Chapter 210

Chapter 210: Rain of Fire.

The rain turned into fire.

Heidi cried out, and that seemingly illogical scream was the only description she could think of in that moment. She simply could not understand what she was seeing, could not understand what had happened. She only knew that a torrential Rain of Fire was falling from the sky.

It all happened in an instant.

The downpour that covered Pland transformed in a heartbeat into flames pouring down from above. It was like a fallen sunset, like an inverted corona. In less than a second, the whole city-state changed from a storm-battered city into the vision of a city melting in living fire.

Everything was set ablaze: trees, houses, towers, clock towers. Even the ground itself spewed fire. The rainwater running along the streets turned into searing lava. The deafening thunder turned into explosions all across the city-state. Those blasts came from steam pipes, gas lines, and pressure vessels bursting one after another in a short time. The roar was even more terrifying than the thunder before… the whole Grand Cathedral shook violently.

Heidi stumbled back in terror as she watched an ending of utter destruction directly overlap the Mortal Realm itself. Then she heard a tolling bell.

The sound seemed to pass through a thick barrier, as if it came from very far away. It was the steam clock tower behind the Grand Cathedral, ringing the Great Bell.

The loud and solemn tolling broke through the Rain of Fire. Right after that, more bell sounds came, near and far, from deep within the fiery rain.

The Cathedral matrix of Pland rang with a hundred bells at once. The Mortal Realm stabilization barrier activated in response. Under the tolling, the torrential Rain of Fire seemed to suffer some invisible disturbance. The flames falling over the Cathedrals turned back into ordinary rain. Even the burning spires and banners of the Grand Cathedral returned to normal in the blink of an eye.

The whole city of Pland burned, yet all the Cathedrals withstood the falling fire under the bell tolls. The bizarre rainstorm and the even stranger sea of fire mixed together in a grotesque way over the burning land. Each Cathedral became like a lonely island in a purgatory, holding firm as a chain of anchors amid the upheaval of heaven and earth.

Only then did Heidi finally hear a steady, aged voice behind her. Bishop Valentine broke the silence and said: “The enemy has launched the attack… Destroy every target that tries to approach the Cathedral bell towers!”

Heidi turned her head. She had just opened her mouth to ask something when a series of deafening explosions suddenly came from the plaza outside the Cathedral.

She ran to the window and saw the Guardian troops assembled in the plaza opening fire. The Steam Walkers’ rotary machine guns were spraying bullets toward the distant streets. The main guns of the Steam Tanks fired again and again. The units hastily transferred from the city-state’s Guard Corps had already set up fortifications at the edge of the rain and were pouring fire at something in that sea of flames.

Heidi finally saw the enemy.

They were writhing Ashen Humanoids, endless in number, crawling and squirming out of the fire. Just looking at them made her blood run cold.

Those ashes seemed to emerge from the flames out of thin air. The shifting forms shrieked and screamed in pain every second. They surged in from all directions, like beasts drawn by some strange lure, rushing toward every Mortal Realm stabilization Node in the city-state—the Cathedral bell towers.

The warriors fired in confusion. Most of them had no idea why this battle had begun or what had happened to their familiar home. They did not even dare think about where those disturbing “enemies” came from. But their duty as the city’s Guards, their trained obedience, and their will to survive pinned them to that infernal frontline. They fought by pure muscle memory, drilled a thousand times over.

So the Guard troops’ guns and cannons roared, easily ripping apart the first wave of ashes that swarmed toward them.

But the next second, more ash rose behind the scattered remnants. Even more twisted, burned things came with the flames and smoke, surging toward the Cathedral.

Their numbers were as if they equaled the entire population of the city-state.

“Hold the bell towers.” Valentine’s voice suddenly rang out, echoing over the whole Cathedral plaza and even above the entire city-state. “As long as the bells are still ringing, our Mortal Realm will not be altered and overwritten by them! Believers, the time has come to witness your faith… Hold the bell towers!!”

In the midst of the chaos, Heidi watched everything, feeling as if her world had already fallen apart. But after a short moment of adjustment, she forced herself to calm down. Once she realized this was a full-scale Mortal Realm invasion, she forced herself not to look at the sea of flames beyond the plaza, not to think about the “fact” that ninety percent of the city-state had already been effectively destroyed. Instead, she ran straight to Bishop Valentine and said: “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Calm the commoners sheltering in the Cathedral. We must avoid anyone inside the Cathedral having a mental breakdown,” Valentine said in a deep voice. “Then wait with them until this storm passes.”

Heidi nodded at once. But just then Valentine suddenly lifted his head, as if his gaze pierced the tall walls of the hall and looked over the distant city.

Flames and flashes were reflected in the archbishop’s eyes. A bird’s-eye view of the entire city-state appeared in his sight.

