Chapter 311

It wasn’t often that Nick was spooked. He was usually the one doing the spooking, and even when faced with extra-dimensional demons trying to corrupt the fabric of reality, he tended to respond with excessive violence rather than fear.However, he had to admit that seeing the piles of bodies, clearly victims of a similar frenzy that had ravaged Sashara’s temple, but without anyone to intervene in time, gave him pause.

The only good news he found was that Ulter’s temple was clearly smaller, holding only about two dozen people.

The massacre here was still a tragedy, but in terms of raw numbers, it could have been much worse.

Finally turning to face those responsible, Nick was shocked to meet exceedingly familiar eyes.

“Vicar?” He asked, the words spilling out of his lips before he could stop and think.

Mana signatures were not things that could be changed overnight. Not enough to make them unrecognizable, at least.

But great traumas, especially magical in origin, could do that. And he knew for a fact that Alexander had experienced something like that.

He hadn’t paid much attention to the poor man after his last visit, but if Nick himself was still cautious of priests and went out of his way to avoid Sashara’s temple, even though he hadn’t been possessed, he had to imagine that Alexander would be much, much worse.

Before, he would have said that the Alexander he knew, who had the patience to teach Floria’s children everything they needed to face the world, and who had helped him hide his shady practices from Marthas, would not have gone off the deep end.

But clearly, he hadn’t realized how deeply disturbed he had been by Sashara’s possession.

“Not a Vicar anymore,” Alexander smiled, though it was a sad thing. He didn’t seem pleased to meet him in this circumstance, and Nick shared that feeling wholeheartedly.

“I can see that,” Devon spat, eyeing the carnage with barely suppressed rage. “Have you gone insane, then? Decided to drink the blood of innocents? Perhaps summoned a demon or two?”

Nick had to conceal his involuntary reaction to his brother’s words. He hadn’t exactly drunk blood, but he couldn’t truly say it would never happen, and he’d certainly summoned demons enough times, even if it was to kill them immediately afterward.

“Ah, both Crowley brothers. I'm sorry to say this isn’t a good time. I would have loved to catch up, but circumstances are as they are, and I have a job to finish," Alexander said, still in that eerily calm tone that made it clear he didn’t think the situation was outside his control.

He’d certainly become stronger. Nick could sense enough mana from him to match some of the graduate mages of the Tower, and he exhibited a level of confidence that could only come from two sources.

Either complete belief in his ability to get out of here, which didn’t seem that impossible, considering the level of death he’d inflicted upon the poor people of Ulter’s temple, or idiocy, and Nick him well enough to know he wasn’t an idiot.

“Whatever it is you think you are doing, stop,” Nick ordered. He could infer much from the way the anguish, pain, and leftover mana from the slaughter were being channeled out of the ether into several anchor points all over the temple, but he wouldn’t let it be known until it was absolutely necessary.

Alexander just shook his head. “I’m doing this for you, too, you know? The gods have grown bolder. In their greed, they are turning more and more people into their puppets, extending their domains unlawfully. If this isn’t stopped, Floria will be swallowed up too. You must know this.”

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At his side, Devon tilted his head in confusion, clearly unaware of what he was talking about, and Nick remembered that while he’d mentioned that Marthas’ presence had caused a resurgence of the faith, he hadn’t gone into detail about what that meant.

“That doesn’t give you the right to kill innocents, especially when I know for a fact you are doing this out of revenge, not a desire to save people,” Nick pressed, feeling a flicker of annoyance pass through Alexander before it was suppressed by the same ruthlessness that was hiding a great deal of grief.

“It doesn’t matter if you believe me. I appreciate your help, Nicholas, and I’ll still give you a chance to walk out of here. Don’t look back, and forget what you saw. I will take care of everything else.”

Surprisingly, there was a genuine honesty in his words. Alexander seemed to truly believe he was doing the right thing, even though that certainty was born of a great deal of pain and anger.

Nick’s eyes narrowed as the pieces began to fall into place. “You never really expected to successfully destroy Sashara’s temple, did you? You knew the Bishop would be there to stop the creature you unleashed, and that help would be sent there soon enough.”

One of the other men, a battle-hardened warrior with arms covered in twisting tattoos, slammed his fist against the wall. “Enough of this, Alexander! We need to move quickly, unless you want everyone in this damn city to come down on us!”

