Ch.8888. The Goddess Shall Discern.

The battle began with Amon’s first strike.

Clang!

Amon’s sword collided with the scarred man’s bare hand, creating a resonant sound.

The man grabbed the blade and shouted.

“I am Balam! I’m here to teach you the truth—”

“Deus Vult!!!!”

“Let me speak!”

When his sword was caught, Amon swung the sword in his other hand without hesitation.

The man who introduced himself as Balam easily dodged the blade aimed at his neck.

Even while evading, he continuously attempted to converse with Amon.

“So what I’m saying is—!”

But Amon attacked without showing the slightest interest in talking.

After maintaining a defensive stance, Balam finally gave up and went on the offensive.

“I think we need to calm down first to talk… properly!”

With a powerful shout, he stomped the ground, causing the road to flip over.

The impact sent Amon’s body flying into the air.

Balam swung his fist, targeting Amon’s airborne body.

But Amon easily avoided it by stepping on thin air.

“Tch.”

Amon clicked his tongue as he landed.

One of his hidden cards was revealed sooner than expected.

Without having forced his opponent to reveal any of his cards. Not fatal, but disappointing.

‘I should try to make him reveal at least one card.’

Amon distanced himself from Balam and pulled the trigger of his crossbow.

The bolt silently cut through the darkness, aiming for Balam’s forehead.

But Balam easily blocked it and charged toward Amon.

Amon matched his movement by maintaining distance from Balam.

Balam read Amon’s obvious intention.

“Fine. I’ll do as you wish.”

With a smile, he swung his arm through the air.

The afterimage of his rapidly swinging arm gradually lengthened.

Amon instinctively defended before he could identify what it was.

Clang!

Only after blocking the attack did he realize it wasn’t the arm that had extended, but the fingernails.

Amon calmly assessed the distance between himself and Balam.

‘Long-range combat will be difficult.’

The nails were about 10 meters long.

The crossbow’s range was longer, but shooting from further away would obviously give Balam time to react and dodge.

‘His reach is definitely longer than mine.’

He immediately discarded the Nigawa Strategy of attacking from a distance.

Amon closed the gap with Balam. Balam faced Amon, freely extending and retracting his nails.

“You’re just a novice who can’t even properly handle Mystic Power!”

“It’s Divine Power, you blasphemous bastard!”

“What’s the difference anyway?!”

The two engaged in fierce combat.

The pink-haired woman who had been quietly observing pulled out a multi-rocket launcher.

“Well, he’ll manage somehow.”

With an indifferent mutter, she aimed at her comrade.

But just before her finger applied pressure to the trigger, she suddenly changed direction and unleashed the rockets.

As soon as Sonia saw the launcher pointing in her direction, she stopped sniping and moved away.

Boom!

Despite the explosion right beside her, Sonia’s eyes remained fixed on the pink-haired woman.

She pulled the trigger, hiding the firing sound within the explosion.

A silent armor-piercing bullet targeted the pink-haired woman’s head.

The pink-haired woman’s gaze followed the incoming bullet.

And just before the bullet reached her, she smiled.

“Aahn!”

The pink-haired woman caught the bullet with her teeth.

She looked at Sonia and smiled.

With that impressive performance, she seized the initiative. At least that’s what she thought.

But contrary to her expectations, Sonia’s reaction was indifferent.

By the time the pink-haired woman noticed something was wrong, her mouth felt warm.

“Ah.”

Bang!

The bullet she held in her mouth exploded.

Meanwhile, Sonia had loaded the next bullet into the chamber.

Though these bullets were very expensive, prone to malfunction, and could only be loaded one at a time—making them highly impractical—their effectiveness upon impact was undeniable, which is why Sonia favored them.

By the time Sonia quickly loaded the next bullet and aimed, a scream-like tirade came from the pink-haired woman.

“Kyaaaak! My haaair! Do you know how hard it was to style this?!”

The pink-haired woman was surprisingly intact for someone who had just taken a high-explosive round to the head. Apart from some singed hair and skin abrasions, there was no significant damage.

Although her vocal cords were damaged, making her voice raspy, she was remarkably unharmed, which was far from normal.

But Sonia didn’t panic and pulled the trigger once more.

This time, instead of aiming at the pink-haired woman’s face, she targeted the rocket launcher on her back.

The loaded rockets and high-explosive round detonated together.

From the smoke of the explosion emerged the pink-haired woman with burns covering half her face.

“Gyaaaa! She shot me again, that crazy bitch!! I was going easy because we’re supposed to bring her back alive!! You! I’ll kill only you!”

