A familiar human figure, wrapped in a sunset-colored radiance.
His mortal enemy, whom he had encountered several times before, and against whom he had been forced to wage a fierce life-or-death struggle each time, stood before his eyes.
‘Beoncheon Hoeju.’
A sense of crisis surged, and alarm bells blared in Harris’s mind.
He had clearly expected that the enemy wouldn’t be able to move freely, so he had never imagined it would reveal itself so suddenly.
Moreover, it was a sudden appearance to the extent that the formations installed nearby had failed to detect any omen whatsoever.
“Tch.”
Swish—
With a single kick, he retreated far back, gripping his bow tightly as he raised his guard.
The spirits he had summoned had already gathered around him, assuming an ironclad defensive formation.
Harris, an archer-type spirit user, specialized in long-range sniping that actively utilized evasion.
To face such a powerful foe at this close a distance was….
‘Wait, is that…?’
In the midst of those incessantly swirling thoughts.
Harris, who had been contemplating whether to retreat as is or call for reinforcements to fight properly, narrowed his eyes.
His starlight pupils, hidden beneath his helmet, flickered as he began to meticulously analyze the clues he had missed in the sudden situation.
“Ah.”
Only a few seconds had passed since his attack was blocked and he retreated to assess the situation.
Then, finally realizing the source of the sense of wrongness, Harris let out a low complaint.
“…You really startled me.”
Before the Chief Priestess, the figure of Beoncheon Hoeju still remained, wrapped in light.
But upon closer inspection, he could tell.
That it was not the real one, but merely a shadow—a projection of a fragment of its will.
‘An overreaction, huh. Is it some kind of holy technique using divine power?’
Perhaps because he had even factored in the possibility that the real Beoncheon Hoeju might appear in person, he seemed to have been more tense than he realized.
Of course, that didn’t mean the current situation was optimistic.
After all, the mere act of appearing had effortlessly blocked an attack containing his full power.
[Adeline.]
“Aah—! My Lord! This lowly servant greets you!”
[A troublesome one seems to have gotten entangled with you.]
“I-I apologize! Due to my insufficient abilities…!”
A resonant voice spread out, and a heavy presence pressed down on the surroundings.
The Chief Priestess no longer paid any attention to Harris, kneeling before that presence and prostrating herself repeatedly.
Though it was clearly nothing more than a fragment projected from him, and not the real Beoncheon Hoeju himself.
[I am sorry, but the time is not right. It so happens that divinity is damaged, so Earth’s interference is stronger than ever.]
“I am unworthy, my Lord. This too is a trial bestowed upon me. I shall overcome it with dignity and prove my worth!”
[Hmm…]
The human form composed of divine power—Beoncheon Hoeju’s thought-body—turned its head and looked toward Harris.
At the foreigner in suspicious attire, surrounded by numerous spirits and on full alert.
‘…Did he recognize me?’
Harris, carefully surveying the situation, swallowed dryly.
Since he had played his part in the battle that had taken place in Auterika previously, it wouldn’t be strange even if Beoncheon Hoeju recognized him.
Even if he had never directly faced the man in close quarters, having only fought via extreme long-range sniping, for someone of that caliber, identifying an opponent by aura alone would be nothing at all.
[Maintaining this projection is reaching its limit. There is not much time left.]
But contrary to his expectation, the man showed no particular reaction.
Whether he was simply hiding his emotions, or whether there were restrictions because this was not the main body, Harris could not tell.
He looked down again at the Chief Priestess prostrating before him and continued solemnly.
[Adeline, my Apostle. I shall permit a spirit body to descend upon you. With your own hands, execute the one who obstructs the New World, and offer his flesh and soul as a sacrifice.]
“Aah! I thank you for your grace, my Lord!”
And then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, its body disintegrated into light in an instant and began to be absorbed into the body of the woman kneeling before it.
Harris possessed saint-level knowledge regarding divine power, so he could tell at a glance what it meant.
‘Gangsin?’
The Chief Priestess was a priestess who served Beoncheon Hoeju as a god, and an apostle who had directly received power from him.
In that ritual, said to be performable only by a select few among the highest-ranking clergy, her divine power exploded and surged violently in an instant.
“Aah! I feel the Lord with me! Glorious and holy!”
A powerful wave spread to the surroundings, and burning heat like lava flared up from the divine armaments covering her body.
Harris slightly furrowed his brow at the momentum that was clearly different from before.
‘I had a feeling it wouldn’t end easily. A second phase?’
