### Chapter 219: Divine Battle (Six)
The weight of oppression felt like a mountain, leaving no room for resistance.
It was like being engulfed by the Golden Bell, but this sensation was magnified a hundredfold. Almost at the moment the light sphere shattered, a dreadful pressure descended from the sky, smashing down like a meteor. The armor wrapped around me was instantly crushed; I could no longer move. The Dead Smoke wrapping me and the flaming wings on my back vanished like morning dew, and my body plummeted to the ground like a boulder, accompanied by the howling Gale.
Boom—
“Cough…”
In the instant of impact, I coughed up a mouthful of bl**d. My body felt numb, and my head buzzed; I felt like I had smashed into rock and was lodged deep in a crevice. I didn’t even feel pain yet; my instinct was to struggle to get up, but suddenly everything went black, and I knew nothing.
I have no idea how long it was.
“……”
“Silvya…”
In the haze, I heard someone calling my name.
“Silvya… wake up…”
Buzzing—
Accompanied by the resonant hum of a Divine Miracle in my ears, my hazy consciousness gradually returned. I groggily opened my eyes to see swirling golden light racing around me, mixed with glowing green spots that looked like fireflies. A tingling sensation spread throughout my body, and my drained spirit quickly revived. Before long, I was fully awake.
…d*mn it—
“Cough, cough… ughhh!”
I couldn’t stop coughing and took a deep breath, almost instinctively yelling as I shot up from the rock crevice. My right arm, deeply embedded in the stone, burst out with a thud. My gaze flickered like a raging fire, and the Black Mist surged suddenly. My body tensed up, and I looked around in panic and confusion. At that moment, a woman’s voice scolded me nearby, “Silvya, calm down!”
Who!
The intense tension and fear triggered an instinctive response within me. Following the direction of the voice, I swung a fist, and the Dead Smoke swirling around my right hand erupted, crashing into a nearby stone wall with a deafening bang. The hissing, corrosive sound echoed as fragments of rock flew everywhere, and a red figure rolled away amidst the chaos.
That was…
The red figure rolled a few times on the ground, shaky but standing up, yelling, “Calm down a bit!”
…It’s the dancer.
I panted heavily and slowly lowered my raised fist.
What am I doing…
My chest felt tight, my head was spinning, and my stiff thoughts finally kicked into gear after a moment. I realized the grim reality—I had been utterly beaten and had fallen from the sky.
What happened after I fell?
I stared blankly at the dancer standing a short distance away, the golden light on her body barely fading.
“How do you feel… huh, huh…”
She was also panting.
At that moment, the woman looked like she had just taken a dip in a bl**d tank. Dark brown liquid stained her body, with clots of bl**d hanging in her hair—she seemed slightly weakened. Confirming that I wouldn’t attack again, she suddenly sagged against the bulging rock beside her, holding her chest and gasping as her damp hair clung to her cheek, the glow of the Divine Miracle finally waning completely, her breathing becoming even more hurried.
“You… cough cough, you’re not dead…”
I clenched my fist, moved my shoulders and neck, realizing my body was completely back to normal. I shook my dizzy head and quickly scrambled out from the stone crevice with one hand gripping the edge of the rock.
After falling, I must have passed out…
My arms, chest, shoulders, and neck still tingled; I was undoubtedly injured. I probably broke quite a few bones… but they were all healed—did this woman use a healing Miracle to save me?
“Let’s just say, I’m not dead yet…” The dancer leaned against the rock, glancing at me with a slightly dry voice.
“Did you suffer a… heavy injury?”
“Everything’s healed…”
“…How long was I out?”
“Not long, maybe ten minutes.”
After a brief and rapid exchange, I walked closer to the dancer and glanced at her chest wounds. Through her fingers, I could see strands of Dead Smoke seeping from the decayed, darkened skin—definitely not a pleasant experience.
“Does it hurt?” I asked softly.
“Thanks to you…”
“Ha, you deserve it.”
I scoffed.
The air around us grew increasingly tense. I didn’t know if it was the dancer’s scent or something drifting from the distant peak, but a sharp stench of bl**d clung to my nostrils. I frowned and stopped paying attention to the panting woman as I looked up towards the collapsed peak in the distance.
What remained of the rocky peak was now completely shrouded in rising gray mist. Within the mist, I could vaguely see the outline of a bl**d-red corpse, silently suspended above the rock.
Beneath it, outside of the gray mist’s coverage, dark red bl**d trickled down the fractured cliff. This bl**d was different from before; it glowed with a bright red light resembling lava. The light flickered like a breath, appearing and disappearing, and the bl**d seemed to possess high temperatures, creating a steam that mixed with ashes, rising into the sky, toward the corpse.
That scene felt like something profane shrouded in gray mist—not a corpse, but a harbinger of doom returning from a bloody hell, a name synonymous with judgment, destruction, and despair.
