The sa grand cathedral had risen once again.
Seven stories tall, branded on its walls with caral, the construct stood proud, the silvery blue windows showing on all its levels reflecting the bright luminance of the stars beyond.
Four turrets shot from the cathedral, at their top ends an oil-painting of the Bishop, highlighted unnecessarily to sell her position in the odd religion she had manufactured for reasons unknown.
Perhaps it was a dream of hers, as a Priestess, to introduce more variety in Aigas. Who knew?
Within the cathedral, a great hall accommodated the cautious Replicus, frowning Warding Pride and delighted Bishop.
It was very spacious.
A little too spacious.
Large, silvery blue tiling made up the floor while a pale gold ceiling littered with the sa sort of glassy chandelier showed above.
At the front of the hall, behind the Bishop, was a massive oil-painted mural of a distorted version of her seeming to look oddly at Replicus and Warding Pride at the sa ti.
The Bishop let out a childish laugh.
Primus oozed from her and engulfed her nine followers. All nine began to float in the massive hall, tunics of light appearing over their bodies.
"Do you rember the penultimate point of our arrangent, Bright Storm?" the Bishop asked.
Replicus didn't answer.
His focus, wasn't on the old woman currently. His concern laid with the bulking n rising in the air.
Oh no.
It was coming!
That damn song was coming!
Even Warding Pride seed to be preparing for it.
"We agreed that if you lost to , you would have to join my faith!" the Bishop cried.
Right then, the nine n opened their mouths and began to sing a lody that was both srising and ominous.
"Listen to the collective,
The collective of pure thought,
This indeed is collective,
The collective of lull thought,
The fire burning in the senses,
Let it cool and simr down,
The fire raging to the sword,
Let it cool, let it simr down,
The collective thought, the collective,
Co together quiet just as one,
The collective thought, the su-um,
Co together, lay hate down~"
Replicus felt the effects imdiately.
The Bishop had used this song when the Factions were trapped in the Cluster with the Ardent Curses days ago.
The song, unlike compulsion, did not affect the soul in order to in turn affect the body. The song affected the body directly as long as one heard it.
All who heard would lose their will to fight and slowly feel themselves grow heavy, saturated from within by a lazy desire to stare at the cathedral and relax.
Back then, the only reason Replicus managed to resist was because he had Allora close by. The Unlimited had used her Mind Casting to reinforce everyone's minds, making it so that their bodies weren't as affected.
Right now, though, Skullius had no such cost efficient counter.
Worse yet, different from before, he was within the Bishop's cathedral, sothing he hadn't known was possible with her technique.
If he had to guess, there was no way to leave this cathedral conventionally.
'Flesh it!'
Replicus stord towards the Bishop, vanishing into the Astral Blizzard Corridor!
Just like last ti, it took a little longer for the full effect of the song to make him completely lose all his functionality.
Thus, he decided that his best bet was to deal with the Bishop before that.
Appearing in front of the Bishop, Replicus manifested a bolt of Levin; long, bright and saturated with mana!
He hurled it at the Bishop from close range.
However, the old woman didn't move.
She seed confident despite having dispelled her Nitros.
A brilliant figure flashed before her and got pierced by it in her stead. The bolt of Levin sank through both arms as the man tried to defend.
It was one of the nine, a balloon-like man... who kept singing despite having the bolt poking
behind him!
Replicus didn't stop.
He hadn't stopped.
He stretched his hand forward and a giant ball of Distorted Gravity manifested before him!
He was just going to have to make it hard for the Bishop and her goons to lavishly sing rry and act nonchalant!
As expected, this... seed to have made the Bishop wary.
She finally moved.
Replicus didn't quite understand how everything played out, but...
His gravity ball seed to pop like a balloon and then, in the next instance, he found himself
in another portion of the hall, far from where he had been.
"You didn't even realise it, do you? You nearly died right there."
The Penetrator turned beside him and saw Warding Pride bearing a disdainful look as she
gazed down at him.
