Chapter 187: Clement VIII
Evan made his way into the city, arriving at the Grand Kaiwang Plaza. The square stretched vast, thick with people. Before he'd even had the chance to take it all in, holy light flared violently across all twelve Cathedrals of the Saints at once, pillars of milky white radiance shooting skyward — the divine array had activated at full strength. In an instant, the twelve cathedrals fused into a single whole, their light climbing into the heavens before curving downward, wrapping the entire holy city in a dome of light.
Evan's expression shifted. He'd become a turtle in a jar. He glanced around — no one seemed to be paying him any attention. Many of the pilgrims stared upward in shock at the display, its scale overwhelming, though none of them had yet grasped what was actually happening.
Every cleric and Church knight in sight moved at once, with not a trace of panic among them — a display of real discipline. Seeing none of them turn toward him, Evan felt some measure of relief. A moment's thought told him the odds were high they'd found Grawvor.
Xiaoshuang, caught in that same instant, nearly flapped her wings in a panic and bolted — but Evan gave a faint smile, and a sudden pull of suction gripped his left shoulder, holding her fast in place.
"Don't panic. This isn't about us," Evan told her through their mental link.
Before Xiaoshuang could answer, a voice rang out. "Grawvor. You heretic. You dare set foot in the holy city itself, defying the very majesty of God?"
At that authoritative voice, a burst of holy light appeared within the Apostolic Palace, and a figure emerged into the open sky, passing straight through walls as though they weren't there, wings unfurling slowly behind him, scepter in hand, a presence radiating around him like a prison of divine will. Pope Clement VIII.
"Heretic? Hasn't your religion's persecution ended yet? What savage creatures you humans are," came a mild, unbothered voice in reply. A figure appeared in the air — no one had seen how he'd gotten there, as though he'd simply always been present.
"Grawvor, if you would only submit to the Creator, repent with a sincere heart, the Lord is merciful. Even a lost lamb may yet find salvation," Pope Clement VIII said. His gaze swept downward and lingered on Evan for just a moment. In that instant, Evan seemed to glimpse something vast and boundless in the man's eyes, without any sense of distance at all — as though the fight with Raphael played out somewhere within them, gone as quickly as it appeared. Evan understood at once — he'd been seen through. The Pope likely already knew he'd killed Raphael.
Evan couldn't imagine how Clement had learned of his arrival at all — clearly, he'd never registered as worth noticing to begin with. His mind raced, searching for a way to slip free of this. He already sensed that once Clement finished dealing with Grawvor, he himself would likely be next.
"Ha!" Grawvor laughed. "I am a god unto myself. Why would I ever make myself a god's slave? I only came to see what humanity's greatest champion might have to offer. I'm disappointed. You're nothing but a priest playing at divinity."
"Heretic. You blaspheme against the Lord. All glory belongs to Him alone. He is the one true god; all others are devils masquerading as gods. A heretic remains a heretic, however boldly he claims divinity for himself. Before the Lord, humility is the only correct posture," Clement said, slow and measured. Unseen, he'd already invoked his Decree — his word becoming law the instant it left his mouth. He pointed his scepter at Grawvor, and Grawvor felt himself abruptly severed from everything around him, his body dropping, falling from the sky.
Grawvor let out a startled sound as his fall halted abruptly. He realized he'd lost his connection to the elements entirely, though he quickly drew on his own inner energy to hover once more.
"Your law has no hold on me! My turn now." Grawvor gave a cold laugh, closing his hand in the air. Space itself seemed to twist and shift, an invisible force winding around Clement, tightening its grip.
The wings behind Clement stirred, a sound like tearing cloth ringing out, unseen, breaking the attempt entirely.
Watching from below, Evan felt, for an instant, as though he could see everything around them dissolving under the Decree's influence — as though all of reality had become something like waves, or scattered particles. Evan sensed this on pure instinct, without understanding the principle behind it at all. He could see it only through Xiaoshuang's own gift, borrowed without either of them quite grasping how. Around Grawvor, everything seemed to superimpose upon itself, his awareness entirely severed from his surroundings, and he began to fall.
But then a flicker of light appeared beside him — some kind of interference — and his body stabilized. He'd begun to fall, then suddenly rose again. He couldn't make sense of it, though something clicked faintly in his mind, something reminiscent of quantum phenomena from his old life — though he understood nothing of quantum theory itself. Some vague understanding stirred in him, a sense that he'd grasped something crucial, though he couldn't say exactly what.
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Clement smiled. A stone-bound Scripture appeared in his hand, its pages falling open, and he read aloud: "The Lord says: blessed are those who believe in me, for they shall surely enter heaven. Those who do not believe walk the path of wickedness, and shall surely fall into hell."
The Pope appeared to be simply reciting scripture, but Evan clearly saw space itself begin to churn, a gateway of sulfur and flame opening slowly, as though it had always been there. One of Grawvor's feet had already begun to step into it.
