Chapter 186: Holy Eton
Lost in his madness, Raphael never noticed the crescent blade's ambush until it was already too late — the blade had driven into the small of his back. He cried out, his mind snapping instantly back to clarity, but the lightning-fire within the blade detonated in that same breath, and in an instant, the organs within his body ruptured and failed.
His body swayed, and he braced himself against the dragon lance, forcing himself to stay upright. "Why — how could you summon the Archangel Hadir?"
"Because the Lord has said all intelligent life stands equal before Him. The Lord has also said that light is always accompanied by darkness. It is you who have misread His intent — which is why He worked this miracle through my own hand," Evan said. It was a lie, plain and simple — but the words settled Raphael all the same.
"My Lord... I finally understand your teaching. I die without regret. May your radiance fall upon all mankind!" He murmured the prayer quietly, a look of pure, saintly peace settling over his face, his voice fading lower and lower until his breath stopped entirely.
Evan let out a breath. He decided, in the end, to see the man properly buried — the first time he'd ever built a grave for an enemy. Whatever else could be said, Raphael had died for his faith, and though Evan held no belief of his own, something in him respected that all the same.
He planted the dragon lance upright at the head of the grave, marking the stone with only a few simple words: A devoted believer — Here lies Raphael. He gave a silent bow and left.
Not long after he'd gone, several knights of the Church arrived, and at the sight of the grave, they stood frozen in disbelief. They refused to accept that the man known as the Blade of Gabriel could have died so quietly — even seeing the lance was unmistakably his, they dug up the grave to confirm it, and found Raphael's body within, exactly as feared.
They dropped to their knees. Nothing of his had been taken; the wound sat squarely in the small of his back, scorched black as if burned by fire. They swore vengeance on the spot. Raphael had gone alone in search of Grawvor, which made Grawvor the obvious suspect — but Grawvor would never have bothered burying him. Someone else must have passed through afterward and done this small mercy.
Grawvor seemed the only plausible culprit still — he'd already killed so many. The knights gathered up Raphael's body along with the dragon lance; he deserved the honor of a proper burial within the great cathedral itself.
Evan had already returned to Roland's side by then. Marshall had woken, and seeing Evan, gave a rueful smile. "This was a real humiliation. Couldn't even withstand a single blow from Grawvor."
"Nothing to be ashamed of. He's a ten-thousand-year-old monster, after all. Jessica must have told you — I suspect he's already surpassed legendary rank, though he's still unfamiliar with our magic. He was raised under an entirely different civilization, one built around existing as something close to a god," Evan said.
"You two did well enough. At the very least, we know now what really happened ten thousand years ago — it wasn't divine punishment after all. How much do you actually know about that weapon of theirs?" Roland asked.
"Honored Master Roland, if I claimed to know nothing at all, you'd hardly believe me. I've mostly been guessing — an atomic fireball, powerful enough to level an entire city, which would explain how the goblins destroyed themselves so thoroughly. As for why I settled on 'atomic' specifically — I reasoned that if we developed our own magical civilization out of elemental theory, perhaps they took an entirely different road, one grounded in a more complete theoretical explanation for everything, even if it never became the dominant framework here. I recalled a school of thought from ancient Xilun that held atomic theory might qualify as the foundation of everything, so when Grawvor mentioned it, I tried the theory on a hunch — and it happened to land. Xilun civilization came along much later than the goblins, though, so it's possible that line of thinking traces back to something the goblins left behind." Evan found himself struggling to hold his own story together — he was learning, in real time, just how difficult lying actually was: one careless untruth demanded another to cover it, and then another still.
Roland didn't fully believe him, though he raised no objection either. "If that's so, Grawvor's behavior is hard to explain. Why head toward Holy Eton at all? By any reasonable logic, shouldn't he be burying himself deeper in the wilderness instead?"
"That, I couldn't tell you. It puzzles me too — I can't make sense of it. Could he be hoping to meet the Pope himself?" Evan said.
"Meet the Pope? How could that possibly be his goal," Marshall said.
"You went ahead — did you see any sign of Grawvor?" Roland asked again.
"No sign of him at all. By the time I got there, he was already gone. I searched the area and came straight back," Evan said, skipping over his own fight with Raphael entirely. He changed the subject. "We should head back. With five people injured, this isn't the time to keep chasing him. Why don't I follow behind him alone, and the rest of you head back — Jessica and Jenny can go with you."
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Roland nodded. "It won't sit easy with me until we understand what Grawvor's actually after. Very well. My thanks for your trouble. Don't engage him head-on — as long as you avoid a direct clash, I doubt he'll bother trying to hold you if you want to leave. Be careful."
"I will. Everyone, we part ways here. Jessica, Jenny, rejoin the main group. A single traveler draws less attention anyway. Come on, Xiaoshuang, let's go," Evan said, calling Xiaoshuang over and bidding the others farewell.
Xiaoshuang settled onto his shoulder once more. Roland watched them grow smaller in the distance, then turned to Jessica. "That man's carrying secrets, I think."
"Who doesn't carry secrets, wouldn't you say?" Jessica said with a smile.
