Chapter 337: Serpent of Fear

As the high priest bowed, thick green smoke billowed from his body, spreading a sickly-sweet, metallic scent through the air.

At first, the crowd didn't react. But the moment they saw the green smoke, the few cultists who had followed the high priest the longest paled. Stumbling backward, they broke into a sprint toward the door of the sacrifice chamber.

The fleeing men desperately wrenched at the door, but the high priest had already locked it shut. No matter how hard they pounded on the stone, it refused to budge.

Their frantic commotion caught the attention of the remaining followers, sparking immediate alarm.

"Lord Priest, what is going on?!"

The high priest remained in his deep bow, completely silent. A profound sense of dread washed over the crowd. Several people in the front row stepped forward to grab the motionless man.

Suddenly, those in the front felt an unbearable itch on their faces. They frantically clawed at their skin.

Those in the back saw green, web-like patterns surfacing on their companions' faces and scrambled away in terror.

"Watch out, the smoke is poisonous!"

The panicked crowd retreated all the way to the edges of the room. Pressing their bodies tightly against the walls, they squeezed together as if trying to flatten themselves into paper, watching the spreading toxic smoke in sheer terror.

"Lord Priest! What did I do wrong?!"

"I've followed you for two years! Lord Priest!"

"My lord! I beg you, spare me! I—"

Faced with death, the followers reacted differently. Some broke down in agonizing tears, others fell to their knees to beg for mercy, while a few turned their fearful rage into sharp, desperate demands.

But the high priest on the altar remained entirely unmoved, holding his posture of utmost humility.

Under their despairing gazes, the poisonous fog expanded until it swallowed the entire chamber.

The poisoned followers clutched their faces in agony, unleashing piercing screams. One after another, they collapsed to the floor. Moments later, the room fell dead silent. Amidst the quiet of the sacrifice chamber, the high priest maintained his reverent bow.

From somewhere unseen, the distinct hiss of a serpent echoed through the silent basement. The flickering torch flames froze in place as a terrifying will descended.

An ethereal green serpent, its body seemingly woven from mist, slithered out from the solid wall.

"Oh... fresh souls, brimming with fear. Delicious."

The phantom serpent opened its jaws, creating a vortex that sucked the struggling, transparent souls into its maw. An inaudible, agonizing shriek rippled outward. Far above in the sky, Willy shivered involuntarily, pausing his search to glance around in confusion.

Having swept the souls clean, the green snake flicked its tongue, still unsatisfied. Its greedy gaze shifted to the bowing high priest.

"I welcome my God!"

The serpent's hunger slowly receded. Its church had shallow roots in Nordhill, meaning every high priest was highly useful.

"Why have you called upon me?"

Only then did the high priest straighten his back.

"My God, the Kingdom of Pavlan and the Afiaiv Kingdom have joined forces. They have discovered this base. Fearing the altar you bestowed upon us would fall into enemy hands, I had no choice but to disturb you and seek your aid."

It was that damned dragon again!

The green snake instantly recalled the White Dragon Lord who had wounded it, fully understanding why the high priest had resorted to this summons.

As a cleric to a false god, the high priest lacked the ability to teleport such a massive altar away. An ordinary Teleportation Scroll couldn't handle items of this size, and this main altar for the Kingdom of Pavlan was too immense to fit inside any standard Spatial Equipment.

Thus, the high priest had to sacrifice his followers to beseech his patron deity for help.

Though only a deity-in-waiting, the green snake had no trouble lending its follower the power to move heavy objects.

With the serpent's assistance, the high priest vanished along with the altar. The phantom snake faded away right after, leaving behind only a pile of gruesomely contorted corpses stacked in the gloom of the basement.

Catching the ripple of teleportation energy, Willy finally pinpointed the exact location of the enemy's hideout. He spent another few minutes tracking down the base's entrance near the road.

Shifted into his dragonkin form, Willy stared into the empty underground compound, realizing he was too late.

Still, having gone through the trouble of locating such a large facility, he wasn't about to leave empty-handed. Willy violently kicked open the doors, determined to search every room.

Spotting still-burning candles and feeling the lingering warmth beneath the bedsheets, Willy knew the enemy had just evacuated. The teleportation surge he had sensed earlier made perfect sense now.

"Seems this evil god's church has a few tricks up its sleeve."

The white dragon tore through chests and cabinets looking for clues, but turned up absolutely nothing along the way.

Willy eventually arrived before the sacrifice chamber and aimed a vicious kick at the stone door.

Thud!

After a deafening crash, Willy was astonished to find the door had actually withstood his blow. It had only cracked slightly instead of collapsing.

"Huh?!"

He launched another kick. This time, the stone shattered into pieces, releasing a wisp of pale green smoke.

