Ch.93Great Chaos (10)

Carisia did not clearly explain the future she had witnessed.

In her vision, Ortes had already defeated the silver giant and was about to take its heart. But at that moment, the Ten Towers dispatched a second Elder.

In truth, she couldn’t even tell if it would end with just two. While Ortes was clashing with the Elder who was destroying the ground, the spatial rift still rippled, suggesting there was “more” to come.

Carisia looked up at the sky. Judging by the angle of the stars fixed in the celestial sphere, this would happen just a few hours from now.

“What about the meeting with our partners?”

“We originally agreed they would withdraw appropriately once the job was done. If they have any sense, they’ll recognize when the situation is resolved and retreat.”

Ortes thought that the priests of the Divine Glory Order might have already retreated.

The second gate opened by Argyrion had opened quite quickly despite Talo’s barrier acting as an obstacle. It was noticeably slower than the first gate, but still fast considering they had to bypass a barrier cast directly by an Elder of the Ten Towers.

Perhaps the angels were skilled enough to easily break through the barrier. But there was a more logical explanation.

The barrier was already compromised through the Saint’s Mark of Pyraios, making it easier to breach.

When someone of an Elder’s caliber personally takes action, the right move is to retreat as quickly as possible, even if it’s somewhat dangerous. Ortes set aside his slight disappointment with the Order and said to Carisia:

“Boss, did you happen to bring any spare clothes? Between the blood and sweat, these are quite unwearable.”

“Do you think I would?”

Wouldn’t she? Given Carisia’s personality, she seemed like someone who would arrive prepared for every contingency no matter how busy she was.

Ortes moved as quickly as his body would allow.

The corpse of the silver giant, now devoid of its brilliant radiance. The angels scattered in falls across it. Finally, the black cliff face that seemed to bear witness to this blasphemous battlefield.

Leaving all traces of the struggle behind, Ortes eventually disappeared beyond the horizon.

***

As Ortes had surmised, the priests of the Divine Glory Order urgently evacuated from the scene. Demos opposed until the very end, trying to send away the other Enyalios priests while remaining behind himself.

But even he had to heed Hyakin’s persuasion.

That outside, Argyrion’s angels and a Ten Towers mage were clashing. That Ortes was instigating the fight from behind them and was positioned to retreat soon, so there was no need to worry.

“As High Bishop, you have a duty to protect the Order’s priests. In an unstable emergency spatial transfer, anything could happen. Go and look after your brothers.”

“…”

Demos could not ignore his responsibility.

Hyakin, as a priest of Phoibos, remained until the end to inform everyone of the “safest” timing for spatial transfer.

‘If only Prodito were here.’

Prodito, who had bestowed the Saint’s Mark of Pyraios upon everyone, did not participate in this reclamation of the Grand Temple. He was carrying out a secret mission from the Pope.

Thus, only the elderly Hyakin remained in the depths of Pluton until the end.

Of course, there was one more person.

Core. The Priestess of Pluton.

She examined the outside scenery with trembling eyes. No one else could see the direction of the battle surrounding the Grand Temple more accurately than she could.

The murderous combat ability of the one who called himself Ortes was not what was surprising.

What was truly astonishing was the absurd magic demonstrated by Ortes, who had so strongly denied any connection to the vanished mage that he wouldn’t even mention it.

When the silver giant’s cannons opened wide, about to pour fire upon Ortes, suddenly all projectiles ceased functioning.

A scene that felt like a miracle performed by some deity. But Core instinctively knew this was not an ability that could be adorned with such noble words as “miracle.”

What else could so simply nullify magic cast by a Ten Towers mage except the power of the “vanished mage”?

‘With such ability, yet claiming no connection to that mage…?’

It was an absurd contradiction. Surely he wasn’t planning to claim this was some kind of Saint’s Mark or Holy Spirit technique?

What Saint’s Mark in the world could intervene in the very activation and completion of magic to nullify it? Perhaps the Holy Spirit bestowed by the Primordial Deity, the embodiment of the world’s providence, might be capable of such feats.

After all, the powers of the Primordial Deity who manipulated time and space remained mysterious even to the Divine Glory Order.

But as far as Core knew, only one person could wield such powers of the Primordial Deity.

Suddenly, Core caught sight of Ortes opening his mouth to speak. The scene without his usual smile appeared quite discordant.

‘A conversation?’

Conversation in solitude is typically considered a precursor to madness. But Core didn’t think Ortes was that kind of deranged person.