In that moment, Grawvor was plainly unprepared. He'd walked a different path entirely — in raw energy, he might well have surpassed the Pope — but in the depths of true understanding, his level fell far short of Clement's, further even than Evan's own. He'd forced his way through purely on the strength of overwhelming raw power, with no real comprehension of what he was doing, his reactions almost entirely instinctive rather than the product of genuine mastery.
Feeling his foot sink into what he took for mere illusion, Grawvor stamped down hard, unaware the difference lay in an entirely different order of magnitude. A thunderclap seemed to roll through empty space, the projection of hell wavering without collapsing — instead, an overwhelming pull began dragging him toward it.
Startled, he threw a punch, a tidal wave of energy surging out toward the hellish projection before him — only for hell to swallow the energy whole in an instant.
Evan let out a breath. Einstein's relativity, it seemed, held true as a genuinely universal approximation of truth — he could see clearly now that this was exactly the effect of relativity at work: space itself, warped absolutely around the gateway to hell. Whether the Pope himself understood this principle, Evan couldn't say, but he'd wielded it all the same, and Grawvor was sliding steadily toward that abyss.
Evan murmured something under his breath and acted. If Grawvor fell here, his own turn would surely follow next — his own mastery fell short of the Pope's, and his raw power fell far short of Grawvor's own. The enemy of his enemy was, for the moment, his friend, and Evan struck without hesitation.
A black lotus flickered within his mental sea, and across all of history, countless intelligent beings' longing for life and fear of death converged in an instant, manifesting Hadir, lord of death, known to the people of this world — something even the divine array couldn't conceal. But Hadir here differed from his ordinary manifestation, presenting two faces at once, a pair of massive light-wings stretching dozens of miles across, clearer this time than ever before — a single body with two aspects, standing upon the black lotus. The face familiar to the people of this world stood forward, the Spear of Hadir in hand, while behind him, another shadow surfaced — a figure in a black, hooded robe, its face entirely hidden, a long-handled scythe in its grip.
The moment he appeared, the divine array shuddered — the first crack it had ever shown in its operation. Hadir raised the scythe and gave it a single, simple hook, and the projection of hell, as though rootless, floating free, wavered once and faded away entirely.
Fury flooded the Pope's face at once. He'd never expected Evan to intervene. Hadir's scythe hadn't clashed against the projection by brute force at all — some trace of true rule had run through that motion, requiring almost no raw power to sever the hellish projection cleanly. He roared, "How dare you!" His gaze snapped toward Evan.
But he found nothing there. Evan had already used the divine array's momentary crack to trigger a short-range teleport, knowing full well the only reason he'd succeeded was the Pope's attention lapsing for that brief instant — face Clement VIII head-on, and he'd have stood no chance at all. There was no better time to leave than now.
Clement's gaze fixed on the spot where Evan had stood, finding only empty air, a ripple still fading through the space there. He pointed his scepter, and a beam of holy light shot after it, vanishing into the rippling void.
He turned to act further, but Grawvor had already recovered his senses. He'd very nearly fallen into hell, someone else's intervention breaking his fall at the last moment — clearly Evan's own doing. The man had left a deep impression on him, someone he now recognized as carrying genuinely profound mastery of magic. A cold sweat broke out across him. Only now did he understand how far he still had to go where magic was concerned — he'd been measuring magic and divine art against the standard of goblin technology, and the gap had proven far wider than he'd assumed. The realization left him shaken, retreat rising in him at once — but fury still burned in his chest too. He gave a roar and threw a punch straight at Pope Clement VIII.
A surging wave of energy crashed forward like a tide. Even the Pope's face showed genuine caution, raising his scepter, a wall of holy light rising to hold back Grawvor's assault. Just as he moved to counter, a doorway of fire opened behind Grawvor, and he retreated through it.
Clement gave a dragon's roar, the divine array surging back into fluid motion at once — but it was already too late, catching only the faintest trace of Grawvor's passage, the ripple in space scrambling the destination of his Random Door entirely, sending him tumbling off to some unknown location instead.
Evan seized the opening without a moment's hesitation, teleporting again, appearing outside the city walls. The instant he materialized, his face shifted, and he swept a hand backward — a massive palm formed of black smoke crashing out behind him — before flickering and teleporting once more.
A beam of milky holy light shot through the air, aimed straight at where Evan had stood. The black smoke palm caught it, then shattered instantly, but Evan had already vanished. The beam struck the ground instead, dust exploding upward, a deep crater left in the earth.
Evan teleported once more, his face going pale, appearing some ten miles outside the city. He let out a muffled grunt, thin sparks of phosphor fire flickering at the corner of his mouth as he breathed. Xiaoshuang, gripping his collar, cried out in alarm. "Are you all right?"
Deep in the jungles of the Barbarian Continent, a small goblin settlement — barely more than a hundred souls — was under attack by beastmen, on the verge of being overrun, when a doorway of fire tore open in the air, and Grawvor came tumbling out of it in a heap.