Badge in Azure

The angels were urged by the oracle to keep pressing forward. More and more monsters emerged, increasingly powerful. However, their corrosive smell and poisonous smoke were dispelled by the oracle’s light, not affecting the angels or Theisio.

The 12 heaven angels’ injuries were all restored by a healing spell. Such minor injuries were things that oracles would not have even bothered healing in the war between the gods.

However, they were now on the plane of Myers Mainland and it was difficult to summon heaven angels. As such, oracles deemed it necessary to keep the underlings around.

The oracle’s mind was taken over by greed and there was no stopping them from advancing further. Theisio’s face had bitterness written all over it. He was perhaps able to sense the oracle’s emotions. The oracle had no intention of hiding anything. Their powers would be restored in no time on this plane. The entire Holy See was but some power that they came to use, and they were ready to cast the Holy See away at any moment.

The Lord of Glory said that greed was an original sin, and those were probably the truest words spoken by him.

“Vile infidels, go back to whence you came!” That voice trembled from the depths of the cave, which sounded like it traveled through vibration of the rocks.

The oracle held the fake Seal of Divine Power in their hand and chanted a string of rushed short prayers. Theisio knew for the first time that prayers could be done in such ways.

The oracle uttered over 9000 syllables in a dozen seconds. Theisio was only able to tell the numbers. If he were to actually decipher the content, his brain would have exploded from the strain.

What kind of divine spell would result from a prayer of over 9000 words?

A level ten group-casted divine spell had little more than 1000 words in the required prayers, and many level nine holy masters were required to spread the strain of the chants.

The fake Divine Seal of Power was also a piece of equipment that had been made through prayers for over 1000 years, and it was crafted from the bones of a pseudogod. Its power would have probably be higher than the holy items popular within the upper echelons of the Holy See. Under the working of the oracle’s powerful divine spell, the Divine Seal of Power burst forth with blinding light, lighting up a path in the darkness before them. The oracle ordered the 12 heaven angels and covered the distance of the path with one step.

Theisio followed closely behind. The oracle arrived at a huge, empty karst cave in an instant.

There was a huge black rock at the center of the karst cave. There was a humanoid monster with eight arms crouching on the black rock. The humanoid monster seemed to behave like a spider, spitting a web from its mouth and encasing the oracle in it.

The oracle smirked and took half a step back, sending the heaven angels rushing at it. The huge, black web trapped all 12 heaven angels, and the oracle uttered a word lightly. “Explode!”

All 12 angels exploded at the same time, their light shining throughout the entire empty cavern. The black web was torn apart and the monster crouching on the black rock had two of its arms on its head melted by the light.

The oracle’s eyes sparkled seeing that the move did not kill the enemy. So there is something else eh? Most of their holy light was quickly dispelled by the black rock beneath the monster. The holy light shined onto the monster. If the black rock had beenright in front of the monster, it would have emerged without so much as a scratch.

The oracle did not continue attacking, saying instead, “Who’s your god? Well, since your god has already perished, how about you come with me?”

That monster looked at its own injuries and grew two new arms from the wound, looking pale.

“Follow you? Pttuih…you’re but an oracle of a low level god. You take yourself too seriously!”

The oracle was hardly fettered and simply said with a cold smirk, “do you really think that rock is able to keep you alive? You’re alive only because I don’t want to see too many deaths around me. If I’m able to find you, I’m able to get more people to come help. I don’t think you have a way of getting out of here.”

“Go get your help, greedy fool. I believe you’ll end up killed by your ‘help’ instead. You’re here for this, aren’t you?” The monster said as it spit out a transparent, gem-like shard from its mouth.

The oracle took a step forward and almost reached beneath the black rock, which was less than 20 meters away.

The oracle’s boots melted with a fizzle. The oracle backed away in shock. The ground beneath the black rock was filled with black holy prose. The holy prose was not drawn by hand, but had grown slowly from the black rock and formed naturally.

The oracle backed away and closed their eyes to ponder for a bit, before saying again, “your master would be the Dark God of Destruction, am I correct? I can’t believe that even that one has perished.”

“How would you know?” The eight-armed monster sounded nervous. It was not a good thing to have such details known, especially when it was unable to leave where it stood. Its enemy would be able to think of many ways to deal with it.

The oracle looked at the poor below before them and said, “because, darkness used to be my faith.”

That monster’s face twisted hearing the words of the oracle. Its expression turned ferocious as it glared at the oracle’s face in fury. Its voice turned raspy.

“You! You are that wretched creature!”

“It’s not like I had much of a choice. I ended up siding with the light.” The oracle continued to take jabs at the monster. Its master had been a middle god of level 16 and had over six kingdom of gods, but one was taken away by the Lord of Glory. The process was incredibly underhanded. The Lord of Glory sent adherents to disguise as adherents of the Dark God of Destruction, which perfectly fooled the middle god.