Ortes was looking somewhere far away. As if someone was beyond there. After expressing some emotion, his expression changed. His usual faint smile returned. Somehow, it looked like resignation.

And so he moved toward the direction he had been looking.

It was like a scene of someone departing after being summoned.

Core felt a terrible fear at the realization that something existed that could command Ortes.

Who else could command a fragment of the vanished mage?

Only the vanished mage himself.

While Core gasped in terrible fear, Ortes was crossing the black cliff. Since the place where Carisia had been watching him was in the opposite direction from where he had fought Talo, this was unavoidable.

Climbing the cliff, then walking across the rocks. Ortes’s blood dripped one or two drops at a time into Pluton’s Grand Temple.

By the time Ortes disappeared from the temple’s domain, his blood had seeped into the temple’s core.

Gooooo—!

The temple shook with a strange resonant sound. Core felt the pulsation of immense divine power flowing through the representation that resonated with her.

“What is this…?”

The temple suddenly seemed to return to the ancient mythic age. The temple’s sacred marks, dormant for centuries, regained their light and bestowed brilliant power.

Core felt that Pluton’s Grand Temple was now alive and moving. She instinctively knew she could control this massive rock formation as easily as her own limbs, perhaps even more easily.

Here was the answer to how this temple could become the final stronghold against the Demon King.

Just as Pluton roamed the world without revealing himself to any living being through his transparent helmet, Pluton’s Grand Temple could also move its dwelling place.

All the sacred artifacts and the temple itself, which had been waiting to awaken in this massive temple, were now in the Order’s hands.

Core felt contradictory emotions of joy and sorrow simultaneously.

For the sacred radiance of the artifacts would ultimately fade in the Pope’s hands.

***

Pluton’s Grand Temple vanished. The black cliff itself stretched across the earth like a massive shadow, then disappeared completely.

An enormous amount of divine power followed this miraculous event. Blasphemia was the first to know.

Blasphemia reported this to the Ten Towers, and the Ten Towers realized that the location where the divine power wave was emitted was the same place from which a distress signal from the Demon King’s legacy had come.

Something terrifying had happened.

The Ten Towers tore through space and urgently dispatched Elders. What on earth had happened there?

And they witnessed Talo’s corpse. In the innermost part of the faded giant, Talo’s brain chip was missing.

The auxiliary computational brain remained, but it was not originally a device for memory. They could only trace the battle pattern through log analysis of what magic had been used.

And around it were angels. Corpses with extra-dimensional wavelengths.

Tinged with a silver color somewhat different from the silver of the Silver Iron Tower, they were undoubtedly Argyrion.

The Ten Towers thought:

‘Was Argyrion strong enough to defeat an Elder of the Ten Towers with just a platoon-sized force?’

‘What were the divine power waves and the signal mentioning the Demon King? Could it be that what they call their cause is…?’

***

Argyrion thought:

As soon as contact was lost with the dispatched Argyrion agents, Argyrion urgently sent new agents to the scene.

The scene was shocking. The sight of comrades who had used the still incomplete art of angelization. Their proud wings were crushed and crumpled, pitifully embedded in the ground.

But what was even more shocking was another corpse beside their comrades’ remains. It was in the form of a giant.

The immense magical power emanating from the mages looking down at the giant from the air. They were undoubtedly Elders of the Ten Towers.

So.

‘Our agents defeated an Elder…!’

“Argyrion is strong!” a junior agent recited with pride, but a senior stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

He quietly put a finger to his lips. Although they were somewhat distant from the scene, the Ten Towers Elders might use some bizarre means to detect them.

The right thing to do was to leave the place as quickly as possible and report to headquarters.

‘Our agents couldn’t possibly be as strong as my junior believes.’

This was an objective assessment. Even accounting for the magical enhancement from angelization, only the executive members could match an Elder of the Ten Towers.

Nevertheless, the fact that a Ten Towers Elder was defeated like this meant…

‘It’s not that we’ve grown stronger, but that the Ten Towers has weakened!’

Not the catalog specs of magical quantity that increase with time, but the mental elements that can only be honed through life-or-death combat.

The Elders, who had wielded absolute authority for at least decades while reigning at the top of the towers, might have strong magic but had forgotten how to wield that power.

‘We must make the most of this situation before they shed their complacency and regain their mental sharpness.’

The misunderstanding spread like a plague.

Confusion, great confusion, had arrived.