Chapter 429

Chapter 429: The ritual in the Chaos of Battle

The ritual had been broken.

That Queen’s Guard Corps had already been cycling in a loop for half a century. When, for some unknown reason, they suddenly broke out of that loop; when intruders blew up the “Gate of Ascension” in the ritual hall; when a group of people from who knew where rushed into the hall—when the sacrificial victim they had chosen, right in front of the pool of elements, instead gave her own sacrificial rite to the green flames. At that moment, this lofty and final ritual had already reached a point beyond repair.

Now, enemy cultists had rushed in. The destroyers were madly slaughtering the Holy Lord’s followers and tearing apart the hard work of these long decades.

“What have you done?!”

In the center of the deep pool, the cultist leader who looked like a blond young man let out a furious roar. His body shot up to a great height. Held up by black sludge, he turned into a swollen and horrible giant. He swung an arm toward Agatha. Countless thorns and bone spurs shot up from the pool, grew at a wild speed, and rushed like a flood toward the Gatekeeper who still stood in the flames.

Yet none of the attacks even reached Agatha’s body. They turned at once into ash under the burning of the ghost-green flame. That strange fire instead crawled back along the trail of the ash, slowly burning away the sacrificial rite symbols and filthy offerings around the Sludge Pool, and then spread toward the pool itself.

Agatha was still wrapped in fire. The roaring spirit form fire had already begun to gush out from inside her. Every wound on her body had turned into a path for the flames to pour out. From a distance, it looked as if the fire had become liquid and was now flowing in her veins. At some point, the awful pain of being burned had faded away. She laughed in the fire, lifted her head, and stared freely at that furious yet helpless heretic with a gaze. She whispered, as if to herself: “Ah… I understand now…”

In the next second, the spirit flame burned away her eyeballs in an instant. Fire spewed out from the empty sockets. With these burned-out “eyes”, she looked around her, at the cultists around the deep pool who had fallen into great chaos.

Wherever her gaze passed, every cultist began to burn. The demons bound to them by symbiotic pacts also began to burn. Every unholy item in the hall turned into fuel for the Fire Seeds. Even the hall itself slowly took on the feel of flame soaking through it.

The Flame Usurper had granted her divine authority. With the divine authority of fire, she would end the blasphemy here. This was the Truth she had seen in the moment when her own eyes burned away.

The cultist in the center of the mud was not worth worrying about. He was only a freak who had finished his own sacrificial rite and transformation. What really kept this place running were the ugly, twisted heretics raving and howling around the Sludge Pool.

“Stop! Stop at once! You have no idea what you’re doing! A ritual in a runaway state is bad for everyone! It has already reached—”

The cultist leader, who had turned into a swollen giant, shouted in vain. He kept raising barriers, trying to hold back the flames that were spreading through the hall. But just then, a gunshot suddenly came from the side and cut off his shout.

“Bang!”

A young warrior in a soldier’s uniform from half a century ago rushed in, an old rifle in his hands. He raised the gun and fired at the swollen, twisted giant in the center of the deep pool.

The brave warrior was swallowed in the next moment by rushing black sludge. But more soldiers were charging into the hall behind him.

By the time line, they had already passed the cycle node of the Queen’s Guard Corps’ “counterattack battle”. All these phantom warriors should have faded away. But it was clear that this loop had already changed because the gate of thorns had been destroyed. The Queen’s Guard Corps, who should have vanished at the next full hour, had returned from the cycle to this place and now began to attack this final hall.

The landing squad led by Captain Lawrence was also locked in battle with the nearby cultists and Abyssal demons. They had used up all their bullets, but they still had sharp sabers and long swords, and for a time they had bodies that did not fear death. So even when they faced dark priests and demonic creatures who wielded all kinds of dangerous powers, they fought like mighty supernatural and did not fall behind.

With a loud clang, Captain Lawrence cut down a bone spike flying toward him with his short sword. He then dodged to the side, barely avoiding a fireball that almost exploded on him. He stepped forward through the flames and sliced through the chain on the back of a cultist’s neck. The dark priest’s body turned at once into drifting ash. Then he lifted his head and looked toward the long-haired woman standing before the Sludge Pool, her whole body burning like a Sacred beacon Torch.

The old captain shouted: “Young lady! We’ve come to help! We all work for ‘the captain’, right—what ship are you from?”

