Chapter 433
While they are commonly called the Heretic Church by the general public, they themselves do not refer to themselves by that name.
This was also discussed in FBO.
The Primordial Faith
The Primordial God who created this world in the distant ancient past is the one and only god they worship.
The gods who currently govern this world are, according to them, evil gods who stole this world from the Primordial God.
That is their truth, their faith.
Though now they are beings lurking in the shadows, they believe that in the future when the Primordial God revives, they themselves will shine forth into the light.
"Hey, hey, Torque."
"What is it, what is it, Talque?"
The twin dwarf brothers who had been continuously graffiti-ing Areiya were also priests of this "Primordial Faith."
Sold to the Primordial Faith as infants, they were pure-blooded believers indoctrinated from the cradle.
"I wonder why those bad guys call our paintings graffiti?"
"Because they're the bad guys. Father said so: they're fools who believe in evil gods."
Holding hands and walking through the dim sewers, today as always, they drew.
"Now, Torque, let's draw here."
"Yeah, Talque, let's draw here."
Unlike the rough brushstrokes they used on the streets during the day,
In this space, they quietly and precisely drew a magic circle.
A magic circle signifying collapse, a circle of destruction.
As they walked, they continued drawing a single line with their large brush, connecting it to the magic circle.
"Almost there, almost there."
"Yeah, this pure white city will become our god's city."
There was no hesitation in their movements.
The precisely drawn magic circle steadily approached completion.
At this rate, it would be finished in about thirty minutes.
Just as they thought that.
"There they are!!"
"!"
Light pierced the narrow, dark space.
Immediately after, a shout echoed.
Without turning toward the light, the twins ran.
"You think you can escape!!"
Immediately after, the sound of an alarm bell.
In this underground space, the sound should echo so much it would be impossible to tell where it came from, but that's the case with ordinary alarms.
"What do we do, Torque? That's a magic tool."
"It's okay, Talque. As if we'd get caught here."
The whistle the dwarven guard who spotted them blew was imbued with magic power.
It was a magic tool that emitted magic-charged sound waves to signal its location to those above ground.
The twins stopped drawing the magic circle and ran at full speed.
They could hear the sound of many footsteps heading their way, drawn by the alarm.
"Hey, hey, Torque. How did they know we were underground?"
"I don't know, I don't know. How did they know we were underground?"
The twins ran.
They had a map of the sewers, traversed countless times, in their heads. They ran, searching for an escape route, but their pursuers also seemed to know the way, steadily tightening the encirclement.
"What do we do, what do we do? At this rate, we won't escape, Torque."
"Yeah, should we fight? But we're not that strong, Talque."
Realizing they were cornered, the twins were about to resign themselves to fighting, but knowing they had no chance of victory, they didn't.
"But, but, Torque. Our role is to draw their attention, right? That means we've lured a lot of enemies underground, right?"
"Yeah, that's true. Then maybe we should do it now?"
"But is it okay? The preparations aren't even half done?"
"It's not okay, but isn't it better than losing everything?"
Desperately racking their brains, the conclusion they reached was to move the plan up.
Preparations were nowhere near complete, but it was better than having it all go to waste.
With such a shallow thought, they acted.
"Then, this way!"
"Yeah, I'll go this way!"
For the first time, the twins split up.
By splitting at a junction, they forced their pursuers to also split into two groups.
Since the encirclement was nearly complete, this resulted in a situation where they could barely escape.
Originally, this plan should not have been discovered.
Rampage during the day, be quiet at night.
By repeating this, the residents of Areiya had come to recognize that the graffiti criminals only struck during the day.
So, at night, they quietly drew in the darkness of the sewers, unseen by anyone.
The "drawings" the twins called magic circles. Though not depicted in the original FBO, the truth of the past story is that a worker inspecting the sewers accidentally discovered the nearly completed magic circle, leading to the incident's discovery.
The effect of this magic circle was detonation. Its purpose was to collapse the entire sewer system of Areiya, destroying the city's functions. However, the magic circle was discovered by chance, necessitating urgent countermeasures.
As a result, while dealing with this act of terror by the Heretic Church against the city of Areiya, the Grand Temple was pushed to the point of having to request reinforcements from the divine mountain, but they managed to repel the attack. However, this allowed an elite force of the Heretic Church to strike the mountaintop temple, resulting in the loss of many barrier priestesses.
Now, what about the reality where Liberta gave advice?
In short, the Heretic Church side was forced to act with insufficient preparation.
That was the gist of it.
Exposure of the terror plan during its preparatory stage, at such an incomplete timing that withdrawal should have been considered.
The twins, having received thorough Primordial Faith education, believed that failure in a holy war was unthinkable and that they absolutely must martyr themselves for their faith. Therefore, they chose to act rather than retreat.
As a result, something similar to the original plan was triggered, but the difference was that the damage to the city was actually less than anticipated. Even so, they frantically sent messages using communication magic tools, ordering the plan's execution everywhere.
Some followers of the Heretic Church responded, while others, judging it too early, retreated.
They were all fanatics, yes. But there was a difference in the nature of their fanaticism.
Some believers狂徒d thoughtlessly, while others thought to achieve their狂徒d goals.
Consequently, the terrorist acts became half-baked, and the need to request reinforcements from the divine mountain disappeared.
"Ah."
One of the twins, the one called Torque, reached the designated ground zero for the explosion. However, the mages dispatched from the temple had already begun dismantling the magic circle and magical devices there.
