Er Mu - Release that Witch

The eyes of the warriors were full of reverence as they looked at him. In this way, he passed the third checkpoint and came to the gate of the Central Secret Temple. The Pope’s personal guards were already here waiting for him. They bowed to greet him, then pushed open the metal gate behind them.

Mayne followed the guards and stepped in behind them, through the gate. From this point onwards, he has entered the heart of Hermes, it was here that all of the Church’s inventions and research took place.

There were no torches within the central secret area, because of this his vision suddenly darkened and only after a moment for him to adapt did he see a narrow passage appear in front of his eyes. The channels roof and walls have been fully covered with cast iron, and both sided of it were inlaid with fluorescent stones. These strange stones were a type of the God’s Stone of Retaliation, and after soaking in demonic beast blood they began to emit a green fluorescence.

Reaching the end of the channel a cage appeared in front of him. After entering the cage, the guards activated the mechanism and it started to go downwards. The chain above their heads issued a crunching sound, which seemed to be especially ear-piercing within the narrow channel. Accompanied by this cacophony of sounds, the cage slowly sank into a hole in the ground, then suddenly Mayne’s eyes were flooded with light.

An extremely spacious underground area suddenly appeared before his eyes.

No matter how often he had seen this scene, he would always be shocked by it anew, giving birth to a feeling of insignificance from his heart.

In accordance with common sense, buried so deeply underground, the cave should have been dark, pitch-dark. But here, the entire cave was illuminated by the light coming from the God’s Stone of Retaliation. The God’s Stone of Retaliation were spread over the whole cave, rising from the ground and forming several stalagmites like crystal flowers. Even the smallest stalagmites were so thick that it was nearly impossible for as many as ten grown men to encircle it. While the highest stalagmite almost reached the apex of the cave, even higher than the Hermes’ Cathedral’s Tower.

Their colors were also all differently having almost nothing in common with each other, the densest stalagmites of God’s Stone of Retaliation were lavender, while the ones at the edge had changed from a dark blue to a light green. The smaller ones were even white, while the seemingly only recently emerged stalagmites had a near transparent body. The lavender colored God’s Stone of Retaliation were the stones shining the brightest, especially the stalagmite which surpassed even the Cathedral’s tower. Its brightness came close to the that of the full moon, making it possible to see the end of the cave without the help of a torch, but also allowing one to just faintly be able to see the ground.

Under the influence of such a large concentration of the God’s Stone of Retaliation, the inside of the mountains could be regarded as being a magic free area. The God’s Stone of Retaliation that were sold by the Church had all been mined from this place.

The space within the cave was large enough to accommodate five or six of Hermes’ basilicas, and down here they had indeed built an exact replica of the cathedral that was above ground, called the Pantheon. But the temple looked much older than the one that was on the top of the mountain. From high up in the air, Mayne could see a black iron gate in the mountain wall behind the temple. It led to the entrance standing at the foot of Hermes connecting it with the Old Holy City. So in a sense, this ancient building could be called the actual core of the Church, it has already existed long before the New Holy City had been established.

The cage took a quarter-hour to reach the ground. When Mayne could finally walk out of the cage, he straightened his robes and followed the messenger to the temple.

The conversion ceremony would be held in a hall of the temple.

Stepping into the hall, the light surrounding the Archbishop was no longer a cold blue-lavender but was instead an orange that was created by thousands of burning candles. Overhead there hung a three-tiered tower-like chandelier, and candle holders had been placed all around the hall. Looking at them through devote eyes they seemed like countless shaking stars. Thanks to all of the flames, the chilliness had been completely dispersed from the cave.

The man standing in the middle of the two conversion tables was the Supreme Pontiff of the Church, Pope O’Brien. He wore an eye-catching red-gold robe with gold-colored gemstones on his head and at the moment was carefully checking the conversion equipment, and finishing the last bit of preparations for the ceremony.

“Your Holiness,” standing before O’Brian, Mayne immediately kneeled down in worship and kissing the pope’s fingers.

“Get up, son.” the pope slowly responded with a hoarse voice. “Besides the guards, no one else is here, there is no need for elaborate rituals.”

“Right,” Mayne stood up, but still couldn’t stop himself from becoming shocked. Compared with last time, the Supreme Pontiff now appeared to be much older, he had gotten deep wrinkles all over his face, and his skin now seemed to be an unhealthy shade of white, both loose and dull. Lastly, a lot of dense and eye-catching brown spots had appeared all over his body. Seeing the pope in such condition, the Archbishop’s eyes immediately became hot, “You’re… suffering.”

“This is a trace of time,” O’Brien muttered, “no one can fight against time, my life is running low, I’m afraid that I will never see the day when humans can defeat the devil. But, in this way I also don’t have to face the pain of the unknown anymore. Be that as it might, you have to keep on fighting until you’ve finally defeat the enemy or you’ve been defeated by them.”

If we fail again, we will ultimately perish, Mayne nodded, “I will do my duty until even the very last minute.”

“Very well,” the old man smiled in satisfaction. “You’ve been doing very well lately, you’ve even increased the Army of Judges by more than thousand soldiers. Today we have sixty-two applications for the conversion, which can be regarded as the biggest number within recent years.”

