Moonlight blanketed the earth as towering flames raged through this ancient city with thousands of years of history, while countless plumes of black smoke rose from the ground into the sky.
Centered on St. Peter's Square, an enormous hole had been blasted into the earth, and blazing magma surged out from below. Seen from the sky, Rome looked as though something had taken a massive bite out of it.
Most of the city had been charred black. The ground was dry and decayed, split apart by abyss-like ravines. Most striking of all was the area containing Vatican City, the holy land and residence of the Pope, the earthly representative of the Lord. Its buildings and parks had abruptly become a sea of crimson lava, the entire district razed flat.
Human bodies, spiritual items, ancient buildings, modern skyscrapers, magical barriers passed down for centuries... everything seemed to have been wiped away by a blazing palm, shattered and scattered beneath the radiance of a god of destruction.
Even far from the center of the blast, the devastation caused by the terrifying shockwave was in no way less severe than directly facing that unparalleled superheated inferno. If anything, it was even more horrifying.
Everything within dozens of kilometers was instantly swept away. The irresistible force collapsed buildings and uprooted trees. Even the fortified strongholds of the Knights scattered throughout Rome were sheared away together with the very ground beneath them by the surging blast wave!
The terrifying superheated temperatures at ground zero instantly ignited everything in the center, whether they were mighty Templar knights, devout nuns, diligent priests, or lofty cardinals...
Before the radiance of fusion, all were equal.
Vaporized, reduced to ash, their bodies utterly annihilated. Yet they were the fortunate ones, for at least their suffering lasted only an instant. Those who survived were forced to confront the collapse of their faith, the pain of their wounds, the loss of their possessions, and the grief of losing family and friends...
On the outer edges of Rome, people clutched their aching chests and climbed unsteadily to their feet with their clothes in disarray, staring in utter horror at the battered cityscape around them.
Everywhere they looked lay twisted metal and shattered fragments of crystalline glass. As far as the eye could see, raging flames burned so fiercely that even the sky had been roasted crimson.
"St. Peter's Basilica has collapsed. The holy land is gone..."
"Vatican City has been destroyed. His Holiness and the cardinals have probably been martyred as well and returned to the Lord's embrace..."
"We are sinners. We failed to protect the remains of Saint Peter."
"Revenge! This is blasphemy, blasphemy! Every Roman Catholic believer in the world should seek revenge! Only vengeance can wash away the humiliation the Roman Catholic Church has suffered this time!!"
Clang!
Some Templar knights clad from head to toe in airtight silver armor threw down their longswords and wept bitterly. Nuns in habits fell to their knees in prayer, while priests dressed in monastic robes roared furiously.
Vatican City was, after all, not very large, occupying less than one square kilometer. Most of those living there were formal members of the clergy or believers who had rendered special contributions to the Church. Far more Roman Catholic believers were scattered among the various churches throughout Rome, and quite a few had fortunately escaped the catastrophe.
Because of the tremendous explosive roar, many people's hearing had been impaired to varying degrees. Suddenly, several survivors not far away could be seen opening their mouths wide and shouting something. In the next instant, they prostrated themselves on the ground.
More and more people began gesticulating excitedly. Although no one understood what the others were trying to say, they followed the direction of their gazes and saw a white-gold radiance shining from within the blazing crimson hellscape. A humanoid figure, white robes, a halo, wings...
Six crystalline white-gold wings unfolded and beat gently. From the streams of light falling like fragments of stars came an aura of magnificence, vastness, overwhelming grandeur, and holiness.
An angel!
An apostle of the Lord. God had not abandoned them. He had bestowed His gospel upon them...
Hummm!
The Roman Catholic believers had only just shaken off their despair and were about to cheer when, before they could sing even a single hymn of praise, they saw the "angel" wave a hand. A blood-red pillar of light linking heaven and earth descended from the sky, completely swallowing the sole remaining ruins at the center of Vatican City—St. Peter's Basilica.
BOOM—!
Even from the relative safety of more than ten kilometers away, they could still feel the destructive power contained within that towering pillar of light. Another fireball erupted high into the heavens, once again dyeing the sky—whose color had only barely begun to fade—a blazing red, like sunset afterglow reflected across clouds to create a burning sky.
Gulp!
Staring at that terrifying sight, every survivor felt their throat go dry and involuntarily swallowed.
That was no angel descending to bring revelation and gospel. It was an angel of death descending to bring destruction!
Alongside the physical fear overwhelming their senses came profound self-doubt and uncertainty regarding the faith they had always believed in.
