The church bells pealed loudly, their sound waves carrying a soothing Divine Art in an attempt to lull the entire city to sleep.
If the whole city descended into panic, the consequences would be even more severe. Rather than letting them trample and fight each other in a panicked escape, it was better to simply put them to sleep and wait for the "catastrophe" to pass.
Of course, the affected civilians weren’t completely abandoned. The field of Divine Power radiating from the Angel was stronger than the Church’s evening bells, and Holy Knights were dispatched to evacuate any commoners they could reach.
Fortunately, the Lord and His most intimate Divine Servants were rciful. The terror descended upon everyone, but it only hard the Cultists.
A sword appeared in the sky above every gathering point of the "Return of the Holy Mother" Sect. The blade, originally a place where light and dark, holiness and filth, vied for dominance, suddenly burst into fla. The conflagration and the sword cleaved downward as one.
All the strongholds were destroyed, but that wasn’t enough. A lion’s roar echoed across the skies of Valuva. All of Seraph’s eyes split open down the middle, transforming into countless maws of the Abyss.
The giant maws generated a powerful suction, pulling in everything related to Mother Earth: souls tainted by herbs and rituals, limbs and livestock that had received her "blessing," and scrolls recording the evil rites.
"No! No! My soul is ant to return to the Mother’s embrace, not—" The Sect’s Elders felt themselves being torn from the physical world. Their Sect had originally been drawn by the call of a "Holy Artifact" in the Valois Royal Capital, infiltrating the city from thousands of miles away.
The Sect had even brought other Holy Artifacts they had accumulated from Istani and the Empire, intending to launch the grandest awakening ritual in the continent’s largest tropolis. Yet what awaited them was the wrath and judgnt of the Lord of Order.
The Angel withdrew its sword. Once the flas died out, its radiance was gone, replaced by a mottled, ink-green color, its surface covered in cracks.
Giant tentacles suddenly burst forth from below the Angel, wrapping themselves hatefully around Seraph’s wings and body, continuously lashing, sucking, and corrupting it.
The Angel didn’t struggle. Instead, it set all its mouths to tearing and biting, devouring the tentacles in great gulps, not even sparing the corrosive ichor.
In the end, Mother Earth was completely devoured. The Angel’s eight wings curled inward as a filthy, petroleum-like sli oozed out from between its white feathers. As if to resist the corruption, its entire body erupted in flas once more.
The massive fireball began to roll across the sky, searing afterimages into the night.
Rorschach and the Star Robe Mage had arrived at the Starlight Torch Tower.
"The Church got backed into a corner and called in the big guns! Aren’t you evacuating? The entrance to the Tower of Stars is about to close!" a Mage walking in the opposite direction of the Star Robe Team shouted.
"It is the duty of the Star Robes!" Zhen declared, charging toward the Starlight Torch Tower without a second thought.
’Hey, lady, can you put down before you charge the tower? I’m just a temp. I don’t need to die with you all...’ Rorschach was about to cast [Feather Fall Skill] on himself and jump ship when Pavard unfolded his map and discovered sothing new.
"All of Mother Earth’s aura is converging! Now it’s gone?"
The Potion indicators on the map showed only a single black dot, which then transford into a bright red spot.
The bright spot was moving toward the Starlight Torch Tower at high speed, just like a bullet.
"What the hell is that?" Rorschach quickly realized what it was—a giant fireball hurtling toward them from the eastern sky.
"Into the tower, into the tower!"
Unexpectedly, mbers of the Alchemy Departnt were still holding their ground in the underground facility, arguing about whether to activate the eighteen-ter-tall Alchemist Warrior.
"What’s the use of a half-finished product? Connect all circuits to the ’Qin String’ system." Snow was issuing the command just as Rorschach arrived at the base of the Starlight Torch Tower.
"All the power? We’ve never tried such a high load..."