The pink-haired woman charged at Sonia with bloodshot eyes.

‘So she doesn’t die from that either.’

Clicking her tongue at the woman’s toughness, Sonia created distance.

It was clear that if those brutish hands caught her, there wouldn’t be even bones left.

Sonia returned fire while maintaining distance from the approaching pink-haired woman.

But the pink-haired woman was not only tough but also fast.

Despite Sonia’s deliberate efforts to maintain distance, the gap between them gradually closed.

Just before the pink-haired woman’s hand could grab Sonia’s hair, Sonia pulled out a new weapon.

Boom!

“Eh?”

With the sound of flesh bursting, the hand reaching for Sonia’s hair disappeared.

In Sonia’s hand was a sawed-off shotgun.

It was a special Dwarven make that sacrificed recoil control, accuracy, and range for pure destructive power.

The pink-haired woman froze momentarily, unable to process what had happened.

When she finally realized her left hand was gone, she let out a piercing scream.

“Kyaaaaaaak!!!”

It was sharper and more grating than any of her previous screams.

Even the usually expressionless Sonia grimaced.

‘Does this woman not know how to speak without screaming?’

Sonia mentally renamed the unknown pink-haired woman as “the screamer.”

She broke open the shotgun to eject the used shell.

Then she loaded two new slug rounds and aimed at the screamer.

‘Among the weapons I have, this is the only one that can harm her.’

But this shotgun had a drawback. By focusing solely on power, it placed too much strain on her body.

Of course, she had the ability to absorb recoil.

But even with the ability to absorb all recoil, there were limits, and the shotgun’s power was slightly above those limits.

According to the Dwarven craftsman, if judging by power alone, it shouldn’t be classified as a personal firearm.

– “Usually, weapons with this caliber and power are mounted or installed somewhere, miss.”

As the Dwarf had warned, Sonia’s hand trembled slightly after firing once.

But…

‘I can handle it.’

Her muscles were slightly shocked, but not enough to crack bones.

Considering her recovery ability, it was a manageable level of power.

‘I might not be able to snipe for a while, but…’

She could still pull this trigger all the way.

She immediately approached the screamer.

No longer confident in her overwhelming defense, the screamer was no longer the predator.

Their roles had reversed.

The screamer became the prey, and Sonia the hunter.

Of course, Sonia wouldn’t fare well if caught by the screamer.

But even with the shotgun’s short range, it was still longer than a person’s arm.

Unless she could move at an unimaginable speed like Amon or extend her arms like the man fighting Amon, Sonia had the absolute advantage.

Knowing this well, the screamer unleashed a massive amount of Divine Power.

With it, the screamer’s speed increased. Her strength probably increased as well.

But even that was within Sonia’s ability to counter.

She took out green and blue ampules from her thigh and injected them into her left arm.

As her physical abilities improved overall, her neural processing accelerated as well.

‘Five-minute time limit.’

Preparing herself for the headache that would follow, Sonia responded to the screamer.

The screamer’s speed had definitely increased, but not as much as Amon’s.

Sonia recalled the priorities Amon had repeatedly emphasized as she targeted the screamer.

First, she dealt with the thighs to limit mobility, then the arms that protected the head.

Finally, as she aimed the barrel at the kneeling screamer’s head, the screamer looked at Sonia and chuckled.

“I wasn’t sure before we fought, but now I’m certain. You’ve returned, haven’t you?”

“… What are you talking about?”

“Don’t play dumb. After what happened to you at the Holy City, you still serve the Goddess? At this point, it’s not deep faith—it’s brain damage.”

“…”

Sonia’s lips tightened.

The screamer continued, as if she’d hit the jackpot.

“Instead of clinging to a god who doesn’t answer, why not join us?”

“Weren’t you just saying you’d kill me? Now you’re begging?”

“Yes.”

The screamer admitted it cleanly, as if pride wouldn’t save her life.

But Sonia’s response remained cold.

“I think I know who you’re talking about, but you’ve got the wrong person.”

“What?”

“Believe it or not, I’m quite grateful to the Goddess.”

Sonia slightly lifted her combat nun outfit to show her bare leg.

The screamer’s eyes widened at the sight of the smooth leg.

“No way… that whore…! Acting all pure…”

Bang!

Sonia pulled the trigger without hesitation. The screamer’s headless body fell forward.

She muttered toward the unseeing corpse.

“Only I get to insult that woman.”

