Goddess Kaleidoscope

Soon, Celica had prepared the food they had brought from the ground using the small stove. Celica couldn't help but think how useful these small items they had purchased locally in Pine Town were. Whether it was the portable stove or the emergency rations called "fried noodles," they were all very convenient, allowing them to quickly have a hot meal under these conditions.

After this trial ends, they must buy as much as possible to take with them before leaving Pine Tree Town, so they can definitely use it when they go to other places in the future.

Just as Celica was secretly marveling at how "products from Pine Town are always top-notch," Lude suddenly said something to her.

"Your Holiness, I have something to say, but I'm not sure if I should say it or not?"

"Master, please speak your mind. You are a senior, and we were very fortunate to have you with us when we entered the maze. Otherwise, if we had relied on ourselves, the situation would probably have been more than ten times worse than it is now!"

"Sigh! It's precisely because the situation is so dire that I'm saying our operation is likely doomed to failure. The best course of action now is to quickly gather our scattered teammates, then evacuate the maze and plan our next move."

"But...but this trial..."

“Selika! I’m an old man who has been through it all. The most valuable lesson I’ve learned from decades of life experience is knowing when to advance and retreat at crucial moments. This is demon territory. We’ve been at a disadvantage from the start, going in alone. Your arrival has only drawn their attention. The sudden increase in the difficulty of the maze shows that Hedtaka is watching us. I know your confidence. As a saintess, you can use your divine power without restraint, and the Great Resurrection spell is second nature to you. But you must know that demons are cunning beyond imagination. They are not without ways to kill our teammates. Take my advice: the waters here are very deep, and you can’t handle it!”

Lude advised Selica to gather their scattered teammates as soon as possible and evacuate the maze before the situation deteriorated beyond repair. Today's operation should be considered a reconnaissance mission; they shouldn't risk their teammates' lives for recklessness.

Selica was also conflicted. She had to admit that she had underestimated the labyrinth before entering. This den of demons was far more difficult to deal with than they had anticipated.

Just as Ludwig said, the devil is very cunning and will definitely use some insidious and vicious methods to deal with them.

Even though Celica, as a saintess, possesses limitless divine power and can use her resurrection spell at will, she still needs relatively intact corpses to revive fallen teammates. Therefore, in the current situation, with most teammates scattered, and if someone is killed and their body taken by the demon's minions, Celica cannot simply conjure them up again with her divine magic.

After a moment's thought, Celica finally adopted Lud's suggestion: first gather the scattered teammates, and then evacuate the maze.

"As soon as I return to the surface, I must report the situation here to the Divine Court. The believers of the Light will never allow demons to taint this world!"

"I think it's not a bad thing to keep this maze."

"Uh...why?"

“Child, you are still young. This world is very complex, and there are some things you may not understand yet. The human race often needs the existence of external enemies to put aside its conflicts and unite to a certain extent.”

Lud's words left Celica somewhat confused. The group rested for about half an hour and ate some hot food to replenish their energy. At this time, Tucker woke up. The young man was still affected by the concussion and felt dizzy, but at least he had regained his mobility.

So the group quickly set off to search for their lost teammates in the vast fourth-level maze.

To speed things up, Lude showed off a special skill. He raised his hand, gathered divine power, and conjured a bunch of firefly-like specks of light, then gently waved his hand and scattered them all out.

Lude told Celica that these little lights were called spirit finders, a divine spell specifically used to locate things. They travel in pairs and can fly at extremely high speeds. Once they find the person or thing their master is looking for, one of them will fly back to report and guide the master there.

This divine technique wasn't something Lud was making up; it was a new move he developed himself, one of the unique divine techniques within the Pantheon system.

Not long after setting off to search for the spirit, one of them flew back, indicating that there were teammates nearby. So they immediately followed and ran for about a few hundred meters before finding two teammates trapped in a pit.

After Salika rescued them, she noticed that both of them looked terrified, as if they were completely frightened.

Celica quickly inquired about the situation. It turned out that the two had passed by a strange gallery with paintings of various handsome men and beautiful women. However, they soon realized that the people in the paintings seemed to be peeking at them. When they got closer to take a closer look, the handsome men and beautiful women suddenly turned into monsters with blue faces and fangs, and then pounced out of the paintings.

