Chapter 570: The Enemy’s First Move
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
When the clock struck nine that morning, the tired choir, who had been singing since dawn, became reinvigorated.
Landmarks in the Holy City had been decorated with white petals, and the cool morning breeze carried these petals throughout the city, bathing it in white. When the rays of sunlight landed on the petals, they emitted a golden glow, making the city resemble a tranquil sea with gilded waves.
Moved by the beautiful landscape, the believers hurried to meet the Pope at the main entrance to the Canningham Basilica. Only moments later, they began to sing loudly and pa.s.sionately.
As they sang, the sky started to change color, turning hazy as the heat covered the realm as though it were silk linen. At that moment, it was as though Isythre had been set alight.
“This… This is a miracle! The Holy Light is upon us!” The Pope exclaimed, his gazed fixed on the white glow that illuminated his fingertips. The crowd also felt a miraculous power rush through their veins, curing them of years-old ailments, which had stumped even the best doctors in the realm.
This really was the work of a G.o.d! According to the Church’s scripture, the G.o.ds were generous with their blessings. Their holy light illuminated every corner of the realm, revealing not only the believers but also the Devil Walker and the Lich Walker, both of whom were hidden at the bottom of a really deep, dark trench.
Both Voidwalkers stared at each other in shock, utterly astonished to see each other illuminated by the golden holy light.
“It doesn’t hurt at all. Why do you think this is?” The Lich Walker asked as it looked down at its bony fingers, which glowed a beautiful G.o.d under the holy light.
“I don’t know; maybe, you should look behind you!” The Devil Walker replied.
After the war in Duat, the number of undead soldiers under the Lich Walker’s control had greatly increased. However, the moment the holy light located the Lich Walker, it’s undead soldiers burst into flames. The weaker undead soldiers, like the Spartois, were instantly burned to crisps!
“M-my precious!!!” The Lich Walker wailed. It was as though it was an otaku whose hentai collection had gone up in flames. Without wasting any more time, the Lich Walker quickly placed its surviving undead soldiers into its Dead s.p.a.ce.
The Lich Walker had brought its undead soldiers out only because it was hidden in a trench, far away from the sunlight. Furthermore, this trench could be dug all the way to the Templar Fort, which the Lich Walker and Devil Walker planned to invade at some point in time to distract the Church.
This decision to bring out the undead troops for a sunbath had cost both Voidwalkers. For this band of misfits, sunlight was more of a disinfectant.
The Lich Walker was not the only Voidwalker being troubled by the holy light. In Arfin City, other Voidwalkers here just as unhappy to see the sunlight.
The Archmage stared down at his glowing fingertips, his gaze fixed on the light weaving in and out of the s.p.a.ces between his fingers. When he clicked his fingers, the light burst into sparks and faded away.
The Astrologist Walker was also absentminded. He eyed the light around his body, which then drifted to his reflection in a nearby pool. “Look closely. The light as it reflects from the water —”
“What is this? A David Attenborough impression?” The Archmage sneered.
“No! If you’d just let me finish… I was about to point out that there’s something seriously wrong about this light!” The Astrologist reb.u.t.ted. “Look, can you cast any spell now?”
“What? Why shouldn’t I be able to?” The Archmage replied, raising his hand for a cantrip.
Then, the impossible happened: a formation appeared atop his fingertips, but it soon began to flicker as though the Archmage had made a mistake in his conjuring. The old-timer knew better, though. His mana was flowing and reacting as usual, and he was not under any kind of psychic disturbances. Moreover, the formation was drawn absolutely correctly. This meant that it did not fail because of a slip-up.
The Archmage pulled out every enchanted scroll and magical tool in his storage pouch and tested all of them, but they failed, as well. Although they were all fine the last time he saw them, none worked now; even his old but reliable communication slab.
This was a bone-chilling revelation way, scarier than Silence spells or anti-magic territories. Under this sinister light, magic itself had utterly ceased to exist in this realm!
There was no doubt about it — this was the enemy’s doing, and it came out of left field. Not a single Walker had expected the angels to pull the rug under their feet by casting a realm-wide magic-canceling field before arriving.
It was a terrifying and effective ploy. Many of the Voidwalkers’ techniques and tools run on magic, so if their power source was cut, what else was there for them to go up against the Church? At this point, even a ragtag band of under-trained mooks from the Church could tear them apart into sc.r.a.p metals.
The direness of their current predicament weighed down on the Archmage. He now realized that they were in a situation even more hopeless than when a hunter forgot to bring a trap with him after being sent off to a monster-capturing mission. Before he knew it, his hands had bound around the Astrologist’s neck as he cried in horror, “What the h.e.l.l is going on?!”
“To explain, I need a pair of shades.”
The Archmage punched his hand through the Astrologist Walker’s newly-patched chest plate. “You’re still thinking about looking cool at this moment?”
“What? h.e.l.l no! I just need it to see the changes in the sky. My guess is that the stars up there are emitting this light, but I won’t be able to see it without a pair of shades, don’t you think?” The Astrologist protested.
