The tall Cultist leader climbed up from the ground.
Its turbid compound eyes gleamed with a mixture of greed and ecstasy.
"Idiots... killing each other!"
Its voice, like two pieces of gravel grinding together, was filled with beastly excitement.
It pointed its massive mechanical claw, modified from a mining exoskeleton, at Leticia.
"Seize her!"
"Offer this great gift... to the great The Spider Mother!"
Incited by it, the hundreds of remaining Cultists broke free from their initial shock at the miracle.
Their sanity had long been corrupted by Chaos; at this moment, greed and fanaticism overwhelmed their fear.
They saw an opportunity.
A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
These damned Astra Militarum Soldiers were attacking that mysterious woman; they were fighting amongst themselves!
"Kill them!"
"Flesh! Offer it to The Spider Mother!"
"Roar!"
The final, maddest roar erupted simultaneously from hundreds of twisted throats.
This tide of filth and blasphemy lunged from all directions toward the sole, quiet island in the center of the battlefield.
The Astra Militarum Soldiers wore expressions of utter despair.
Their ammunition was exhausted.
Their stamina was long spent.
They had just summoned the courage to fire upon a being who might be a deity, and now, they didn't even have the strength to raise their bayonets to block this final charge.
Some even closed their eyes, awaiting the end of being torn to shreds.
Valerius's face was as pale as frozen iron.
The situation had completely and utterly slid into the deepest, most uncontrollable abyss.
He was powerless.
As an Imperial Commissar, this was the first time he had tasted such pure, unadulterated powerlessness.
Terrania's small body trembled slightly with fear.
She subconsciously hid in Leticia's arms, her small hands clutching the black hem of the dress tightly.
Leticia did not look at the approaching enemies.
She merely reached out and gently patted Terrania's back in comfort.
Then, she cast a calm glance at Fogremia beside her.
There was no command in that gaze, no urging.
Only a faint sense of casualness, as if saying, "Time to clean up the trash."
Fogremia understood.
She even felt a negligible annoyance at failing to grasp the Goddess's intention earlier.
A smile, filled with disgust yet supreme elegance, bloomed on her perfect lips.
She took a step forward.
This understated step seemed to draw a line between the sacred and the mundane.
She perfectly shielded Leticia and Terrania behind her.
"A bunch of trash with no aesthetic sense."
Her voice was not loud, yet it clearly reached the ears of Valerius and every Astra Militarum Soldier.
Her voice carried an undisguised contempt, like an artist looking at a shoddy imitation.
"Even your charging stance is so ugly, disorganized, and filled with nauseatingly redundant movements."
She slowly raised her hand and gripped the hilt of the ornate longsword at her waist.
"Let your filthy lives play the shortest funeral dirge for the Goddess's arrival."
Her voice sounded like a final verdict.
"At least, don't let your blood soil the Goddess's hem."
The moment her voice fell.
Her figure moved.
No.
That wasn't "moving."
On Valerius's retina, and in the vision of all the Astra Militarum Soldiers who could still keep their eyes open, that silver-haired figure [vanished] from the spot like a phantom.
No starting movement for a charge.
No dust raised by high-speed movement.
No sonic boom from breaking the sound barrier.
She was like a drop of water merging into the sea, a wisp of wind merging into the air, simply evaporating from the dimension of reality.
The next second.
A bolt of silver lightning.
A slender, extremely brilliant bolt of silver lightning, whose trajectory could not be captured by the naked eye, flashed through that tide of filth composed of hundreds of Cultists.
Fast.
Fast beyond thought.
Fast enough that Valerius's gene-enhanced brain could not process this instantaneous information.
He didn't see anything clearly.
No one could see her movements clearly.
People could only hear.
Hear a dense, continuous, yet strangely rhythmic... cutting sound.
The sound was very light, very soft.
Not like the violent roar of a Chainsword tearing through flesh, nor the dull boom of a Bolter exploding a body.
That sound...
Was like a master chef using the sharpest knife, at a speed beyond human limits, processing the finest ingredients.
Pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft—
Hundreds of sounds of blades cutting into flesh overlapped in a thousandth of a second, merging into a strange, brief, teeth-gritting note.
All the Cultists' roars stopped abruptly.
The fanaticism on their faces froze.
Their momentum from the charge had not even dissipated.
That bolt of silver lightning had already retracted its brilliance.
Fogremia, who knows when, had already returned to where she stood before.
As if she had never left.
She turned gracefully, facing Leticia, and bowed her head slightly.
The ornate longsword in her hand let out a light, satisfied hum, and she slowly sheathed it.
Click.
A soft sound.
Like the last note of a symphony falling.
Her pale purple silk dress was spotless.
Her moonlight-like silver hair was not stained with any filth.
And behind her.
That surging, filthy tide.
Stilled.
All the charging Cultists, in the same instant, remained in their forward-charging posture, frozen in place.
Then...
They fell apart.
Not knocked back, not falling down.
They were like building blocks cut by the most precise laser scalpel, broken into pieces from the middle, from the neck, from the waist, from the limbs...
Every cut was smooth as a mirror.
No tearing, no pulling.
Only absolute, perfect, geometrically beautiful... separation.
Pfft—
Blood mist.
The delayed blood mist exploded from the hundreds of broken bodies at the same moment.
A thick, scarlet, scalding-hot mist of flesh instantly enveloped the entire battlefield.
The mist was so thick that it temporarily obscured everyone's vision.
The battlefield fell into dead silence once more.
A dead silence more profound, more viscous, and more soul-shuddering than any before.
Only the sound of the remaining Astra Militarum Soldiers gasping, one after another, as if trying to pull their own lungs out.
As the blood mist slowly dissipated.
On the ground, there was not a single complete, standing Cultist left.
Only mounds of steaming, perfectly cut... fragments.
Valerius knelt there.
He looked at the hellish, yet strangely artistic scene before him.
He looked at the silver-haired knight who, after sheathing her sword, stood quietly behind the black-haired girl.
His brain, that cold, solid thinking machine armed with the imperial codex, was, at this moment, no longer just shattered.
It was directly crushed by a higher-dimensional force that could not be understood, analyzed, or resisted.
Crushed into the finest, meaningless... dust.
He opened his mouth, wanting to say something.
Judgment?
With what to judge? With his ridiculous Bolter pistol?
Reprimand?
In what capacity to reprimand? As a loser who survived only because the enemy needed "protection" from her?
He found that all his words, all his thoughts, all his faith, in the face of that one sword strike, seemed so pale, so ridiculous, so... insignificant.
That was not a battle.
Valerius, using his last ounce of reason, reached a conclusion in his heart.
That was not a battle.
That was...
Cleaning.
It was a higher-level life form cleaning a dirty floor that displeased it.
His gaze uncontrollably shifted from that silver-haired "sword" to that black-haired "wielder."
Leticia.
From beginning to end, she had not moved a single step.
From beginning to end, she hadn't even spared those Cultists a second glance.
She was just comforting the frightened child in her arms.
As if that one-sided massacre, enough to overturn mortal cognition, was just an insignificant background noise happening far away.
This composure.
This indifference.
This calmness, treating a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood as nothing.
Made Valerius feel a... chill from the depths of his marrow, more than that earth-shattering sword strike earlier.
He finally understood.
Understood the source of that power.
Understood who that terrifying, elegant slaughter was serving.
And also understood how stupid and ridiculous his previous actions were.
He was not fighting a heretic.
He was...
Throwing stones at the sun.
Leticia ignored the bloody scene behind her that would have caused any veteran of a hundred battles to have a mental breakdown.
She also ignored those Astra Militarum Soldiers who were either dazed, trembling, or already kneeling and vomiting.
And even more ignored the Imperial Commissar kneeling on the ground, whose faith and reason had been completely turned to dust.
Her gaze turned in another direction.
Turned to those loyal imperial soldiers lying on the ground, groaning in pain due to their injuries.
In her pure black eyes, deep as the nascent universe.
That god-like indifference slowly faded.
Replaced by a trace of... compassion.
She took a step and walked slowly toward the injured soldiers.
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