Badge in Azure

The great head inquisitor pulled out a blank divine spell scroll and wrote on it with divine power: demons destroyed the village and the wheat fields were consumed by a great fire. The defilers will invoke the wrath of god and when divine punishment is visited upon us, the world will rise again from the ashes.

The blank scroll shone with pure divine light when the writing was done. The spell was sealed into the scroll, a level eleven Divine Punishment. It came into being as the great head inquisitor distorted truth and falsehood.

The demons ran on the street. They ran into the deeper reaches on Titan. Merchants, mercenaries, and even patrolling armies went out of their way. The demons never bothered attacking. Both sides were reluctant to fight.

The demons felt rather exhausted after moving for over 300 miles, and only then did Nailisi slowed down.

Saleen turned around and peered back. The holy masters came up again, keeping a distance of 15 miles.

The sensory connection between Nailisi and Saleen was severed. She let the two supreme demons lead the way while she returned to Saleen’s side, saying in a rather frustrated tone, “Master, the people behind wouldn’t give a damn if we end up slaughtering the city, no?”

“They would. The village we passed earlier — they burned it down,” Saleen’s voice was rather eerie. It was rare for mages to be truly angered. It was especially rare for them to be angered on behalf of common folk.

Nailisi felt nothing peculiar. “Master, don’t tell me that you’re thinking that we doomed the villagers.”

Saleen almost laughed. Although he held that urge in, he actually felt better.

Responsibilities were not simply shouldered. Any resistors were all sinful according to the reasoning of the Holy See, but if one were to simply submit and roll over, then they had spared others of further suffering. Just what kind of bulls**t is this?

It was unthinkable for Saleen to feel dejected over the great head inquisitor slaughtering the entire village, for he had been strong enough to shoulder the deaths of over a million in Ironwall City.

However, if they continued what they were doing, they would end up pulling more innocent people into their fight, and it would not change how their pursuers acted.

“Nicholas, any ideas how to go about it?” Saleen asked the old holy master.

Nicholas thought for a bit. “My liege, if we want to provoke them into attacking, we need to head back to the mountains. We’ll capture a few holy masters in the next town or city and purify them using nature divine spells in the mountains. I don’t think that will sit well with them.”

“Nature divine spells eh, I’m not sure I know how to use them. Don, can you use them?”

Don replied with his unique voice, “so long as Your Highness gives me enough of the nature goddess’ divine power, it’d be quite a simple task to someone who has no way of defending themselves.”

“What about the power of faith then?”

“Even better. I know several nature divine spells. If Your Highness has chants, prose, or runes of nature divine spells, we can have people within tens of miles feel it. There is at least one level ten holy master among the ones on our tail. Well then, Your Highness, do you still want to provoke them?”

“Indeed. Do whatever you can.” Saleen waved and let the demons continue moving forward. He told Nailisi to take a detour around the next town and head for larger cities.

There were many destroyed cities in Titan after the war. While they were in a central region near the north, things still looked rather desolate. There were fewer than half of the villages that had been around. Most peasants were taken away to the south by the nobles.

The demons slowed down and walked for tens of miles. They continued after resting for a bit. Don was envious of the demons’ constitution. He asked Saleen while riding on a Nightmare, “Your Highness, could the demons be made a part of the knights corps of Nature Faith?”

“Demons don’t do religions,” Saleen put up his Water Shield. While he was riding the Nightmare, the buffers he had on him were never dispelled.

“It’s totally fine that they don’t have faith. The knights corps need no such thing after all. Your Highness, if you need an organization like the Tribunal, I can help you set one up.”

“I don’t need a Tribunal. The knights corps will do,” Saleen rejected Don’s request. He had immense hatred of the Tribunal after all.

Don sighed in relief. He was testing Saleen. If he had to establish a Tribunal, he’d have been compelled to figure out ways to kill Saleen before the thousand-year contract between them was fulfilled to destroy the Nature Faith.

The team took a detour around the town and spent half of the night resting. They departed again around midnight, heading for their target. It was a newly established mid-sized city with a population nearing 100,000.

It had been an ancient city of Titan that was destroyed in the war. Most of the residents moved away. With only several thousand left, life in the new city looked rather desolate.

While the Holy See did their best to get the place prosperous again, the war between Kroraina and Qin robbed the path of its business opportunities. With the absence of merchants, development of the city stalled.

The Holy See perfected their ways of keeping the peasants under control, but they had little to deal with merchants. There were many factors, such as the existence of the Sikeqinya Empire and Qin merchants making a point to never trade in regions under Holy See control, among others.

The ones who were willing to trade with the Holy See were the Cloudflow people, who were adept at sea trade, but also kept being pirates.