Due to the ritual’s influence, both the quantity and quality of her divine power began to explosively grow to more than three or four times her original amount.
Since that was the case with divine power alone, her overall combat capabilities including her other abilities would be far greater.
The Chief Priestess entering the Gangsin state was becoming a formidable enemy even Harris could not guarantee victory against.
However—there was one decisive difference between media like games and reality….
‘Now!’
Namely, that he was not a kind enemy who would wait until his opponent finished transforming completely.
Oooong—
Harris’s star-shaped pupils gleamed, and [Observer of the Galaxy] captured a gap in the Gangsin ritual.
Of course, since it was displayed so openly, the ritual itself had thorough security placed upon it, but that was not enough to completely deceive the eyes of Harris, who also had considerable knowledge of divine power.
Booooom—
[Progeny of the World Tree], [Nature Assimilation], [Call of Nature], [Natural Body], [Fairy Judgment], [Melody of Harmony], and even [Modified Wuyou Bagua Feigong].
All abilities he possessed harmonized into one, and the power he had secretly gathered while watching for an opportunity from the moment of Beoncheon Hoeju’s appearance detonated all at once.
———!
Toward the Chief Priestess who had yet to finish her preparations.
***
“Hectar!”
Rumble!
Along with Harris’s shout, a massive stone wall shot up from the ground.
It was not mere stone, but a mass of rock saturated with nature’s energy, so hard that ordinary metal could not leave a scratch.
It instantly grew in size and blocked the path of a human figure, but—
Kwaang!
It could not endure long under the onslaught of a massive hammer that flew in right after, and was shattered into pieces.
It had only managed to briefly grab the opponent’s ankle, as he had initially hoped.
‘More troublesome than I thought. The formation also limits my freedom of movement.’
At that, Harris clicked his tongue and frowned.
He continuously retreated while twanging his bowstring without rest to keep the opponent in check.
Toward the female warrior, the Chief Priestess, who charged aggressively like a tank, scattering reddish light everywhere.
Sssshriek—! Swhack!
Kwoong! Kwang!
Lightning falling from the sky was blocked by a shield, and flames that sought to devour everything around were pushed back by the hammer’s wind pressure.
Even the sharp, blade-like wind merely scratched the surface of the sturdy armor.
Wrapped in sunset radiance, silently breaking through all obstacles and advancing—that figure was literally a divine general of heaven itself.
‘Tch, still, it’s much more manageable than I initially expected…’
That was all thanks to an all-out surprise attack that struck like a bolt from the blue during the Gangsin ritual.
As expected, the ritual had been protected by mighty divinity, but it could not be completely unaffected by a finishing blow delivered with full intent from the very beginning.
If it had ended right then and there, it would have been the best possible outcome, but hoping for that much would be too greedy.
“How dare you! How dare you! I’ll kill you, you unbeliever bastard!”
Though the opponent did not seem to think so.
Harris shook his head at the sight of the Chief Priestess, who had discarded all the honorifics she had used until now, veins bulging across her face as she spewed rough words.
“Wouldn’t it be better to calm down a bit? That’s not very good for your health either….”
“To interfere with the glorious ritual! I will definitely burn you alive and offer you as a burnt sacrifice to the Lord!”
“No, I thought you must be confident, seeing how you ignored me despite me being right in front of you and boldly went about your business. There’s a limit to safety negligence. If it was that important, you should have done it somewhere safe and paid more attention to security….”
“Shut up, shut up! I will tear that tongue out without fail!”
He had stated the facts one by one and expressed the unfairness of his treatment, but his opponent, with a face like a ferocious demon and eyes rolled back, did not seem inclined to listen.
Well, his main purpose in speaking in the first place had been to provoke her, anyway.
‘By the way, this is bad at this rate. It’s taking far longer than expected. Though there must be a time limit on the empowerment from Gangsin…’
The problem was that the time limit for this entire operation would expire before the Gangsin even ended.
Objectively speaking, wasn’t he nothing more than a terrorist who had attacked the Pantheon’s top brass?
In fact, just delaying this long was already quite burdensome.
‘I’ve hidden the traces as seamlessly as possible using a formation of natural ki.’
Of course, that could not last forever.
Whether the formation eventually collapsed from accumulated internal impacts or was exposed by external searches, this situation would reach a breaking point before long.
Right now, it wouldn’t be strange at all if American Guardians came rushing in at any moment.
‘…I can’t let that happen. If I miss this golden opportunity, I don’t know when I’ll get another chance.’