The two were so terrified they nearly jumped out of their skin, scrambling to escape the scene, only to fall into the pit. Luckily, there were no sharp spikes or other deadly traps in the pit, saving their lives.

"Holy Maiden, the spirits in this place are terrifying!"

Guided by the spirits, the group gradually gathered several groups of lost teammates, but eleven people were still missing. Among them, Prince Li Wei and Prince Duran Weishead were of higher status. Additionally, Aina, Ludwig's disciple, and the Guardian Knight Xiu were also missing.

All the teammates who were found said that they had encountered some strange and terrifying things after they were separated. The physical injuries were not serious, but the psychological trauma was severe enough to leave psychological scars. Even Celica's soothing magic could not heal them immediately!

The creator of this labyrinth seems to be hiding in the shadows, watching their every move inside, and playing tricks on them in various ways.

During their search for their teammates, the group discovered an upward spiral staircase and the large turntable that appears after the first and second floor boss battles. Therefore, Rudd deduced that this was the starting point of the fourth floor, and the staircase led to the upper level of the maze.

Therefore, Lude suggested that most of the teammates stay here to rest, while he would leave his top disciple Shanis here to protect everyone, and Serica would join forces with him as a search team to speed up their journey.

Upon learning that Lude was going to team up with Serica alone, Shanis glanced at Serica, her expression hesitant. After much deliberation, she finally pulled Lude aside and spoke to her before the two were about to depart.

“Master, if you are going to travel with that saintess, you…you’d better be careful of her.”

"Huh? Why?"

"Because... I don't know how to explain what I saw to you! In short, you must be very careful."

"???"

With the question Shanis had suddenly posed to him, Lud and Celica made some preparations and set off. Of the spirits Lud had sent out to search, only a small portion had returned. He could use his senses to determine the location of the remaining spirits, so the two of them headed in that direction.

The two accelerated their progress, with Selica directly shielding herself from the maze's traps. Rudd was astonished by her apparent disregard for the loss of divine power, thinking to himself that she truly was a powerful religious family; the accumulated wealth of the Holy Lord of Light over thousands of years far surpassed that of the impoverished and upstart members of the Pantheon.

Lude secretly decided that, at least in the short to medium term, he should try to maintain a peaceful relationship with the three starter families and avoid any form of conflict.

The Pantheon is now a medium-sized religious sect. Without sending a single missionary abroad, Rud has developed hundreds of thousands of followers in the northern part of the kingdom solely through commercial operations. Its fame has spread throughout the country and even reached neighboring countries.

If he were only facing a sect of the same level, given the Pantheon's advantage in the number of gods, Rudd would be fearless now.

However, even with its rapid growth over three and a half years, the crickets could not surpass the foundation built up over thousands of years. The three great gods remained unattainable. Picking any one of them would be an easy victory against them. Even the slightly inferior Earth Mother Goddess could still crush them.

Fortunately, Rudd's goal from the beginning was not to destroy the gods, but to try to improve the current one-sided exploitative relationship between humans and gods step by step. Therefore, the Holy Lord of Light, who is inclined to be kind and lawful, is a potential partner for cooperation.

With the help of spirit scavenging, Lud and Celica found several more of their lost teammates. Although everyone was in a terrible mental state, thankfully, no one was killed.

Lud said that this was indeed very much in line with Hedtaka's usual style. This demon rarely kills, not because of kindness, but because it enjoys torturing the living and watching their reactions to suffering. Sometimes, this guy will even actively prevent his victims from committing suicide.

Most of the teammates were found quickly, but only Levi, Weshead, Aina, Hume, and a girl named Sunny were still missing. Ludwig sent out three more waves of spirits, but still received no response.

As time ticked by, Celica grew increasingly anxious.

Fortunately, after a while, the spirit finally returned. The two followed the light and searched their way forward. Along the way, traces of battle began to appear, and many damaged dolls could be seen everywhere.

With Celica, the humanoid Gundam, taking the brunt of the damage and clearing the way, the two of them passed through three areas in one go. Finally, they could hear some sounds ahead: a man's roar and the screams of something clearly not human, as if they were engaged in a fierce battle.

"The commotion up ahead is quite loud; they might have sneaked into the tier master's room!"