"Ha! Well said. Who indeed. Jessica, you and Wang have done real service again on this trip. You're close to Arcanist rank yourself, I hear. Keep at it — Hollingburton might well have another legendary mage in a few years' time," Roland said with a laugh.
Meanwhile, Xiaoshuang was muttering under her breath. "Wang, you weren't telling the truth back there. I could smell it. You're holding something back — whatever happened was definitely not as simple as you made it sound. There's killing intent clinging to you. You fought someone. You killed someone, didn't you?"
Evan faltered for a moment, turning to look at Xiaoshuang perched on his left shoulder, and let out a sigh. "I did kill someone. I ran into Raphael, as it happens — he'd already fought Grawvor and taken some wounds. I crossed paths with him and finished him off."
"Isn't that the one who hurt Xiaoling back in the Black Forest?"
"The very same."
"Excellent. I should tell Xiaoling — actually, no, better not to. Strange as it sounds, if she heard this news, I don't think it would make her happy at all — more likely sad. Not like me. I pay back kindness with kindness and grudges with grudges. Like that goblin Nobi — he wronged someone once, and now he's goblin king." The mere mention of Nobi soured Xiaoshuang's mood at once.
"Well, he's put you up on a pedestal as a god by now. What more do you want from him?" Evan said with a laugh.
"Fair enough. I'll let him off, then." She turned thoughtful. "Grawvor's a goblin too, isn't he? Do you think he might try to take Nobi's throne?"
"Unlikely. He wears a human face now, and he won't give up that identity easily — it's letting him evolve on his own terms. Wait." Evan seemed to catch hold of something. "He's heading to Holy Eton. Could this have something to do with his own path toward godhood?" A thought seemed to click into place for him — though he had no idea he was overthinking it entirely. Grawvor's real reason for heading to the Church was simply to gauge what tier the Pope himself had reached, using it as a yardstick for his own progress. He hadn't fully shed a goblin's own sense of superiority yet. Evan wasn't Grawvor, though, and sometimes the gap between species meant a gap in thinking too — Evan naturally projected his own assumptions onto him.
But as they drew closer to Holy Eton, Grawvor seemed to vanish entirely. Several days passed with no trace of magical activity, no sign of battle anywhere. If not for tracking him magically, Evan might have believed he'd disappeared altogether.
Even Eton itself showed no reaction at all. Evan's wariness sharpened considerably — a truly skilled fighter left no visible trail of triumph behind him, and Evan refused to believe the Church had no idea Grawvor was coming. The closer they drew, the calmer everything appeared on the surface, the people around him devout and untroubled, and Evan grew more careful with every step. He'd spent his whole life avoiding the Creationist Church wherever possible, and here he was, walking straight into its holiest heart. In truth, some part of him was genuinely curious — he'd heard so much about this place and never once seen it with his own eyes.
He'd taken this risk hoping to slip into the city quietly while the Church's attention stayed fixed on Grawvor — reasoning that a lowly lich like himself would draw no notice at all.
He caught sight of Holy Eton from a distance — a city built high on a plateau, not especially large in area, though it stood as a nation within a nation, despite sitting inside the Norma Empire's own borders. It held the Grand Kaiwang Plaza, the Grand Kaiwang Basilica, the Apostolic Palace, the Pope's summer retreat known as Charlemagne's Keep, the twelve Cathedrals of the Saints, and the Eton Museum, among other landmarks. The territory formed a rough rectangle, walled on all four sides, sitting along the right bank of the Tiber River, backed against the Taijing mountain range. The twelve cathedrals, each architecturally distinct, merged together into a single, seamless whole, forming a vast divine array that blanketed the entire city, wrapping it in holy light like some earthly paradise made manifest.
This divine array ran, ordinarily, at only a tenth of its full strength, the city walls etched with dense layers of sigils thick enough that no worldly army could ever hope to breach them — and that was before accounting for the ranks of magical cannons mounted along the walls, not the ordinary gunpowder kind, but true magical artillery, requiring a senior mage simply to operate, capable of vaporizing a hillside in a single shot. Other empires had tried and failed to replicate such weapons, and even had they succeeded, few could have afforded to fire them — each shot cost in the tens of millions of gold, since the shells themselves were true magic cores, not ordinary shot at all.
Evan drew in a sharp breath at the sight from a distance. Even a legendary mage couldn't withstand more than two direct hits from such a weapon, and that was only what showed on the surface — no telling what secrets lay hidden deeper within. No wonder people said there was exactly one place in this world where even a god would find himself powerless. Holy Eton. What business could Grawvor possibly have in a city like this?
Evan drew his own lich-presence in further still, letting the electromagnetic magic he'd since mastered show plainly instead, and fell in among the pilgrims making their way toward Holy Eton. Watching all this, Xiaoshuang said, "Wang, maybe we shouldn't go in at all. This is too much."
"Xiaoshuang, since we've come this far, let's enter Holy Eton with a devout heart. The Lord will surely watch over us," Evan said, crossing himself over his chest, the picture of piety.
Xiaoshuang rolled her eyes. Such a hypocrite.