Chapter 715: Human and God

In the original New Holy Scripture, before Brennild ever altered it, there was an ancient myth that spoke of a time when heaven and earth, light and darkness, water and fire remained undivided. It was the omniscient and omnipotent Lord who, through divine power, separated and reshaped them. His words became law, commanding the heavens to extend only so far, while land and sea were established at the ends of the world, destined to become the cradle of life and sustain the countless beings born upon it.

At that moment, the sword in Lyra’s hand appeared to be bound by a similar divine decree. It stopped mere inches from Moserria’s throat, as though an invisible command had forbidden it from moving even a fraction farther.

This... what kind of magic...

Dense arcane factors gathered upon the surface of the holy sword, locking firmly against its tip and severely sapping the kinetic force it carried.

The wind brought by clusters of light-element particles brushed the stubble along Hebrew’s cheek. The man bore a blazing sun at his back as he hovered in midair, gazing at the [Sword of Light] that was about to strike him from a hair’s breadth away, his eyes brimming with manifest sacred flame.

Sensing danger descending, Lyra decisively abandoned the attack. She lifted her wrist to recall the light sword, only to find the hilt in her grasp utterly unmoving, as though wedged within a barrier no wider than a palm.

Lyra immediately abandoned any attempt to wrench the sword free. With a powerful beat of her light-forged wings, she changed course, abandoning the frontal attack and sweeping around to strike the man from the side.

In the following instant, the searing radiance surrounding the Holy Light Knight gradually faded from Hebrew’s sight. Even the girl’s wings of light behind her back had begun to dissipate, their rapidly shifting forms becoming visibly fragmented and incomplete.

Fortunately, Lyra was not only an early tier Arcanist mage, but also an early tier Crusader. Wings formed from elemental motifs shattering would not affect her too much; she only needed to continue supporting her body with materialized mental power to maintain high-speed flight.

Reaching Hebrew’s flank, the Sword of Light that had been suspended in midair turned into a strand of pliant radiance, returning to Lyra’s hand by means that defied normal physics. It then transformed once more into a weapon and stabbings toward the Pope before her. The speed was so fast that although Mosseria could react in mind, constrained by physical ability he simply could not control his limbs to dodge effectively.

A mage’s weakness was laid bare in intense close-quarters combat. Powerful mental power could indeed help them lock onto and respond to an enemy’s movements, yet their frail bodily skills could not keep up with the tempo of their thoughts. They could only draw upon surrounding elemental particles as an extension of armor.

Moreover, Mosseria was not here in his true body. Having lost the divine physique that cultivated both magic and martial prowess, he was instead fighting by manipulating the flesh of an unfamiliar human, an unfamiliarity that only made the sluggishness more pronounced.

Facing the long sword wreathed in waves of light, Mosseria softly chanted a spell within his heart. Brimming light-element particles erupted from the laurel crown like violent solar flares, suddenly blasting Lyra back.

Sensing the immense force surging toward her, Lyra immediately lifted her sword to defend herself. She held her breath as she fought to avoid inhaling the scorching air, knowing a single breath could burn her lungs. Within the surrounding radiance, her sky-blue eyes gleamed with even greater intensity.

So there was still a chance. At the very least, Moserria’s reaction confirmed one thing: he genuinely did not want Lyra getting close. He was deliberately avoiding a direct clash of blades.

Her silver-white knight’s boots stepped on air. Using materialized mental power as a foothold, she drove her body forward. Lyra lifted her sword to cleave open the surging flames and shot towards Mosseria like a meteor, silently chanting.

"Astrid... help me strip away his external defense..."

The critical message traveled through soul resonance to the other end of the battlefield. Astrid, who had been watching Lyra’s situation closely all along, naturally noticed what had just happened to her.

When Mosseria blocked the Sword of Light, what he manipulated was not the light element, but arcane factors. He obstructed the blade’s penetration by attaching microscopic particles, Astrid had seen such a spell in books before, though she did not know the exact ancient incantation.

But how to break it... she had a rough idea...

Hearing the cool, clear tone arise from the depths of her mind, Lyra mirrored it in silent recitation. A portion of her mental power kept perfectly in step with Astrid’s formation of the spell array, and under her lover’s careful guidance, achieved a one-to-one magical replication imbued with the scent of Astrid’s soul.

