After being forced to step down, the once-annoying nun eloped with me.

So we'll be very busy, very busy... so busy that we might not even be able to get together with friends occasionally.

Yang Hao's explanation left Elena silent for a long time.

Before they knew it, they could see the girls playing happily or relaxing in the small pavilion where the tea party was being held.

Elena realized that no matter how distant those women were, as long as they lived in the Purple Palace, they would all have the right to meet, be intimate with, have tea with, or even go out with Yang Hao at any time in the future. Yang Hao would neither refuse nor could he refuse—in this situation, even if she were Yang Hao's friend, it didn't necessarily mean that their relationship would be particularly close.

Unbeknownst to her, a feeling called "jealousy" arose in her heart. But soon, the little synthetic doll regained her composure and said, "In that case, let's find some time to get together again."

"Understanding: After all, it's just a work-related matter... I can understand... But Mr. Yang Hao? What are your thoughts on Eden now?"

“You have great potential. Once you recover, it won’t be difficult for you to become a world power with your unique technology. Your status will definitely rise higher and higher then, Elena.”

"...Um."

Elena nodded, sighing inwardly; she didn't really care about her rising status... she cared deeply about her only friend who understood her. That was all.

But now it seems...

...Perhaps we should start from other places to make ourselves entitled to come over and chat at any time?

The tiny synthetic doll muttered to itself.

After they walked together into the venue where the tea party was being held, she became even more convinced of her idea and decided to put it into practice this year.

.............

Late at night on April 16, after the airship was modified and its cargo hold was filled with ammunition and food, Yang Hao and the others boarded the airship and headed towards the Shkur Territory with the drowsy Black Dragon Nia in tow.

In the afternoon, they received a message from the rangers—the divinely inspired army of believers was moving through the night and was expected to arrive in the territory of Shkur on the morning of the 17th, and reach the area surrounding the church where Theresa had been staying before noon.

To prevent the believers' army from destroying the church before they could, Yang Hao and the others decided after a brief discussion to lead a team to the territory of Shkur ahead of time. This time, they only brought a limited number of people and an airship as their main force.

"About 200 elite soldiers... As for the mages, besides Fen and the archmages who are masters of magic, I am a key force in divine magic, Naruja can create some golems for us on the spot, and that sleepy black dragon lady over there can provide us with air cover while using her intimidation to demoralize the peasant army below..."

In addition, the hastily modified airship also carried two large-scale destructive weapons produced by the Kingdom of Eden, which you called "Thermobaric Bombs".

No matter how you look at it, we should be able to easily withstand the attacks of those fanatics—defeating them is easy, but annihilating them is still quite difficult, isn't it?

Theresa is an essential member of the team needed to reopen the Sanctuary Chapel, so she will travel with the airship and naturally be able to use her divine magic to support the ground forces.

With such a luxurious troop configuration, let alone using two hundred men to withstand the attack of tens of thousands of demoralized peasant soldiers, even with only twenty men, Yang Hao and his men would have been able to crush the morale of the peasant soldiers. But as the saying goes, defeating the enemy is very easy, but annihilating them is very difficult.

Because of the advance notice, Yang Hao and his team could only bring two thermobaric bombs as key equipment for their hasty departure. Yang Hao calculated that, if used effectively, these two bombs could inflict permanent damage on nearly ten thousand people, ultimately causing them to die from burns and wound infections after a period of time.

But the peasant army numbers in the tens of thousands—even if ten thousand die, tens of thousands more will remain unscathed and become bandits roaming the lands... Yang Hao meant that he didn't mind Roman becoming more chaotic, but at least in the territories of Kagard and Shkur, within the new mines of the future United Nation, they still hoped to maintain local order as much as possible...

At the very least, they need to ensure that no one robs them every day during future mineral transport—after all, even too many mosquitoes can be annoying, let alone these future bandits who are not just mosquitoes, but even worse, cockroaches.

On Earth, the US military couldn't clear the Viet Cong from the forests without using defoliants, let alone in this alien world where defoliants are not available.

