Chapter 385: Cause and Effect
“Don’t be so upset, Lord Mayne.” Zero held her hands behind her back and paced slowly around the square. “The church was founded by the Union to begin with. His Holiness only wanted the witches to reclaim what was always theirs. And if you win, you gain everything I’ve accumulated over two hundred years. That’s not nothing.”
Mayne was quiet for a long moment. Letting Zero access the Reflection Church was already strange. Even as O’Brien’s favorite, she was still a Pure Witch — she should never have been given access to the church’s deepest secrets. I should have questioned it sooner.
“If you win,” he said carefully, “where do you intend to lead the church?”
She raised her head. Her answer was without hesitation.
“To victory. Or destruction.” A beat. “Not to the Fjord Islands.”
“What?”
“You think no one noticed?” Her tone carried a thin edge of mockery. “Right before a major battle, you diverted resources to repair ships in the Kingdom of Everwinter’s harbor and hired sailors. Then you sent a large number of scapegoats to the gallows. These are costly actions. Nearly impossible to hide from the church’s eyes.”
She had access to the Pivotal Secret Temple’s intelligence apparatus. Of course she did. His jaw tightened. “That proves nothing. As Pope, it’s my responsibility to think beyond the present battle — to ensure the church’s survival under any outcome.”
“Do you even believe that yourself?” Zero laughed. “The moment you accepted the scepter, you began planning your own escape. You lost your will to win the Battle of Divine Will before it started. Do you honestly think a God capable of measuring such things would approve of you?”
“What approval of God?” The words came out sharper than he intended. “If his approval meant anything, why has humanity suffered defeat after defeat?” He breathed hard, controlled it. “We need the God’s Punishment Army because nothing else can match the demons. Time is limited. Nothing you do changes that.”
“Not just the God’s Punishment Army,” Zero said softly. “The fate of mankind cannot rest in the hands of a few.”
“Are you suggesting we count on witches?” He laughed, cold and short. “Don’t forget it was your kind who failed us four hundred years ago.”
“Witches are also only a small group.” She stopped walking. Her eyes found his and held them, and something in their stillness made the sunlit square feel briefly colder. “This battle will decide the survival of all humanity. Everyone must be part of it — men, women, the elderly, children. All of them honored warriors, fighting the demons together. Otherwise…” She didn’t finish the sentence.
“Absurd. You want to send ordinary people — the ones who scatter at the sight of a demonic beast — against actual demons?” He began to say you must be insane, and then stopped.
She wasn’t joking.
The realization landed in his chest like something heavy dropped from a height.
The only way to give ordinary people the ability to fight would be…
“You want to feed them the Pills of Madness.” He heard how strange the words sounded as he said them. “All of them.”
“One person in the grip of madness can’t match a God’s Punishment Warrior,” Zero said, turning her head to look at him directly. “But what about ten? The Pivotal Secret Area currently has a steady supply of demonic beasts, and it may be possible to develop new formulas. In five years, we could produce three to four million pills. That number, alongside the God’s Punishment Army, gives the Holy City an army of millions of maddened men to send against the demons.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’m insane?” The calm in her voice cracked open. “You’re the one who isn’t taking the Battle of Doomsday seriously!” The sudden volume of it filled the square. “The Union and the church both used small specialist forces against the demons’ full strength — that’s why they failed. No one is exempt from this war. Mortals cannot hide behind the God’s Punishment Army or witches forever. This is a battle that demands everyone, every available body — or we cannot match the demons in the Barbarian Land.”
A Pure Witch raised from birth by the church did not speak this way. This was the voice of a conqueror. Someone who had absorbed not just the memories but the ambitions of a king and a queen, and had spent two hundred years of a remarkably long life assembling her own conclusions about what defeat looked like and what victory required.
The blood left Mayne’s face.
Your Holiness O’Brien. Did you foresee all of this?
“Accepting knowledge is part of changing,” Zero said, quieter now. Her breath had steadied. “Progress comes from the collision of ideas.” She looked at him across the sunlit square with an expression that was almost respectful. “Perhaps we should stop talking and determine who the ruler of the church will be.”
“Don’t bet on winning.” Mayne’s voice came through clenched teeth. “I built this world.”
Red Mist bloomed at his feet and spread.
Zero seemed momentarily surprised. Then her hand went to her throat, and she screamed — a sound that had no human shape behind it, her face warping and curling like orange peels falling away in wet strips, blood everywhere, the shape of her head losing its definition.
“This is the demonic mist stored in the Pivotal Area’s traps. It acts only on witches with active magic power.” Mayne spoke through the red fog spreading from his feet. “If I fill this entire square with it, you’ll die a thousand deaths and never stop suffering.”
The mist around Zero cleared in a sudden gust. She stood whole again, panting, the wounds already gone.
“Of course.” Her voice was rough at the edges. “The new Pope has surprises. If you’d gone straight to the Pivotal Secret Temple’s library first, this battle would have been harder.” She seemed to genuinely mean it. “But that’s what makes the Soul Battlefield interesting.”
A green crystal glinted on her finger — a Stone of Windpower. Mayne assessed it quickly. Its area of influence was limited; if he maintained distance, he could break it with a God’s Stone bolt. But preparation would help. He concentrated, reached into his memory of the conversion process, and produced two Pills of Madness.
Swallowed them.
“Smart,” Zero said, watching him. “Your greatest weakness is close combat. The dual-colored pill increases strength, agility, tolerance for pain. It makes you harder to attack from range.”
He ignored her and began concentrating on creating a God’s Stone of Retaliation. The pills were taking hold — his vision sharpened, his muscles thickened with sudden energy. Once he had the stone, it would be the most effective weapon against her. She would have no shield against it while trying to attack through the Red Mist.
She was building weapons herself. He watched her from the periphery of his focus.
Swords? Long ones, strange in their proportions — blades as broad as her torso, each one encrusted with crystals that caught the light in patterns that seemed almost organized. The design nagged at his memory.
Zero raised the weapons. “In the Illusion Room of the Reflection Church, there is more than one recorded image.”
He frowned.
“Did you forget what His Holiness O’Brien told you?” She spoke carefully, as though placing each word with precision. “Alice’s battle with Natalia was entirely recorded by the Union.” A pause. “Beyond absorbing memories, watching and learning are also abilities of mine.”
The crystals on the blades began to illuminate, one by one, deliberate as a countdown. Gold light spilled from the edges of the swords, burning through the Red Mist, shooting upward in a column toward the simulated sky. And then the sky responded — thousands of threads of golden light raining downward, converging.
“What—” Mayne started.
The answer never came.
The golden light swallowed him entirely, and with it, the world.
The cage touched bottom.
Zero let her discarded clothes fall from her shoulder to the floor of the elevator and stepped out without looking back. Her skin was unmarked — the lash wounds gone as completely as if they had been drawn in chalk and then rubbed away.
The Verdict Warrior standing guard outside lowered his head and extended a prepared golden robe: the vestment of the highest authority in the church.
With attendants on both sides, Zero allowed them to settle the robe across her shoulders. Then she walked, unhurried and without a backward glance, straight toward the Pivotal Secret Temple.