
Fortunately, a breakthrough put a halt to the Vatican's monopolistic efforts. The Rodel Potion Company managed to develop a cure, the main ingredient of which happened to be Elephantipes, a plant that was hardly considered as a medicinal herb. But for some reason, the company had secured a significant amount of the plant in advance, as if they had known something like this might happen.
Their supplies allowed them to mass-manufacture the cure and distribute it to the patients who were suffering. It alleviated the workload on Saintess Muriel, but it also stopped her from capitalizing on the opportunity. By the time ten days had elapsed since the catastrophe broke out, everyone in Serentra was working diligently to undo the damages it had causedâall while the Divine Emissary slept.
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The sun shone over a beautifully cultivated farm of herbs that stretched as far as the eye could see. This was the hidden dungeon farm under the Gilette Castle. The farm was a highly valuable asset that produced over 90 percent of all the Elephantipes herbs used for making the cure for the respiratory disease caused by the dungeon burst.
The herbs were tended to by seven skeletons with squeaky clean skulls that glistened in the sun. They were taking a break after finishing the day's work, but something seemed different from usual.