Chapter 625: The Decisive Battle
“Lady Zero, Margie is wearing out.”
Vanilla’s voice held a thread of genuine fear.
“Hold on.”
Underground, Zero watched the battle through the dome of the Magic Ark. A beam of diffuse light came through the earth overhead, and in it she could read the shape of what was happening: the God’s Punishment Warriors were advancing along the captured trenches, grinding forward through the enemy’s position—but slowing. Every chokepoint was defended. Every passage through a transverse groove held a blocking position. Her warriors would take the trench and find the next trench waiting, and the one after that, and the fire from the towers at the rear of the line never wavered.
The third trench was the limit. She could feel it.
Damn it. She had prepared for this. She had prepared carefully. But she had still underestimated the snow powder weapons.
The messengers’ mission had been mostly theater—a pretext to establish Roland’s location. It didn’t matter that he refused to meet them. The letters written in the Pope’s name had served their true function: each sheet of paper had been dusted with an alchemical powder, a product of the Pivotal Secret Authority, which emitted a trace odor undetectable to ordinary senses. Every person who handled the letters absorbed the compound through their skin. Water wouldn’t wash it off. The smell accumulated with each contact, and the one who touched the letters most—who opened them, read them, read them again—would carry the strongest concentration.
She had been confident Roland would read every letter himself. No ruler ignores revelations about the four-hundred-year cycle and the demon threat. Others might have handled the envelopes briefly, but only Roland would have spent hours with the pages.
Vanilla could detect scents that defied ordinary imagination. She described blood from a month-old wound as still carrying a faint stench; she could identify animals by their breeding-season musk at distance. Roland was a thousand steps away, and Vanilla could find him as precisely as a compass finds north.
The total cost of this operation staggered her when she totaled it. The God’s Punishment Army, the Judgement Army, the lesser pure witches she had fed deliberately into the enemy’s fire—all of it was expenditure. She had gambled on Blackveil’s ability to end the battle in a single moment. Sacrificing everything else to deliver Blackveil to within range of Roland’s position had seemed worth the price.
But Margie’s strength was failing. The Magic Ark was beginning to crack—fissures in the walls, the dome growing dim. The field above was not where Zero had intended to surface.
No other choice.
“Go up! Proceed as planned!”
Margie exhaled and wrestled the ark toward the surface. The moment it broke through the earth, her magic collapsed completely. Smoke and blood and the incessant hammering of gunfire flooded in. The ark’s walls dissolved.
Blackveil turned and looked at Zero once—a long, steady look—before stepping over the edge of the square pit left behind.
That was the last service she would render the church, and they both knew it.
The battlefield stilled for a heartbeat. Then it resumed, as if the invisible hand that had paused it had simply let go.
“Isabella—activate ‘Infinite’!”
Several shots rang out behind her. Blackveil fell back into the pit like a leaf torn from a branch.
Isabella’s jaw was tight. She took the sigil in both hands.
The magic stone went dark—not the ordinary darkness of an inert object, but a consuming blackness that swallowed the ambient light around it. Under Isabella’s ability, an invisible ripple expanded outward across the battlefield. Its frequency was calibrated precisely opposite to the God’s Stone Roland wore. The stone’s protective field—the null-zone that made magic harmless to whoever it touched—inverted, vanished, became nothing.
Zero became light. She was already moving before Isabella finished.
From above the pit, the battlefield resolved into a picture she had rehearsed in her mind a hundred times: soldiers in every trench, shock and fear on their faces; the Extraordinary moving at full speed; the Judgement Army charging forward in its berserk momentum. Then the towers’ fire resumed, and the picture returned to noise and carnage.
There—the gray-haired prince, a thousand steps away on the command platform.
God’s blessing was in the closing distance—she was certain of it.
In Nightingale’s world of black and white, the magic of the approaching figure blazed like a cyclone.
She understood immediately. This was the last strike—the deepest card the church had saved. Pure speed, pure purpose, aimed at Roland.
“Protect His Majesty!”
Shavi threw both arms wide. A broad barrier of hardened air materialized across the platform.
Andrea drew the Magical Longbow and loosed an arrow of concentrated light—bright as magnesium, straight as hatred.
Nightingale grabbed Roland’s arm, already pulling him sideways, knowing the barrier and the arrow would not be enough but needing to create distance, needing every tenth of a second she could find.
