Chapter 107: The Traitor of the Choir of Saints (End)
A rotting black sore, accompanied by the faintly evaporating Dead Smoke oozing from it, had been gnawed at by the power of the Abyss—creating a spine-chilling scar that looked like decaying flesh, almost covering the masked half of Chris’s face.
One of his ears had already fallen off.
When the mask slipped away, his nearly bald head, riddled with sores, was fully revealed. His eye sockets were dark and smoky, the eyeball long since eroded, leaving only a golden needle stuck in there, faintly glimmering with a bit of golden light. Though the glow was weak, it seeped into every putrid wound on his face, suppressing the Black Mist from spreading further; otherwise, he might have been dead already.
Yet despite holding onto a thread of life, if you covered the other half of his relatively intact face, the man named Chris looked like—
A decaying, blackening corpse.
Right…
That’s the vibe.
The first thing I sensed was the chaotic aura emanating from him.
A thought flashed through my head, and I retracted the black snake writhing at my feet, where the Black Smoke “whooshed” into my body. Instinctively, I took a step back, staring intently into Chris’s eyes—the one that was a hollow black pit and the one that was continuously bleeding—along with his pained expression.
This guy turned blind just to escape the illusion, pulling off a stunt like that… It seems he really knows the ropes of how Oblivion works.
And what’s with those sores on his face? Clearly, he’d been eroded by the Abyss’s power—but who did that? Definitely not me; I just wasn’t—well, I admit, he did manage to surprise me a bit. ~
So, after a moment of reflection, I finally caught the hidden meaning behind his recent words.
“What did you say?”
I instinctively blurted out, then quickly fell into thought.
Angel or Romani…~
No one is willing to give him a way out?
That’s what he was saying, right?”
Which means—
I squinted at him, slightly narrowing my eyes: “Chris, what’s going on between you and the Choir or the Church?”.
After pausing and seeing he wasn’t going to speak, I continued, “As far as I know, there hasn’t been any Abyss sightings in the Western Continent for the past two years. How did you end up like this?”
“Why is your face eroded by the power of the Abyss?”
Not just his face…
His clothes, especially the upper half, were badly damaged from battles, exposing skin that had not only frostbite wounds that hadn’t healed but also several old injuries gnawed at by the Dead Smoke—though these looked nowhere near as severe as the ones on his face, like minor splatters that you hardly notice, which is why I hadn’t paid them any mind during our scuffle.
“You…”
I trailed off, suddenly thinking of something: “Could it be from the Holy City?”
No way.
An ominous feeling washed over me…
Because if the Abyss showed up in the Western Continent aside from me, the most likely culprits would be only two places: the Holy City and the Holy Wall.
As far as I could tell, the Holy Wall hadn’t fallen yet; disasters were still under control. With Chris’s status in the Choir, the chances of him being directly affected by the Abyss over there were slim.
So that only left the now-unknown status of the Holy City—Romani and the Pope were there, and Chris just mentioned them, sounding like something terrible had happened…
The more I thought, the more serious my expression became.
“Heh, heh… ha.”
Chris let out a weak laugh, not answering my question, but instead asked, “Want… to know?”
He was halfway sprawled on the ground, clearly having lost a lot of bl**d and somewhat exhausted, unable to stand up, and only managing to say a few words before gasping for air, as if his lungs were like a deflated bellows, wheezing and hoarse.
“I… will tell you…”
“Will… you let me go…?”
Light still sparkled from the divine miracle lingering on him.
But that light was dimmer now, nearly negligible.
His chest bore a fatal wound from an ice scythe, and though his blinded eye was surrounded by green luminescence, that horrific wound had only healed halfway, refusing to continue mending no matter what.
His complexion grew paler, his lips lost all color.
Probably…
By now, his brain was also turning fuzzy, with his ability to think gradually slipping away.
“I will.”
So, I blinked, gazing at him without a second thought: “Provided you’re not lying to me. I saw your companion not too long ago; I know whether you’re lying or not, so answer my questions truthfully, and I’ll let you go. After all, killing you doesn’t do me any good.”
Upon hearing this, Chris raised his head higher.
He seemed to be looking up at the sky; even though he had lost his sight, it was as if he could see something.
“Eh, eh…”
After a moment, the man took a deep breath, the madness on his face fading as a hint of calmness returned to his smile: “I… trust you…”
“Yeah, right…”
I said, raising my right arm in front of him, bl**d-covered, suddenly emanating a faint golden glow from the wound—a piece of what was known as “Ancient Deity’s Words” that he had embedded back into his flesh, now about to showcase its power again.
His smile spread wider on his lips.
But this time, his movements were way too slow.
Boom!
Using Moon Step, I flashed in front of Chris, lifted my leg, stomped down on his right arm, and pressed his palm back onto the Bluestone floor, snapping my fingers.
A sharp ice spike, with wicked hooks, suddenly condensed from the air and shot out, piercing through the palm of his hand, pinning it firmly to the ground.
“Zhh—”
The man gasped in pain.
I took the chance to lean down, pulling out the now dimmer piece of divine miracle from his bloodied wound, shaking off the bl**d and fidgeting with it in my palm, slowly withdrawing my foot from his arm.
The moment I held this thing, I was prepared for my body to react uncontrollably and “devour” the relic like it did back in the Empire town.
However, as I waited, the red “veins” didn’t appear, and the bone piece remained snugly in my hand.
…Huh?
“This thing—”
This relic belonged to the Ancient Deity, not the Goddess of Sin; I thought about confirming that with him.
Suddenly, I heard a “hum” sound, a slight vibration reverberating from my chest, and a white light burst forth as the long-quiet white branches floated out from my torso, instantly sucking the bone piece from my grasp.
I barely had time to react.
Once it devoured the bone piece, those branches “hummed” and suddenly vanished, and I jerked, feeling my heart race: “d*mn—”
“What, what is this…”
Chris’s intermittent, hoarse exclamations reached my ears: “The Holy Tree Brithfen… birthed by the Ancient Deity… the everlasting white tree, this is its branch…”
Huh?
This guy’s eye—was it slowly regaining its sight?
“The Woodward… forest, that Storm Tree… turns out… you took it…”
“The original source of Gidales’ divine power…”
“What?”
I was a bit lost regarding what he was saying.
“Eh…”
But Chris laughed again, his recently stirred emotions fading back to calmness: “Now, what’s the point…?”
“Even if you, Silvya… hold that forbidden god power… the white tree branch… it’s still… useless…”
That voice sounded rather pessimistic.
As if he had completely given up on something, filled with a gray despair, yet laced with a mockery I didn’t quite grasp.
“The Holy City… is done for…”
He suddenly spoke, dropping a bombshell: “Saint George, the owl… heh heh… the power-grabbing guy… has no idea… what awaits them inside…”
“What do you mean?” I grabbed hold of his collar, lifting him halfway up, “Be clearer.”
“Eh, eh heh…”
Chris’s laughter was downright unpleasant: “Why should I tell you…”
Saying this, the healing light enveloping his eyes began to fade.
“The Holy City is doomed, the Church is doomed…”
“Now, even I’m going down with them…”
Next, the emerald light swirling around his chest dimmed.
“And you all…”
“How long can you keep hiding…?”
The man laughed.
That hollow black eye pit flickered with light for a moment, and as he softly exhaled his last breath, the golden needle lodged within snapped with a “crack.”
The Dead Smoke, which had been suppressed on his half-destroyed face, suddenly surged, “whoosh,” swallowing his whole body, turning him to mere ashes.