The holy-white sword severed the light shackles. Flames bright as day upon it parted wind and waves, shaking loose the arcane factors Mosseria had gathered, shaking them loose rather than cutting them, because arcane factors were even smaller, more microscopic existences than elemental particles. Whether it was the [Sword of Light] as a physical entity, or the light-element motes clinging to it, neither could inflict even the slightest fracture-type damage upon what constitutes arcane factors.

All they could do was slam those factors aside, thereby weakening the spell’s effect.

The light within Lyra’s blue eyes moved so fast it left afterimages. The sharp blade came up from beneath the enemy’s ribs, cleaving straight toward Mosseria’s chest. A thought flickered within him, and light, turned wave and particle, poured down like scattered feathers.

Yet no one would think those flecks of feather-light were harmless. The aura of destruction they radiated alone was enough to make every mage present recoil.

Lyra did not dodge. She chose to press on. Sword and feathers collided with crisp metallic clangs. The instant they touched, a tremendous force detonated, forming a chain of halo-like explosions.

Each was like a star shattering. The spilled destructive force became a tide, blowing across frost and grit on the ground.

"Miss Astrid..."

Seeing Astrid’s body tremble faintly, Elise, who had maintained vigilance from the start, walked over in measured steps and gently supported the Regent.

Feeling the softness at her side, Astrid, finding support again, placed her full weight onto the head maid. Her black-silked, tender legs that had been standing straight bent slightly, and even the ornate high heels beneath her skimmed the frost with a faint sound.

If it were merely the distant aftershock of impact, Astrid could have sealed herself in ice and focused on assisting Lyra.

But what was injuring her now was a synchronized resonance at the level of the mind. As long as Astrid maintains the connection with Lyra, she could not avoid these impacts, she will fully experience everything Lyra felt in the sky, and those soul-level tremors will further affect Astrid’s body.

Not to mention that there were quite a few enemy Arcanist mages on the field. Once the ice spell [Frostward] was cast, she would become a massive, immobile refrigerator unable to dodge magic at all, and would instead be more likely to take unnecessary damage.

Steadying her mind, the Empire’s Regent continues chanting. The night-sky-colored princess skirt spread against Elise’s maid uniform, pressed by long legs wrapped in delicate white silk, forming small folds. Astrid guided the little knight in releasing origin spells suited to the current battle even as she searched for a way to break the deadlock for Lyra.

At the battlefield’s center, radiant as the sun, as Lyra rapidly closed on Hebrew, some kingdom mages attempted to assist from the side, seeking to shoot down the sinner who dared attack the Lord of Descent. Yet merely the aftershock reflected by collisions of sword and light was enough to drown out the elemental magic they had been brewing for so long.

Origin spells were powers meant for gods, while Mosseria possessed mental power comparable to that of a peak high-tier Arcanist, not to mention his immensely exalted status. Among them, the only one who could likely stand her ground against him was Lyra.

She too possessed a holy relic of light, had successfully unleashed origin magic through soul resonance with Astrid, and, thanks to her extraordinary, rule-defying affinity for light, had pushed her resistance to light magic all the way to MAX.

A roaring tidal wave of light-element particles dyed the heavens and earth, stabbing at every mage’s retinas.

Sensing a needle-prick sensation from above and realizing a scalding cataract of light was about to pour down, Lyra was about to flash away, when she suddenly caught sight, at the edge of her vision, of a gigantic rift like a cleaved-open eye.

Peak tier Arcanist magic: [Void Dragon Scar].

Headmaster Anthony’s support arrived at exactly the right moment. [Void Dragon Scar] tore open space at this critical instant, swallowing the massive quantity of inverted light-element particles into the void, creating a brief elemental vacuum.

Constrained by the barrier effect of [Holy Light Manifestation Torrent of Light], [Void Dragon Scar] exists for only an instant, but it was enough. Mosseria’s counterspell failed to take effect, and what lay before Lyra was now the Pope of Light, utterly unshielded by any elemental particles.

He couldn’t block this strike.

Dodging the dazzling light arrow before her, the [Sword of Light] cleaved straight for his face. The recoil of the blade slightly reduced Lyra’s overall speed, yet it still could not stop the pink-haired, silver-armored girl knight from flashing towards Mosseria with a swiftness beyond ordinary sight.

