The shadow writhed as if it had a mind of its own, and the pulse of subtle madness flickered intermittently. Pope Senedict and the Master of the Magic Tower were gripped by the fear of getting devoured by the shadow and immediately stopped their bickering.
"Another god."
Chaos and Evil spoke without revealing any emotions. He slowly rose from his throne. His blood-red eyes stared at the space ahead of him, but he didn't seem to be focused on anything in particular. He then stood still as a statue.
"Yes, Darkness Conceived by Light?"
"What troubles you, Unholy One?"
The two humans each called him by a different name, but he didn't respond to either. His thoughts had been drawn into somewhere that was as deep and dark as an abyss.
"Another god..." He trailed off as he repeated the words to himself, vision blurring as if in a trance. The phrase confirmed something he had been suspecting for a very long time.
Ailette Rodeline first used the Divine Advent before he had started his cycles of returns. At the time, he thought there was something different about her energy from that of the Strict Order and Goodness, but had quickly dropped all suspicion since it would have been sacrilegious to accuse someone with divine abilities of heresy.
In hindsight, he should have trusted his intuition. He was foolish enough to follow the doctrine of monotheism so blindly that he failed to notice the difference in divine power, despite having entered the pantheon himself. Although he had long since renounced God, it seemed God still controlled his thoughts and ruled his mind. Reed realized how foolish he had been, but he didn't show his regret on his face.
"Another god, huh."
Instead, he repeated himself for the third time. Despite his empty expression, the information had completely rattled him. It undermined everything he had been working on. He felt as if he was facing a rebellion where he least expected it to happen. Reed walked past the anxious pope and Master of the Magic Tower.
"G-Great Darkness, what is it?"
"Did something happen?"
He finally decided to say a few words to the humans begging for a response before he left the hall. "I need to think things over."
Then, he left the hall and shut the door behind him. The black statues on both sides of the long hallway bowed down in reverence as he walked by them, but the handsome man ignored their presence. He arrived at a secluded spot deep within the Vatican's gardens where no demon or human ever visited.
An altar had been made upon a large rock, through which a tiny stream of water trickled down. The place was completely silent, save for the sound of the flowing water. The place had been used by priests of the Vatican to meditate. Reed stood there all alone and turned his gaze to the vast, open sky above him.
As he watched, meteors continued raining down, signaling the disasters he had inflicted upon the world. He maintained that posture for a very long time as if he was waiting for a dawn that would never come, and his solemn dedication to stand still almost made him look like a priest carrying out a holy ritual. Much time passed before he did anything else.
"God," he muttered with a voice filled with emotions. He sighed when his period of contemplation only led him to a hollow, lamentable answer. A cold smile crept onto his lips, but it was hard to tell whether he was mocking the world or himself. "It's too late anyway."
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Many churches across the continent of Serentra succumbed to corruption. Demonic energy and Dead Man's Flowers tainted the churches and turned the surrounding areas black, clearly marking them as the territory of the demonic realm within the human world. Evixinous teleported her minions to the coordinates of each church and continued expanding their demonic colonies.
At first, she sent more than six thousand bishop-class demons into the human world at once to display her might. But that was no longer necessary. Now that the key locations were under her control, she could focus on gradually gaining territory. The remaining sixty-thousand demons were either deployed to the newly established colonies or ordered to conquer key locations that would best fulfill the requirement of Harmageddon.
Sometimes, these objectives were small churches in the vicinity of larger ones. In other cases, it required demons to find nearly abandoned churches in extremely remote regions. Although the strategy was seemingly random, those who could see the bigger picture and connect the dots could find the logic in it.
However, most thought there was no pattern to these attacks, which terrorized them all the more. Regardless, the situation wasn't too dire in the human world for now. According to the observations made so far, fallen churches gradually expanded the territory of the Demon Realm over time and corrupted the humans within reach, stripping them of their souls and turning them into slaves for the demons.
But that was all. The tainted churches couldn't directly harm anyone standing outside its territory. In fact, the pace of expansion was rather slow. In other words, anyone who wasn't inside a church at the time of an invasion could easily avoid any danger. Residents living near affected churches left their homes and fled to the outskirts or to villages whose churches were still intact. There, they waited for the kingdom to send its troops and resolve the crisis.
Gaillac Village was one of the few safe villages, situated at the foot of Mount Eltio, the most remote location in the Holy Kingdom of Elfenheim. All the nearby villages in the area had succumbed to demonic corruption, including Devon Village, located in the middle of the mountain. But the invasion steered clear of Gaillac Village, and everyone believed this would continue to be the case because it was one of the few places in Elfenheim that didn't have a church.
