In the distance, a man was questioning a polite-looking man.

“Gerald, why did you bring out our entire army here?”

“Someone needed help. It’s only fair that we help them out.”

“This is crazy! What kind of situation needs our entire army to mobilize? There might not even be an enemy by the time we get there! This is a massive waste of resources!”

Gerald didn’t mind Dvar’s ramblings. He knew what he was doing ever since he gave Reinhold that signal. There shouldn’t be any dangers around where he lived that would result in Reinhold needing to call for help. If Reinhold ever did use that signal, it meant that there was something extremely wrong.

Gerald, who usually thought out his moves, acted on this feeling. This extremely odd way that Gerald handled the situation made Dvar uncomfortable. They were supposed to defend the mansion and take try to get as many Insignias as they possibly could.

Inside the ash-filled city.

Reinhold felt his heart drop. They were completely losing. Everyone was going to die now.

“Think! Think! Think!” Reinhold’s mind sped by so many thoughts. Countless ideas on what to do, how to execute them, and how they could possibly survive this hopeless situation.

Reinhold conjured a metal ball and threw it toward Yio. Reinhold had to physically throw this ball forward. Yio didn’t even twitch, he was only looking at Reinhold with pure malice, similar to a certain monstrosity Reinhold faced back in the mansion.

“At least his mind couldn’t handle this much power. This should be doable, by the skin by our teeth but doable.”

Reinhold reassessed the situation, the Fanged Lioness was brutally split in half while Houston was unconscious. Their side’s greatest strength was now incapacitated while the enemy suddenly gained a monster as their ally.

Now… it was up to Reinhold.

Reinhold looked behind him. He saw Hannah was still being held back by the inquisitors. Reinhold’s one last desperate card was about to be played.

The symbols he etched on the back of multiple mercenaries were finally about to be used.

A dead mercenary that had his stomach pierced through by Yio’s hand had a very odd symbol glow behind his back. There was an earth-shattering explosion.

Yio waved his hand, creating a strong gust of wind, blowing away the ash and smoke all around him. Reinhold’s tactic was useless against Yio but it didn’t mean it had no purpose.

“Distract him! We can still survive!” Reinhold immediately took command, he couldn’t run away due to his bad leg but he could still use the symbols he learned these past few days to affect the situation.

Morale was low, incredibly so. Every single mercenary had the thought to escape but they were quickly pulled back into reality by Reinhold’s words.

“There’s a giant army waiting to slaughter us if we do nothing! It’s now or never!”

Pulling themselves together, they followed Reinhold’s orders.

They started their flimsy tactic, to use the stronger mercenaries to distract Yio while the rest swarm the inquisitors, trying to break through to get to the effigy.

A death a second, that was how brutal Yio’s onslaught was. It wasn’t even fair to call it a distraction, they were just lambs to the slaughter and Yio was enjoying every single moment of it.

His reptilian body had extremely tough scales that they couldn’t pierce through and a razor-sharp sword that made the pavement look like butter.

Reinhold gritted his teeth, he was already caused so much friendly fire on his side due to how recklessly he was using his symbols. Although this was the case, it always lead to the mercenaries getting an advantage in the battle. This time, however, he wasn’t doing to do the most efficient way to win, he was going to make the moves that end the battle the fastest.

“You’re all brave, men. I’m sorry,” Reinhold gritted his teeth.

Before any of the mercenaries realized what Reinhold said, countless explosions occurred. Both mercenaries and inquisitors were blown apart, and countless limbs and droplets of blood littered the battlefield. This one action took countless lives but managed to advance the situation.

Slowly, for each sacrifice, the battle came to a close even faster. The Gifted inquisitors were holding their own against the mercenaries but they were clearly much more exhausted due to Reinhold’s countless methods.

Hannah blended into the shadows through the chaos, she was still struggling to get closer to the effigy. Even more explosions occurred, and the situation was getting more and more chaotic with each of these terrifying forced sacrifices.

At this point, there were barely any mercenaries and inquisitors left, a mere fraction of how many people each side started with. The conclusion was already pre-determined, the only question was how fast could they light the effigy up.

Another corpse blew up, taking ten more inquisitors with him. There were only a mere twenty inquisitors left struggling to keep a hundred mercenaries back. As they were about to finally push through one last time, an unsettling noise appeared from behind the mercenaries’ back.

A brutal bone-crunching sound, it was as if there was a machine breaking apart bone, the unsettling noise it made had shaken everyone to their core.

Yio finished off the mercenaries that were distracting him. He didn’t even seem bothered at how long it took him to kill them. It seemed that whatever Yio became, he was confident he wouldn’t die. No one could even refute this creature’s confidence since it was the cruel truth. No one could kill him… yet.

“Push through! I can handle Yio alone if we break apart the God’s Domain!” Reinhold screamed his orders, this entire situation was turning out to finally lay down on his shoulders.

