1103 Judgment Part 1 (1/2)
The great head inquisitor pulled out a blank divine spell scroll and wrote on it with divine power: demons destroyed the village and the wheat fields were consumed by a great fire. The defilers will invoke the wrath of god and when divine punishment is visited upon us, the world will rise again from the ashes.
The blank scroll shone with pure divine light when the writing was done. The spell was sealed into the scroll, a level eleven Divine Punishment. It came into being as the great head inquisitor distorted truth and falsehood.
The demons ran on the street. They ran into the deeper reaches on Titan. Merchants, mercenaries, and even patrolling armies went out of their way. The demons never bothered attacking. Both sides were reluctant to fight.
The demons felt rather exhausted after moving for over 300 miles, and only then did Nailisi slowed down.
Saleen turned around and peered back. The holy masters came up again, keeping a distance of 15 miles.
The sensory connection between Nailisi and Saleen was severed. She let the two supreme demons lead the way while she returned to Saleen's side, saying in a rather frustrated tone, ”Master, the people behind wouldn't give a damn if we end up slaughtering the city, no?”
”They would. The village we passed earlier — they burned it down,” Saleen's voice was rather eerie. It was rare for mages to be truly angered. It was especially rare for them to be angered on behalf of common folk.
Nailisi felt nothing peculiar. ”Master, don't tell me that you're thinking that we doomed the villagers.”
Saleen almost laughed. Although he held that urge in, he actually felt better.
Responsibilities were not simply shouldered. Any resistors were all sinful according to the reasoning of the Holy See, but if one were to simply submit and roll over, then they had spared others of further suffering. Just what kind of bulls**t is this?
It was unthinkable for Saleen to feel dejected over the great head inquisitor slaughtering the entire village, for he had been strong enough to shoulder the deaths of over a million in Ironwall City.
However, if they continued what they were doing, they would end up pulling more innocent people into their fight, and it would not change how their pursuers acted.
”Nicholas, any ideas how to go about it?” Saleen asked the old holy master.
Nicholas thought for a bit. ”My liege, if we want to provoke them into attacking, we need to head back to the mountains. We'll capture a few holy masters in the next town or city and purify them using nature divine spells in the mountains. I don't think that will sit well with them.”
”Nature divine spells eh, I'm not sure I know how to use them. Don, can you use them?”
Don replied with his unique voice, ”so long as Your Highness gives me enough of the nature goddess' divine power, it'd be quite a simple task to someone who has no way of defending themselves.”
”What about the power of faith then?”
”Even better. I know several nature divine spells. If Your Highness has chants, prose, or runes of nature divine spells, we can have people within tens of miles feel it. There is at least one level ten holy master among the ones on our tail. Well then, Your Highness, do you still want to provoke them?”
”Indeed. Do whatever you can.” Saleen waved and let the demons continue moving forward. He told Nailisi to take a detour around the next town and head for larger cities.
There were many destroyed cities in Titan after the war. While they were in a central region near the north, things still looked rather desolate. There were fewer than half of the villages that had been around. Most peasants were taken away to the south by the nobles.
The demons slowed down and walked for tens of miles. They continued after resting for a bit. Don was envious of the demons' constitution. He asked Saleen while riding on a Nightmare, ”Your Highness, could the demons be made a part of the knights corps of Nature Faith?”
”Demons don't do religions,” Saleen put up his Water Shield. While he was riding the Nightmare, the buffers he had on him were never dispelled.
”It's totally fine that they don't have faith. The knights corps need no such thing after all. Your Highness, if you need an organization like the Tribunal, I can help you set one up.”
”I don't need a Tribunal. The knights corps will do,” Saleen rejected Don's request. He had immense hatred of the Tribunal after all.
Don sighed in relief. He was testing Saleen. If he had to establish a Tribunal, he'd have been compelled to figure out ways to kill Saleen before the thousand-year contract between them was fulfilled to destroy the Nature Faith.
The team took a detour around the town and spent half of the night resting. They departed again around midnight, heading for their target. It was a newly established mid-sized city with a population nearing 100,000.
It had been an ancient city of Titan that was destroyed in the war. Most of the residents moved away. With only several thousand left, life in the new city looked rather desolate.
While the Holy See did their best to get the place prosperous again, the war between Kroraina and Qin robbed the path of its business opportunities. With the absence of merchants, development of the city stalled.
The Holy See perfected their ways of keeping the peasants under control, but they had little to deal with merchants. There were many factors, such as the existence of the Sikeqinya Empire and Qin merchants making a point to never trade in regions under Holy See control, among others.