The enemies had been defeated, but the lingering questions were now more bothersome than before. “We need not be at odds with each other.” What did that even mean?
The War God was a god of peace 1 , at least from what Baiyi had gathered. The god did not have a lot of worshippers; in the plains, only those barbarians believed in him. The Church had come to know of this pagan god’s existence through a few failed missionary projects, but they never discredited him by referring to him as a ‘diabolical god of the heretics’. Perhaps, this was because they did not see the War God as a threat, seeing as he had only a small amount of followers and almost zero miracles attested to him.
The Godsfall cult, however, was a completely different story! It was one of the most stereotypical cults and a force of evil that checked off every item on the list of the Pop Culture “So You Think You’re A Cult?”. Cultists like these were supposed to be mortal enemies of the War God, yet when the High Reverend misidentified Baiyi as a messenger of the War God, he had said something amusing. To Baiyi, those words contained something sinister.
Furthermore, one of the basic tenets of the cult was to “not believe in gods”; they even went further down this path to advocate for “overthrowing the tyranny of gods”. Although cults like Godsfall always sought the best ideology to deceive their followers, the higher-ups of these cults would never go against the beliefs they had about gods, especially in front of a stranger like Baiyi, no matter how unreliable the leaders were.
The fact that the High Reverend had made such a statement may have highlighted the Godsfall cult’s reluctance to engage the War God or Baiyi in battles. Nevertheless, the fact that such an evil cult had hinted at the possibility of a truce confused Baiyi. However, even though the cult had taken a step backward for Baiyi, there was no guarantee that he would return the favor.
The Fifth Walker was not the slightest bit interested in the affairs between theGodsfall cult and the Church 2 . To him, there were not nearly enough fine people on both sides. Both were Baiyi’s enemies; hence, if they fought each other so hard that their brain juices rained down, he would be there to clap and cheer, with an umbrella in hand. The Godsfall cult had been unnecessarily psychopathic in their actions, and they were always trying to kill him. The Church, on the other hand, was quite cordial with Baiyi, and Baiyi himself needed their reputation to build his name. Thus, Baiyi would have no choice but to lean in favor of the church if anything was to happen, for now.
“Don’t believe those empty words. Don’t you once let your guard down,” the Shadow Walker uttered a reminder from the Void. As the fallen ex-candidate for papacy, she was an expert in matters like these.
“Of course I won’t! We were enemies a second ago, and now I am supposed to share their agenda after a conversation? What is this? The plot of a Japanese shonen manga?” Baiyi replied, feeling amused. “I bet that those words were only a smokescreen to divert my attention! As if I would be this gullible.”
“What I meant was that both the Church and Godsfall are two sides of the same coin. You can’t trust the Church, either,” Shadow Walker clarified. “I also advise you to take Little Mia’s safety seriously. They might just go for her next time, and if they send men like the ones we just saw, then a plushie will not be able to stand in their way for long.”
“Meh. I say they can’t organize an assassination of this level every time,” the Thane Walker interjected. “If they could so easily deploy Holy-level pawns to play assassins, then they would have been controlling the world already. Of course, sir Shadow has a good point. You’d best pay more attention.”
“Understood,” Baiyi replied agreeably. He may not have admitted it, but after what happened, he was starting to form new opinions about this cult; in his mind, their threat level had risen. ‘This isn’t a normal foe. I really have to be careful the next time I see them.’
“To cut things short, one must always have their own force; only then will many of these problems be solvable,” the Archmage added. “We gotta hasten up your Academy project, son. The Godsfall cultists have just shown their intention to call a truce, so we have less dead bodies and bones to worry about. That’s good news!”
“Um, speaking of academies… have we forgotten about something?” Baiyi suddenly said. He stood up and took out his communicating slab; this was a method of communication he shared with his students. “We were engaged in such an intense fight over here, so our power vibrations should have reached where they are, right? But why haven’t those kids asked me if I were okay? Are they asleep?”
“Maybe they just don’t really care about you?” The Paladin Walker chimed in.
“No bloody way,” Baiyi snapped, fidgeting with the slab for a while. Then, he waved the slab about for a while. “Odd. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this slab, and the spell is working fine, but… why can’t I connect to them?”
“Something’s definitely wrong here,” Baiyi kept the slab in and soared into the air, then he streaked towards Mia’s location.
Baiyi flew for a long time, but he still did not see the hill where he had left them. All he could see below was the deserted gobi; it seemed endless.
“A Delusion Labyrinth?” The Charlatan blurted out. “But, that’s impossible! No one could possibly fool you with their illusions!”
A ‘Delusion Labyrinth’ was a large illusionary spell, containing a number of minor illusions, which encompassed a large area, forming an inescapable area; areas like this appeared in standard adventure fantasy stories that involved grave-robberies. Once someone got stuck in the middle of a Delusion Labyrinth, they would not be able to get out even if they tried; it was an advanced illusionary spell.