"Is this divine punishment?"
"Why?! Why would God treat His lambs this way?"
"What did we do wrong? Why has the Lord abandoned us?"
...
No one could provide answers to these pitiful believers whose faith was collapsing, because the bishops who possessed the authority, prestige, and qualifications to interpret the word of God had already been reduced to ashes along with Vatican City.
The destructive "angel" likewise paid no attention to the believers desperately seeking answers. She transformed into a streak of light and swept across the land, the pressure radiating from her alone enough to terrify ordinary mortals out of their wits.
Crackle...
Listening to the crackle of melting metal, spontaneously combusting wood, fuel, and other explosive materials detonating in succession, mixed with the shrill wail of disaster sirens and the prayers and cries of the crowds, Selene looked down upon the ruined city that had survived the calamity.
At this moment, the Italian government troops stationed near Rome finally arrived. Firefighters, police officers, and soldiers set up cordons while rescuing and dispersing the crowds, some staring upward while others knelt on the ground in anguish.
Without exception, not even the secular Italian government forces dared to retaliate.
The collapse of the Roman Catholic faith in the hearts of the people was one thing. More importantly, the angel of destruction had left behind a terrifying inferno that distorted the very air and caused everything within it to melt.
Some officials transmitted footage of the scene in real time to senior government officials who happened to be elsewhere and had survived. The generals who had initially flown into rages and clamored for retaliation immediately fell silent when they saw the destructive angel of death in the sky.
They had originally assumed Rome had suffered a nuclear strike, in which case it truly would have been their responsibility to respond. But the reality was that none of the missile-defense or air-defense systems had even reacted before the capital was blown apart. There was no nuclear radiation either. Obviously, this was an internal war on the magic side.
Fight?
Like hell!
They wanted to live a few more days. They had no intention of courting death.
Uh... you can't seriously expect them to declare war on God Himself, can you?
"Whew... What a truly venerable and respected Pope... Things went this smoothly thanks in no small part to his guilt and compassion."
With the memory extraction complete, Selene casually tossed the elderly head in her hand, now covered in violet-red spots from Honkai energy corrosion, into her storage space. Beating the six angelic wings that served practically no purpose beyond making a dramatic public appearance, she closed her eyes with a sigh.
Truthfully, based on Aleister's intelligence regarding the Roman Catholic Church's hidden trump cards, Selene had expected a bitter struggle considering the normal output level of this divided-spirit avatar. She had never imagined it would be this easy.
But after Selene finished reading every memory belonging to Pope Matthai Reese of the Roman Catholic Church, she had to admit that Matthai had inadvertently helped accelerate the Roman Catholic Church's destruction through a twist of circumstance.
At a time when hawkish thinking dominated the Roman Catholic Church's middle and upper ranks, it was rare for Pope Matthai Reese himself to be a dove.
No matter how much of a rubber stamp he had become, he was still the Pope. Many of the Roman Catholic Church's most deeply hidden magical techniques required the Pope's authorization before they could be activated.
"The switch for your ultimate weapons was placed in the hands of a softhearted and indecisive man. The other factions of this world really are fortunate."
A satisfied curve touched Selene's lips as a hexagram-shaped magical formation appeared in her palm. The entire pattern of the formation was blood-red, engraved with black ear-like markings, the Keys of Saint Peter, and crosses. Its glow was warm and gentle.
"'Fish of the Supper,' the Gregorian Chant... I hope they'll be useful to that fellow Aleister."
Although she had successfully plundered them, they were useless to Selene.
"Fish of the Supper" was one of the Roman Catholic Church's ultimate trump-card techniques as the foremost of Christianity's three great denominations. Its effect was extremely simple: amplification. It could amplify the power of any offensive magical technique by two billion times.
There were many complicated steps involved, but after swallowing everyone in the Vatican—including Cardinal Pietro Yogdis and the other cardinals and cardinal bishops—without even sparing the ground beneath them, Selene had already obtained a complete understanding of the technique's structure and construction.
As for its activation conditions, only two points were worth noting. First, the Pope of Rome had to personally issue the order releasing its restrictions. Second, the user had to be hated by all two billion Roman Catholic believers.
For the first condition, Selene had already stripped Matthai Reese of every spell and spiritual item resembling part of the Papal inheritance. As for the second... Ahem. I've already done everything I reasonably can for you, Aleister. If you want to use it, figure out the rest yourself.