Snap.

A suicidal mercenary jumped over in the middle of the twenty inquisitors and blew up. There was finally no one stopping Hannah from taking advantage of this nameless… no, he wasn’t nameless, he was Argen. Argen jumped forward taking on spears and swords piercing and slashing away at him, even taking one of his arms before blowing up.

This one move further solidified his beliefs, as long as it could save everyone else, he didn’t mind being the one death that ended it all.

Hannah teared up at this realization. Argen was the man who kept on speaking about justice, he was too vocal with his beliefs but he wasn’t a bad guy. Argen helped out everyone to the best of his abilities, he was the first person who went out and tried to stop people from running out when Reinhold first spread his trap.

From distrusting and hating Reinhold, Argen knew that Reinhold’s orders took into account the best possible outcome for each scenario, this time he didn’t mind being used since he managed to uphold what he believed in.

Hannah gritted her teeth, her eyes were red and her breathing was unstable. Her emotions were running out of control but she managed to focus on the most important task at hand, she slipped by and lit up the effigy.

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So many sacrifices for this one thing. It made Hannah question why the world was this cruel.

The effigy, as expected, burned up so quickly that it seemed as if it was cotton. The undetailed face, body, and wings quickly turned into ash.

Reinhold was not disappointed with what was about to come.

A rumbling from the skies made everyone halt.

The clouds parted, the smoke turned into white vapor, and everything that was related to fire was slowly turning blue.

An eye of unspeakable magnitude opened, looking at Green City with a gleeful glint. One couldn’t even feel fear because there was no point in feeling it. It was as if death came, unstoppable.

Stopping and kneeling down felt natural, bowing wouldn’t even have been seen as odd. Most of the mercenaries and inquisitors kneeled down as if it was ingrained in their nature to worship. Some even bowed and prayed, incoherent words came out of their mouths.

Only Reinhold and Yio weren’t affected by this strange scenario in the city. Yio was currently so oppressively strong that the God of Fire’s influence and almost negligible to him. Reinhold, on the other hand, was relying on his artificial domain to take on the burden.

This worship wasn’t only contained within the city. On the horizon, two different armies were being forced into kneeling as well. Horses were tumbled over as their riders’ started to fall down.

Gerald retained his stance, keeping his balance atop his horse. Dvar, on the other hand, was slightly shaky but still resisted the extremely terrifying will trying to force him against his actions.

“The God of Fire?! Why was his incarnation summoned?! Gerald, what is going on?” Dvar was completely stunned, it was extremely hard to summon the incarnation of gods. In fact, if it weren’t for their special dispositions, they wouldn’t even bother going down here.

“Something that’s worth our attention… hmm? There’s smoke.”

“In the distance, there’s a fire. Don’t tell me some psychopath tried to summon a natural domain. Whoever that person was, he’s suicidal. Gerald… do you know the person who did this?”

“I might have an idea,” a red-eyed man flashed by Gerald’s mind.

Dvar kept his silence. Managing to summon an incarnation of a god was no easy feat. You either had to please the god which was in itself near impossible since it was extremely hard to figure out what a god wants and hates. The other one was to offer up their Insignias as a sacrifice for their favor.

Both entire armies had to stop in their tracks. Their soldiers were being forced against their will, only those reaching a certain boundary or accumulation could fight against it. There were also a few who used some kind of artifact to nullify this oppressive control like Reinhold.

The eye stared directly at the burning effigy. The God of Trial’s figure was ash yet there seemed to be some kind of invisible object that was concealed by ash. This resulted in the effigy retaining its outline yet being completely hollow inside.

The slit eye continued to look around the vicinity trying to find something else of note but lost interest over time. This eye looked at Yio for a little bit and showed his disgust, clearly annoyed at seeing him. The raging forest fire started to turn blue, the flame’s temperature started to exponentially rise, and smoke stopped rising since not even ash remained, only nothingness.

The God of Trial’s God Domain had cracks appear, tiny fragmented regions started appearing on the golden red barrier. The blue flames spreading out of the forest started to converge directly onto the God’s Domain. These small cracks started to expand, getting longer and longer until they met other similarly long cracks.

The God’s Domain that has plagued Green City was finally shattered. They achieved their well-deserved freedom.

The God of Fire slowly closed his eyes, taking away the blue fire that he used to shatter the God’s Domain. This eye started to fade into nothingness when everyone, Reinhold, Yio, the citizens, the mercenaries, and the two armies heard the God of Fire speak.

“Disgusting,” as he said so, Yio started to feel unbearable heat coming from within his body.

He opened his mouth to scream but instead of sound, weird symbols came out.

“Laws…” Reinhold instinctively felt that these were what laws were made out of. They were also symbols, similar to Eminence yet there was a very distinct difference between them. Laws weren’t visible, they were more conceptual, and he managed to ‘feel’ the symbols come out.