Truth be told, there used to be one until a delusional old couple set the church on fire, claiming they wanted revenge on God for taking their daughter away from them. In hindsight, perhaps it was God's foresight of this crisis that explained Him allowing the fire to happen. The story sounded all the more plausible since the old couple's supposed daughter was actually Muriel Phylise, the saintess.
Ha! I knew all the refugees would come to my village! Dzeko Grion of Gaillac Village was quite excited today. The fact that he was the head of this sanctuary made him proud, but that wasn't the only reason for his cheerful mood. All the refugees who came to the village handed him a lot of money under the table, asking him to take them in.
Dzeko expected the Vatican to send their troops and sort everything out in time, so he only had to sound accommodating and accept the money offered until the whole thing blew over. He had nothing to lose since the entire village would share the burden and labor of hosting the refugees anyway. After all, wasn't that the perks of living in a community? Everyone had an obligation to help each other.
I wouldn't mind if the Vatican took their sweet time sending the troops...
Unfortunately for Dzeko, his awful desire to profit off the misery of others backfired when he started sharing their fate.
Rumble.
The ground began to tremble, and Dead Man's Flowers started sprouting all around the village.
"Ahhh! W-what is that thing?"
"Why is this happening to my village?!"
"Help me!"
Gaillac Village took the full brunt of the calamity they thought they were immune to. In fact, things were much worse here than anywhere else. Since the village had no churches, the entire area became a demonic territory at once, and no one could escape the disaster that unfolded as swiftly as a tidal wave sweeping up everything in its path.
It was all the more catastrophic since the many refugees had come to the village from nearby towns. Only those who were far outside the village managed to save themselves, but they still had to watch the village turn into a wasteland overrun with Dead Man's Flowers and the undead.
"But the village had no churches..."
"I thought we'd be safe here!"
The incident made people realize that no place on the continent of Serentra was safe from the reach of Harmageddon. The people of Ragneif Republic of Magic were also deceived by their initial misunderstanding of the calamity. The capital of the republic and home to the Dark Tower, Gehenid, was a city of mages and atheists who rejected the notion of God.
"I hear demons are appearing in other nations through their churches."
"What a shame."
"I'm so glad we don't have any churches in the republic... H-huh?!"
Cracks appeared all over Gehenid and massive black crosses shot out of the ground before the mage could finish the sentence. Coffins rumbled up out of the earth, and vampires emerged from them. Their bloodthirsty smiles revealed their fangs.
"No one has claimed these parts yet. Then, we shall take them as our own."
Gehenid wasn't the only city suffering from the phenomenon. There were hardly any churches in Ragneif Republic of Magic because they had severed diplomatic ties with the Holy Kingdom of Elfenheim ages ago. They even went so far as to call divine power users "white wizards" to avoid having connotations with anything of divine nature, and it was their aversion to religion that made the entire republic turn into demonic territory at once.
People in areas taken over by high-ranking demons perished immediately, just like the villagers in Gaillac, while those who were lucky enough to have lesser demons appear in their areas had to play a deadly game of hide-and-seek.
Compared to the republic and the holy kingdom, things were relatively better in Vinchester Kingdom thanks to its skilled commander who happened to be an aura master. Romina Lecandro immediately dispatched troops to contain the disasters occurring at churches around the kingdom. She herself joined the mission to retake the Church of Saint Hestina located on the outskirts of Vilhelon, the capital of Vinchester.
The kingdom was forced to fight multiple battles at once, but the troops managed to win them all since the enemies were only as powerful as S-class monsters. One by one, the demon bishops who occupied Vinchester's churches began to fall.
But that wasn't the end of their troubles.
"I-I don't understand! The demonic territory won't stop expanding!"
"But we killed the boss..."
"N-no, look! The boss just revived itself!"
"Ahhh!"
Helbreon, a well-tanned fallen angel whom Romina Lecandro had just killed, suddenly moved once again, pulling a stake out from where it had been embedded in one of its wings. The creature then rose to its feet. It felt as odd and grotesque as watching a marionette prop itself up on its own after its master had cut its strings. Helbreon spread out its three pairs of wings and spoke.
"Foolish nonbelievers, you will never regain this sacred ground."
The kingdom's forces had to withdraw in order to avoid an endless battle of attrition. The reason for their defeat was all too clearâno one understood the rules of Harmageddon or how it worked.