He could see it very clearly. The young woman standing in the flames burned with the same ghost-green fire as he did, so she was clearly on their side. At the same time, the fire on that young lady burned deeper in color and higher than the one on his own body. That kind of “ally” was clearly not an ordinary one. The flames on her were bigger and greener—so she had to be a big shot under Captain Duncan.

Using his rich experience as both an adventurer and a captain, Captain Lawrence made a simple, plain judgment. His conclusion was that he should take the lead and greet this future high-ranking coworker.

Agatha stared in shock at the tough old man dressed like a captain who was shouting at her from across the chaos.

After two or three seconds, Agatha could not hold back anymore and shouted: “What did you say?! It’s too loud in here! I can’t hear you!”

Lawrence paused, then turned to the subordinate next to him to make sure: “She answered me, right?”

“How should I know!” Anomaly 077 was closest. The mummified corpse was yelling at the top of his lungs, his voice full of panic and fear. He jumped around between the flames spreading from all sides, trying his best to dodge the flying bullets, fireballs, bone spikes, and even blasted-off arms and legs. Chips already showed on the blades of the twin knives in his hands. “I’m a sailor! Why am I fighting cultists to the death in a sewer right now? This is the work of a landing squad member!”

“You didn’t say that when we came ashore,” Lawrence shouted. “You were as excited as a pirate getting ready to raid a city-state.”

“You were the one who said we aren’t pirates!”

“Then I now appoint you a landing squad member.”

“You fu—”

“Hm?”

“You fu—sir…”

Agatha listened blankly to the wild shouting between those rough, tough sailors and their captain. She watched the scene of pure chaos in front of her.

[Who are these people? Where did they come from? What are they even doing?]

She saw the strangers burning with the same green flames as she was, and the cultists in the hall locked in fierce battle with them. She saw a whole group of soldiers, like ghosts from an ancient age, rush in and start firing in all directions. From time to time, some of the soldiers called out the name of the Queen of Frostholm. Everything here had gone beyond what she could understand. It was as if…

It was as if, after she chose to carry out her own sacrificial rite, the whole world’s style had changed.

But soon a rushing sound of wind in her ears cut off her wild thoughts.

The swollen, twisted giant bent down toward her.

It roared: “Everything… can no longer be stopped…”

Filthy black sludge in a runaway state spewed from all over its body. The handsome face of the blond young man it once had was gone without a trace. In its place now was a horrible monster with only a rough human shape.

Half its body was covered in crisscrossing mouths. The scraping and whispering of sharp teeth made one’s skin crawl. Its head slowly split open in front of Agatha. The crack was packed with eyes full of malice. elements had fully corrupted the human body this monster once had and taken its place. It had become one part of that pool of mud, and even… part of some bigger, more twisted will.

The swollen giant stared hard at Agatha with its countless eyes. The mud spreading around it had already caught fire. The flames even crawled back along the mud and burned on its body. Yet the monster seemed to feel no pain at all. It only repeated again and again: “Cannot stop… cannot stop… error, error…”

Agatha lifted her head and met the monster’s gaze. The flames pouring from her eye sockets twisted the air around her. She said: “You have already failed. You should be able to feel it. The so-called ‘passage’ has been cut off. The Inversion between mirror world and the Mortal Realm has stopped.”

“Stopped?” For a brief moment, the monster seemed to wake at her last words. In its countless twisted eyes, a human hatred showed again. It snarled: “Fool… You think that just because you sacrificed yourself… we have no other sacrificial victims?!”

Agatha froze.

In the next second, she saw the giant suddenly raise both arms high. Those arms changed at once. Like dried, cracked branches, they grew and split in a rush, turning into huge masses of thorn-like structures. They stabbed into the roof of the hall and into every nearby pipe. Between the sharp tips of the thorns, faint lights began to race by, like fireflies.

From deep inside this “thorn forest”, a cry full of mad joy rang out:

“I see it! I grasp it! I understand it!
“What a mighty creation! What a grand Blueprint! O greatest and holiest Lord… I have grasped Your will. I have grasped it… To remake this world, yes, remake it… All of us, and all things in this world, will be born again from the flesh of God—believers, the time of sacrifice has come!”

“The time of sacrifice has come!”

Under the stunned gaze of Agatha and of the landing squad led by Lawrence, all the remaining Annihilators in the hall began to cheer in wild joy. It was as if they had truly received some revelation from the Truth. In that roaring wave of shouts, they threw themselves one after another into the pool of mud in the center of the hall!

(I have a bold idea!)