Chapter 483: The Distance to God (Part I)
“Do you want to… initiate an attack?” Isabella froze.
“We are desperately short on time,” Zero said, her voice unhurried. “I have never dreamed of wiping out the demons entirely. The Holy Book says that only when the Bloody Moon arrives and the Gates of Hell open can the demons raise a black spire. The spire is not built—it grows.”
“Are you saying those stones are alive?”
“This information exists only in the personal notes of the Union’s Three Chiefs.” Zero settled her hands flat against the map. “The demons’ expansion depends on the black spire’s capacity to produce Red Mist. Currently, spires take root wherever God’s Stone mineral veins are densest—and their range will keep widening. In the early days of the Second Battle of Divine Will, an Extraordinary once led a division underground, close enough to smell the Red Mist. What they found stopped them cold: an enormous creature writhing beneath the spire, its body larger than the Taquila tower itself.” She paused. “It was decomposing God’s Stone and converting it into black crystals—the source of the Mist. Given that the demons already possessed Chaos Beasts capable of turning God’s Stones into Magic Stones, the ability was not hard to understand.”
Isabella’s mouth worked for a moment before she spoke. “That’s disgusting.”
“Unfortunately, once a spire forms, small surprise attacks become useless. Our only real option is a direct assault. I don’t know how long it takes for decomposed God’s Stone to push up through the earth, but it doesn’t happen overnight. During that window, the demons can only draw Red Mist from reserves—their strength will be limited. We need an army large enough and mad enough to cut a path through them, so the God’s Punishment Army can reach the creature underground.” Zero’s voice carried absolute conviction. “If fortune holds, we buy ourselves another four hundred years.”
Isabella studied the map in silence. “The crazed soldiers are not God’s Punishment Warriors. The pills can harden their resolve, but not past the point of genuine terror. Against something truly monstrous, even millions of men may break—and millions of men fleeing will crush us all.”
“Which is why the crazed army must be built from the church’s lower-tier believers, with the Judgment Army at its core.” Zero returned to the window, her back to Isabella. “And to raise that many believers, we must first unite the Four Kingdoms.”
“What are our chances?”
“Thirty percent? Fifty?” Zero gave the question a half-shrug. “How can anyone calculate odds against an enemy we have never faced, whose records are four centuries old? Don’t forget what I said—if fortune holds.”
That was precisely what made it exhilarating. She was placing every chip she had on a single cast—the fate of all humankind staked on one battle against crushing odds. An unexpected triumph there would taste sweeter for the weight of what was risked.
The continuation of mankind depends on their courage, wisdom, faith, and sacrifice in this hour. She let the thought settle like a stone in still water. This is what God hopes to witness. Cowards cannot earn his smile.
“I hope you’re right.” Isabella frowned. “I find myself more curious now.”
“Curious about what?”
“If Prince Roland of the Kingdom of Graycastle were standing here—what would he do?”
Zero’s brows drew together. “Why? Do you believe he could best me?”
“Bishop Tayfun has heard nothing from the Pure Witch he sent to the Western Region—as if she simply vanished. The one you assigned to investigate. Besides her, there’s Aphra from King’s City, the Bishop candidate Mira, the church in Longsong Stronghold…” Isabella let the silence gather. “Don’t you think that since we turned our attention to the Four Kingdoms, we have never suffered so many losses before? It is as if wherever we touch the Western Region, we bleed. As if God is protecting him.”
“Enough.” Zero’s fist struck the table. “You know nothing about God.”
Isabella blinked. “I was only joking. Since when did you care so much about God?”
Zero forced her anger down through will alone. “He is merely a mortal. Mortals depend on calculation and accumulated knowledge—all of which will become part of me in time. Whatever methods he possesses against the demons, the Union will surpass them.” She turned and held Isabella’s gaze. “When the church’s armies march into the Kingdom of Graycastle, you will see clearly who carries God’s blessing.”
As Isabella left the library, she said quietly, almost to herself: “You are becoming more and more like a… Pope.”
Zero sat beside the table after she left, her emotions moving in slow, unfamiliar currents—something she had not felt in two hundred years of life.
She knew what Isabella meant. But she could not explain herself. No matter who took the papacy, no matter what convictions they held beforehand, the moment they stepped into the Prayer Room, something in them changed—something beyond prediction. She had witnessed it in predecessor after predecessor and had not understood it until she stood in that room herself.
God… really exists.
Zero realized her thoughts had been scattered beyond recovery. She closed the book and walked upward through the library, toward the highest point of the Pivotal Secret Temple—the Prayer Room.
She pressed open the hidden door built into the bookshelf, climbed a narrow stone staircase, and entered a windowless room barely large enough to stand in. The ceiling was cone-shaped and studded with Magic Stones that cast a faint blue light. In that thin illumination she could see the four walls and the hard floor. There was nothing else. It was difficult to believe that this stuffy, cramped space was the closest any living person could come to God.
Zero closed her eyes and felt for his summoning.
The darkness behind her eyelids began to shift—something entered her mind and unfolded a vision there, something she knew was not imagination. Not even her soul, which had absorbed hundreds of lives and all their memories, could have conjured what she now saw.
As the twisting lines stilled, five vast paintings materialized in an immeasurable space. One hung above her in a great ring; the other four arranged themselves in a cross around her, symmetrical and absolute.
A sign from God.
Watching from within was a sensation unlike anything in the waking world. Zero understood that the moment she opened her eyes this would vanish—so she held herself still and let her consciousness move through each painting, feeling herself drawn inside as her focus settled.
The great ring-shaped painting above was undoubtedly God himself.
A dark world without visible boundary. At its center, a giant red sphere composed entirely of magic power, its surface churning in slow, measureless swirls. Even the act of looking at it conveyed a sense of infinite force. Half of it appeared severed—cut away or swallowed by the surrounding dark—so that only a hemisphere remained visible.
The more closely Zero studied it, the more certain her judgment became.
It was simply too immense for words.
She was nothing beside this sphere. The world beneath her feet was dwarfed by it; the swirling magic on its surface spanned wider than any sea, and its light outshone noon at midsummer. Besides God—who else could hold such power?
This was the Bloody Moon from the Holy Book. Viewed from the side, the half-sphere truly did not resemble a full moon at all.
She had tried to pray to it once. It had not answered. It floated in the darkness with absolute patience, as though it were simply waiting to observe how the Battle of Divine Will would end.
That was why Isabella’s words had struck a nerve so raw. This thing bestowed no blessings on anyone. Zero had seen it for herself. In its presence, all of humanity—every life, every dynasty, every ambition—shrank to something negligible.
She turned her attention to the four paintings below.
She had long believed that the battles recurring every four centuries were called the Battle of Divine Will because of what those paintings contained.
The church’s secret histories preserved past Union leaders’ and Popes’ interpretations: most arrived at the same conclusion—the location of the war’s end was hidden somewhere in these four canvases.