Reacting swiftly, Willy covered his nose and retreated. He waited until the toxic fumes cleared through the ventilation shafts before cautiously stepping inside. Seeing the floor littered with bodies, he immediately crouched down to investigate.

The corpses were covered in green, web-like patterns, their expressions twisted in hideous agony. They had clearly suffered immensely before dying.

"The cause of death has to be that toxic fog from earlier."

Willy lifted the arm of a sturdy man and noticed his hands were covered in thick calluses.

"Years of hard labor. The dead are the villagers abducted by the cult."

He inspected the bodies one by one, discovering that every cultist showed signs of serpentine mutation. They either possessed some snake-like organ or had grown patches of scales on their bodies.

Suddenly, he spotted a dimension bag on one of the bodies. Without hesitation, Willy opened the ownerless item.

Inside were some daily supplies and a small chest of gold coins, but what thrilled him the most were two books. One was a diary, and the other featured an ornate cover. Seeing the title, Willy rejoiced.

"Excellent! I've completed the task my brother gave me!"

Over the past few days, the information tortured out of the cultists had provided a decent grasp of the cult's doctrines, but they had never found any written records. Willy hadn't expected to stumble across an evil god's scripture here.

He flipped through the diary and the scripture before stowing them both away. Glancing back at the corpses, he realized their distribution was quite strange.

They seemed to have been gathered around something. Willy crouched in the center of the room and noticed heavy indentations on the floor.

An Altar?

Taking out the diary, he confirmed his suspicion: this was a sacrifice chamber.

They slaughtered their own people when escaping, just to take the Altar!

Willy was puzzled for a moment, but then he remembered the Altar hidden in the mountain village's cave.

"Looks like I have to make a trip back."

He headed for the exit. Reaching the doorway, he paused, then turned back and threw a burst of flame to incinerate the bodies.

"Detestable yet pitiful cultists."

Ignoring the fire and thick smoke behind him, Willy returned to the surface. After collapsing the entrance to the cult's base, he flapped his wings and took to the sky, flying back to the village to retrieve the ominous Altar from the cave.

Shortly after sunrise, Willy arrived back at the city of Sabel. He returned to the Golden Rose Hotel and summoned Hogger.

"Hogger, deliver this Dimensional Bag directly into my brother's hands!"

Seeing Willy's serious expression, Hogger had a rough idea of what the bag contained.

"I swear to complete the mission, Your Highness."

...

At the Overseas Archipelago, the White Dragon Lord opened the Dimensional Bag to find two books, a miniature Altar, and a letter.

He pulled out the letter first; it was written in Willy's own hand.

"Brother, after these past few days of investigation, I've realized this evil god's church is far from simple. They have branches not just in the Kingdom of Pavlan, but all the way in the western parts of the continent. The evidence is recorded in the diary I sent you..."

The White Dragon Lord raised an eyebrow and opened the diary.

The journal chronicled the descent of a fallen noble named Morward into a cultist. Morward had first encountered the church in a small country out west.

Amos tapped his finger lightly on the desk, contemplating how to handle the situation. He had originally assumed the green snake's influence was confined to the Kingdom of Pavlan, but it turned out the enemy was hiding much deeper than he expected.

After a moment, he formed a plan. Since White Castle alone was stretched too thin to deal with this, he would drag the Holy Sanctuary and the Council into the mess. After all, nobody liked a false god's church.

He put the diary away and flipped open the heretical scripture—Monafido's Nightmare.

Reading through the text, the White Dragon Lord discovered the green snake proclaimed itself the Serpent of Nightmares, the Savior of Fear and Despair.

"The venom is innate, but nightmares are its path to godhood."

The White Dragon Lord muttered to himself. He closed the finished scripture and carefully analyzed the information it contained.

A long while later, the White Dragon Lord fully digested the doctrines.

The green snake's name was Monafido. The divine portfolio it envisioned for itself was the God of Nightmares. It could sense nightmares saturated with fear and despair, allowing it to communicate with mortals through their dreams.

"Nightmares, fear, despair..."

The White Dragon Lord knew what to do. He picked up the Altar Willy had brought back. After a thorough inspection, he found it was once a sub-altar linked to a main one, though the connection between them had long been severed.

Stowing the Altar away, he teleported to the Holy Sanctuary with the diary and the scripture in tow.

After a short wait, he secured a meeting with the Grand Archbishop of the Sanctuary and relayed everything regarding the green snake's cult.

"Lord Amos, thank you for bringing this to our attention. The Sanctuary will undoubtedly do everything in its power to save these lost lambs."

Having received a satisfactory answer, the White Dragon Lord took his leave.