"We’re facing a Great Angel! If you don’t want to fucking die, then move it!" The output from the two subterranean Ether Generators was channeled entirely into the central support pillar of the Starlight Torch Tower. Instantly, all the lights in the research building went out.
The Angel’s fiery light ca cleaving down. Just an instant before it could breach the tower, ten layers of blue barriers materialized in front of the "Fire Whip." Seraph’s attack shattered the first eight, dissipating along with the blue light.
It was Kano. He stood at the very top of the Starlight Torch, facing Seraph directly.
Of course, the Chief wasn’t fighting alone. Just as the Great Angel was about to ram its way through, Poincaré made his move. The space before Seraph began to distort. A distance that seed to be less than a hundred ters should have been covered instantly at the Angel’s speed, yet it could not advance a single inch. The flas and electric arcs it emitted were twisted into chaotic curves within the warped space.
"The Great Mage has stalled the Great Angel for us! Hurry!"
Circuits lit up on the Starlight Torch Tower’s support pillar. It began to tremble and distort under the violent influx of Ether, yet miraculously, the entire tower did not collapse.
The "Qin String" system was a form of Magic that used Mithril "Qin Strings" to generate Ether waves capable of blanketing the entire city.
Snow quickly explained to Rorschach, "To put it simply, think of this tower as a giant-sized Magic Staff. The Magic it casts is also giant-sized in power and range. Got it?"
Once the calibration was complete, the first spell was ready. The Observatory at the top of the tower beca the emitter, its massive lens aiming at the target. An intensely cold ray... no, it was a storm, three ters in diater and approaching absolute zero, that ca howling out.
"Are those guys down there trying to freeze us to death?" Kano grumbled as he and Professor Poincaré moved away from the "Frozen Ray Pro Max" edition.
However, the ray failed to inflict any substantial damage on the "fireball." The flas did die down sowhat, but the Angel was still struggling. It frantically shook its ice-caked feathers as black sludge coursed over its body.
Another lion’s roar.
"It seems... very sad."
The Great Angel’s roar pierced through the building’s many floors, and all the Mages who remained behind to fight heard it. Zhen looked up. Though she could only see the ceiling, she could still feel the transcendent being’s pain.
Snow watched the monitor. "Damn it, no effect. Should we use a different damage type?"
"Given Seraph’s Authority, that would be even less effective," a fellow who had studied theology replied, rejecting the idea.
"Does anyone here know any Magic that targets the Lawful alignnt? Anyone secretly an Evil Mage? We’ll look the other way today!" Snow was starting to spout nonsense.
"I’ll do it." Rorschach wanted to try using the hundred-ter-tall Magic Staff. "Use the Divine Power Exorcism Technique."
"Will that work? ...Never mind, we don’t have a better option." The head of the Alchemy Departnt ordered everyone to cooperate with Rorschach.
Following the instructions, Rorschach wrapped his entire body around the support pillar.
"Does it have to be like this?" Rorschach asked, facing the pillar. The position felt a little strange.
"The contact surface area between the operator and the ’Qin String’ has to be as large as possible," an Alchemy Departnt mber explained, placing a headband on Rorschach.
Rorschach accepted the setup and threw himself wholeheartedly into the Casting. His senses expanded, soaring high, and he could suddenly perceive the Angel. Not only was his line of sight level with the being, but he also felt imnsely tall, as if the building beneath him were just a miniature model.
The pillar lit up once more, but its circuits had changed. Power surged through the tower and across all of Prairie Avenue.
This ti it wasn’t a ray, but a transverse wave that erupted outward, sweeping over all of Valuva City. Seraph, bearing the full brunt of the wave, wailed in agony. Its holy form and the sludge covering it steadily dissipated in the invisible wind.
The soul-piercing lion’s roar grew fainter and fainter, until it finally vanished from the skies above the Royal Capital, along with the Great Angel.
The Requiem concluded. The black clouds receded, and moonlight spilled down upon the scarred earth.
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