No matter how familiar the elves are with the activities in the forest, how many people can they kill in a day? And how far can those peasant soldiers run in a day?

If the believers' army were allowed to escape into the surrounding forests, the area would be mired in a disgusting banditry for at least the next five years... To avoid such a terrible situation, Yang Hao hoped to annihilate as many believers as possible in the mountainous area where the church was located.

But the question is, how exactly should we do it?

After thinking it over, Yang Hao snapped his fingers and said: "After entering the mountainous area where the Church of Schuler is located at dawn, immediately use the power of magic to clear the woods around the church and spread them out on the gentle slope in the direction of the enemy's attack, spreading them out as wide as possible."

Then, Yang Hao shook the drowsy black dragon awake from the sofa and asked Nia how far her [Dragon Breath] could ignite flammable materials. He received a satisfactory answer:

“Anything flammable, I can… hah… ignite—but you can’t expect me to ignite everything at once, so you’d better be prepared to stop them from escaping…”

"The thermobaric bomb will explode behind them."

"Thermobaric bomb? What's that?"

Black Dragon tilted its head dazedly, while Yang Hao smiled and said, "This is a consumable weapon that can deal devastating damage to a wide range of enemies." Then, under Black Dragon's suddenly alert and resentful gaze, Yang Hao left.

After returning to Theresa and Finn's side, he touched Naruja's hair, who was dozing on the table, and said, "Now the problem of how to inflict massive casualties on the enemy has been solved."

By using magic to cut down the trees around the mountain and spread them on the ground to create a flammable zone, and with the ground soldiers feigning weak resistance to lure the enemy forward, the black dragon finally spews a breath that ignites the wood on the ground. Then, the airship throws thermobaric bombs in the direction the enemy is retreating, trapping the vast majority of the enemy in the fire and suffocating space, unable to move forward or backward.

By then, whether the airships are used for target practice or the ground soldiers are used to mow down the rebels with machine guns, the number of believers will be drastically reduced. While some soldiers who haven't entered the fire zone will inevitably desert, if only a few thousand escape into the forest, it will still be within Yang Hao's acceptable range...

Although the plan made the forest-loving elves look uncomfortable, none of them wanted to play hide-and-seek with tens of thousands of cockroaches in the forest in the future, so all the elves, including Fen, chose to accept the plan.

On the other hand, now that the enemy has been dealt with, shouldn't they talk about the objectives of this trip?

Yang Hao hadn't forgotten that the main focus of their trip wasn't actually defeating the enemy, but rather rescuing Theresa's "Light"—now that they had confirmed the "Light" was in the sanctuary church, their fundamental goal would be achieved if they could simply rescue the "Light."

"Should we risk opening the church while simultaneously defending against the enemy's attack... or should we eliminate the enemy completely before opening the church? Theresa, what do you think?"

“Personally, I lean towards the latter,” Theresa shrugged. “The presence of enemies could lead to unforeseen circumstances. I hate unforeseen events, especially those concerning the [Light]... And Finn also thinks it would be more appropriate to eliminate the enemies first, right?”

Finn nodded in agreement. However, she also suggested that if the situation became too dangerous, rescuing "Light" first would be an option.

"After all, we can't guarantee that the God of Light won't do something suddenly... He used divine revelation to make believers in the border areas move spontaneously toward the Shkur territory, and even pointed out a safe route for them that would not be blocked or disturbed by the undead or other forces."

If nothing unexpected happens, the [God of Light] definitely has a backup plan. To ensure that [Light] is killed or captured, he might even create something similar to the [Corpse Angel] in St. Petersburg on the spot?

Fen's reminder left Yang Hao feeling somewhat helpless. After all, this was their first time confronting a god—although it wasn't a direct confrontation, the fact that the opponent was a "god" was enough to make everyone nervous.

However, Yang Hao was still confident of winning – after all, if the God of Light could really intervene directly in the territory of Shkur, why couldn't he do the same?

If the God of Light truly possesses that power, why can't he come himself? It's clearly the "Light" that threatens his own faith's rule, yet he simply summoned tens of thousands of insignificant border peasant believers to join the fun and call it a day?