The light passed through the arrow. It passed through the barrier. It passed through the Mist.
Nightingale pushed Roland clear and turned into it.
The light went through her too.
It struck Roland.
“No—”
Her voice broke. Roland’s eyes were wide, startled, already unfocused. He swayed. He fell.
Chapter 625: The Decisive Battle
Translator: TransN Editor: TransN
…
“Lady Zero, Margie appears to be worn out.”
Vanilla turned around and said with an anxious look.
“Hold on.”
Zero watched overhead with a grim expression. Although she was underground, she found a beam of light shone on the dome. The God’s Punishment Army was moving forwards along the rampant trenches, encroaching on the enemy’s position gradually. They, obviously, progressed slower and slower.
They could only choose to attack in a roundabout manner as each strategic pass was heavily-guarded. Therefore, they would be inevitably shot down by the snow powder weapons while throwing the spears. The gap between trenches could only be filled with the bodies of the soldiers, and the blue blood overflowed in the pit bottom.
It was even harder to march atop the ground.
Although the God’s Punishment Warriors could leap over the wire entanglements which could not be destroyed, they would be likely exposed to the enemy’s firepower. The flame was blazing all the way, in particular, in four towers in the rear of the defensive lines, which blazed as if it would kill people at any time.
The third trench would probably be the ultimate limit that the God’s Punishment Warriors could march to.
Dame it! She did not ever expect that things would actually come to such a deadlock.
She thought that she had prepared well for the arrival of this day,
Such as locating the accurate position of where Roland Wimbledon was.
The mission of the messengers was nothing more than a pretext to meet Roland, but it did not matter if they did not meet him. The letter written in the name of the pope revealed the secrets of the church and the Battle of Divine Will. People would not take it seriously when hearing such impossible information, but it would be much more convincing if the letter was written in the name of the pope.
Besides, what she wrote was true. Roland could still not make out her real intentions from the letter, even though he had witches skilled at handwriting recognition.
A special powder was daubed on the letter. It was an alchemic product developed by Pivotal Secret Authority that emitted a smell that ordinary people could not detect. Each time a person touched the letter, the smell would accumulate and be imbibed into the skin, making it hard to remove, even with water.
Zero firmly believed that the letter would be delivered to Roland as no rulers would not be interested in these kinds of shocking secrets. Other people had no chances to read the letter and so in this case, Roland would have the strongest smell on his body. Although there were no differences between Roland and other people, Vanilla could easily sniff it out by virtue of the smell.
Vanilla could sniff out various unimaginable smells when she cast her ability. In her opinion, bloodstains after a month would still emit a faint stench and there would be a strange odor on furs when animals were in the rut.
At the moment, Roland was just a thousand steps away from them.
Zero even took all costs to use the God’s Punishment Army and Judgement Army to divert the attention of the Graycastle’s defensive line. Some Pure Witches of less importance even became the sacrificial lambs in consideration that there were witches who might perceive magic power in Roland’s Camp. However, she, the evil backstage, was hiding underground and moving between the rocks by means of Margie’s Magic Ark.
Blackveil was the real game-changer to win this war.
As one of three pure witches of the highest rank in Holy City, valued by His Holiness O’Brien, her ability was extremely terrible for common people who had no defensive abilities. The people that had seen her would feel the inner feeling of dread when she was young. Her power was further strengthened when she was in adulthood. The strong sense of fear would occupy people’s minds as long as they saw her eyes, and thus they would kill themselves or hurt people around due to their maniac surmises.
At the same time, the derivative ability was also powerful after Blackveil’s awakening. The simple eye-to-eye contact could cause not only fear but also unclear illusions. Although her ability could only impact one person at a time, it would also play a vital role at a critical juncture. That was also why Archbishop Tayfun did not doubt the pope’s orders.
At the gaze of the Eyes of Death, Zero took it for granted that Roland’s troops would be defeated instantly.
Everything seemed to go smoothly, and Zero did not realize that she had the wrong idea until the war begun.
She did not expect that she had still underestimated the power of snow powder weapons.
Dense smoke and fire enveloped the mountain pass. With the help of snow powder weapons, Roland launched attacks from 5 kilometers away, and the troops of the church were heavily hit before touching the defensive lines.
She changed the battle tactics at once to attack the position but found that the God’s Punishment Army was also in difficulty.