“Can you tell me how many members of the God’s Punishment Army we will need to overthrow the Devils?” Mayne asked, and after hesitating for a moment, he continued. “All the information I know about the Devils comes from the Holy Book. But the record in the book aren’t complete, within them, there isn’t any information about their origin, quantity or combat style recorded. I know that to know these secret I will have to wait until I become the next Pope, but…”

“You are too anxious, you have to show more patience,” O’Brian reminded him, “and it won’t be long before you can take over the title of Supreme Pontiff, becoming the next Pope. You will find all the answers to your questions in a secret library at the top of the Pantheon. For now, I can only tell you this, the more there are, the better it will be.” He sighed.

“Also, I’m not really looking forward to you presiding over the conversion ceremony, but since you’re already here, this session of the conversion, you will try to host it while I will be looking at it from the side. For later, this way you can also accumulate some… Keke… experience.”

Mayne promptly patted the Pope’s back and when his breathing had become slightly smoother, he then bowed and said: “As Your Holiness commands.”

To become the next Pope, it was necessary to grasp all knowledge about the God’s Punishment Army’s Conversion Ceremony. A year ago, after O’Brian had declared that Mayne would be the one to become his successor, he had given him books about the ceremony to read. Only when he had obtained all the knowledge within would he have the qualifications to succeed him.

Because of this, the contents of the book have long since already been memorized.

To create a new soldier for the God’s Punishment Army, it was necessary to sacrifice a witch’s life. A mixture was made out of her blood and out of the God’s Punishment Stones, which was then injected into a warrior of the Army of Judges. During the centuries the pattern of the ceremony had been improved many times, but the essence of it has never changed — while the number of witches decided the upper limit of the possible number of new member for the God’s Punishment Army, it was the devotion and will of the Judges which decided its rate of success.

After reading this book, he finally came to understand why the Church would accommodate so many young women every year. There was no outward sign to indicated that they would turn into a witch, before the moment they started to gather their magic, they were completely the same as any other human. But once they began to converge into their magic power, their body, organs, and blood would all be changed. So, in addition to expanding the scale of the breeding, there was no other way they could raise the number of witches.

This was also the reason why he had approved of Heather’s way of speaking — everything they had ever done was totally evil, the hands of the people within the higher ranks of the Church were all soaked in blood. They had killed more witches than any executioner. But in order to defeat the Devil, to avoid the destruction of humanity, they had no choice but to do so.

Only the victorious would be qualified to obtain God’s favor.

…

There were two Judges placed on the conversion table, and Mayne knew both of them, namely it was Dylan from the first battalion and also Tucker Thor, a Holy City guard, who was still a Presiding Judge.

Even though both of them were smiling and trying to display their faith, but because of their tensed muscles and clenched fist, the Archbishop could still see just how nervous they truly were. So he tried to calm them by stepping up to them and patting their shoulders, “Relax, I believe both of you will succeed.”

“Your Excellency, as long as we endure the pain, will we make it?” Dylan couldn’t prevent himself from asking.

“That’s right, you only have to hold on,” Mayne laughed. “Your name is Dylan, right?”

“You remembered my name,” he became totally excited.

“Of course, you are a member of the First Battalion, which had participated in the war to defend Hermes last year. The captain of your unit is… Alica, am I right?”

“Yes,” Dylan nodded over and over, “During the battle, our unit suffered heavy casualties, half of my comrades died under the claws of the demonic beasts. I thought that if I could get the ability to kill those mixed species like I’d seen the God’s Punishment Army do, Your Excellency, I would also want to become a member of the God’s Punishment Army!”

“That’s a firm belief,” Mayne encouraged, and then turned around to look at the other Judge. “So what’s about you, Tucker Thor, what is your reason for becoming a member of the God’s Punishment Army?”

“I want to defend the New Holy City,” said the Presiding Judge. “Furthermore, it seems that each passing year the demonic beasts only keep on growing stronger. They already broke through the wall of the Holy City last year, and if it weren’t for the God’s Punishment Army, it would have been entirely possible that they cathedral would have had fallen on that day. So now I also want to become a powerful shield against the demonic beasts, and pierce them with my pike.”

“Excellent, you are both the pride of the Church,” Mayne, just as it was described in the ancient records, tried to resolve their tension and fear through using encouraging words. When he saw that their faith was as strong as possible, he waved his hand to signal that the ceremony could now continue.

A group of guards came up to blindfold their eyes and used iron rings to fix their ankles and hands to the top of the table, making it impossible for them to struggle free during the course of the Conversion Ceremony. Then the witch was also brought in and placed on the table between the two.

As a witch that belonged to the Church, she had spent most of her life in a monastery within the Old Holy City, but after her awakening, she was then sent over to the core area, waiting until it was time for her to become the material needed for the conversion.

One day before she was to be turned into a sacrifice, she was forced to drink a lot of dream water was. The dream water was an herbal medicine made from boiling sleeping ferns and winter flowers, it ensured that regardless of what happened she would not wake up during the ceremony.