There were oracles among the infiltrating adherents. The oracle had been a level nine professional back then and a rare case of being able to advance to the rank of oracle. Most oracles were like the heaven angels, weapons of war created by the gods, constructs of living energy.

The deceivers caused an entire kingdom to fall, which was taken over by the Lord of Glory and purified. The gods were still fighting the humans back then and were losing. If such infighting was found out by the other gods, things would have looked incredibly dire for the Lord of Glory.

The Lord of Glory disappeared without a trace after taking over a kingdom of gods, which almost drove the Dark God of Destruction mad. It was due to such reasons that weak gods like the Lord of Glory were able to survive the war all those years ago. All the other gods were busy mobilizing their forces to fight the human armies, but the Lord of Glory was running across a number of planes.

The eight-armed monster had been an oracle of the Dark God of Destruction. When humans waged wars across multiple planes, including kingdoms of gods, there were many gods who were killed and their kingdoms ransacked, but there were also those who were taken back to Myers Mainland for research in captivity.

The Dark God of Destruction had been one of those who were captured in the war. Humans had captured many gods and were unable to keep an eye on all of them, resulting in some gods escaping. However, the rules of the plane of Myers Mainland were simply too powerful back then. The gods, with their divine persona broken and divine fire snuffed out, were unable to do much.

Furthermore, most of the escaped gods and their oracles were killed. There were too many powerful ones across Myers Mainland back then. The bodies of the oracles and their gods made fine crafting materials, and many fought heated battles for them.

The oracle protected its god and escaped all the way underground, but even then, the Dark God of Destruction was unable to escape his end. Ironically, it was the oracle who survived, a fate worse than death. The very reason it had survived painstakingly until that day was so that it was able to resurrect its god, and it put all hopes on that thought.

Its hopes were completely broken seeing an oracle of the Lord of Glory coming all the way there. Given the nature of the Lord of Glory, there was no way his oracle would simply let go of such lucrative loot.

Such was the outcome from the wait that lasted for tens of millennia. The oracle of the Dark God of Destruction took a very deep breath. It did not like the body it had much, as it resembled humans yet it did not possess the evolving abilities of humans. However, it deemed that it was the end of its existence. If it was unable to resurrect its god, it might as well take everything around it in death.

All of a sudden, its body expanded to over a dozen times its original size, taking over the entire top of the black rock. It swallowed the divine persona shard that was on its tongue. Its thick neck pulsed and the Lord of Glory’s oracle went pale.

“Let’s go!” They did not forget to save Theisio. They intended to take the pope, turning around to grab him. However, Pope Theisio was nowhere to be found. He was more than 400 meters away from the black rock, retreating to the exit of the karst cave.

The oracle of the Dark God of Destruction opened its huge mouth and spit a blob of darkness.

The blob was not some kind of energy, but simply darkness created by rules. If the Endless Night had been a powerful skill of dark magic, then the darkness that the oracle had spit was almost like creating a space.

A space that was devoid of light; a space with only death.

The light at the surface of the oracle of the Lord of Glory had been completely snuffed out. The entire cavern was encased in darkness, and it had almost swallowed Theisio. The Bramble Crown on Theisio’s head shone with pale light, protecting Theisio and allowing him to leave the karst cave.

The Seal of Divine Power in the oracle’s hand was fake, and shattered right away when the oracle of the Dark God of Destruction lashed out at full power. The gathered power of faith from adherents over a thousand years flowed into the oracle’s hand.

However, such power was deemed mediocre in the face of what was to come. The skill that the oracle of the Dark God of Destruction used was backed by the divine persona shard, and was activated by unleashing all energies accumulated over ten thousand years in the black rock beneath its body. Its body was a medium. After the move, the Dark God of Destruction had truly ceased to exist. Its body was assimilated by the darkness and the thing that sustained the darkness was the divine persona shards floating on top of the black rock.

The signature move of the Dark God of Destruction: Darkness Disintegration.

The oracle of the Lord of Glory was nailed where they stood and felt the energies in their body crumbling bit by bit, dissipating and turning into nothing. They were very regretful of jesting with their opponent. The feud all those years ago pushed the oracle of the Dark God of Destruction over the edge.

It was different from the oracle of the Lord of Glory, who was already planning to betray their god, and it could have even be said that they had already betrayed him. The oracle of the Dark God of Destruction, in contrast, remained loyal and protected the dignity of its god.

This is frustrating, to think that I’ve just gotten the chance of breaking free of a god’s control…

The oracle of the Lord of Glory struggled to move forward, walking towards the black rock guided by memory. They extended their hand, intending to take the floating divine persona shard in the air. But no matter how they moved, it felt that they were simply stepping on the ground where they stood. Their hand was dissolved by the power of darkness, losing its last bit of light.