On Earth, this is like a bank's final vault being completely moved, and the bank's only action is to send a few negligent security guards to wander around where the vault might be—doesn't this prove not only the incompetence of those guards, but also the weakness of the bank itself?

Therefore, in a sense, Yang Hao believes that the [God of Light] is unlikely to cause trouble in the territory of Shkur. Even if he decides to do so, the [God of Light's] power has most likely been greatly weakened by the appearance of [Light]... In other words, he is now just a mortal who can be killed by ordinary people, right?

"If the [God of Light] is truly the traitor we previously deduced—a man who values ​​his own life and will stop at nothing to climb higher—then he would most likely be unwilling to risk his life to confront us head-on... just like Garsen of the Roman Empire today. He has the desire to sit on the throne, but he lacks the courage to do so."

In other words, we only need to focus on dealing with the believers' army—but in the meantime, we need to allocate some resources to counter any potential variables…”

“For example, those angels?” Finn curled his lip. “The only threats a parish can pose to an airship are either angels, griffins, or the lethal magic of high-ranking priests—but the army of believers attacking Shkur territory only has a few low-ranking priests at most, and there are no griffins... In this case, the only threat is their angels, right?”

"But the angels of the God of Light are actually puppet creations made from corpses... Apart from being able to fly in the sky to intimidate people, they don't actually have much power, right? After all, the birdmen in St. Petersburg have already shed most of their rotten flesh?"

“Theresa, we can disregard the enemy's character, but we absolutely cannot disregard their strength when it comes to unpredictable events, okay? So for now, let's keep the airship hovering at low altitudes. This way, we can maintain our advantage of attacking from above and also ensure that if any [Angels] appear, we can take them down immediately... Is that alright?”

Faced with the angels that the God of Light might summon, Yang Hao and the others didn't really have any good strategies.

After all, the advantage of the [Angels] lies in their ability to fly—they can hover at high altitudes, and once they take to the skies, the infantry that Yang Hao and the others have placed on the ground will have little chance of threatening them.

In this situation, the heavy machine guns on the airships become the most important source of firepower against the angels... But conversely, why should we wait until the angels take to the sky before we consider dealing with them, instead of taking them out before they take flight?

Yang Hao calculated the extent to which the shells fired from the ten machine guns on the floating ship could cause serious damage to enemies within a certain range after the explosion. After concluding that the angel's wings could not possibly withstand a round of explosions, he thought that the God of Light's "Angel" was probably just like that.

(But for now, we still need to prepare for air defense... and in future wars, we may frequently face enemy air strikes—under these circumstances, researching air defense weapons has become an essential task for us.)

Seeing everyone gradually relax under his confidence, Yang Hao sighed softly and decided to take a short nap before arriving at the hypothetical position in Shkur.

Meanwhile, not far away, Nia, who was distracted by the [Thermobaric Bomb] mentioned by Yang Hao, wandered aimlessly around the airship. She also noticed something strange about the airship.

She wasn't sure if it was just her imagination, but she always felt that the eye-like statues on the floating ship seemed to be swaying gently in sync with His Majesty Yang Hao's every move.

"...This can't be some kind of surveillance camera, like the Eye of the Sky, but permanently fixed to the statue, can it?"

Black Dragon muttered to himself as he stood beneath a constantly swaying eye statue.

As she murmured to herself, those eyes suddenly turned towards Nia, startling her and making Nia realize that the only person capable of such a thing was probably Miss Irina from the Kingdom of Eden...

Chapter Two: The Angel of the God of Light—8K

In the early hours of April 17th, after the airship arrived above the dilapidated church in the Shkur territory, which was familiar to both Yang Hao and Theresa, it released 200 elite soldiers and some Gapa 1405 heavy machine guns from its cabin. All ground units were commanded by an elite sergeant to ensure the smooth execution of the plan and to avoid confusion in the command system.

Upon landing, the soldiers, with the help of elven mages, began a massive clearing of the trees around the church. The elven mages used magic to uproot the trees, and after expending some of their magic to distribute them evenly at the foot of the mountain, the entire hilltop transformed from a lush, verdant mountain into a barren desert. The culprits who caused all this simply stated that if they wanted the trees to burn even faster, they could use magic to further dry out the moisture within the trees.