“No, nope. Not a Delusion Labyrinth,” the Explorer Walker muttered. As a professional grave-robber, he was well-versed in all kinds of labyrinths that could be found in tombs and forbidden areas. He could tell that Baiyi’s situation was completely different from what he had seen before. As Baiyi streaked through the air, the sceneries beneath him kept changing; not even the plants and shrubs he passed were the same. This meant that Baiyi was not circling a fixed area; he really was flying straight.
“Very intriguing,” Baiyi said. “I just scanned the surrounding with my psychic power, but I did not find any illusion spells or suspicious vibrations. The bit of my consciousness outside of this realm shows that I really am moving forward. I do not think an illusion is at work here. Could it be that… although I’m still within the realm, I may have entered some kind of special territory?”
“The Godsfall cultists again?” the Assassin Walker asked, with worry.
Baiyi shook his head sideways. “Impossible. The people they sent to kill me could not possibly pull this off, and neither could that First High Reverend. They might have been able to conjure some abnormal tricks, but this…?”
Baiyi landed on the ground and picked up a fistful of sand, examining it intently as he rubbed the sand between his fingers. He plucked a leaf from a shrub and raised it close to his eyes.
Afterward, Baiyi said, ” The sand and leaves… they are all real. This… This feels like we are still within the realm, yet existing outside of the realm, at the same time. It is like a special space. To construct something like this is not possible for mankind. It’s only possible if something else is involved. Something like.. the Laws.”
“The Laws?!”
Roars of astonishment resounded within the void. The Scholar Walker was especially enthusiastic about this. “What could be the elusive cause behind the existence of a mysterious law in a location like this? Why would this unhabituated realm even host such an enigma? This place does not seem significant; rather, it exemplifies the concept of normalcy.”
“Normalcy? Maybe. However, I remember what those Ancestors from the Alpine Barbarians said before,” Baiyi said, his thoughts flashing back to the times he contacted the Ancestors in Harrogath. They, too, had mentioned being in a very special place where one can neither see them or sense them, but they could still see everyone, and bestow anyone with miraculous powers.
“You can no longer call this small realm a ‘normal place’, seeing as it possesses a territory like this! Did you really find this place by coincidence?” The Archmage asked.
“Yes, a coincidence through and through!” Baiyi replied, with certainty. “That bit of consciousness that I left outside of my body, and outside of Isythre, had scanned this realm multiple times, like a satellite, before I brought the kids here; it never spotted any anomalies! In fact, I came here before this trip, and I still found nothing. Besides, neither the assassination team we met previously nor that High Reverend from Godsfall, who could use a dead man as his talking piece, had discovered this territory. I’m starting to wonder if that hunch I had previously was not because of Godsfall’s secret surveillance, but because of something else…”
“If I’m not mistaken, the ‘hunch’ we are referring to was the alarming, spontaneous instinct that had struck you whilst you were summoning the Void Energy, yes? Moreover, back then, you neglected to erect a Shield Barrier around yourself before summoning the Void Energy, solely out of the need for convenience,” the Scholar Walker chimed in. “Fascinating. Could this special space have been created as a result of a reaction from the Laws to the abnormal, barbaric nature of Void Energy? Is it an automated defense mechanism triggered whenever danger or foreign forces are detected? Is that why it went ahead warp you in this special space?”
“You’re scaring me,” Baiyi replied with a mirthless smile. “Not that your conjecture is completely false, though. The Void has always been an existence repulsed by the world. There was even something like a shield that was constructed by the Laws to purposely separate the Void from everything else. So it’s possible that I got trapped here because I summoned a forbidden energy.”
“I doubt that it’s something this dramatic. Remember, many people who are not as strange as you have also obtained the method to utilize a little Void Energy. This shows that the realms have not been too hostile to anything from the Void, or else those people would long since been trapped in this purgatory, just like you are now, instead of waiting to be captured by the Inquisition.” came a reply from the Paladin Walker, who was rarely this serious.
“H-hold on! I think I have an idea of what this space may be!” The Astrologer Walker suddenly spoke. “Long ago, when I was investigating the stars, I noticed something that resembled galaxies; they were like paintings. Although their boundaries seemed endless, their details never changed. It was because I was investigating this curious phenomenon that I got captured by the Inquisitors and banished to the Void.”
“Think about it. Doesn’t that sound similar to the place you’re in? I had also studied some other subjects in the past, and one of them was theology. There was something I noticed in the ever-so-ubiquitous Scriptures, which says: ‘The land that God watches over is called the Holy Ground, and it is out of reach from the mortals; ever eminent, ever boundless.’,” the Astrologer Walker said. “At first I thought it was just another one of those liturgies which worshippers sing to their God, but the term ‘ever boundless’ had left an impression on me.”
“You’re saying… this is a Holy Ground?” Baiyi exclaimed in surprise.