The First Pope - Chapter 24
Chapter 24
The direction indicated by the Divine Stone was toward the Ochester Swamp. When the witches realized this, some were no longer willing to press on.
In truth, not all the witches had agreed with the decision to help the God Race find their people. Dissent had always existed, but it had remained quietly dormant as long as they faced no danger.
The small cliques of witches stopped again to "hold a meeting." Standing more than twenty meters away, Cynthia could still hear their arguing. She had grown quite accustomed to this situation. While the witches argued, she observed their surroundings.
Ochester was dense with jungle and heavy with mist. The ground beneath their feet was concealed by dead leaves and branches; a single careless step could lead one into a "trap," swallowed by a mire.
A faint sound came from her right. Cynthia tilted her head slightly. On a branch thick with leaves hung a dark green python. It had locked its eyes on the weakest and most defenseless among them, Susan, and was silently closing in on her.
Cynthia's lips moved, and a white flame fell upon the python, instantly burning it to ash.
The flame flying past her face startled Susan. She turned her head instinctively, just in time to see the python being incinerated.
She frowned and gestured for the knights ahead to return. Seven or eight tall knights holding longswords surrounded her, their gazes fixed warily on their surroundings.
Standing in the center of her knights finally gave Susan a sense of security. She glanced over at the witches and said to Cynthia with a hint of schadenfreude, "It looks like they're planning to abandon you."
Cynthia placed a finger to her lips, signaling for Susan to be quiet. Her golden eyes stared in the direction from which the python had just appeared. The mist there seemed even thicker, and some branches were bent downward under a heavy weight.
Seeing Cynthia's serious expression, Susan's smile vanished. She took a step back and gestured for a nearby knight to investigate.
The knight held his silver longsword horizontally before him and cautiously approached the tree. As he looked up, a dark mass dropped down. The python, its bright red tongue flicking, attempted to coil around the knight.
A silver light flashed. The sword's energy passed through the python's body, slicing it in two. The snake's tail fell to the ground, still thrashing wildly.
The knight breathed a sigh of relief. Just as he was about to turn back, he felt a binding sensation around his feet. He instinctively looked down, and a sudden feeling of weightlessness overcame him. Before he even had time to react, he was swallowed by a bottomless mire.
A white light shot over the moment the knight was engulfed, but it was a step too late. The ground, covered in dead leaves and branches, began to writhe. A dark mire appeared in Cynthia's and the others' line of sight. A python, dozens of meters long, crawled out of the pit, its cold, crimson eyes staring at this fresh prey.
The mire beneath the python suddenly began to roil as if boiling, and one after another, more pythons poked their heads out. The sight of the dense, writhing mass was nauseating.
Susan gasped and instinctively moved closer to Cynthia, murmuring in a low voice, "These are monsters…"
As the City Lord of Hatz City, she was not entirely ignorant.
Looking at these monsters, Susan suddenly felt a pang of regret. She should have told Cynthia just how dangerous Ochester was. She shouldn't have let her desire to see the extent of this silver-haired God Race's abilities lead them into such a perilous place.
Susan looked at the witches, who were still arguing, oblivious to the approaching danger, and found the situation somewhat amusing.
Although the witches were not weak and were numerous, after this period of observation, Susan had found that the silver-haired God Race beside her was far more reliable.
A barrier enveloped Susan and her knights. Cynthia then summoned another barrier around the witches not far away, who had yet to notice the pythons' presence.
The sudden appearance of the barrier startled the witches. They all turned their heads and saw the pythons in the mire, their eyes widening in disbelief. Someone muttered incredulously, "How can there be monsters here…"
They were supposed to be traveling through very safe territory.
Tired of their bickering, Eunice, who had found another place to rest, leaped down from a tree and walked over to Betty. Her gray eyes held a trace of gravity as she instructed, "Stay by my side."
Betty took out her staff and nodded with a serious expression.
"These monsters were likely driven out of their territory by the Vampires…" Cynthia mused for a moment before leading Susan to regroup with the witches. Susan's guards stood firm before them, separating them from the monsters.
The knights Susan had brought were her elite force. Over a hundred armored knights stood like an impenetrable wall. The pythons swarmed out, but they were intercepted halfway by the knights.
Flashes of silver sword light cut into the pythons, leaving deep gashes. A dozen or so knights leaped onto the pythons' backs, mercilessly piercing their bodies with their swords.
The knights who could fight the pythons head-on without being at a disadvantage had abilities comparable to sixth-generation vampires, or perhaps even stronger.
After observing them for some time, Cynthia had already figured out the capabilities of Susan's knight contingent. It was precisely because she knew how strong they were that she hadn't let Susan leave.
Back at the lighthouse, if Susan hadn't been careless and allowed Cynthia to restrain her, she might not have been able to rescue Chelsea and the others from these very knights.
"Finish them quickly. We can't stay here for too long." After reminding the witches, Cynthia turned to the somewhat bewildered Sarah and Jenny and said, "Keep an eye on those knights. If you see anyone get injured, use a Healing Spell. Don't let them bleed."