“Oh…. Uh hem, well, you can probably try this?” The Archmage fished out a pair of sungla.s.ses from his pouch and tossed them to him.
“Are you telling me that you have a pair of shades with you all the time?” The Astrologist Walker sneered after freeing himself from the First Walker’s hold.
“Now is not the time for such interestingly trifling topics, pal!” The Archmage snapped.
Suddenly, the Scholar Walker’s voice rang out of nowhere around his ear. “Urgent help… needed! Please, without a.s.sistance, I will tire from exertion anon!”
“Scholar! What’s wrong?”
“This baleful aureole… it’s tormenting Noirciel… She’s suffering from overwhelming agony! I’m holding up an opaque barrier around her… But if my calculation is unmistaken, I’m reaching the limits of my reserve…”
“But how are you still capable of contacting me?” The Archmage blurted in disbelief.
There was a strained sneer before the reply. “B-because runic magic… is the true paragon of magic!”
The communication magic ended.
For the first time ever, the Archmage extended his finger and began to draw magic through a method he had never stooped to before, and discovered that the Scholar Walker was partially right. A spell would somewhat function if one expended three times the amount of mana said spell usually required if one performed it through runic magic. The caveat, however, was that if one stopped charging the runes with their mana, the spell vanished instantly.
In other words, the Rohlserlian formation nonpareil known as the Sage-Emperor of the Magi had no choice but to use ign.o.ble, unsophisticated runic magic like a troglodyte! Not only that, he could only cast spells one at a time!
Meanwhile, back in Noirciel’s ward, the angel’s life was once again on the line since her painful exile. The enemy’s unexpected and cruel magic-nullifying technique had rendered every life-supporting formations to fail immediately, hence forcefully terminating Noiricel’s recovery process. It was by a very fine stroke of luck that Tisdale, Nota, and Vidomina had come to pay a visit right before it happened, and so was able to throw themselves into supporting the Scholar in her desperate rescue.
“I beseech you, do not let go!” The Scholar Walker exclaimed, visibly panicking. The four planted their palms firmly on the barrier around Noirciel as they desperately pumped three times the usual mana into it.
Although the Scholar Walker, as a Voidwalker, had a lot more mana within her, which would allow her to go on for a while, the three young girls were nearing their limits. The barrier and the complicated formations supporting Noirciel were hungrily drinking their mana like a steady, unstopping blackhole, and it did not take a long time before the girls’ straining muscles and pale faces were drenched in sweat.
“Attie!” The Scholar Walker shouted to the only girl in the room who was unable to help. “Feed them with mana recovery items posthaste! Locate those in their storage pouches!”
“Oh! Um, right!” Attie answered and snaked her hand into Vidomina’s bra before pulling out her storage pouch. After rummaging through the content, she yanked out several bottles of colorful potions and asked the pouch’s owner, “Flavor?”
“U-uh… Um… C-C-Citrus?” Vidomina gritted through her effort.
“Oh no, I don’t think there’s a citrus-flavored one here. How about milk?” Attie replied, wagging a bottle of viscous, milky-white solution in front of her face.
“Does this crisis concerning an endangered life project so little gravity that the taste of a potion is now a more paramount issue?!” The Scholar screeched.
Stunned from the Voidwalker’s shriek, Attie went quiet before slapdashedly grabbing a banana-flavored recovery potion from the pile and popping the lid open. Then, she tipped it toward her mouth.
“You ignoramus!” The Scholar Walker howled. She would have strangled the girl right there and then if her hands were not tied. “Do you really need to be reminded every foul time to not feed with your mouth?”
Fortunately, Attie recovered from the Scholar Walker’s rare outburst enough to remember what to do. Anxiously and tactlessly — although one may wonder it was actually her backhanded way to get back on Vidomina for outcla.s.sing her in the a.s.set department — Attie dumped the entire potion into Vidomina’s mouth, causing the latter to gurgle and cough in distress. Some yellow fluid even dribbled out of the corner of the poor girl’s lip, flowing down her sharp chin before dripping on her bosoms.
Fortunately, it was at this moment that the Alchemist Walker arrived, sprinting towards the girls with his arms full of black Void Crystals.
“This light can’t affect Void Energy, so let’s use them to power these formations right now!” He explained while rapidly inserting the crystals into all of the vital points supporting the formation system under the Scholar’s instruction.
“How astute of you, Sir Alchemist,” the Scholar Walker sighed in relief.
“Oh, it wasn’t me. We noticed that the Engineer Walker’s weird spider-thing is still moving despite this light’s interference and quickly worked out why,” he replied modestly, still swapping out the mana sources in the system with the Void Crystals with the speed of a j.a.panese senpai playing rhythm games.
With the crisis temporarily averted, the three young girls heaved out a sigh and collapsed to the ground in exhaustion. Noirciel was safe again, for now.
Around this time, the Astrologer Walker also had minor good news for all: through his expertise, he had quickly identified a slew of newly appeared stars in the sky. Although their numbers were many, the Astrologer Walker had deduced that if they could somehow remove the three closest stars hovering above Arfin, they should be able to stop this lethal magic-nullifying light.