The circumstances were different from the Spirit Envoy who operated in the shadows, or the Duke he had lured into a trap, or the Doctor.
The Chief Priestess was clearly active in the open… moreover, as a leading figure of the religious world called Pantheon.
If she felt threatened by this incident and decided to put on the guise of a public figure and hold out, even he wouldn’t be able to touch her carelessly.
At worst, public opinion would deteriorate, and unnecessary discord could arise among those who should be joining forces.
“I pray, my Lord! Grant me the power to pass judgment upon the unbeliever who blocks the path of the New World!”
Then, the Chief Priestess, who had finally broken through all obstacles and approached Harris, swung a massive hammer at him.
Though the restrictions placed on the spirits had been considerably loosened by [Dimensional Barrier Mitigation], that was not enough to suppress the opponent’s tremendously heightened momentum.
Divine power was a higher-order energy to begin with, too.
Swhaaack!
“Hup!”
“Uh? What—!”
But the large combat hammer that tore through the air and charged in never hit its target.
Before it could properly unleash its destructive power along the grand arc it was swung in, its trajectory was naturally twisted by Harris’s strangely outstretched hand.
Kwoong!
In the end, the hammer struck empty ground.
He retreated, avoiding the fiercely burning sunset-colored divine power gushing from the cracks of the splitting and overturning earth, scrunching up his face.
While continuously rubbing with one hand the wrist that had deflected the attack.
‘…Heavy. Even though I deflected it using the principles of softness as much as possible, to think it’s still this much.’
Until now, he had mainly used it to assist with natural forces and spirits, but the [Modified Wuyou Bagua Feigong] he had mastered was clearly a branch of martial arts.
Moreover, its overall grade reached the staggering S-rank—a peerless martial art that could be called the finest in its dimension without exaggeration.
Having tasted the principles of martial arts through Hugo’s [Wanliu Guizong], applying it was nothing to him.
‘Though the efficiency drops a bit.’
More than that, since things had come to this, his resolve grew even firmer.
She was an opponent who demonstrated such depth of power even while burdened with restrictions.
If he let her live like this, it would definitely come back to haunt him one hundred percent.
“You scurry away quite well. But how long can you keep doing that?”
Then, perhaps because the heat that had flared in her head from the earlier attack had subsided somewhat, the Chief Priestess, who had been rampaging like a runaway locomotive, opened her mouth calmly.
Her rough abusive tone was once again overlaid with the polite pretense from the beginning.
“This barrier, it’s using a formation, correct? I understand that it clearly derives from the martial world, so it’s fascinating that a spirit user is employing it. Dimensions where those two mysteries are mixed together must be quite rare….”
She furrowed her brow and pondered briefly, then soon shook her head and let out a smirk.
As if to say it no longer mattered.
“Anyway, it’s over now. Barrier-type mysteries have their limits no matter how much effort is put into them. Though it was sturdier than expected and took a little time.”
At her confident attitude, Harris’s expression hardened.
Just as she said, the formation was shaking from accumulated impacts, and considerable cracks had formed.
He had immediately grasped that and repaired it with all his might, but security was something that lost its value the moment it was breached once, even if you had done it right a hundred times.
“At most, ten minutes remain. By then, the Pantheon and Guardian elites will completely seal off the area and come rushing in here. It’s a shame I can’t crush you with my own hands right this instant… Well, it’s just a slight delay, that’s all.”
The Chief Priestess finished speaking and donned a radiant smile.
Wrapped in divine power tinged with red light, smiling as she uttered brutal words with composure—she looked nothing like an apostle of God, but rather like a minion of the devil, indescribably horrifying.
“At most, ten minutes…?”
Of course, Harris, who would never feel fear, paid no heed to such threats whatsoever.
He calmly surveyed the surroundings, then lightly nodded and slowly continued.
“It’s a bit tight… Hmm, but that should be enough.”
“…Huh?”
The Chief Priestess’s face distorted at his calm reaction.
Then, soon thinking it was simply empty bluster, she regained her composure and donned a sneer.
A haughty gleam coldly flickered in her eyes, the corners of her mouth twisting as if to say it was ridiculous.
But unfortunately.
That display of his was neither empty bluster nor overconfidence.
And for good reason—.
[Entity Rally]
“Kahahaha! It’s been a while! I’d like to take it slow and enjoy this, but it’s a shame there’s no time!”
“…It would be better to leave some margin. Let’s finish this within five minutes.”
It was because he had something he truly believed in.
The ancient tradition passed down through generations to the Warriors of Justice.