[A Remaining Despair Tower Ticket Exists! Continuing to the Next Floor!]
[Entering Despair Tower Floor 82: "Barrage of the Divine"!]
[A floor where bombardment rains from all directions!]
[Clear Condition "Protect the Pilgrim Procession" Updated! Failure if more than 20% of the pilgrim procession dies!]
[The barrage begins the moment you step onto the path!]
---
How much further had they come since meeting Vellia and the believers?
A straight, long road stretched out before them.
"Perfect for getting bombed!"
A path surrounded by cliffs and hills of varying heights.
It was hard to imagine a better place for concentrated fire.
Vellia stepped forward, her brow furrowed.
"This is where we lost countless brothers. Apostle. Do you happen to possess any dark-attribute weapons?"
Vellia pulled a pitch-black crossbow from her robes.
"Those beings are also armed with dense divine power. Without dark attribute, you cannot wound them. You can't even touch the attacks coming at us."
Finishing her words, Vellia looked around at Jinhyuk and his party.
No matter how she looked at it, she couldn't see any dark-attribute equipment.
She didn't want to doubt the apostle.
But doubt was inevitable.
Could they really break through this barrage?
"It's fine. Let's go."
Jinhyuk smiled and continued walking with his party.
A few believers whispered to Vellia.
"I fear we'll meet the same end as our brothers before."
"Perhaps we should find another path."
Vellia shook her head.
They couldn't abandon the path ahead.
If they did, it would take several times longer than their original plan.
"The Apostle sent by Lord Azriel. To doubt them is to doubt the God. Do you truly wish to walk the path of apostates?"
"A-apostates? That's absurd!"
"Besides, even if we hadn't met the Apostle, we would have had to pass through here. We've prepared thoroughly for it."
Following Vellia's lead, the believers also drew their weapons.
Dark-attribute weapons meant to kill divine beings.
The beings blocking their path also served divinity, just like the pilgrims.
But there was no other choice.
If those beings stood in the way of reaching their God, they would simply break through.
"Let's go."
---
Some time after stepping into the canyon.
Beams of light began to fall from each cliff and hill.
Divine-type monsters emerged from the fading light.
Soon after, siege weapons—the kind usually seen in castle assaults—were summoned before them.
"Judgment upon the heretics who block our path!"
With Vellia's cry, pitch-black energy erupted from the believers' weapons.
The attack grew in scale, covering the cliffs and hills.
Monsters touched by it had parts of their bodies erased, falling from the cliffs.
But compared to the whole, it was only a fraction.
"Reload immediately!"
Before they could prepare their next attack, a hail of divine spheres and arrows rained down.
*KWA-GA-GA-GAK!!*
They returned fire belatedly, but wiping out all the attacks was impossible.
Unlike those born from divinity, these were ordinary humans.
No matter what attribute the attack carried, being hit meant death.
"Ah..."
Vellia let out a small gasp.
A concentrated barrage that could have swept away all the pilgrims in an instant.
Finding herself in a situation she couldn't overcome on her own, Vellia's eyes turned to the apostle ahead.
"...?"
For some reason, the apostle was watching the incoming barrage with complete ease.
*'So these are the monsters Hiyori and Seyeon mentioned.'*
He breathed a sigh of relief.
Thank goodness it was monsters blocking the pilgrim's path.
If it had been tower residents trying to stop heretics instead of monsters?
He would have broken the deal with Azriel, thrown away the ticket, and gone to get new enhancement tokens.
*'Let's just smash them without worry.'*
The barrage had entered a certain range.
*Thud.*
Camilla stepped forward from behind.
She held out the inverted cross of Judas Iscariot that she carried.
"Devour them."
The moment she murmured, black energy spread from the inverted cross.
An energy that devoured all divine power within a certain range.
In the blink of an eye, the divine power that had filled their视野 vanished.
Physical projectiles like arrows and spears were still effective, though.
*Kang! Ka-gak!!*
But they never reached the pilgrim procession.
Seira and Dark easily knocked them away with their sword and chain.
"Let's go."
Together with Renya beside him, he pushed off the ground.
The party had two inverted crosses.
Since the inverted cross's range was limited, they split into two groups.
A defense team to protect the pilgrim procession, and an attack team to strike the cliffs.
The moment they entered the inverted cross's range, the divine power enveloping the monsters vanished.
What came next was easy.
Just like always.
*Sgak!*
Cut.
*Jjeong!!*
Smash.
The floor was strengthened, so the monsters were naturally stronger than those on lower floors.
But it was laughably insufficient to pose any real threat.
"This is totally soda! So refreshing!"
Kancho, who had been scanning the cliffs with a yodeling telescope, burst out in admiration.
This was almost like a 40-ton dump truck level.
The moment they made contact, monsters came tumbling down.
"Like falling leaves in autumn wind!"
Camilla, who was listening, furrowed her brow.
What was this little Satan saying?
