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

"Because this is very important for our future plans, it is in a sense the most important part here."

"...understand?"

The synthetic doll tilted its head. And just then, Lalumia said that it was almost time.

If things continue like this, the people who have been calmed down by the tranquilizing spell will start to stir again. So, is it really okay for Yang Hao not to hurry?

Let's begin now.

Knowing that time was of the essence, even though he hadn't had a proper rest all day, Yang Hao finally fastened his collar and left the conference room accompanied by his two wives.

They went to their respective battlefields to prepare, while the other girls who had been assigned tasks were naturally not idle either.

They left one after another, and in the end, the one who stayed behind was Lord Lalumia, who had a puffed-up face and looked very unhappy.

Lalumia was unhappy because she had nothing to do. Even after realizing that Yang Hao genuinely couldn't find suitable work, this unhappiness inexplicably began to flare up and she took her anger out on him.

"Stupid child! I'd do anything, even fetch water! Now I have absolutely nothing to do, what am I going to do?"

Sulking with resentment, Lalumia sat down in Yang Hao's chair, grumbling as she felt the divine power accumulating within her.

Feeling the lingering warmth behind her, and realizing that she truly had nothing to do that night, the gentle deity could only sigh and say, "Children grow up and no longer need their mothers."

She was just saying it. But an indescribable loneliness still filled her heart... However, she was not a fragile god.

She quickly found herself a job—she could observe the current state of the parish by following the path of divine power transmission.

Although the process may not be very clear, it should at least give her an understanding of the current situation in the parish.

If I can gather enough intelligence, the rest of the plan will proceed more smoothly... and then I'll be the one who's done a great service!

So after dealing with the God of Light, let him grant me one request.

Lalumia's puffed-up face gradually calmed down.

In the parish.

The Protestant and Catholic factions are locked in a stalemate, neither daring to make a move against the other.

Chapter Thirteen 5/5: The Final Battle - 8K

On May 20, the opposing Christian and Protestant armies stood facing each other on their respective positions. Neither dared to make the first move to attack the engineering students, as everyone appeared utterly exhausted and had no energy left to leave their posts.

The Protestants were exhausted from the daily grind, while the Catholics had much more bizarre experiences.

Despite their overwhelming numerical advantage, a large number of ordinary believers, equipped with varying degrees of inadequacy, were unable to go to battle due to stomach pain. They clutched their abdomens in twos and threes, writhing in agony, but the pain was not enough to completely incapacitate them.

Many Catholic soldiers even suffered from severe diarrhea due to the pain. The stench emanating from the Catholic positions even attracted the last group of undead who were still lingering under the Protestant-built earthen ramparts. The attack of these undead gave Peter a legitimate reason to stop the offensive.

"Great God of Light—my warriors are weak and exhausted. We need to withstand the onslaught of the undead before we can launch an offensive against the Protestants. Please have mercy on us, or allow your mighty warriors to launch the attack!"

Bathed in moonlight, the cult leader Peter knelt on the ground, outwardly pious, and prayed towards the distant St. Petersburg. He was testing whether the God of Light still had the power to monitor the battlefield, and even more so, whether the skeletal demons were capable of acting independently—but no matter how he looked, he received no response; the skeletal demons continued to mechanically remind him of his mission.

...They didn't even raise a knife in a threatening gesture. Master Peter was certain that these skeletal demons possessed no intelligence whatsoever, and that even the God of Light hadn't placed "eyes" within them to observe him—or rather, the God of Light of the past certainly had that power, but why didn't the current God of Light do so?

Feeling the divine power from the God of Light dwindling within him during the day, Leader Peter chuckled a few times and decided to wait—he would wait for the moment the God of Light would appear, and even more so for the moment when these approximately fifty skeletal demons would be completely exhausted.

Although Chief Peter was obese and a coward, he was by no means stupid. He knew that the Skeleton Demon was currently the only power and backing of the God of Light. Once the Skeleton Demon was completely destroyed by Cecilia of the Protestant Church, the God of Light would have to reveal himself to ensure his wrath had a consequence.

Once the God of Light appears, and there are no guards around, if the god-slaying dagger in his hand can find an opportunity to stab him in the heart... then the leader of the Church will be elevated to a god, and the title of "leader" will be changed to "god".

What a wonderful future this is!

He waved his hand with satisfaction, deliberately assigning the weakest believers to the front—these fanatics who worshipped the God of Light were of no value in Peter's eyes in the future. It was more practical for them to die on the battlefield now than to cause trouble later.