During the great war thirteen thousand years ago, the Gods of Justice joined the battle and saved Nordhill. Ever since then, they had monopolized the vast majority of faith in the realm.

Now that an evil pseudo-god had popped up in Nordhill to steal a piece of the pie, the Sanctuary—acting as the mortal representatives of the Gods of Justice—would naturally strike down the heresy in the name of righteousness.

Next, he traveled to Sky City and informed the Council about the cult. Through the Council's extensive network, every nation across the continent learned of the Church of the Green Serpent within half a day.

Up until now, the Church of the Green Serpent had strictly adhered to a low-profile existence. They only converted followers in remote borderlands and sacrificed ordinary snakes rather than humans or other intelligent beings. Even if someone stumbled upon their rituals, it rarely raised alarms, as the continent was full of far more bizarre sacrifices.

As a result, the cult had faced no major crises over the years. But now that the White Dragon Lord had dragged them into the light, numerous powers took immediate notice. Hiding in the shadows to expand in secret was no longer an option.

Over the following month, the Church of the Green Serpent in Nordhill suffered a comprehensive crackdown. Orthodox churches moved swiftly to crush a competitor, and secular nations outright refused to tolerate a heretical cult within their borders.

Even moderately knowledgeable professionals despised false-god cults. Since pseudo-gods possessed neither true divine portfolios nor a Divine Kingdom, they could not harbor the souls of their followers. When those poor, deceived believers died, their souls would find no resting place, ultimately becoming mortar for the Wall of the Faithless.

Given that Nordhill lacked a temple dedicated to a God of Good Dreams, the White Dragon Lord simply broadcast the green snake's divine portfolio to the world.

Through this relentless campaign, even The Gods learned of the green snake's existence via their worshippers' prayers. The serpent was now famous.

On the path to divinity, a true god feared being forgotten, but a deity-in-waiting feared being known. A famous Demigod had a much higher chance of being plotted against by other powerful entities.

Demigods possessed Divinity. Rival gods looking to eliminate competition and advance further, or terrifying powerhouses hunting for divine sparks, could all turn into lethal hunters.

...

In an unknown plane, the serpentine beauty—now shifted into a half-human, half-snake form—hid deep within a gloomy subterranean cavern. Flames of pure hatred burned in Monafido's eyes.

"Amos Aldrich! You will pay for this!"

Her followers in the Nordhill Plane had been nearly wiped out, and even her major Altars had been uprooted by the large churches. However, just before the total collapse, a few fanatic high-ranking cultists managed to send back crucial intelligence, informing Monafido of the White Dragon Lord's free publicity campaign.

Now, Monafido's hatred for the White Dragon Lord was as vast as a sea of stars.

Exposed prematurely to The Gods, Monafido only had two options: immediately conduct the apotheosis ritual, join a pantheon, and establish a Divine Kingdom for self-preservation; or cower in fear, hiding from greedy hunters.

The first path was impossible. Monafido's soul had been wounded by the White Dragon Lord, and attempting ascension before the injury healed carried far too much risk. Naturally unwilling to take that gamble, she was forced into hiding.

Fortunately, Monafido possessed the ability to sense nightmares steeped in negative energy, preventing this from becoming an absolute dead end.

"Let me see... who will be the lucky one this time."

In a hastily crafted secret chamber, Monafido slipped into a deep slumber. Her consciousness morphed into a serpent of black mist, slithering straight into the boundless realm of dreams.

Countless figures stood within the dreamspace. The silhouettes were blurry, varying vastly in size. Powerful individuals manifested as massive figures, while the weak appeared small. Their colors also differed, ranging from black and white to shades of gray. The deeper the nightmare, the darker the hue.

Monafido was searching for a pitch-black figure that matched her own color. She could only commune with those trapped in dark nightmares; attempting to force a connection with a figure brimming with positive energy would cause the two opposing forces to clash, resulting in a severe backlash.

Suddenly, Monafido spotted a towering shadow up ahead. The black smoke billowing from the figure was so thick it seemed almost tangible.

"Wow!"

Staring at the colossal, pitch-black silhouette, she gasped in awe. This was undoubtedly a High-Tier Legend.

How could a powerhouse of that caliber suffer from nightmares?!

The stronger someone was, the smoother their life tended to be. It was exceptionally rare for even an ordinary legendary powerhouse to experience extreme nightmares, let alone a High-Tier Legend.

Monafido's expression shifted uncertainly. Whatever could subject a High Tier entity to such terror would be extremely dangerous for her as well.

But wealth and honor are sought within danger. Steeling her resolve, Monafido decided to take the gamble.

"Let me see exactly what you are."

Brimming with curiosity, her serpentine body coiled around the massive black figure and merged into it.

(End of Chapter)