The ex-vicar shot a fierce glare at the man, causing him to stumble back, but he turned to the two brothers with a somewhat apologetic smile. “What will it be? Will you do the right thing and let us free the people of Alluria from one of the gods threatening their peace, or will you stand against freedom?”

That had to be the most egregious strawman fallacy Nick had ever experienced. It was almost impressive how quickly Alexander managed to distort the situation to make himself look like the hero, but Nick knew that continuing to argue wouldn’t lead anywhere.

A quick look with told him that the other Pure Souls were nearly finished with their ritual preparations, and it felt eerily similar to what he’d seen in Honeyton, but several times stronger, since it was fueled by three times as many deaths.

Ulter’s domain would be consumed by a blasphemous flame, serving as fuel for the fire’s spread, and soon, the temple grounds would lose their sanctity, becoming a void in the ether where negative emotions would be drawn.

That destruction wasn’t necessarily something Nick opposed. He had definitely noticed that the god of the seas was gaining influence in the city, which would probably turn it into a battleground for the people’s faith between him and Sashara.

But the method used to accomplish it was simply inexcusable, especially since he could see several young acolytes among the dead, who had done nothing to be blamed for.

Nick wasn't a justice paladin. Honestly, he was as far from that ideal as possible. But even he wouldn’t accept turning Alluria and the West into an open battleground for religious war.

No, he had to stop this here and now, or things would only get worse.

He didn’t say anything, but felt his brother shift into a ready stance and saw the sadness flicker across Alexander’s eyes as he understood this wouldn’t end without a fight.

“For what it's worth, I’m sorry it had to come to this,” the man who had once been his teacher said, and Nick nodded back, showing more respect than he had to any other enemy so far.

Stone exploded as Devon closed the gap between himself and the nearest cultist, sword humming with and slicing through the shield that flickered to appear around her without hesitation.

A second cultist appeared a moment later, his tattoos coming to life and summoning a much sturdier brass barrier, against which Devon’s blade made a ringing sound.

A third, the grizzled warrior, moved to attack Nick but was stopped by Alexander’s raised hand. “No, you can’t face him.”

Doubt clearly flashed across the man’s face, but he knew better than to contradict his leader and stepped back, doing something with his mana to stabilize the ritual, which had been teetering on the edge of backlash since Devon distracted a fourth cultist.

Nick watched the process with more than a little curiosity. He knew that once rituals were disrupted, they were extremely hard to get back on track, especially without sufficient resources and expertise. However, the man, whose limited mana made him unlikely to be a secret master in disguise, managed to achieve this feat alone.

Not that he expected proper ritual safety from these people, but he had to wonder if the man even knew the danger he was in.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t spend as much time on the matter as he would have liked. His brother was holding his own, and the longer this continued, the more likely they were to have Xander join them, but the ex-vicar seemed to realize that too, and was doing something with his mana that eerily reminded Nick of , if used offensively.

Dark flames flickered on Alexander’s hands, greedily consuming the divine power of the sea god still present in the domain, quickly growing into a blaze that engulfed the man entirely, yet didn’t seem to hurt him at all.

Nick studied the spectacle with more than a little trepidation. Despite his extensive knowledge, he couldn’t say he’d ever seen anything like that before. That made him wary and prompted him to immediately focus on the higher-level magics, lest he get caught off guard at the wrong moment.

materialized around him just in time, as a wave of fire burst off Alexander, roaring over him.

Surprisingly, he felt his own magic weaken quickly as the anti-divine fire found the tiny piece of holy power left from the in the spell and used it to break down the entire structure.

It wouldn’t be enough to break through, but it was still more than anyone else had managed so far.

Nick didn’t just sit there, though, and decided that to deal with esoteric powers, he needed to wield his own.

Fortunately, there was more than enough leftover emotion in the local ether, even after much of it was siphoned away to fuel the ritual under his feet, to empower a , which he released with little more than a pang of regret.

The dark tide of flames retreated immediately after, forming a dense sphere around Alexander, but paid it no mind. Both were magics operating on a different plane than regular spells, yet the flames were optimized to counter divine powers, and without that presence, they were just powerful fires. was an attack capable of tearing open the lines between the world and the soul.

Alexander was forced to detonate much of the flames he had summoned to cancel the spell that would have otherwise ended the fight, cracking the stone around them and roaring in anger.

Nick wasted no time deploying and launched an attack on the sacrificial ritual.