The blade cuts through the air like steel striking flint. The surrounding flame-waves were sparks bursting forth in an instant. They could not compare to the blazing sun, but for this one second, they were bright enough to flicker.

Wind stirred her pink hair. Brilliant light reflected off her holy armor. The movements within Lyra’s sight gradually slowed until she could clearly see the arrogance and disdain in Mosseria’s eyes.

He did not seem flustered at all.

The moment she realized it, Lyra’s pupils tightened slightly. In her vision, the arrangement of elemental motes became meticulous and slow. Inside the burning flames, violent fire-element activity remained, yet their speed was slower than before, not by a little.

It wasn’t that her mind had sped up, making everything within her attention appear to move slowly. Lyra was merely a gifted Holy Light Knight, not some cyber-superman fitted with a Sandevistan.

Then... time itself had truly slowed...

The hand in pure-white gloves moved at its usual speed. Before Lyra’s astonished gaze, it rose slowly. The sword tip less than half a meter from his chest crawled like a snail before him.

Then, "Hebrew" seized Lyra’s slender, pale neck, and with it, all the momentum on her body said.

In the next second, time flowed normally again. Lyra felt an iron clamp lock around her throat, and even her wrist strength was stripped away by several degrees.

Mosseria looked at the pink-haired girl before him. Then he turned his gaze aside, toward the Sword of Light in her hand, and spoke softly.

"Sinner, you have defiled it."

He could feel that this half of the godhood fragment had already fused with the Holy Light Knight before him, becoming an indispensable part of her.

To regain his status as a god, he had no choice but to return it to its original form. That meant completely erasing the existence of its current owner, destroying everything from body to soul, so that the two could eventually be fused together.

With a casual motion, the holy-white knight’s sword was sent plummeting from above. For now, it was beyond its master’s reach and could not return to Lyra’s hand. The searing heat seeped through her gloves, yet instead of the comforting warmth of holy light, what she sensed from it was a chilling, overwhelming aura of death.

Mosseria’s current vessel might have been that of an Arcanist mage, yet he could still overpower Lyra, an early-tier Crusader, through sheer physical strength alone. There was only one possible explanation: he was concentrating the vast majority of his mental power into his palm.

Midway through her thoughts, Lyra sensed the iron clamp constricting her suddenly began to tighten. Fingers on both sides, like machines obeying orders, crushed inward, trying to snap her throat bones.

"As...tr...id..."

Although she looked like a delicate girl, Lyra was, in the end, an early tier Crusader. With mental power reinforcement, her body was formidable, armor aside, if she defended on purpose, she would not be broken so easily.

Astrid, who had completed synchronization with Lyra, naturally felt that crushing pressure as well. She watched the two high above, Mosseria in a spotless white robe, lifting the pink-haired girl in sacred armor into the air.

There was no time to think about what had happened in that lightning instant. Astrid immediately guided Lyra to release an origin spell. In the next moment, Mosseria, realizing he couldn’t crush the girl’s throat, saw pale eyes gradually ignite with points of light.

No, there isn’t time.

If she tried to interrupt, the ice and dark elements in the upper sky had already become extremely scarce due to the light-element’s. Even if Astrid acted, it would be futile.

It had to be Lyra herself who broke free.

"Astrid, I may have a way."

"If possible, help me convert this spell into a destructive type."

In thought, their exchange was faster than the pull of mental power. Lyra could sense the outward changes in the light element within the spell array currently being built.

It had only reached the arrangement stage, there was still a chance to re-anchor the entire magical base.

Without further hesitation, Astrid chose to trust Lyra once more. Drawing upon her vast knowledge of magic, she turned the half-formed restrictive light spell into the far more destructive [Scorching Death Ray].

Light-element particles gathered and aligned, burning between them with ultimate light-heat. Lyra also pushed her mental power output to its limit, both hands gripping Hebrew’s forearm tightly.

In the next second, light collided with light within less than half a meter. Lyra’s sacred armor flickered incessantly under the impact, light motes spilling and regrouping, driven into chaos by different mental pulls.

Within the extreme radiance, Lyra felt as though even her soul was about to be scattered, yet she still bit down on her last trace of strength, driving her materialized mental power into the tide.

She touched that laurel crown.