Chapter 815 - Sacrifices
Chapter 815: Sacrifices
“Um, actually, I have a private matter to request your help with.”
A few days ago, Roland had said this to Sandro after they made their secret agreement at the Cloud Tower.
“Actually, I have a death magic sword that requires absorbing both the souls of the living and the dead in order to complete its evolution. The battlefield at the chaotic domain will likely become the best meat grinder of all, as well as the last chance for me to complete my magic sword. But, as you know, my status is rather special…”
Some things didn’t need to be said completely.
Sandro understood already. Roland had many identities, such as being the prince of the Northlands, the representative of the Hell Faction, and so on. But in the entire mortal plane, his most important identity and most accepted one would be…
“The successor of Estrada, the Strongest Holy Knight in the world.”
Perhaps being the representative of the Hell Faction would be plenty for the highest-level existences, and perhaps the kings and nobles of the various countries would feel that the Mist Alliance was incredibly powerful, but most ordinary citizens in the world likely wouldn’t truly understand what such status represented.
Most ordinary people wouldn’t care about Hell (what’s that? Never heard of it), or the prince of the Northlands (is that the royalty of some rural countryside?), but all of them would understand the reliability and power of being the Strongest Holy Knight.
Roland also had another important identity which had hidden importance.
“Roland is the creator of the Southern Sect, and the discoverer of pure Holy Light.”
In a way, Roland and the Southern Sect were analogous to Jesus and Christianity or Buddha and Buddhism. Of course, the return of the original sect founder would be a disaster for the current leaders of any church, so Roland and the Southern Sect both voluntarily forgot about this relationship.
However, some things couldn’t possibly be eliminated. Just as how Karolan was the one who brought Holy Light to this world, Roland’s achievement of discovering pure Holy Light was destined to be recorded in history.
Originally, Roland didn’t care about such a thing at all, as he didn’t care about reputation. However, some things couldn’t be decided by him alone.
Without regards to who won the final Holy War, if everything was successful and Karwenz and the Chaos Faction were eliminated as threats, then the Holy Light Faction and the Hell Faction would definitely have “much interaction” with each other afterwards.
The Holy Church’s biggest source of support was naturally the common belief in the Holy Light that most of humanity worshipped. Shaking the Holy Church’s authority would naturally require shaking belief in the Holy Light.
At that time, the fissure between the Southern Sect and the Holy Church would naturally become the most important breakthrough point.
The Hell Faction would naturally support the Southern Sect, and fight against the Holy Church to the end.
In that case, Roland, the forgotten discoverer of pure Holy Light, would naturally be pushed to the forefront and become a hot topic of discussion.
From ancient times to the present, the easiest and most practical way to smear a religious faction would be proving that the religion’s founder was someone immoral who was a scammer, bastard, and scumbag. That would naturally make their religion a joke.
This was a common tactic even in the modern day.
The Holy Church was obviously an expert at starting religious conflicts and religious slander.
It really was rather ironic. Victory hadn’t been achieved yet, but these two factions which were allied on the surface were already scheming on how to stab each other in the back.
Still, humans were already accustomed to endless internal conflict while fighting united against outside enemies for the past thousands of years already.
Roland was a critical individual in the Hell Faction and Southern Sect. His status was incredibly important. If his reputation was besmirched, then it wouldn’t only be his personal reputation that would suffer. The entire Southern Sect’s properness and legality as a religion would be called into question.
Some things would be privately known to everyone while they all pretended not to know. However, far more people would be hurt if certain truths were brought to light.
For instance, the Holy Church knew quite clearly that Roland was Undead Emperor Yongye, but the Holy Church would never say anything about this to try and slander Roland. That was because the Holy Church would then have to explain why they allowed Roland to go wherever he pleased without trying to kill him.
Perhaps after a few hundred or few thousand years, with Gods and indestructible existences voluntarily forgetting certain things, the creator of the Southern Sect truly would become regarded as a saint, while the so-called Undead Emperor Yongye would be forgotten by the annals of history.
As for Roland’s current forcefully whitewashed reputation, it didn’t matter what he did in secret, but it would absolutely be a major taboo if he started gathering souls on a large scale in public.
Many ordinary people were already now willing to accept that undead magic wasn’t evil, and that only certain undead mages were evil. However, everyone still believed that only those who were truly evil would forcefully drain soul energy from the dead.
Ordinary people wouldn’t care about how death magic was also part of the Cycle of Reincarnation, or how everything would always return to the River Styx and the Cycle of Reincarnation in the end. Ordinary people believed that undead mages who forcefully drained souls for themselves were no different from those who desecrated graveyards. It was considered to be far worse than even graveyard desecration.
Roland required a large number of souls in order to complete that final Original Sin Sword which was also his strongest sword. It was obviously expected that a tremendous number of angels and demons would die in the chaotic domain, and that even many Gods would likely die as well. Such excellent “resources” were incredibly rare to find elsewhere. It would be a miracle opportunity for any undead archmage to find an ancient battlefield where Gods had perished before.
In the chaotic domain’s battlefield, veteran Gods of various factions would all likely appear. If Roland absorbed souls here to complete his magic sword, not only would his reputation suffer, this would have many political consequences and ramifications afterwards.
Thus, Roland did his best to think of what else he could do, and came up with the idea of having someone else complete the soul absorption for him.
However, the candidates he could ask to help him with this were truly limited.
The person would need to be an expert at undead magic in order to even consider soul absorption. Secondly, that person would need to be incredibly strong, SemiGod at the very minimum. Otherwise, that person would instantly be devoured by the death magic sword. That person would also need to dare to absorb souls right in front of the other Gods, which was an incredibly shameless action. That person would also need to be powerful enough to protect themselves… Who else could possibly be up to the task apart from the powerful, vicious, and shameless Undead Emperors who were also experts at undead magic?
Roland talked to Sandro and used this as a bargaining chip to help the latter revive the Tark Republic. Roland forced Sandro to take the blame for soul absorption for his sake. As for the Undead Emperors… since their reputation was already extremely bad to begin with, they wouldn’t really care about taking more blame for something else.
Currently, the Undead General was wielding the black death magic shortsword and slaughtering others on the battlefield. The sword absorbed countless souls and divine soul shards as an uncountable number of grudge-bearing souls filled this entire area.
Meanwhile, the currently opening altar door was also furiously absorbing the souls and life force of all the sacrifices here.
The altar absorbed life force, flesh, and blood, while the death magic sword focused more on absorbing soul shards. The two had different focuses.
Incredibly powerful demons and Gods were dying every moment on this battlefield, solely for the sake of becoming sacrifices for a certain pair of twin brothers.
Finally, the death magic sword representing the Seven Original Souls reached maturity as more Gods perished.