"Then we need to hurry even more."

The two ran wildly. Because of her Saintess outfit, Celica was several times faster than Lud. In order to get to the scene as soon as possible to save people, she accelerated and left Lud behind, rushing into the room where a fierce battle was taking place.

As soon as she rushed into the hall, Serica was stunned by what she saw. The BOSS battle room on the fourth floor was unusually large, cylindrical in shape, with a circular floor about fifty meters in diameter. Several of her companions were fighting against more than a dozen giant marionettes that were many times their size.

Looking up along the strings of these puppets, Celica saw an even larger giant hanging upside down from the ceiling of the hall.

This giant also appears to be a golem, with its face covered in dense purple eyes and dozens of pairs of arms growing on both sides of its body like centipedes. It is controlling the relatively smaller puppets below it in battle.

Selica had to admit that the pressure this thing exerted on him was far greater than that of Dog Brother and F4 on the first and second floors; they were simply not in the same league!

On the ground, the individual combat strength of those puppets wasn't particularly outstanding; they seemed even weaker than Dog Brother on the first floor. They probably couldn't defeat Levi and Weshead in a one-on-one fight, but there were a great many of them. Moreover, these things had another characteristic: when a puppet was damaged, it would pick up body parts from other destroyed puppets and use them, and it would also adapt to changing circumstances.

Sometimes, when the corresponding parts cannot be found on the battlefield, people just grab whatever works and make do. As a result, as the battle goes on, monster puppets with four arms and two heads, which look quite disgusting, begin to appear on the field.

After a brief moment of stunned silence, Celica quickly assessed the situation by scanning the entire area. She glanced at her teammates who were fighting hard; the five she hadn't been able to find earlier were all here. Levi and Weshead, two young masters who usually couldn't stand each other, were now fighting back-to-back against the enemy, while the highly skilled dark elf was weaving through a large number of marionettes with his unparalleled agility.

As for Ludwig's seemingly simple-minded white-haired female disciple, this nun was surprisingly able to use divine magic, creating a barrier to protect her and the unconscious Sanny.

Celica could tell that Aina had probably considered dragging Sunny away from the battlefield, but unfortunately there were too many puppets around, blocking their retreat, so they could only awkwardly hold on in the enemy ranks.

Seeing that everyone was in dire straits, Celica didn't hesitate and immediately joined the battle. Her addition, with her formidable fighting prowess, immediately relieved the pressure on her companions.

"Selica!" x2

Upon seeing the arrival of the saintess, Livy and Weshead were overjoyed.

They had been haunted by a persistent ghost nun the whole way, so they couldn't even let their guard down while taking a piss. They also accidentally knocked out Sunny, who was wearing the same style of nun's habit. Then, in a daze, they entered the BOSS room and were surrounded and beaten by a large group of ugly-looking puppets.

The two brothers thought they were going to die there today, but fortunately, at the critical moment, Aina and Hume, who had also been separated from the main group, arrived at the scene to rescue the three of them. Then, not long after, Celica also arrived, and the situation was rapidly improving.

With Selica's help, the pressure on the group was greatly reduced. She first single-handedly repelled several puppets, clearing a path for Aina and Sanny to retreat to safety, before turning back to fight again.

Celica discovered that although these puppets seemed to be controlled by the Hundred-Eyed Giant with strings at first glance, when Celica swung her sword and cut the strings, she found that the strings had no substance and just looked like marionettes.

So Celica tried to fly up and attack the hundred-eyed giant who had fallen to the ceiling. But as soon as she jumped, the giant suddenly fired blazing red light from its eyes. Hundreds of rays instantly formed an impenetrable net, shattering her holy light barrier in a single blow. The power was simply outrageous!

Seeing that Selica was in danger, Levi and Weshead immediately rushed forward to save her. But at this critical moment, Rudd, who arrived late, took the lead and instantly cast four layers of holy light barrier on Selica, successfully blocking the attack of the Hundred-Eyed Giant.

"Sorry I'm a little late."

Lude arrived at this time not intentionally, but because he was simply not as fast as Celica. The Saintess Set provided an all-around boost, and even if Lude had a military off-road vehicle, he still couldn't catch up with Celica, let alone on foot.

"Damn it! I need to get myself a set of god-tier gear when I have some free time."

