Ch.326Bloody Paradise. Kreeks Hall (5)

In the distance, a massive city surrounded by countless arenas comes into view.

Skeletons litter the streets, and no one without a weapon can be seen walking about.

In the arenas, the sounds of flesh being crushed and bones breaking echo throughout, as losers are eternally forgotten and winners eternally remembered, over and over again.

Eternal struggle is imprinted upon this land; this place where Karil ascended is truly a paradise of war and combat, a sanctuary of struggle and resistance.

“I don’t like it.”

“Is that so? Still, we have no choice but to trust them. We can’t continue sailing with holes patched by tape.”

Victor nodded at Simon’s words. Even though he had killed five of Karil’s apostles, gods and their followers were different matters.

These people respect only the strong and worship strength.

Those who crown the victors of struggle with glory would do no harm to Victor’s forces.

“We’ll just make repairs and leave. No reinforcements.”

“Yes. I thought as much. I won’t say anything about that. Karil’s followers… have difficulty with hierarchy.”

In places with strong vertical order like the military, one must adopt the attitude of following orders from above even if they seem unreasonable.

However, Karil’s faith celebrates individuals who overwhelm the collective. They’re the kind of group that believes if a private comes up with a brilliant strategy, slaps a general across the face in the command tent, then deserts only to return with the enemy commander’s head, the slapped general deserves to lose his own head.

While Victor had no intention of interfering with their beliefs, he simultaneously had no desire to incorporate such believers into his forces.

Considering that soldiers following and officers commanding is the virtue of an army, Victor’s words made perfect sense.

History’s accumulated battles and lessons showed that many individuals cannot defeat a unified group.

If the many chains forming a collective break formation because each wants to be the boss, that collective ultimately becomes nothing but a disorganized rabble.

-Visual observation of Kriks Hall complete. Estimated arrival in 1 hour and 20 minutes.-

“…”

“Something’s bothering you. Isn’t that right?”

“I’m concerned about Casia and Lucia. Casia has a fatal wound, and Lucia is also considerably injured.”

“Are you worried about them?”

“Not physically. The problem is mental. Until now, the elves haven’t met worthy opponents. At best, they’ve only encountered undead forces. They’ve been adventuring since Waterfall, but they’ve never truly met an enemy who could overwhelm them.”

“Hmm…”

Simon let out a thoughtful hum at Victor’s words.

The battlefield was a place where even elven sisters who were Aura users could easily die.

If hit by a sufficiently large caliber cannon, they would die instantly without time to regenerate their bodies. Even without that, continuous attacks like flamethrowers or neurotoxins, or multiple organ failure, would eventually whittle down their health until even Aura users would die like infantry.

The dwarves were old, Simon had long mastered everything in the world as a sage, Victor was half-immune to PTSD due to his incredibly harsh life as a mortal, and Raisha had learned to resist the world’s injustices after losing her father at a young age and spending years as an adventurer.

But the elves were born with silver spoons, having never experienced any hardship, truly treasured children. They were barely in their 60s.

One might say that’s quite old, but by the standards of immortal elves, being in one’s 60s was like being sperm and eggs that hadn’t even formed a zygote yet. Even to mortal humans, their immature behavior was obvious, and their judgment abilities were probably not much different from those of humans in their early to mid-teens.

“Children cannot easily escape trauma. Evil spirits easily enter fragile minds.”

“For now, I think it’s best just to watch over them. If we try to comfort them unnecessarily, we’ll only end up reopening their wounds.”

Simon quietly nodded.

There’s a saying that you may know what’s at the bottom of ten fathoms of water, but not what’s in a person’s heart one fathom deep.

It was, unfortunately, a common sight in the human world to cause more harm by awkwardly trying to approach someone.

*

And finally, the Sky Warden entered Kriks Hall with its wounded body.

Warriors who saw the melted right side were astonished, wondering what could have done such damage to the massive warship, while those who saw the intact left side were too intimidated by the Sky Warden’s overwhelming presence to even look up at the sky.

And those positioned directly beneath it saw only the shadow of the massive battleship that blocked even the light of the sun.

The Sky Warden entered the largest repair facility in Kriks Hall, and the repair period was only two weeks.

This was because the basic design was sturdy as a warship, and the repair shop foremen gathered everyone they could, saying they wouldn’t miss the chance to work on such a precious vessel.

After paying the repair costs, Victor granted his soldiers and officers the right to rest freely for two weeks.

This time, he didn’t impose restrictions like limiting them to places they could return from within hours, because Victor had gained confidence.

“Are you sure this is alright? It could be greatly disadvantageous in case of emergency…”

“It’s fine. I am a god, after all.”

It was an extremely arrogant and prideful thought, but when Victor, who was truly a god, said it, it somehow didn’t feel arrogant or prideful at all.

It might be possible for someone to sneak aboard the flagship of a being with overwhelming power who could handle five apostles alone, but doing anything would be impossible.

“Hahaha. To think capturing apostles was this easy… truly disappointing.”

As Victor said this, he wondered if he too could place someone on an apostle’s seat.

Since no god had ever descended to the earth before, it was uncertain whether he, still bound to the earth, could create an apostle’s seat.

Moreover, considering that Nariakira Saburo, the sun of the universe, had only created one apostle—Victor—throughout that long time, perhaps the sun’s apostle needed to be spiritually differentiated from the apostles of other major gods.

Victor thought this hypothesis quite plausible, as the solar memories he could access showed that all the individuals to whom the sun had directly spoken and blessed had lived isolated and unhappy lives like Victor in his mortal days.

Perhaps the humanistic sun had given them power out of pity. But in the end, only Victor Walker had reached the sanctification of divinity.

“An apostle…”

Victor narrowed his eyes, imagining the apostle he would create.

Naturally, one human came to mind, and his name was Curtis.

The man who had clung to his trouser leg with a dirty and ugly appearance, crying out for justice.

He had disembarked at the nearest village upon arriving on this continent and was never seen again.

Victor had ordered Curtis to “go and fulfill your will,” and Curtis, who had become his faithful follower, was probably now adventuring with a party.

Suddenly, Victor thought he envied him.

He couldn’t even remember the last time he had gone on a proper adventure, as he was now on a pilgrimage rather than an adventure.

No matter how much he rationalized that moving toward the unknown was adventure, displaying divine power everywhere he went, receiving oaths of loyalty, and engaging in mortal combat with apostles could not be called adventure. This was just a trial and asceticism. Like accumulating virtue to ascend.

“Haah….”

What was more annoying was that even the concentration of these stifling emotions was gradually fading.

In the past, they had been so intense that his veins would pop out, but now they had thinned to merely causing him to furrow his brow.

Even sexual intercourse, which in the past would have been insufficient at dozens of times a day, had now reduced to just a few times daily.

It wasn’t that his sexual desire had decreased… perhaps it had become more restrained… anyway, as the imperfections of humanity were gradually replaced by divine perfection, desires, cravings, and wishes were becoming increasingly faint and dull.

“At this rate, in about 10 years, it might come down to once every 100 years.”

“My goodness.”

Victor said this to his wife whom he was embracing tightly, as he gazed at the city deeply stained with Karil’s blood incense.