The seemingly shallow trenches were much harder to seize than the towering walls. The warriors wrested the transverse trenches from the flying bullets. However, they had never expected that the enemies did not care about the loss of the battle line and just retreated in order. They left the pass to the God’s Punishment Army that had suffered a heavy cost and then continued to intercept them, relying on the following passes. During this period of time, Zero even saw an extraordinary witch.
Margie’s Magic Ark could not be operated all the way to her target as her magic power had declined along with the combat capability of the God’s Punishment Army. However, the current situation was still a far cry from her expectation.
Isabella perceived that less than half of enemies were wearing God’s Stones. Under such circumstances, she had to gather them together if she wanted more people to see her. The God’s Punishment Army was now marching forwards to the third entrenchment and the enemies were too sparse in the rest of entrenchments.
Once Blackveil was exposed to the enemies, she could only have a limited time to cast her power. How many enemies would notice her in an instant? She would be hit by the snow powder weapon before they came back to their minds.
“Your Holiness, the ark… will be torn apart soon…” Huge sweat had emerged from Margie’s face, her voice slightly trembling. Obviously, the excessive use of her magic power was a heavy burden on her. At the same time, there were cracks in the walls and the dome became dim. Zero realized that she had to make a choice.
Or rather, she had no other choice at all.
“Go up! Take action as scheduled!”
Margie took a breath and started to operate the ark to draw close to the ground. In a second the ark rushed out of the earth’s surface, her magic power dissipated at once. A pungent smoke taste, boring and continuous roars along with a bloody smell, suddenly filled all around.
Blackveil turned around and glanced at Zero profoundly, and then leaped over the square-shaped pit left by the ark.
Foreseeably, it was the last time that she would serve the church.
The battlefield quietened down unexpectedly as if an invisible giant hand nipped people’s throats.
“Isabella! Start using ‘Infinite’!” Zero ordered.
After several ringing peals, a bunch of bloody flowers appeared on the back of Blackveil, and then she dropped down into the pit like a rootless fallen leaf.
Grinding her teeth, Isabella took the sigil in her hands.
The black and bright magic stone turned dark and gloomy at once as if it absorbed the sunshine around. Under the function of ‘Infinite’, an invisible ripple spread out and extended all over the battlefield. The amplitude of the fluctuation of the ripple was exactly the same as the God’s Stone Roland wore but in an opposite direction. Under the influence of the ripple, the black hole formed by the God’s Stone of premium quality vanished into the air.
Almost at the same time, Zero magically changed into a beam of light and flew towards the King of the Kingdom of Graycastle a thousand steps afar.
In a second flying out of the pit, she overlooked the whole battlefield from the sky.
There were hundreds of soldiers, who were also common people, lying down in the trenches,
Looks of shock and panic on their faces.
The Extraordinary was galloping fast.
While the Judgement Army was charging forward.
Everything seemed to come to a standstill until the lethal fire on the tower appeared again. And the whole battlefield returned to its normality. The yell of fighting, howls and explosive sounds mixed together, forming a thrilling ode.
She saw the prince with gray hair and felt the smiles from God upon her as she got closer and closer to the platform.
…
Nightingale witnessed the quirky change. In the misty world of white and black colors, the magic power of the beam of light was extremely expressive, like a mass of blurry cyclones coming towards the rear of their position at a tremendous speed.
She knew that it was the last and the most critical strike that the pure witch had launched.
“Protect His Majesty!”
Shavi stretched her hands to prop up a wide magic barrier, large enough to cover the whole platform.
Andrea summoned the Magical Longbow to shoot at the beam of light with arrows of light, bright as the sun.
In a bid to withdraw, Nightingale grabbed Roland who had lost the protection of the God’s Stone as she had realized that the beam of light was targeted at His Majesty, Roland.
But it indeed moved too fast.
Instantly, the beam of light passed through the arrow of light and the magic barrier and easily caught up with Nightingale and Roland, even the Mist could not block its tracking.
Nightingale pushed Roland away without any hesitations and turned around to crash straight into the beam of light.
However, all of her efforts did not work. It all happened in a split second. The beam of light pierced through her body and went into the body of Roland.
“No…” Nightingale cried out, heartbroken.
With his eyes widened, Roland’s body shook hopelessly and fell backward feebly.