He clearly saw all of Pland burning fiercely under the Rain of Fire. Each Cathedral became an island in the sea of flames. Every Cathedral suffered an invasion from beyond the Mortal Realm. Blazing Evil Spirits, released from some branch of Doomsday, were attacking the still-ringing bell towers in a frenzy, as if desperately trying to drag this surviving Mortal Realm world down into the same tragic End as their own. Behind those ashes stood countless Tall Gaunt Shadows.

Those dark figures stood silently in the fire, wordlessly pushing the city-state toward Doomsday.

They were the minions of the Sunspawn.

The minions of the Sunspawn?

Valentine’s expression suddenly shifted. Faced with this massive disaster at the level of a Mortal Realm invasion, he suddenly remembered a “small matter” that had supposedly been resolved long ago and nearly forgotten.

He turned sharply to a High Deacon at his side and said: “Are those Sun heretics still in the underground sanctum?!”

“The Sun heretics?” The High Deacon did not react at first. He stared blankly for a second before answering in a hurry: “Yes, they are still locked in the underground sanctum. A full Guardian battalion is on watch. They cannot escape…”

“They never planned to escape from the start!” Valentine said quickly. “From the very beginning, they wanted to be locked inside the Cathedral!”

“Wha…”

The High Deacon’s eyes went wide. Before he could finish, a dull boom suddenly came from deep beneath the Cathedral.

It was as if some giant beast had awakened in the underground sanctum.

Some priests in the Grand Cathedral who had lived through a certain Sun crisis four years ago thought of something else when they heard that boom.

Four years ago, hundreds of Sun heretics had gathered in their hiding place and, through a mad and bloody sacrificial rite, summoned a short-lived but terrifying forbidden power. A “replica Sun” formed underground and almost caused a catastrophe.

But before they could succeed, their plot had been discovered by the newly promoted Inquisitor Vanna, who led a team to wipe them out.

“…That was a test…”

The High Deacon stared, muttering to himself.

Heidi felt the heat around her suddenly rise and sensed the tremors from deep underground growing stronger and stronger.

Fire surged. Bells rang as one. Steam whistles shrieked through the Rain of Fire. Countless ash-born monsters appeared from all directions and rampaged across the mortal world.

Vanna had lived through many dangerous battles. She had faced cultists, forbidden monsters created by cultists, runaway Abyssal demons, and deranged, raving Enders. Yet no battle could compare to this purgatory before her.

She was no longer facing a battlefield, but a suddenly descended Doomsday.

Or rather, Doomsday had already come long ago. It had only been hidden behind the Veil until this day. Now someone had torn the Veil away—the living had no time to react before they became embers in Doomsday.

But Vanna was still alive. She had carved a bloody path through fire and ash and was struggling toward the towering Grand Cathedral at the center of the city-state.

Every breath burned her lungs. Her body was so exhausted it could have crushed an ordinary person several times over. Her armor was badly damaged. Her body’s recovery could no longer keep up with the rate of harm. Her wounds grew worse bit by bit.

Yet the young Inquisitor still moved forward.

The bells of the Grand Cathedral were still ringing. That meant Bishop Valentine’s defenses had not yet been broken. Perhaps the Guardians did not know the history of this corruption or the full conspiracy behind it, but they had always prepared for every conspiracy and battle.

As long as the battle at the Grand Cathedral continued, Vanna believed she had a duty to return to her place on that battlefield.

Vanna thought as she moved.

She noticed that Bishop Valentine had activated the Mortal Realm stabilization measures, which meant he had already realized part of the truth. At least that part of their response was correct. As long as the bell towers did not fall, the heretics’ scheme to overwrite “true history” with a “false history” would not succeed so easily.

As long as the overwriting process was interrupted in the end and the corruption cut out from history at its source, the city-state could still be saved. The current destruction was not true destruction. It was only a terrifying “possibility” created by two different histories overlapping… It was not too late. It was still not too late.

Vanna repeated this in her heart as if she were cheering herself on. She tried not to think about the possibility of the other Cathedrals falling. She tried not to think about where that mysterious and terrifying Captain Duncan might be waiting along this chain of events. She only moved her feet in a mechanical rhythm, smashing every obstacle in her path and walking step by step along the burning streets, closing the distance between herself and the Grand Cathedral.

But suddenly, she stopped at an intersection not far from the Grand Cathedral.

A dark gray car had flipped and lay upside down by the roadside, as if it had overturned in an accident on its way to the Grand Cathedral. Several bodies lay dead nearby, thrown from the car.

There was still someone inside the car. An arm stuck out of the tilted window, trapped against the twisted door.

Vanna recognized the car at once, and she recognized that arm.

It was her uncle, Dante Wayne.