A large, tallic cube floated before her. Well, half of it was molten, its bits falling to the
tiled floor.
It seed like another one of her specialised shields.
"If I hadn't pushed you out of the way, the Bishop was going to punch you into oblivion, just like she did to whatever that thing you summoned was."
Replicus socket flas flickered.
Wait...
What?
"You're still more green than you think. Proud and stupid. You thought taking out the riff-raff
in the Union would prove that you are soone worth a title you gained after coaxing Eaniss. Now, all that babble is showing its fruit. You didn't even realise the true strength of soone you boldly decided to play a death ga with."
Indeed. Indeed it seed so.
Replicus could only imagine. If the Bishop, as Warding Pride said, just punched gravity...
The Penetrator opened his mouth to speak, but no words ca out.
"Don't bother speaking to . I can't hear anything at the mont..." Warding Pride said, her eyes turning to the Bishop who gave them both a very cross look from the distance
At the ntion, Replicus noticed that Warding Pride had several large, dark symbols over her
body.
His imdiate guess as to their purpose was that they blocked out all sound that attempted to reach Warding Pride, eliminating the threat of the Collective song for her. Unfortunately, this application didn't seem to work for anyone other than the blue-skinned Faction Leader. Replicus noticed that her subordinates had succumbed to the song's effect a
fair distance away.
"Are you really disturbing our innocent ga, Warding Pride?!" the Bishop bellowed.
Warding Pride smiled, shrugged and gestured to her ears.
In truth, she could understand the Bishop by reading her lips though.
The Mad Bishop seethed. Her empty socketholes then turned to Replicus.
"Is this it? Are you really done already?"
The full appeal of the Collective song, which had yet to stop, was finally affecting the
Penetrator. He felt his mind slip, becoming both exhausted and dysfunctional.
His body followed, growing very heavy.
He kneeled. 'Ah... in the end, my current level of strength still isn't even a close match for these guys,
huh?' Replicus thought.
The current him truly was lacking.
That was why he needed all these plans and sches, after all.
He felt Warding Pride grip the top of his helt and apply imnse force. She then addressed
the Bishop.
"I don't know what kind of understanding you have with him, but I think you should know what he is before committing to anything," she said with a triumphant grin. "So things
aren't as they seem. This especially applies to PEOPLE."
The Bishop raised a brow.
Warding Pride looked down at Replicus.
She had only saved him just now because she wanted so closure.
She, just like the rest of the top brass of the Severed Union, knew that the Bishop often lost
control of her imnse physical strength, which seed to increase unreasonably the more
followers she got.
She couldn't have Bright Storm die by a ungodly punch that turned him into dust. "Rember what I told you back when you foolishly decided to play gas with ? This is exactly what I envisioned. You at my rcy," she scoffed.
Warding Pride gripped Replicus' helt tighter. Of course, she couldn't unmask him like
so common villain with a ski mask. The Hollow Dusk Prison was a Mythical grade item,
after all.
Instead, she planned to reveal Replicus' nature to the Bishop in a flashy manner. She aid to blow it up with a seal.
A better one that what she used last ti.
This was going to be very sweet.
...
The sudden disappearance of the helt she held, however, caught her by surprise.
The Hollow Dusk's Prison vanished before she could do anything, revealing the bare features
of the Titan World Storm Penetrator.
As expected, the Bishop recoiled in genuine shock, as did her nine flying man-cherubs.
She didn't think.... no one would have thought that this... was what the Penetrator looked like.
"What is... THAT?" she said as her face contorted in revulsion.
Warding Pride did the sa.
While she had seen Replicus' face, she had never seen his full body.
The pitch black skeleton whose body seed to be laced with lightning on every fibre...
This sa skeleton suddenly pointed up with its bony hand as it knelt, taking advantage of its
stunned enemies.
Then, from its finger, a familiar light was fired.
A light that the Bishop recalled without any kind of fondness.
It was light that ate away at her cathedral's seven stories in an instant before erupting out the
roof with a triumphant bang!
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