Nailisi slowly and meticulously unleashed demons from the purgatory of devils. The number of demons grew by more than a thousand by the time they reached the city.

Over a thousand demons would prove enough against a city with a population of several thousands. They were in central Titan. With most of the army stationed at the borders, there would not be many troops in the city.

When Nailisi brought a regiment of demons and rushed at the city, the guards were hardly able to react. Despite receiving alerts about approaching danger, calculations estimated the demons to take about two days to arrive at the city.

The city was taken over by the Tribunal. While the army consisted mostly of Titan people, delivery of news was still done using flying magic beasts, which enabled news to be relayed at great speed.

Their miscalculation was dire. It was not only the estimated arrival of the demons that was miscalculated, but also the numbers, which differed greatly from the intel. They were told that there were only about 200 demons arriving, but more than a thousand showed up on their doorstep.

There were about 100 wardens throughout the entire city and the wardens intended to mobilize the troops against the incoming enemy. It was a pity that the gate was already destroyed by the demons.

None of the Titan troops were willing to throw their lives away, seeing how the demons rushed into the city. All of them ran instead.

All who remained in the city had tasted war first hand before. Back then, their country was taken by the great army of the Holy See. The civilians hid in their homes, unwilling to help with fighting. The only place resistance occurred was the church at city center.

The church was built by the Pivotal Council and was a four story building. It remained a very eye-catching landmark in a city that had experienced war. Over a thousand demons slithered through the streets, surrounding the church. The wardens had no choice but to block their way in front of the church.

Saleen did not bother using tactics of any kind. Nicholas cast a fallen divine spell to suppress the divine light of the church, before the two golden grand swordmasters and the two supreme demons rushed at the church, scattering the wardens, toppling the top of the church and barging through the main door.

Nailisi did not take out her Grey Memory and used the 20 meter-long spear instead, tearing down the church with one thrust after another. There were quite a number of holy masters in the church and over a dozen of them were captured.

The great head inquisitor felt rather tense seeing the demons barge into the city. He wanted to go in and save the holy masters, but he held the urge in and let the demons slaughter their way in. He would gain more use of the wrath of god.

Nailisi paid no heed to commoners. When demons slaughtered, it had to do with food and life forms encountered. Under Nailisi’s binding, the trained demons became entirely disinterested in demons. The demons slithered through the city and scattered after capturing the holy masters, leaving a pile of dead wardens behind.

The most notable damage the demons wrought was stomping and destroying the stones the streets were paved with and destroying a church. They wrecked nothing else.

The intense battles that Nailisi imagined did not happen. While the 100 wardens were strong, they only managed to kill about a dozen demons. With Jola and Sul around, all powerful warriors were taken out early in the fight.

The most powerful warriors among the wardens were only silver grand swordmasters. There was no need to guess at the outcome of a silver grand swordmaster ganged up on by two golden ones.

Nailisi chose to strike in the evening. The demons were returned to the purgatory of devils. It was dark when they made it into the mountains, and there were about 200 demons left.

The ones by Saleen’s side grew tense. The dozen or so holy masters were all low-levels, but they were nonetheless proper professionals acknowledged by the Holy See.

The people served as the face of the Holy See, and Saleen was about to slap at the face of the Holy See hard. If their pursuers were unable to hold it down, a battle would inevitably breakout.

Saleen unleashed the Elemental Stone Statue Soldiers after reaching a flat terrain and began to clear the ground. After the ground was cleared, they dug up the earth and added magic powder. A platform over a hundred meters long in length and width was completed after the ground was petrified.

Saleen took out a piece of chlorite and infused it with power of faith from the Ring of Gifts, before handing it to Don.

Chlorite was useful for maintaining divine power, the power of faith, and other energies with divine attributes. It was due to such properties that it was known as a Rock of Taboo.

Saleen had few of the rocks with him as all veins containing the minerals were depleted back in ancient times, with the only veins left untouched being ones in the sea.

Don was slightly surprised before taking the uncut chlorite. Saleen handed several scroll papers to him, infused with the nature divine spell that Saleen had arranged, as well as writings of the Nature Faith. The only thing lacking was the holy prose created by the goddess of nature.

It was not necessary to cast divine spells using divine tongue. The divine scripts left behind by the goddess of nature were based on Myers language in nature. As such, it was comparatively easy to cast nature divine spells.

Their sight was blocked when moving in the mountains. Saleen was unable to see the great head inquisitor, and the great head inquisitor was unable to see Saleen. He followed Saleen immediately after the mage captured more than a dozen holy masters, not knowing what Saleen was up to.

The sky turned dark and Saleen’s party stopped moving. The great head inquisitor also ordered his group to set up camp.

Saleen slowly set up his divine rune charm array, getting prepared to judge the dozen or so holy masters of the Lord of Glory.