Selene had also obtained the sacred incantations of the Gregorian Chant.
That was the so-called ultimate weapon of the Roman Catholic Church.
It was a grand-scale spell in which 3,333 monks gathered within a cathedral and chanted sacred incantations together. Like sunlight focused through a magnifying glass, it could drastically amplify magical power and precisely reduce any point anywhere in the world to ash.
These two grand magical techniques formed the foundation underlying the Roman Catholic Church's status as the foremost branch of Christianity. Both required the Pope to personally release their restrictions before activation. In a sense, this was an insurance measure established by the Popes of earlier generations who had developed and perfected the techniques, intended to prevent Papal authority from falling into other hands.
Unfortunately, who could have predicted that God's Right Seat, originally nothing more than an advisory institution for the Pope, would grow so powerful that it became impossible to control and even turn into the true ruler of the Roman Catholic Church? And now, the Roman Catholic Church's accumulated heritage had fallen cheaply into the hands of an outsider like Selene.
As for these magic-side techniques, no matter how devout a faith they required for activation, Selene had no interest in them. They were fundamentally incompatible with her own power system. At most, they were amusing curiosities.
She would keep a copy and send the whole package to Aleister so he could refine and modify it. He was an expert in this sort of thing. Once altered, using it as a catalyst for the Artificial Heaven seemed quite promising.
The magical formation in her palm dissipated. Selene beat her wings and, rather than using Spatial Teleportation, openly streaked toward Eastern Europe with tremendous fanfare.
Whoosh—!
Simply by flying across the heavens, the violent air currents seemed to split the night sky in two. The thick clouds and every particle of dust in the atmosphere were forced aside, leaving the skies clear for thousands of kilometers and revealing starlight stained an orange-red hue.
Exactly. Selene wanted to make this as spectacular as possible.
The Roman Catholic Church could no longer be allowed to exist. She intended to shake the foundations of the faith it controlled and influenced.
Otherwise, why would Selene have deliberately manifested angel wings and cosplayed as an angel, then summoned those silver knights she had specifically shaped to resemble angels...?
She had even chosen those six white-gold wings only after carefully calculating the perfect golden ratio of aesthetics, size, and number. Two wings were too plain. Twelve were too cumbersome. Four and eight looked awkward. Six was just right.
Selene would not allow those silver knights to dissipate immediately either. She intended to let them rampage for a while longer. While once again suppressing the active spread of Honkai energy, she ordered them not to harm ordinary people and specifically to cut down those Roman Catholic believers screaming for revenge.
The news that the holy land of Vatican City had been destroyed by "divine punishment" would spread throughout the entire world.
As for believers, the more devout they were, the more likely they were to doubt themselves first. According to Christian doctrine, God could not be wrong. So who must be at fault?
Naturally, the Roman Catholic Church. They would instinctively begin searching for their own mistakes.
At a time like this, even trivial shortcomings that were not truly sins would be interpreted as wrongdoing. And as for actual shortcomings, there were plenty. If Selene deliberately pointed them out herself, it would only lessen the effect. Every believer who reflected upon the matter would discover sins they personally accepted as genuine.
...
The Strait of Malacca, a golden shipping route connecting the Pacific and Indian Oceans, had already lost its usual bustle.
Not far off the coast of Banda Aceh cruised the flagship of the Roman Catholic holy-war punitive fleet, the Queen of the Adriatic Sea, and its current condition was hardly good.
The frozen hull, glowing like an enormous white light bulb, looked like a model that had been mauled by a destructive child. Its moonlight-colored surface was scorched black beyond recognition.
One side of the warship in particular was covered in twisted metal wreckage and traces of intense heat damage. An enormous hole had even been torn through the bottom of the stern compartment, and ice transformed from seawater was rapidly repairing the damaged hull.
Although the Queen of the Adriatic Sea had suffered no truly substantial damage, its commander, Bishop Biagio Busoni, was still flying into a rage.
"Useless! Every last one of you is useless! We have this many people—the great Roman Catholic Church's Knights and magical combat units—and you're telling me we still can't defeat a fortress manned by a bunch of little brats, amateurs, and heretics?"
"They're espers... not exactly children."
"Who?! Who dares talk back to me like..."
Dressed in heavy, lavish vestments that dragged along the floor, his entire appearance exuding the gaudy air of a nouveau riche, Biagio immediately bristled and roared.
Then, in the very next instant, his somewhat harsh-looking face suddenly froze. He slowly turned around, muttering under his breath.
"How is that possible?"