Was she trying to say "like falling leaves in autumn wind"?
"What's that! Momo wants to see too!"
"Huh? Where did it go!? My yodeling telescope!"
Momo had pickpocketed the telescope in the blink of an eye.
*Crunch crunch crunch!*
With one hand, she vacuumed down potato chips while using the other to move the telescope, watching the master and Renya's feats.
"They're fighting so well!"
"Give it back!!"
Kancho lunged.
Not toward the telescope, though.
Even if he took it back, she'd just steal it again.
Instead, he flew toward the potato chips and began inhaling them with both hands.
And Vellia and the pilgrims watching this chaotic scene...
'Th-that...!'
They were speechless with shock.
Not because of the apostle's combat prowess or the small beings that seemed to mess with one's mind.
Their eyes were fixed on Camilla and the apostle's neck—more precisely, on the inverted cross of Judas Iscariot, the apostate.
'A weapon of the heretic that should not exist.'
They couldn't fail to recognize it.
That was the energy of the being their doctrine constantly mentioned, the one their God had named the Adversary.
But they had heard that power was completely sealed and vanished. How could it exist in such a form?
"V-Vellia. Are you certain that person is truly the Apostle? Aren't they using the power of an apostate?"
"Something must be wrong! We need to make a new decision, even now!"
At the believers' urging, Vellia furrowed her brow.
And soon after, she reached a conclusion.
'That person is indeed the Apostle chosen by God.'
If not, there was no way they would know God's name.
But.
'That person does not serve our God.'
It was impossible for someone using an apostate's power to serve Azriel.
From this, only one conclusion could be drawn.
'God is using evil for the greater cause.'
The irony of pilgrims needing to break through the divine legion to awaken God.
God must have brought in evil to overcome this abnormal situation.
"Listen carefully, pilgrims."
Vellia Blackwell lowered her voice.
The murmuring stopped as the pilgrims lent their ears.
"That person is a heretic who serves the apostate. Our clear enemy. But God has appointed them as the Apostle. The reason is simple. To use them temporarily as a guide to lead us to our destination."
"But to walk the pilgrim's path with a heretic..."
"Do you still not understand? God's will."
Vellia snapped sharply and continued.
"The ultimate goal of this pilgrimage is the complete resurrection of our God, Lord Azriel. Nothing is more important than this. For this, we must use whatever we can—apostates, heretics, anything. And the moment this great purpose is achieved, that heretic will also perish by God's judgment."
Vellia's eyes fixed on Jinhyuk's back.
"So let's quietly use them. These foolish ones who turned their backs on divinity and chose the path of apostates."
The corners of Vellia's mouth curled up as she watched silently.
The apostate—the being said to have brought Lord Azriel to the brink of annihilation in the past.
His inverted cross had appeared, but there was no need to worry.
Because the apostate no longer existed in this world.
A being completely banished to a dimension from which return was impossible.
Bringing that being back was absolutely impossible.
'I look forward to it. The order of the world that will be rebuilt by our God.'
With the Adversary gone, there was no one who could stop Azriel.
Once resurrected, it wouldn't be long before he consumed all worlds.
*Smirk.*
Her lips curled even wider with overwhelming anticipation and swelling hope.
And in the meantime.
*Jjeong!!*
Jinhyuk and Renya, who had crushed the last monster, stopped moving.
Renya approached, casually wiping the blood from her hands.
"Master."
"Yeah?"
Renya gestured with her chin toward Vellia and the pilgrims.
"A stench of blood. Thick. Doesn't match all that divine talk."
Nodding, she pointed at her blue-tinted eyes.
"I saw it. Hundreds, thousands of vengeful spirits surrounding them."
"You already knew."
"That's why I was going to back out if what we faced wasn't monsters."
She shrugged.
"If both sides are enemies we need to eliminate anyway, it's just a matter of order. Figured we'd clear the tower first, then deal with them."
"Smart thinking. We need to climb the tower."
"But one thing's been bothering me. That symbol they showed before we left? I've seen it before."
"The one they used to awaken... what did they call it?"
"A game. You know that computer Kancho and Momo always play on? I played it too. And on one floor, that symbol appeared. To clear that floor, you had to help the being with that symbol seal the darkness."
"The being with the symbol... Azriel, the one we met before coming here?"
"Probably?"
He slowly nodded.
The gap between a 2D object seen on a monitor and reality was enormous.
Especially for a cosmic horror-level being like Azriel.
*'It was way bigger than my character, though.'*
The match still wasn't easy, but judging by the symbol, it was likely the same being.
He let out a small breath and continued.
"If the being I saw in the game and Azriel are the same, and we have to face him at the end of this section... Maybe we should find something first before meeting Azriel."
He recalled it in his mind.
The dark being that was sealed with Azriel's help in the game.
----------
T/N:
Just for being a free member, you'll get 5 advanced chapters every week!
Access 35 chapters in advance on my Patreon:[email protected]//towerup