Chapter 89: The Truth Behind Holy Radiance

The searing white beam slammed into Finn and knocked him off his bicycle.

Another beam swept past immediately afterward, scorching a black trench across the ground.

Finn held his longsword across his body and pushed his Profound Energy to its limit, blocking the attack.

“Some kind of concentrated energy beam!”

Finn’s heart jolted. He fired a nuclear rocket toward the source of the white light, jumped back onto his mountain bike, and charged onward at full speed.

Forward!

No matter what it took, he had to keep moving forward!

The white light subsided for a moment before erupting again, this time like a dazzling laser. Finn blocked it with his sword, tore through the orange-red nuclear fireball, and charged ahead.

As he closed the distance, the smoke-shrouded battlefield finally came into focus.

A translucent, pale-white energy shield covered the ground. Inside it, a saucer-shaped aircraft hovered in midair!

The craft had a rounded dome in the center, with a thin, streamlined shell extending around it. Multicolored lights flickered behind its windows.

Finn froze.

Holy Radiance... was an alien!

On the scorched earth below, a short humanoid moved along in small steps. Its entire body was encased in a capsule-shaped spacesuit, making it look like a walking pill.

Ripples of white light flowed across its body like waves on water.

Finn suddenly felt as though he had been completely duped. Anger at the Radiant Path surged through him.

Wasn’t Holy Radiance supposed to be the supreme god?

What a disappointment!

His high-energy detector was still shrieking. Finn narrowed his eyes and saw a translucent box floating in the short humanoid’s hands. Inside was a brilliant, crystal-clear cube.

The World Nucleus!

Finn snapped out of his shock and sprang toward the alien.

White light gathered behind one of the saucer’s windows, then swept toward him in an attempt to stop him.

Finn twisted aside, narrowly avoiding the beam. He rushed the capsule-shaped alien and brought his longsword down in a vicious slash.

Holy Radiance or alien—it didn’t matter!

He would kill it all the same!

The gleaming blade tore through the alien’s spacesuit, then bit into something as tough as hardened leather. Green fluid burst from the wound.

The short alien collapsed, dropping the translucent box.

Finn shattered the box with a single swing. Crackling white sparks sprayed in every direction, and the crystalline cube he had longed for day and night rolled across the ground.

Finn picked it up and examined it closely.

A perfectly defined cube. An ice-blue crystal with light racing through its depths.

There was no mistaking it.

This was the World Nucleus.

Even through its outer shell, Finn could sense the immense, pure energy contained within. The power of thousands of stars had been sealed inside, its dazzling radiance enough to leave anyone spellbound.

After all that effort, the World Nucleus was finally his!

Finn suppressed the urge to take a hit from it and stored the incredibly expensive cube in his storage space.

The saucer flew toward him, unleashing countless white beams at once.

Burning pain erupted across Finn’s entire body.

But it wasn’t over yet.

A hatch opened beneath the saucer, casting a beam of pure white light onto the ground. Two more short aliens emerged from the craft and slowly descended through the light.

Blinding white beams erupted from the tops of their capsule-shaped spacesuits, igniting everything in their path. Even the air caught fire.

Finn charged without hesitation, moving as fast as lightning. His longsword sliced through one alien’s spacesuit and split its body open, spraying bright green fluid everywhere.

He pivoted and kicked the other alien flying like a soccer ball.

He had deliberately spared it. Finn wanted a live alien specimen to study.

As luck would have it, the saucer was hovering directly above him. The hatch on its underside was still wide open, spilling white light.

“There’s a road to Heaven, yet you refuse to take it; Hell has no gate, yet you insist on barging in!”

Finn sneered as a nuclear rocket launcher appeared in his hands. He hoisted it onto his shoulder, aimed diagonally upward at the open hatch, and fired.

The nuclear rocket streaked straight into the saucer, trailing a long plume of flame.

A deafening explosion erupted inside the craft!

After swallowing a miniature nuclear warhead whole, the saucer began wobbling like a drunk. It bobbed and swayed uncontrollably in the sky.

“Have another!”

Finn fired a second nuclear rocket, sending it straight through the hatch.

BOOM!!!

Nuclear fire blasted from the hatch that had once glowed white, and the bright windows went dark one after another.

The entire craft spun through the air before suddenly nosediving into the ground, burying itself at an angle in the dirt.

“Did that finally finish it?”

Finn let out a breath of relief, but his anger at being deceived by the Radiant Path’s Holy Pontiff still burned.

“Stop! You wretched sinner!”

An old man’s furious shout thundered through the sky.

A battered, cigar-shaped aircraft approached from above the drifting icebergs of the Alderon Sea.

It wobbled unsteadily through the air. The craft was old and decrepit and riddled with holes, as if someone had dug it out of a scrapyard.

It was smaller than the saucer, and a point of white light flickered beneath it like a candle flame.

“Face the wrath of the Divine Ark!”

The old voice rang out again, hoarse and trembling with boundless fury.

“That’s the Divine Ark?” Finn stared at it in disbelief. “That’s obviously an alien ship on the verge of falling apart!”

A blinding white beam shot from the bottom of the cigar-shaped craft, carving a deep trench into the ground. The beam slowly swept toward Finn.

Finn raised his launcher and fired a nuclear rocket into the ship’s hull.

The cigar-shaped craft rolled through a full rotation, but stubbornly remained airborne.

“Another!”

“Another!”

“And another!”

At last, flames engulfed the ship. It plunged into the ground and broke apart.

An emaciated old man crawled from the burning wreckage. His face was covered in stubble, and the ends of his snow-white hair had curled from the flames.

On the ground, where nuclear radiation was spreading, his life flickered like a candle in the wind, fading fast.

Finn rushed over and tossed out a Nine Revolutions Resurrection Pill. With two sword strokes, he cut it into four pieces, then forced one piece into the old man’s mouth to keep him alive.

“You’re Holy Pontiff Alistair Rupert?” Finn asked.

He had seen the Holy Pontiff’s portrait before. This old man looked exactly like him.

“Yes. I am the Holy Pontiff.” 

Leaning against a piece of blackened wreckage, the old man coughed twice and sighed deeply. “Finn... you won.”

Finn hauled him upright and dragged him over to an alien corpse.

“Are you blind?” Finn demanded coldly. “This is Holy Radiance? It’s obviously an alien—an intelligent life-form from another planet!”

Holy Pontiff Alistair Rupert weakly raised his head and gave a bitter smile.

“I learned they were extraterrestrials eighty years ago. But if an alien looks like a god, flies like a god, and can do what only a god can do... then what difference is there between it and a god?”

“Hmph.” Finn scoffed. “If a god looks like an alien, walks like an alien, and tastes like an alien, then it’s an alien!”

He touched the tip of his sword to the alien corpse, picking up a dab of green fluid. Then he stuck out his tongue and gave it a lick.

He smacked his lips thoughtfully. His face twisted at once, and he spat.

“Ptooey! This alien tastes awful!”