They were all killing people, true enough, but none of them had expected Adam to be quite so clean and thorough about it — not one living soul left behind.
Watching Adam stroll up to the altar as if nothing had happened and pick up the bone-white staff, William's mouth twitched. "Kill them all, just like that? Don't we need to keep a few alive for questioning?"
Adam levitated the bone-white staff with psychokinesis and held it hovering in front of him — something that eerie was not going to touch his body until he was sure it was harmless. Hearing William, he answered, "No need. They're low-level believers. They won't know anything valuable."
"But..."
"Our mission is to wipe out the Church of the Supreme God, not to subdue it, so all we have to do is follow the energy reactions and kill our way along." As he spoke, Adam tried to provoke the bone-white staff with mana, and as the mana clung to it, the staff actually began to show signs of collapse. That meant its material was ordinary, too flimsy to bear mana.
Ophelia stepped forward and picked the staff up with her bare hand. After studying it closely for a while, she suddenly crushed it to pieces.
Adam did not stop her. Only once she had finished did he speak. "What did you find?"
"An alchemical product made by special means. The material was the body of a little girl — an ordinary little girl." Ophelia's voice was flat, but everyone else heard the killing intent in it; clearly this practice made her furious.
"A low-grade energy converter. It has exactly one function: turn flesh and blood into energy and give it off." That said, Ophelia walked off to one side and cleaned her greatsword, and said no more.
Adam looked at the staff, now reduced to fragments, then addressed the devil. "So this isn't the medium?"
A bead of cold sweat ran down the devil's forehead. It went over to the fragments and scanned them with its energy again and again. "That can't be right. Just now I clearly felt some idiot trying to contact the Mage World — how could it not be this?"
Adam didn't blame the devil, because by now a vague inkling had formed in his mind. A medium had to exist, or there was no explaining where the first Servitor to contact an other-plane being had gotten his power. But perhaps there was only ever that one medium, and its only function was to confer power — perhaps the way the other-plane being obtained the world's coordinates was through the believers?
Once Adam voiced this guess, William and the others fell into thought. Cristel recalled something Mage Blake had once said and told them, "The Instructor once said that across the endless planes, every kind of being has a different path to power. In some worlds, the beings there can draw in the faith of their believers — the Mage Plane calls that power of faith. Maybe this Supreme God is that sort of creature?"
Adam nodded. It matched his own deduction closely. "We don't have enough samples yet to reach a judgment. We need to observe more sacrificial rites and gather enough information."
The four took to the sky again and flew west, and before long they came upon God's Servitors of the Church of the Supreme God attacking yet another city.
This time the four arrived before the sacrifice began, and they found a scene quite unlike the last one.
This time the leader of the Church's Servitors was actually a kindly, mild-faced old man. Dressed in a white robe threaded with gold, he hovered alone in the air, displaying "miracles" to the panicked people within the city.
"Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Supreme God does not abide in him. All that is in the world — the lust of the flesh and of the eyes, the arrogance and madness of human nature — comes not from God but from the world. On the day the Supreme God descends, He will wash away the sins of this world, and those who believe in God and love God will be forgiven."
"God loves the people of the world, and could not bear to see them suffer from poverty, from war, from sickness and from death, so after the creation He came to this world once more to bring down the gospel. The Supreme God says: all who believe in me shall be spared every suffering and washed clean of every sin; all who are devout shall come to my kingdom of God and become sons of God, and receive my glory."
As he spoke, the Servitor worked his magic and lifted a common man who was missing all four limbs into the sky. With a gentleness that made the skin crawl, he gently caressed the man's body, murmuring to himself; then the man's already-healed wounds split open and he let out a cry of pain. But the very next second, his limbs actually began to grow back.
The city began to waver. They saw that the Church of the Supreme God was not the brutal thing the tales made it out to be — it had shown them miracles instead. Some people stirred, wanting to speak.
The four hidden in the sky were dumbstruck. A full-fledged Mage might manage such a thing on his own body, but they had never heard of anyone regrowing lost limbs for someone else — otherwise Frank would not have needed a mechanical body grafted on.
William thought of his father. He whipped his head around toward Ophelia. "Is — is this kind of thing real?"
Ophelia did not turn around. Her voice was dazed and uncertain as she answered, "I don't know..."
The pain soon passed. Staring in disbelief at his restored body, the man dropped to his knees in midair, and the Servitor laid a hand on his head and declared loudly, "You were once a heretic. Your sins are not yet washed clean, but the Supreme God is merciful and loving, and has already forgiven your sins and granted you a new body. Now — are you willing to dedicate your life to the Supreme God?"
The man was utterly lost, and his voice came out thick with tears. "I am willing. I am willing to give everything to God."
The Servitor said fondly, "Good child. You trust in God, and God will not forsake you." The words had barely left his mouth when the power holding the man aloft vanished; he fell straight down from the sky, struck the ground hard, and had no breath of life left in him.
Every sound in the city cut off at once. They stared at the Servitor in terror, unable to understand why he had done it.
The Servitor spread both arms forward as if to embrace something, and as he did, the corpse on the ground was wrapped in red light and rose slowly, until a moment later it hung before him once more.
The Servitor embraced the corpse, and then the miracle happened: the dead man came back to life. Once again he fell to his knees in the air, prostrate at the Servitor's feet, kissing his boots.
"You must hold firm in your faith in God. The Supreme God loves the people of the world and will never forsake any believer; those already dead shall be given new life."
Boom!
The people in the city went mad. If regrown limbs had not been enough to set them ablaze, raising the dead had convinced them that God existed!
"I believe in God! I am willing to give everything to God!"
"Please, God, save my child!"
"Please, God, heal my body!"
They were completely won over. There was no need to storm the city at all — everyone opened the gates of their own accord and reverently welcomed the Servitors and the believers in.
Up in the sky, William and the others could not help but feel doubtful. This was nothing like the bloody, savage way of spreading the faith they had imagined.