"Although this was not our intention, to put it bluntly, the trees are willing to sacrifice themselves for better living conditions...for their offspring."

On the ground, Fen murmured sadly beside Yang Hao, a soft, green ball resting in her palm. According to her, this seemed to be a "need" left to her by the felled trees—a seed representing the continuation of life in the surrounding forest.

"At that time, we will place it in the Elf Forest... Perhaps that will be enough to make up for the mistakes we have made."

The elves truly love trees. They only permanently damage forests when absolutely necessary—which also demonstrates Yang Hao's current standing in the elves' eyes, perhaps even higher than their favorite trees.

Yang Hao could only nod gratefully and say that he would try to make up for his mistake to the trees here—but more importantly, the next crucial issue was the arrangement of the fire site... He personally felt that it would be better not to dry the moisture in the trees.

"After all, smoke is also a weapon of mass destruction... For those deep inside the fire, the smoke makes it even harder for them to find their way out—moreover, if the fire could spread more slowly towards the center, it would allow us to conduct some testing of the gunships..."

"Are you going to use those believer soldiers to test the power of our new weapons?"

"That's natural—after all, sending weapons to the battlefield without testing is just a waste of lives and supplies, putting our soldiers and operators in danger... Now that we have a suitable target, why can't we use it? Besides, barring any unforeseen circumstances, our enemy for the foreseeable future will also be the Romans. Improving our army's understanding of the Romans is never a bad thing."

"Hmm...you always manage to convince us on these matters. So you decide—but Yang Hao, are you sure [Light] is really here?"

Finn turned around and looked with Yang Hao at Miss Teresa, who seemed somewhat uneasy as she went in and out of the church entrance.

Theresa seemed to be communicating and praying to something underground. And judging from the faint silvery-white light emanating from her body, she might indeed have made contact with someone underground.

But Fen always felt something was off...

After all, [Light] is a conceptual god, so how could a conceptual god be bound underground?

This is like trying to confine all the concepts of "writing" in the world to a single piece of paper—it's simply a fantasy. So, is the "light" currently underground truly the "light" they perceive it to be?

Is it really not something disguised? And was Theresa truly not deceived?

Fen knows it's really bad to be so suspicious... but, it's okay for everyone to be a little cautious, right?

After all, three key top members of the United Nations are here this time... If they have truly been deceived, the United Nations will lose three pillars of support in a single day—a loss the United Nations simply cannot afford...

So, can't we really be any more cautious?

Finn looked worriedly at Theresa, who was kneeling on one knee praying, while Yang Hao, after thinking for a while, reached out and rubbed the little elf's head.

"Oh no?! Don't mess up my hair outside!"

The elf puffed up its cheeks angrily, swatted Yang Hao's paw away, and then he grabbed its cheek in the process.

"Don't worry about Theresa. After all, she's a child who grew up under the watchful eyes of the Light—what child wouldn't recognize their own parents?"

Yang Hao's words silenced Fen.

Right, Fendu almost forgot—for the most destitute of them, [Light] and Theresa, they had already established an incredibly solid relationship.

Theresa grew up under the watchful eye of the Light, and before she met Yang Hao and became the faith leader of the demons, Theresa was, in a true sense, the only true believer of the Light.

[Light] could not possibly mistake Teresa, and naturally, Teresa could not possibly mistake [Light].

Despite Theresa's constant accusations of the Light being all talk and no action, if anyone were to insult the Light to her face, she would absolutely draw her sword and fight them to the death. This is why Yang Hao and Fen only joke around a little when it comes to matters concerning the Light, not only out of consideration for God's feelings but also out of respect for Theresa's deep reverence for the Light.

In a sense, it's impossible for Teresa to mistake the Light—you could say she might mistake Finn and Naruja in bed one day, but she absolutely could not mistake the existence of the Light, absolutely not.

In this situation, if Theresa firmly believes that the existence beneath is "light," then the other party must also be "light."