Lud's timely arrival improved the situation. Lud's plan was to withdraw while the situation was favorable and help his teammates escape the battle as quickly as possible.

But then everyone noticed that Celica, who had floated down from mid-air, looked a little strange. Immediately afterwards, everyone present felt the air freeze for a moment, and an unprecedentedly powerful force suddenly surged from Celica's body. The immense divine power was astonishing.

Under the infusion of powerful divine power, Celica almost became the "incarnation of light," but Rude keenly noticed that Celica's entire demeanor had also changed, as if something had temporarily replaced him.

At this moment, Celica, having completed her transformation, raised her hand and pointed her holy sword at the fallen Hundred-Eyed Giant, then grinned maliciously and said...

"You...you've really angered me!"

Looking at Celica, whose temperament had suddenly changed and whose strength had surged, Lud was first taken aback, then thought to himself, "This is bad." He subconsciously thought that Celica had activated the legendary "divine intervention," directly summoning the Holy Lord of Light, Carius.

Kumirard had previously stated that after a god breaks through to the fifth tier, they will gain a special skill: to create a small subspace world outside the main plane as their own exclusive divine domain.

Furthermore, gods of the fifth rank and above possess divine power strong enough to interfere with the world laws of certain regions. Therefore, to avoid causing unnecessary trouble, they simply hide in their own subspaces and become reclusive, only venturing into the human world as a last resort.

However, as a deity who feeds on faith, he ultimately needs to maintain necessary interactions with his sect, and there will inevitably be situations where he needs to personally descend to the mortal realm.

However, traveling back and forth between the primary plane and the warp is not as easy as going downstairs to pick up a package. So, in order to save trouble, these high-level gods came up with the skill of "divine possession". Their own bodies stay in the warp and rely on their divine sense to remotely find a mortal body in the primary plane to use as their temporary vessel.

However, taking shortcuts always comes at a price. When a deity descends to the mortal realm using a spirit medium, depending on the quality of the vessel itself, it can usually only exert about 10% to 30% of its true power. Moreover, in this state, if it is accidentally injured, there is a high possibility that its soul will be directly damaged.

However, Lude soon discovered that although the transformed "Selica" was indeed much stronger, with her two holy swords unleashing forty-meter-long sword energy that swept away all the marionettes in an instant, and then launched an attack on the main body of the fourth-floor BOSS "Hundred Eyes", she was still subtly not strong enough. Aside from her cool divine armor, she had not completely transcended the limits of mortals.

The Holy Lord of Light, Karius, is an eighth-tier high god. Lude doesn't know exactly how strong this big shot is, but he can at least be sure that if the other party were to descend as a god, even if he only used about half of his strength, it would be enough to kill Hundred Eyes instantly.

This is not an exaggeration, but a statement of fact!

At this moment, Celica attacked while laughing wildly. Her entire demeanor changed from a dignified saintly girl to a completely different delinquent girl, and the smile on her face was almost too healthy.

However, Celica's personality soon changed again, transforming from a violent delinquent into a sarcastic girl with a disdainful expression. While beating up Hundred-Eyed, she unleashed a barrage of trash talk at a giant golem that had no self-awareness, appearing quite sadistic.

The battle that followed was almost entirely Serica's one-sided domination, and while fighting, Serica herself seamlessly switched between several distinct personalities, seemingly suffering from severe dissociative identity disorder, which greatly surprised Lud and his companions.

At that moment, Hume slipped over to Ludd and whispered something in his ear, knowing that Ludd was wondering about something.

"It's not a divine intervention, it's the sentience of the divine artifacts on her. High-level divine artifacts have their own consciousness. To unleash the full power of these artifacts, one must gain the recognition and merge with their spirits. This girl is wearing a complete set of divine artifacts, and each piece has its own spirit!"

Won't this cause side effects?

“How could there not be! So many spirits are all crammed into the same body right now; an ordinary person would have collapsed long ago. But I reckon this child has received Karius’s divine blood, so he should be able to hold on for a while.”

Due to "Selica's" great performance, several teammates were almost forced to withdraw from the battle, fearing that the opponent might accidentally cut them down if they didn't pay attention to controlling the sword light.

Under Lud's cover, the group quickly retreated to the edge of the hall.