Henry's face went dead white. Clearly the use of that ability placed a heavy burden on his body, but he did not care in the least; his expression only grew more fanatical. Under his direction the arm killed every knight who resisted, one after another, and along with them a great mass of Church of the Supreme God believers and ordinary townsfolk. The deformed arm drained every corpse dry, bundled up a great load of flesh and blood, came back, and shrank down to normal, leaving an unnatural flush burning on Henry's face.
"This is the power of a god! Blasphemers, fear! Tremble! And then accept death!" Henry laughed at the sky, arrogance overflowing.
The other Servitors likewise displayed extraordinary powers and quickly swept the town's resistance away. Then they ordered the ordinary believers to gather up all the survivors, and casting in unison they bound every last one of them with blood-red chains.
Wearing sickly smiles, the Servitors ordered the ordinary believers: "You are fortunate. As blasphemers you ought to wash your sins away with blood; now you have the honor of contributing your bodies to the Supreme God. Give thanks with your lives and your souls!"
The survivors wailed and begged for mercy, all to no avail. The Servitors commanded the ordinary believers: "Begin building the altar."
Under the fangs and claws of the ordinary believers the altar was quickly completed. The Servitors, as if driving livestock, herded batch after batch of townsfolk into the altar and were strict about exactly where each one stood. Once everyone was in place, they snapped the blood-red chains, and every townsfolk dropped flat to the ground against their will.
The blood-red chains linked to one another and finally converged in the deepest part of the altar. With the greatest care, Henry drew a snow-white staff from against his chest; the staff had been refined from an entire female skeleton and gave off a sinister aura.
Henry descended from the sky, carrying the staff in both hands, and walked step by step toward the very center of the altar. Then, without hesitation, he cut off his own hand and used the stump to draw a bizarre pattern in the earth. At last all the Servitors came to the center and knelt around Henry; Henry piously thrust the staff into the ground and withdrew on his knees.
They chanted obscure incantations together, and the townsfolk, with no power to resist, had all their flesh and blood drawn out and carried along the blood-red chains into the staff.
Then an evil but faint will radiated from the tip of the staff, and all the believers excitedly kissed the ground, as though wrapped in some immense glory.
Next a mist formed of flesh and blood spread outward, beginning to feed back into the believers and dyeing everything around red. As the blood mist touched their bodies, Henry's hand healed in an instant, and all the Servitors shuddered as if drugged. Then the blood mist swept toward the ordinary believers, who wore the same expressions, their bodies growing more beastlike still.
Henry reluctantly drained the last thread of blood mist, reverently pulled the staff free, raised it over his head in both hands, and kneeling, moaned, "Praise the great Supreme God! Thank you for granting us power!"
"Praise the great Supreme God! Thank you for granting us power!"
And just at that moment, a pillar of fire split the sky and came straight down, burning Henry to charcoal. The bone-white staff fell to the ground.
Time rewinds a little.
Led by the devil, Adam and the other three soon arrived above the town, and the first thing they saw was Henry using his mutated body's ability.
Adam ordered everyone to hold position; he wanted to see what this so-called divine sacrifice actually was.
No one questioned the order. Ophelia could not levitate for long, so she went off alone to stand atop a giant tree, and everyone else quietly watched the sacrificial spectacle.
The Servitors' beguiling words in the town carried clearly. The devil said with contempt, "A crude, barbaric trick. If it weren't aimed at idiots, nobody would fall for it." As a devil, it had every right to look down on the Church's Servitors; it felt that if it had handled the job itself, it could have gotten everyone to meekly hand over their lives without a drop of blood spilled.
When he saw the Servitors driving the townsfolk down into the altar, William could not hold back and wanted to act, but Adam stopped him.
"Wait a little longer."
Then Henry took out the bone-white staff, and Adam's eyes fixed on it. He knew he had to have that staff; perhaps it was the key to this entire mission.
Seeing the townsfolk drained of flesh and blood, William's surroundings surged with searing heat. Adam pinned him firmly in midair with psychokinesis and said sternly, "I said wait. If you can't control yourself, I can do it for you."
William's body trembled. He did not turn to look at Adam, but chose to shut his eyes tight; he knew there was no way he could stop what was about to happen.
Cristel's voice sounded at William's ear: "William, you should understand that this sacrifice is necessary, so that even worse tragedies can be avoided."
Different environments, the different people one meets, and different ideas truly do have an enormous effect on a person. Cristel, once the most timid and soft-hearted of them all, had quickly accepted a Mage's way of thinking under the teaching of full-fledged Mages, while William's thinking was still stuck at the apprentice stage, his progress negligible next to the others'.
When all the flesh and blood had gone into the bone-white staff, the devil spoke with contempt again: "That fool on the other end wants to find the coordinates of the Mage World, but his power is too weak and the distance too great. A sacrifice of this level wouldn't work even a hundred times over."
The sacrifice finished, Adam found that beyond the ordinary people touched by the blood mist growing slightly stronger, nothing else out of the ordinary had happened. So he said, "Wipe them out. Don't damage that staff."
William, who had been unable to wait any longer, ignited his magic in an instant. A pillar of fire came down from the sky and precisely killed the Servitors without touching the staff. His fury still unappeased, William was the first to drop from the sky, and as his magic worked, patch after patch of flame burned the ordinary believers to ash.
With a great boom Ophelia landed in the town, raised the giant sword in her hands, and charged forward with unmatched momentum. Facing the packed mass of believers and the Servitors ahead who were just then unleashing their abilities in shock, she gave no ground; she swept the greatsword up, ripples swirling along the blade in her grip, and mortal flesh might as well not have existed for all the resistance it offered. It was the same for the Servitors' flesh abilities—their faces still wore their shock when Ophelia had already arrived behind the crowd.
"Hah." She let out a soft breath and lowered the greatsword, and in that same moment everyone behind her turned to blood mist.
Not one of them had left a whole corpse.
This was the first time Adam had seen Ophelia fight. Supported by extraordinary eyesight and computing power, he clearly made out her swordsmanship: at high speed she kept quivering her arm, setting the blade vibrating at high frequency, and in that way produced devastating lethality.
No mana clung to Ophelia's sword; clearly this bunch of enemies was not worth her full effort. Adam could sense that with mana behind it, this way of fighting would be truly terrifying.
"Who are you people?"
"You dare disrupt the sacrifice and raise your hands against the Supreme God's faithful! Are you not afraid of divine punishment?"
"Lowly blasphemers, if the Supreme God sends down His wrath and destroys the world, you will be the criminals of the whole world!"
The devil was so amused it cackled without pause, tumbling over and over in the air, clutching its belly: "Cack cack cack cack, there really are idiots like this? Destroy the Mage World? Cack cack cack, where do these morons even come from!"
Adam landed on the ground. From their words alone he could tell they were nothing but beguiled idiots, incapable of knowing anything useful, so these people no longer had any value.
Adam raised his arm slightly, and fine crackling sounds rose by every ear. Apart from William and the other two, every person felt their skin prickle as visible lightning burst and crackled.
"Divine punishment! This must be the Supreme God's divine punishment! Heretics, blasphemers, you will pay with your lives!" The Servitor threw himself to the ground and, enduring the pain, kept kowtowing and cursing.
Adam expressionlessly brought his arm down, and amid a tremendous blaze of light, every surviving Church of the Supreme God believer was scorched to charcoal by the lightning.