My hands began to tremble again.
“The Church… Angel… they sent me here to fight against… something like this…?”
This thing…
How on earth could I defeat it…
Why did Angel have such confidence? Why… did they think I would win…
“They underestimated the power of the Deity.”
The dancer stood by my side, “The Church hierarchy, including Pope Angel, they all speak of the great Deity, yet they hardly show any reverence. The age of Divine Warfare has long past, a thousand years gone; those beings that once made all living things kneel in prayer—what true power they wield is probably long forgotten…”
“But…”
But Angel, Margaret, even Teresa—all of them had seen Deities before, hadn’t they?
Why…
What should I do now…
“Silvya.”
The dancer called my name softly.
“I just told you to leave, why aren’t you going?”
“…Leave?”
I forced myself to suppress my trembling voice, my throat dry, my mouth bitter, my cheeks stiff: “Leave this demon behind, unbothered. Let it break free from the seal and head out to k*ll everyone?”
“Ha…”
At my words, the dancer let out a scoff.
“Silvya, you’re too naive and too kind. Do you really think that after standing tall in this world for a thousand years and repressing the Gate of Truth for hundreds, the Holy Church could only put all their hopes of salvation on a little girl like you at this moment?”
“You…”
I frowned at her.
My instinct was to ask the dancer what she meant, but as soon as the words came out, I realized.
I suddenly recalled that teleportation node from before…
In this crucial moment, hastily established before the Heretics arrived, the Church set up the ‘World’ teleportation node at Woodward Forest. Surely it wasn’t just for post-research purposes, as the late Jeffrey Priest implied.
Angel hasn’t shown up from the start.
What is he up to… what is he deceiving me about…?
These thoughts flashed through my mind, then buried deep inside; now wasn’t the time for contemplation. I heard the dancer’s calm voice beside me, “You should leave, take the branch of the White Tree, and leave this place.”
“No, stop saying that.” I shook my head.
I didn’t know how the Holy Church was arranging things or what Angel was thinking, or what methods he had left.
At this moment, I didn’t care about those things anymore.
The demons were approaching, and outside the forest were Grandma Claire, Ryan, and all those villagers, so many innocent people still nearby; even if I wanted to run, I wouldn’t make it far.
I couldn’t place my hopes in a Church that had deceived me, trust in Angel to allow me to escape for my life. I couldn’t do that.
I had to leave this thing behind…
I had to do this…
But—
I looked up at the mist-wreathed mountain rock, gazing at the nearly unbeatable corpse resting there. My fists tightened and relaxed repeatedly as I bit my lower lip. The emotion named courage surged in my chest, only to be repeatedly squashed by a feeling of powerless dread.
But what am I supposed to do…
What can I do to defeat that kind of guy…
“I’ll do as you say…”
I asked the dancer, raspy voice and all, “If I take that bead… but why… does it still…”
“If you hadn’t taken the Tear of the Goddess, what we’d be facing now would be the fully restored Goddess of Sin.”
Fully restored…
“You mean…”
So Deities don’t look that horrifying…?
“You saw it just now, right? The Goddess’s physical body at this moment, due to the premature interruption of its hatching, hasn’t just failed to form flesh and bl**d—it has only partially completed its skeletal structure. Its power hasn’t fully restored as expected, and its spirit, what the Church calls the ‘Fire Seed,’ is actually still far off in the barren deserts of the Eastern Continent.”
The dancer continued, after a brief moment of rest, her energy seemed to regain a bit as she stepped forward, her silhouette reflected in my eyes. “I know you might not fully understand the significance and connection of this right now, but that’s okay. What I want to tell you is, the Goddess’s physical body we’re facing right now has approximately only one-tenth of its full potential… probably around that level.”
“Inadequate, just one-tenth…” I muttered, panic lacing my voice, the sense of confusion and helplessness brewing in my heart as my limbs grew cold and unresponsive.
Just one-tenth, and it’s already… this powerful…
Is this… the power of a Deity…?
“It’s still not a complete Deity’s body, not even possessing consciousness; it’s merely a fleshly body full of power,” the dancer continued, not seeing my expression. “If you believe in me, Silvya. If you really don’t want to leave and want to do something, then my suggestion is to go all in… we have a chance.”
She pointed to the distant rocky peak. “You see that mountain’s bl**d? It has already reached a very high temperature; that is the power of Sin Fire, the Source Force. It has broken through the limitations of the Land of Dragons, perhaps because of the Deity’s descent, or maybe due to the branch’s arrival in your body, the ancient Deity’s seal is gradually beginning to loosen.”
As she spoke, the dancer suddenly turned back.
“I can feel it; the power of Infernal Fire is rapidly restoring within you. And you… Silvya, haven’t you noticed the changes in yourself?”