Sarah and Jenny nodded repeatedly, their gazes fixed on the knights with a mixture of nervousness and concentration.
A wall of fire over ten meters high appeared around the mire, greatly reducing the pythons' area of movement. Gray shadows of various shapes and sizes materialized above the pit, each seeking a target. The shadows coiled around the struggling pythons and dragged them toward the white flames. If a python so much as touched the fire while trying to break free, it was instantly ignited and turned to ash.
With the knights guarding the front, the witches didn't have to worry about their safety this time. They could focus their entire minds on their witchcraft. The gray shadows methodically assisted the knights, tossing injured or incapacitated pythons into the fire. Before long, all the pythons had been cleared away.
Once the pythons were eliminated, Sarah and Jenny quickly ran over to heal the injured knights. Cynthia dispelled the wall of fire and turned to speak quietly with Chelsea.
Chelsea separated from Cynthia and went to her companions. They gathered together, taking out various materials and beginning to concoct something.
This was the first time Susan had seen the witches and Cynthia use their magic. She was inwardly surprised by their power but showed little of it on her face.
"These knights of yours are quite good," Cynthia said thoughtfully as she walked over, her gaze on the knights who were regrouping ahead.
While witchcraft and magic were powerful, their drawbacks were also obvious: they required time, and the caster could not be disturbed while chanting spells.
Facing agile enemies who could close the distance before a spell was complete was extremely dangerous for both witches and the God Race.
In their previous encounters with danger, the witches had only been able to unleash about eighty percent of their power.
This time, with the protection of the knights, the witches appeared much calmer when casting their spells.
"How long did it take you to train these knights to their current level?" Cynthia asked with interest, resting her chin on her hand.
Having gained some understanding of Cynthia's strength, Susan's attitude toward her had changed slightly. She glanced at Cynthia and replied, "About two years."
"My father was the previous City Lord of Hatz City. The knights he trained were even stronger. The captain of his force could almost contend with a fourth-generation vampire," Susan said in a calm tone. "But that drew the attention of the Vampires."
It drew the attention of the Vampires, and then what? Susan didn't continue, and Cynthia didn't press her.
Since Susan was now the City Lord of Hatz City, the answer wasn't hard to guess.
"To the Vampires, humans are merely prey. They would never allow their prey to possess the ability to fight back," Cynthia said softly, patting Susan on the shoulder. "But we are not prey. Humans once coexisted peacefully with Vampires on this continent."
The touch on her shoulder was very gentle, leaving Susan slightly stunned. She looked up and stared at Cynthia for a moment, then suddenly narrowed her eyes and asked suspiciously, "What are you doing? I have no interest in becoming some Light Believer."
As she spoke, she took a few wary steps to the side.
"You're overthinking it." Cynthia scanned Susan from head to toe, a beautiful curve forming on her lips as she smiled nonchalantly. "You don't meet the requirements to become a Light Believer."
Susan was not among the special group of people who possessed a Light Constitution.
Susan: "…"
Although she had been the one to first declare her lack of interest in being a Light Believer, being so directly rejected by Cynthia left Susan with a strange feeling. She patted her cheeks, trying to shake off the odd thought.
After learning from Cynthia that there were Vampires in Ochester, Chelsea quickly led the other witches in preparing some powder to conceal their scent.
Signaling the other witches to distribute the powder, wrapped in parchment, to the Silver Knights, Chelsea walked over to Cynthia and said in a flat tone, "Have we walked into a trap?"
As she spoke, she glanced at Susan, who was standing nearby.
Cynthia shook her head slightly. "Not exactly."
Their original destination was Ochester, so it wasn't as if Susan had lured them here. Besides, even if they had known Vampires were in Ochester, they still would have had to come, because Manden City, with a third-generation vampire in residence, would be even more dangerous.
Still, first they had run into the Elf Race and the Wolf Race in the Slade Sea Region, and now they knew a third-generation vampire was there as well. What exactly was over there that was attracting all these people?
Cynthia remembered Chelsea once telling her that third-generation vampires rarely set foot on the Sitatul Continent anymore.
A witch who was distributing the powder suddenly tripped over a branch on the ground. As she got up and brushed the dirt from her black robe, she caught a glimpse of a dark shadow out of the corner of her eye. She instinctively looked up. A corpse was floating head-down above the mire. Its black robe was covered in mud, but she could vaguely tell that its style was very similar to her own.
The witch froze for a moment, then cried out, "There's a body here!" She chanted a spell, and a cloud of gray mist wrapped around the corpse, bringing it to an empty space in front of her.
She turned the body over and saw an unfamiliar face, but from the clothes and the aura, she could identify the corpse as that of a witch.
The body hadn't been dead for long; it hadn't even fully stiffened. On its arm, she could see a chain specifically designed to suppress witchcraft.
Cynthia, Betty, and the others walked over upon hearing the commotion. The witch looked up at them, her tone a mix of panic and excitement. "One of our people is being held captive here."
Not only were there members of the God Race here, but their own people as well… The witches who had been arguing about leaving fell silent.
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