While the Old Church proceeded according to its plan, using its weakest believers to fight the undead in front, Cecilia and Priscilla stood by on the earthen ramparts, watching blankly as the Old Church's believers were gradually crushed by the undead, witnessing the Old Church's extravagant and wasteful arrangement of lives.

What are they doing?

Cecilia blankly ordered her warriors to continue resting until the undead were wiped out.

"The stench emanating from them was one thing... but most of the soldiers looked to be in extremely poor condition, some even crouching on the ground as if they had been poisoned before the battle even began... and instead of sending these soldiers back to the rear, Leader Peter made them stand at the front to defend against the undead? This... isn't this just recklessly wasting human lives?!"

"...I think that for the Old Cult, human life is basically the most valuable resource. And you're right, those soldiers were indeed poisoned." The Night Witch nodded blankly, then gave a vague explanation.

"And even so, those skeletons... those blasphemous creations didn't seem to have any intention of attacking us?! They just watched as their master's followers were slaughtered?!" Cecilia still couldn't understand... She really couldn't understand why the Old Church made such an arrangement, and she couldn't understand why the God of Light's [messenger] remained unmoved in the face of his followers being slaughtered by his own creations.

"Perhaps, the God of Light doesn't care about believers at all."

"..."

Faced with Priscilla's explanation, the saintess was completely speechless.

The God of Light doesn't care about his followers, only about his own goals—and so does the leader of the Church of Peter, who only cares about his own interests.

They paired up, and both of them disregarded the lives of their subordinates, and in the end... this is how it turned out.

The lives of believers were constantly being consumed by the undead. These soldiers, who could have been used to launch a fierce attack on the Protestant strongholds, became victims of the undead... And the perpetrators of all this did nothing about it, and even seemed to be enjoying it.

How many people do you want to kill to satisfy your filthy and despicable desires?!

Cecilia felt angry, followed by a wave of helplessness.

She was facing a god, and a cult leader who used that god's power to bring destruction. Her only power to fight back was herself. Although the god was constantly weakening, did she truly have a chance to defeat him?

Cecilia sighed and turned her head away, unable to bear witnessing the scene of the old cult soldiers being brutally murdered while crying out.

For Priscilla, however, she was more concerned with the starkly different attitudes of the three major factions within the Old Church army toward the war.

(The fear of the believers' army... the discipline of the smaller but better-equipped guardians in the rear... and the mechanical nature of the skeletal monsters that were clearly "divine messengers"...) she thought to herself, (Three completely different situations... like a piece of wood with an outer steel plate and a layer of rotten wood simultaneously being struck by another piece of wood... this might be our chance.)

As a wise witch, Priscilla immediately noticed the signs of division within the Old Cult army. She watched as the Old Cult soldiers fought the undead, as the cannibalism and being cannibalized occurred—and she soon realized a problem.

The power of the God of Light is far weaker than they imagined. While the God of Light may not care about the lives of his followers, he will certainly care about his own reputation and whether his goals can be achieved.

Peter's actions undoubtedly increase the likelihood of the God of Light's plan failing—any capable, normal person who knows their subordinates inside and out would try to stop it, but the God of Light did nothing.

(This can't possibly be a conspiracy by the God of Light... If it were truly a conspiracy, he should at least show some signs of it... God of Light... You can't even monitor your own loyal followers? And despite being a "divine messenger," those skeletal monsters seem more like low-level golems without any intelligence...)

As the most intelligent witch in the Roman Empire, Priscilla could see that the skeleton demon of the God of Light was essentially a low-level golem.

This gives the impression that a king is actually a clown, issuing not a bright and great decree, but ordering all citizens to go to the circus to watch him perform as a clown... This sense of incongruity greatly shocked Priscilla, but upon closer reflection, it was not impossible.

Do people really understand the existence called the "God of Light"?

Even the manual of Cecilia's faith might be a unique copy left behind by another god, only with one name changed by the God of Light... In this case, why should we consider the God of Light a powerful being, rather than a petty person who gained power by chance?

He acted like a petty person.

He secretly hated Cecilia for causing him huge losses. He should have been able to punish her directly, but he chose the safest, even overly safe, method of joining forces with the Old Cult to launch an attack.

Faced with the fact that the leader of the Church of Peter was wasting his own strength and increasing the possibility of defeat in the battle, the God of Light chose to "let it go"—or rather, not even let it go, but simply "not pay any attention"... Is this really the perspective a god should have?

Does the God of Light disregard his own foundation, his own believers, and even the process of what he desires unfold?

Think about it carefully...