He quickly slipped into a gap to hide, but there was nothing more he could do.
They had prepared two ground zero locations, just in case.
"Talque..."
Just as he thought, "If this one's no good, maybe the other side will work," a loud boom echoed and the sewer shook.
"Ah, Talque, I'm so jealous."
Even though the scale was smaller than planned, it was still a spectacular explosion that shook the sewer and halted the work.
This was the signal for their comrades to move.
Realizing this, Torque, while the enemy was disoriented, squeezed his small body through gaps and attempted to escape the sewer.
He intended to join the attack on the Grand Temple himself.
In the original history, Torque would have been buried alive in the sewer as a suicide bomber.
He does not fear death.
He is a genuine fanatic who believes that even if he dies, he will merely go to the Primordial God.
Instead of worrying about his younger (or older) brother Talque, who he believes has departed to the Primordial God, he is envious.
Therefore, he acts to partake in the surface terror, to martyr himself for the Primordial Faith's teachings.
The other ground zero is impossible.
It has been completely neutralized, and there are too many enemies there.
Judging that dying in vain was unacceptable, Torque reached a passage not yet discovered by the enemy and managed to get above ground.
"Ah."
"You are... those clothes..."
However, the Primordial God had abandoned Torque.
A scar-faced woman, dragging two men.
That woman, Claudia, had rushed to suppress the terror attacks the moment she heard of them.
Moving freely, arriving at the scenes of the Heretic Church's terror, she used her stats to suppress them.
If they were rampaging, she kicked them; if they held hostages, she punched them; if they tried to self-destruct, she choked them unconscious—showing incredible versatility.
Currently, she had just punched and knocked out Heretic Church believers attempting to attack a certain inn, and was about to hand them over to nearby knights.
"Um, excuse me."
"Where do you think you're going?"
Torque's intuition screamed danger.
A toned woman, dragging muscular male Heretic Church believers one by one.
The tattoos on the dragged believers were on their faces—members of the combat-focused Bend Faction cooperating in this incident.
Their combat ability should be top-tier within the Heretic Church.
They were the main force of this attack, dispatched by the top of Torque's own Ardagón Faction through connections with the Bend Faction.
"Lady Claudia! We're done here too."
"I checked the surroundings; there are no more around here."
"Mine is also finished."
"Ours concluded safely as well."
It's not over yet, Torque thought.
The Bend Faction's main force wasn't just two people; twelve combatants had been dispatched.
If only two were taken down, they could still recover—he calculated quickly. But right after, a fox-eared, red-haired girl appeared, carrying one on her shoulder with a large halberd.
Behind her was a group of samurai in red armor, several holding believers with the same tattoos.
From another direction, a woman in a maid outfit and a noblewoman in a dress walked over, also followed by a samurai group, holding captured Bend Faction members.
Counting with his eyes, Torque saw a total of twelve.
This indicated that all the combatants they had requested were here.
If the words of the bird-kin girl who descended from the sky were true, then all believers in this area had been suppressed.
Realizing this, feeling the danger, Torque tried to slip back underground. But the scar-faced woman, having discarded the believers she was dragging, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him back to the surface.
"Let me go!"
He struggled violently, but she didn't budge.
Even if he tried to slip out of his clothes, her grip was too tight.
He couldn't cut through his gear either.
"There might be more underground... but guards have already been dispatched. Let's hand him over to the knights and help with suppression elsewhere. At this rate, it looks like we can suppress everything quickly."
All was lost.
The thought flashed through his mind, and Torque realized the plan's failure.
But he knew this was only the failure of the operation in this city, not the end.
"Hahaha! So what if you've suppressed our comrades in this city!!"
The faces of the people before him, relieved at stopping their comrades' activities in the city, looked foolish to him.
Go ahead and enjoy your temporary peace, Torque sneered internally.
"The temple on your precious mountain is probably destroyed by now!! This is divine punishment!! Our justice will prevail!!"
At worst, as long as they served as a diversion, the goal could be achieved.
They should have attracted considerable attention with this commotion. Even if these people rushed up the mountain now, he had heard that the Church's elite had already been sent in.
By the time they headed for reinforcements, the mountaintop temple would be annihilated.
The scar-faced woman heard Torque's words, spoken with such conviction.
"You are unlucky. No, perhaps I should say 'you all' are unlucky."
She wore a troubled, wry smile.
Her expression was wrong.
The expression Torque had imagined was one of panic, colored with anger, exposing their disgraceful state driven by emotion.
The face of a loser.
But what about these women?
Far from panicking, they seemed troubled, yet they were smiling.
Not just the scar-faced woman, but the surrounding women and samurai as well.
"Yeah, they're unlucky."
"Liberta-kun is unlucky in a way too, isn't he?"
"That's right. Liberta would probably be angry, saying 'not again!'"
"Yes, Lord Liberta would react that way... Does this mean our reunion will be delayed?"
Why were they so relieved? Torque was confused instead.
Suspended mid-air in the toned woman's arm, question marks kept swirling in his mind when a massive explosion occurred from the divine mountain.
The source of the roar wasn't the summit, but the mountainside.
Combat starting in a place different from the plan. Even so, Torque should have been狂喜d, believing in the operation's success, but—
"They're doing it."
"They're doing it, huh."
"They are doing it, aren't they."
"They are doing it."
"Well, it'll quiet down soon."
Hearing these women's words, utterly devoid of tension, Torque's mind was filled with anxiety.