After dealing with the screamer, Sonia adjusted her clothes and looked toward Amon.

Amon’s battle was also coming to an end.

“For my mother!!!”

Amon was disabling the man by cutting off his limbs.

After an intense battle, he finally cut off the right arm, leaving only the torso, and grabbed the man’s hair, shouting:

“I told you. You’ll be thrown into the furnace fire.”

By “furnace fire,” he meant a smelting furnace.

Amon placed Balam’s torso aside and contacted the car’s AI.

Before the car arrived, Balam spat blood and rambled:

“What an ignorant fool… can’t even use Mystic Power properly…”

“It’s Divine Power. Get it right.”

“No matter how much you call out to that woman, she won’t answer. It’s all in vain, you idiot.”

Crack.

A vein bulged on Amon’s forehead.

But as if mocking this, Balam bit into a poison molar.

Before Sonia could cast a detoxification spell, Balam smiled widely.

“See you in hell, Judas.”

With those words, Balam closed his eyes.

Silence fell between them.

The silence was broken by Balam’s foolish utterance.

“Huh? Why?”

Before the confused Balam, Amon pulled out a spherical object.

It was an EMP bomb.

“I carried this just in case, but I never dreamed it would be this useful.”

It was a bomb he prepared after noticing that attackers from Neville Pharmaceuticals would electrocute their brains if they failed to commit suicide with poison.

Unfortunately, Kathy had said that no useful information could be obtained even after setting off an EMP, so there had been no occasion to use it.

In fact, Kathy had made this statement because she hadn’t been using future vision since that day, but Amon kept it just in case.

A cold bead of sweat ran down Balam’s forehead.

“This can’t be…”

“Death is not an escape, heretic.”

Amon gagged Balam.

With a desperate scream, Balam was dragged away by Amon.

***

The scene changed to somewhere in Europe.

In a dark room, holograms of twelve people appeared.

Each wore masks and robes, with voice filters that made it impossible to determine even their gender.

But they had one thing in common: each had an inverted pentagram marked somewhere on their body.

The meeting of the mysterious group began.

“Balam and Jagan have been taken down.”

The figure with a pentagram on the shoulder spoke.

The reactions of the remaining eleven varied.

Shock, anger, indifference.

Amidst the various reactions, the figure who started speaking raised a hand to silence the group.

“This is footage created from what Naberius witnessed.”

With a gesture, a video played in the view of all twelve.

The video showed Amon and Balam fighting from a third-person perspective.

Watching the two fight, a figure with a magic circle on their head muttered.

“That’s no less than a beast.”

Another figure agreed.

“Is my vision failing? He seems to be using only basic Mystic Power abilities?”

“You’re seeing correctly. He’s only using physical enhancement.”

“Is that even possible? The enhancement level is strange, and the duration is even stranger!”

“Theoretically, it’s possible.”

“What is he, an ocean of Mystic Power?”

“Not an ocean, but perhaps a nuclear power plant.”

Several figures sighed.

Undoubtedly a blessed being, they said.

One of them muttered.

“I’d prefer to make him an ally if possible.”

“Enough. After seeing this, it seems impossible.”

The man who started the meeting forwarded the video.

It showed Amon hanging Balam’s torso on a hook and inserting him into a smelting furnace.

Balam screamed.

But Amon was using those screams as the basis for his prayer.

[Mother, You commanded that those who worship idols should be thrown into the furnace with their idols. In service to Your word, I carry this out.]

[I’m sorry! I’ll tell you anything! I’ll even tell you about my organization, just please spare me!]

[You commanded us to hate sin but not the sinner, so I offer this prayer of forgiveness for this man.]

[Please! If you’re going to forgive me, just kill me cleanly!!]

[I send this prodigal son back to Your side. I place him in Your hands, so that You may judge whether he is Your son by his sins.]

[Listen to me, you crazy bastard!!!!]

Balam screamed in agony as his flesh burned.

What was more horrifying was that Amon didn’t fully immerse him in the furnace.

Instead, he suspended him just above it, roasting him with the heat.

Amon didn’t stop praying until Balam burned to death.

One of the robed figures watching this muttered to what appeared to be their subordinate.

“If you ask me, that man seems like Satan himself.”

“At least to me, sir, he doesn’t seem human.”

All the robed figures present agreed.

The proposal to recruit Amon as an ally was implicitly abandoned.

“Well, Orobas is going to have a hard time.”

The figure who played the video muttered this and continued the meeting.

The meeting topic was “Large-Scale Corruption Plan for the European Region.”