Chapter 699 The Chariot Card

Panike actually had the power to kill the King outright, but she didn’t. She was simply torturing him.

The Chariot card’s effect was activated voluntarily, so the King could die if he gave up. But he endured being tortured again and again, refusing to die. Loren couldn’t help but think even more highly of him.

This cruel scene had also been witnessed by the others. They etched the terrifying witch deep into their memories.

“Just kill him. Every time he recovers, it costs the lives of his people.”

Loren stroked Panike’s hair as he spoke.

“……”

Panike nodded gently, then crushed the King into a pulp.

This time, he died for good, with no chance to heal himself again.

Loren walked over to the King’s remains and used Return to Earth to make them disappear. As he did, he picked up the Chariot card lying on the ground.

Loren had noticed where the Chariot card was earlier. The King had hidden it inside his body.

The King might not have been a good person, but he was certainly a tough guy.

The Chariot card could heal him, but it couldn’t ease his pain. He had endured it all through sheer willpower.

Loren picked up the Chariot card discreetly, and no one else noticed. The fewer people who knew about the Tarot cards, the better.

“Let’s go.”

Carrying Panike, Loren headed toward the Bountiful followers. Luna was among them.

“Y-You… what are you going to do…”

A few Bountiful followers reflexively tried to cast magic at Loren. He casually swept Blood Moon Condensed Light across them, and they vanished. Luna was among the group.

With Loren’s level of control over magic, he could easily annihilate the others without harming Luna.

At the same time, Veronica activated her Arcane Ability, making Luna invisible to everyone else.

To be safe, Loren also shared the effect of the Hermit card with Luna.

Loren deliberately left behind someone who looked like a leader. By now, he was so terrified he was nearly wetting himself. As Loren approached, he couldn’t even manage to run.

“Don’t be nervous. I just want to ask you something.”

“Go ahead, Master Mentor! I’ll tell you everything I know!”

“Do you know Jessica? The ordinary girl who was implicated because of me.”

“I… I don’t know…”

He was telling the truth. Loren wasn’t surprised that he didn’t know. It wasn’t a particularly major matter, and even if it hadn’t been kept very secret, few people would have heard of it.

“Alright, then you’re no use to me.

“Panike, kill him.”

The next moment, the leader exploded. Not a drop of blood or a scrap of flesh landed on Loren; an invisible barrier blocked the gore. Panike had created that barrier too.

Loren left the battlefield in plain sight. It was a long time after he was gone before people finally came to their senses. They forgot all about the war and fled in every direction.

All their leaders had been killed by Loren. They could run without anyone stopping them.

No one wanted to fight. Even though many had joined the war at first to defend their faith, witnessing so many deaths gradually shattered their ideals.

Besides, they had also seen how the higher-ups regarded them.

They weren’t warriors here, nor defenders of anyone’s faith. They were nothing but expendable fodder.

……

As they headed back, Loren looked at the Chariot card in his hand. Its face depicted a chariot, but beneath it were people carrying it. Standing atop the chariot was a mighty King, pointing his sword ahead with boundless bravado.

The upper and lower halves of the image formed a stark contrast.

【Tarot Card: The Chariot】

Effect: Draws on subordinates’ life force, stamina, energy, and more for the user’s own benefit.

Description: The chariot of the age rolls ever forward, and you are all its fuel.

The card wasn’t particularly useful to Loren. Even without it, he had plenty of stamina and could heal himself well enough.

Besides, Loren couldn’t bring himself to drain the witches’ life force.

Still, he had thought of a use for it. Cecelia could use her Arcane Ability to give Loren many more followers, and he could draw life force from them.

The card couldn’t select its targets. It automatically drew from whoever was the least useful.

If witches and ordinary people both worshipped Loren, the card would surely drain the ordinary people first.

And “least useful” here meant least useful to the country. Put a prisoner and a worker together, and it would draw the prisoner’s life force first.

Even if you put an idle King beside a hardworking worker, the King would be the first to die. So Loren wouldn’t feel much guilt using the card.

However, making a King the target of its life-force drain would be difficult. In the end, the Chariot card would mostly target ordinary people.

The Chariot card did have some positive effects, at least. Better than nothing.

In a short time, Loren had acquired another Tarot card, bringing him one step closer to collecting them all.

The Tarot card holders had only begun appearing one after another after the Divine War started, so it was only natural that Loren’s rate of collecting cards had increased dramatically.

Even the Judgment card was like that. The Prison of Sin Spire appeared once every four years, and one appearance was due after the Divine War began.

“We’re back. Next, we’ll go save Jessica’s parents.”

Loren put away the Tarot card and returned to the witches.

Jessica had been on edge this whole time. All her hopes of saving her parents rested on Loren, while she herself couldn’t do anything to help. It left her feeling deeply uneasy.

“Master Mentor… what should we do next? Is there anything I can help with?”

“Do you know the exact location where your parents are? Which country they’re in?”

Loren asked. Having a specific location would make them easier to find. Even if Jessica could only name the country, Loren could interrogate every official in it, from top to bottom.

“I don’t know…”

“Then never mind. Do you remember when and where you were separated?”

That would work too. Loren could use the Wheel of Fortune card to trace events back, just as he had when investigating the detective. He could follow the projection to find Jessica’s parents.

“I know! I’ll never forget that day!”

At the mention of it, Jessica gritted her teeth.

“We were in the Gedlan Kingdom!”

“Good. Then we’re off to the Gedlan Kingdom.”

Starnight transformed back into a Dragon. The others climbed onto her back, and they flew toward the Gedlan Kingdom.

Loren looked at the Wheel of Fortune card in his hand and sighed.

What a pity. The Wheel of Fortune card probably wouldn’t help him find Movila. She had so many copies, and Loren didn’t know which one had survived to the end.

Still, perhaps the Wheel of Fortune card could help him find Seraphina. Loren knew the location where she had last appeared.

But Seraphina was Gabriel, and Loren couldn’t be sure whether Gabriel, who knew what the Wheel of Fortune card could do, would let him find her.