Chapter 156

Chapter 156: Assassin

St. Amanda School was built by the saints of the Radiant Church, so naturally, a church facility was standard.

The school’s church was located on a lawn slightly away from the main part of the school. The building wasn’t small, and students would often come here to pray. Sometimes, theology teachers would give classes here as well.

At this moment, this prayer venue had turned into a battlefield, with Dorothy standing before the altar at its center. She wore an expensive dress, held a cane, and wore a golden dance mask on her face. Her long white hair was tied into a single ponytail behind her head, making it difficult to discern its color from the front. Her eyes, hidden behind the mask, silently looked down upon the battlefield.

Godfrey, who had just entered the church, manipulated his bone blades towards Dorothy continuously, but each strike was deflected by Vania, who stood beside Dorothy, using her sword. At the same time, Dorothy controlled several hidden zombie puppets in the church, shooting at the attackers. Oswan continued to defend using bone shields as he always did.

In the brightly lit church, gunshots rang out. Dorothy and Vania, Godfrey and Oswan, were engaged in a one-on-one offense and defense, gradually forming a complex battle situation. The scene seemed to be at an impasse once again. This impasse made Oswan impatient, and he questioned his companion beside him.

“Have you not resolved this yet? Just a brat!”

“It’s not that easy! That nun’s swordplay is ridiculous; it’s hard to get through!” Godfrey responded, attempting to attack Dorothy from all directions with his bone blades, but each strike was blocked by the nun’s sword. Even when he tried to attack from the side or behind, Vania saw through it all, and every attempt was thwarted.

Vania, wielding her sword, had become Dorothy’s most solid defense, with no bone blade able to penetrate her defenses.

Dorothy still had 1 point of the “Cup” spirit left from “Lamb Song,” which was just enough for her to use another bl**d-Eating Sigil to enhance her physical strength.

Just as the situation was at an impasse, Dorothy observed her surroundings. Seeing that her enemies had all entered the church, she knew her chance had arrived.

Immediately, Dorothy controlled a zombie puppet hidden near the church door. The puppet stood up, pulled a nearby lever, and the heavy church doors slammed shut, trapping everyone inside.

“What…”

Hearing the sudden closing of the door behind them, Godfrey and Oswan felt something was amiss. At that moment, Dorothy took out a small item from a small bag—a candle.

She placed the candle to her lips, and it ignited with black flames. She slightly lifted her mask, then blew out the flame on the candle.

Following the extinguishing of the candle’s flame, all the lights in the church went out.

This was a Blacklight Candle, which Dorothy had obtained from Lu’e. She infused it with 1 point of “Shadow,” causing all the lights in the church to go out instantly, plunging the entire space into darkness.

The vast space became pitch-black, even the moonlight couldn’t penetrate. Before this, Dorothy had already sealed all the windows in the church!

With the darkness descending, Godfrey and Oswan lost their sight. All attacks came to a halt out of necessity.

“This is a ‘Shadow’ artifact; they want to block our vision! It’s a trap!”

Seeing the situation, Godfrey immediately reached into his pouch and pulled out an item—a crumpled sigil with a gold coin wrapped inside at its center. This was a storage item of “Lamp.”

“Illuminate me!”

As he spoke, Godfrey threw the sigil with the gold coin into the air. The sigil burned and transformed into an orange-yellow light ball, illuminating the surroundings once more.

This was a Light Sigil, prepared for emergency situations like this.

Seeing the rising light ball, Dorothy was startled and injected another point of “Shadow” into the candle, causing its flame to reignite. After blowing it out, the floating light ball also went out, plunging the surroundings back into darkness.

Seeing this, Godfrey was taken aback. The Light Sigil was their emergency measure, but since both spirit storage items and sigils weren’t cheap, they hadn’t prepared too many.

In the Secret World, accumulating primary and secondary spirits required significant effort, and few people were willing to spend a lot of energy storing other spirits. Most just stored enough to activate sigils and artifacts.

“d*mn, that guy used ‘Shadow’ artifacts twice in a row… Wasn’t he supposed to be an extraordinary being with the ‘Cup’? Where did he get so much ‘Shadow’?” Godfrey thought angrily, then instinctively touched his companion beside him.

“Give me the Ground Listener Sigil!”

Without hesitation, Oswan handed over the Ground Listener Sigil to Godfrey. Godfrey activated it, touching the ground to sense the surroundings, then controlled his bone blades to fly toward the rear door, attempting to break it open so they could leave this dark, lightless church.

Godfrey only used half of his bone blades to dismantle the door, while the other half guarded around them, reinforcing their bone shield.

In such a pitch-black environment where they couldn’t see anything, Godfrey and Oswan knew the key was to prevent the enemy from taking advantage of the darkness to attack. As long as they prevented surprise attacks, once they finished breaking the door, they could escape this trap.

“Hmph, they probably want to take advantage of the environment to lock us in and then launch a surprise attack in the dark. But with the Ground Listener, I’ll sense anything approaching.”

Thinking this, with the Ground Listener’s perception and the defense of bone blades and bone shields, they were confident nothing could approach them unnoticed. Once the door was broken, they could return to the safety under the moonlight.

“And in such complete darkness, you can’t see anything either, right? Without being able to determine positions, how will you launch a surprise attack?”

Continuing to think, they began to subtly move their positions within the church to prevent Dorothy from launching an attack based on their location memory.

In the darkness, Dorothy remained standing before the altar, facing the darkness. With a slight movement of her fingers, four zombie puppets appeared at the edges of the church space.

Under Dorothy’s control, one of the puppets retrieved several items from its body—a sigil and two silver coins.

The puppet stacked the two silver coins onto the sigil and pressed it against its forehead. As the coins lost their luster and turned to ash, the sigil’s effect activated.

The two coins were storage items of “Shadow,” and the sigil was the Silent Sigil Dorothy had found on Bill, capable of eliminating sound and vibration. It was praised by Audric as a favorite of thieves.

In the darkness, Dorothy waved her hand, and all the controlled zombie puppets ran towards Godfrey and Oswan. Dorothy could judge their positions in the dark because of the passive Spiritual Vision provided by the Identification Technique.

In Dorothy’s Spiritual Vision, the bone artifacts possessed by the ghosts emitted a faint, pale glow. These bone artifacts surrounded their owners to protect them in the darkness.

Thus, by observing the positions of the bone artifacts, Dorothy could clearly identify the enemy’s location. The center surrounded by these bone artifacts revealed the position of the enemies, and the ghost-possessed bone artifacts betrayed their owners’ locations.

Suddenly, all of Dorothy’s zombie puppets charged towards Godfrey and Oswan. Sensing the vibrations, Godfrey immediately manipulated his bone blades, moving towards the source of the vibrations. Shortly after, three of the four zombie puppets were destroyed, failing to reach their targets.

Only one managed to reach the target—using the Silent Sigil to hide its vibrations and run directly to the target. It approached the shield wall formed by four bone shields.

Then, it pulled out a bundle of sticks tied together with a fuse from its clothing.

These were eight eggs, explosives, originally prepared by Harude to blow up a ship.

Pulling the simple delay detonator, the zombie puppet threw the explosives into the bone shield wall. Simultaneously, Dorothy picked up a prepared gas lamp, turned it on, grabbed Vania’s hand, and hurriedly ran to the altar, where a secret passage was hidden.

Just as Godfrey was about to relax after destroying the zombie puppets, he suddenly felt something fall beside him and Oswan.

“What’s this?”

Just as they both wondered, a loud explosion shook the sky above St. Amanda School.

“Boom!!!!”