Isn't this the kind of arrogant, powerless, and incompetent villain that was most common in the Roman Empire? They were arrogant, powerless and unwilling to train themselves, and wanted to make money but took no real action, instead drinking in silence. In the end, they could only vent their anger and impotence on the weak while turning a blind eye to the fact that their own wives and daughters were selling their bodies for a living.

...So this is the true face of the god of the Roman Empire's greatest religious faith?

Priscilla stared blankly as a third of the poisoned believers in front of the Old Church were slaughtered. She watched as the skeletal monsters mechanically performed their actions as if issuing divine pronouncements, while the elite guards of the Church remained unmoved.

She suddenly realized that those believers who kept shouting the greatness of the God of Light until their deaths probably never imagined that the God they believed in was a filthy and despicable person.

Thinking about this...

"...Hehehe."

She couldn't help herself. The pale face beneath the witch's hat suddenly regained its flesh color, the slit between her nose and chin curved slightly, and finally grinned into a wanton crescent smile.

Her strange behavior caused Cecilia, who had been silently praying for the tragically deceased while looking down at the ground, to raise her head in bewilderment:

"Priscilla?"

The saintess was worried about her friend, but the night witch, who was already thoroughly amused by her own conclusions, simply covered her mouth with her hand to try to hide her smile. However, she found that no matter how she covered it, her giggles, barely audible, would still escape from time to time.

She desperately wanted to hide her feelings, to conceal her smile... but she simply couldn't hold it in.

Especially when one thinks of the rumors that in the early days of the nation's founding, countless parish warriors with truly high-level faiths were burned alive by their own parishioners during the years they secluded themselves to study magic.

Priscilla couldn't hold back any longer.

She laughed. The witch's laughter, tinged with self-mockery, helplessness, and even despair, left the saintess beside her bewildered.

"No...it's nothing. It's nothing. I thought I was disgusting enough...but I never imagined there were people in this world even more disgusting than me. I wanted to laugh, I couldn't hold it in."

Hehehe... This is truly laughable... I actually thought our country was a powerful empire, but looking at it this way, isn't it just a country where the filthiest things in the world have been mixed together in an attempt to defy fate? In the end, we were the ones who pushed them out of this cesspool...?

Even the god worshipped in the parish is like this, a being that was revered as a god by the Romans hundreds of years ago... and now it looks like this?

Ha...hehehe...

What are we, anyway?

The witch's bewildered question left Cecilia silent.

What exactly are the Romans? The saintess asked herself, equally bewildered. She knew that the Romans' current behavior was nothing like that of a normal intelligent life form—in fact, one could say that even the simple demons in the Demon Forest were more human-like than them.

But she also knew that even in such a group, there were a very few who harbored true light in their hearts—for example, the former king, and the capable generals during the war.

This is also why Cecilia was willing to become a saintess of the Church of Light, and why she was willing to possess such great power but choose not to abuse it, instead choosing to believe that people can live better lives.

...but now she knows.

Without a strong ruler, the Romans were no match for the people. They still maintained a tribal mindset, and even after establishing their own kingdom, they continued their tribal system in their respective villages and towns. In many areas, customs such as the right of the first night still existed in secret—this was a fact that the Holy Maiden learned from the newly ordained nuns after she began to take control of her own territory.

The insignificant Romanians chose to live an insignificant way. They knew that the emperor was far away and wouldn't pay much attention to policies unless the emperor actually came to them—unless it brought them benefits or meant being forced or whipped.

Even if there is a powerful ruler running around for their future, driven by jealousy and anger, they will still choose to actively tear down the person who can lead them to a better world, without feeling any regret.

Education does exist. But the premise of education is that the Romans today can only retain a very small number of their own generation and the next generation, who are as pure as paper.

The late king and Yang Hao did not do that. They tried to save the people from their suffering using the stupidest and most futile method, but one that would at least minimize the harm to the people. However, the people in the midst of suffering only wanted those of them who were not yet affected to die quickly.

One of them died on the battlefield, and it has now been confirmed that he was poisoned by the late king's brother.

The other group consists of those who were torn down by the people themselves amidst conspiracies and intrigues; the very few who did not collude with them either died or fled.

The rest are pathetic and despicable.

Especially with the already pathetic and despicable Romans now burdened with nobles and leaders of various factions whom they would never resist in their lifetime, the Romans have already squandered their last chance to change themselves.

Now that things have come to this, the first thing the soldiers in the military region think about is not how to break away and prove that they have nothing to do with the current Roman Empire, or how to use their military power to risk reforming themselves, but rather how to protect this country that is beyond saving.

Now that things have come to this, the oppressed people, after finally awakening, have only raised their flags, but when it comes to actually fighting the nobles' private armies, they retreat faster and faster than the last.