Yio’s laws were being taken away by the God of Fire. His body started to spasm as he felt his body weaken and decay as if an unbearable exhaustion took hold of him. He wanted this to stop yet he couldn’t he was a mere ant in comparison to a god, and there was nothing he could do but watch as he slowly died.

All of a sudden, another segment of the clouds started to part away. Winged red eyes, called angels, started to appear from the skies. His presence did not cause everyone to submit to him rather, it felt extremely warm and comfortable, as if being in his presence was everyone’s natural destination, feeling completely natural.

The laws that were being siphoned away from Yio suddenly started to come back to him. Yio didn’t understand what was happening but he knew that his own god saved him.

“Hyuo’in, you dare?” the fading eye started to re-manifest itself, and the pressure of submission continued to permeate the vicinity.

“Of course, I dare, T’ siler. This is my follower, go have fun somewhere else,” the oppressive pressure that the God of Fire was being mellowed out by the God of Trials.

“I was summoned by… heh…”

The red angels’ eyes turned bloody, and the warm comfortable feeling that the God of Trials gave off suddenly made people a bit hot, they weren’t feeling hot in the sense of temperature but in terms of their mentality.

The God of Trials was outraged that someone dared blaspheme his effigy, countless blood-red angels looked at Reinhold who was still standing up, refusing to bow down. A terrifyingly open killing intent started to pressure Reinhold down.

Reinhold grit his teeth, his artificial domain did nothing but act as a fake layer of protection. This time, the God of Fire started to concentrate his extremely dense aura of burning intent to nullify the God of Trial’s pressure.

Both gods were beings that were beyond the people below them, even in their current incarnations that isn’t even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of their power. They were both prideful gods that focused on their own image, making that the most important factor of their existence.

The God of Fire saw that Reinhold managed to burn away the forest and the city into ashes, although this made the God of Fire slightly interested in him, this kind of destruction wasn’t enough to bring him forward. The one thing that pleased the God of Fire was having one of his rival’s effigy be burned by a nobody while having one of his Deacon and Blue Inquisitors to guard it.

This was enough to make the God of Fire have one of his incarnations show up to create the natural domain to break apart the Blue Inquisitor’s artificial domain. The Holy Fire wasn’t even anything in the God of Fire’s eyes since it wasn’t even one of the stronger ones. In fact, it wasn’t even an offensive flame, it was more a supportive flame meant for purification.

Reinhold was currently waiting on whether his last gamble would pay off. Based on his father’s book, the God of Fire and God of Destruction is a different group from the God of Trials, with these different groups fighting each other based on what they wanted to do. The Holy War sprouted from this.

He pleased the God of Fire while angering the God of Trials, he did not know if this was the correct plan but it was his best one.

The gods above silenced themselves as if they finally started to communicate in private. Neither Reinhold, Yio nor the approaching armies dared move in the presence of terrifying gods beyond their comprehension. This kind of scenario was extremely rare, they didn’t even think that they would ever personally experience a god’s incarnation.

After a while, Yio started to ease down and glared at Reinhold, he ran forward out of nowhere. Reinhold saw this and reacted accordingly, if his guess was correct then under his artificial domain Yio’s laws should be suppressed.

Reinhold understood what was happening. The gods wanted to see a fight for victory. The God of Fire seemed to express with his gigantic eye that he was unpleased with the decision. Meanwhile, the God of Trials was a bit joyful as his warm light turned cold and chilly.

He conjured up an odd metal ball and physically threw it at Yio. Yio didn’t seem to care as he continued running, ignoring Reinhold’s attack. Unfortunately for him, he overestimated himself and underestimated Reinhold, this odd metal ball was based on what he learned from his days of research, a completely unstable attack.

This metal ball had instability as its core, meaning if it ever met with any form of law, it would crumble. On the opposite side of the spectrum, if this metal ball collided with anything that wasn’t protected by laws then the only result was complete annihilation.

Both the God of Fire and the God of Trials were intrigued by Reinhold’s attack. This move wasn’t grand nor was it strong, in fact, it could even be considered as worthless since everything strong in this world was clad in laws. What made them interested was its ingenuity, and complete and utter brilliance of its execution, using the unstable laws from Reinhold’s father’s book and the symbols from the magic scrolls he managed to form this unique Eminence.

Eminence, the trait of reality, the control of reality. A rune that symbolizes reality. The Path of Unity, the study of Eminence is vast, far too vast, the possibilities so great that even Reinhold managed to create a new Eminence based on the basic symbols from the magic scrolls he bought.

This metal ball dully went forward, meeting Yio’s stomach. This ball passed through without any resistance as Yio’s stomach began to empty itself of the blood and guts that was once there.

Yio grimaced in pain, he looked down only to see that there was a fist-sized hole in his massive body. This hole was extremely clean cut, it was as if his body was nothing more than paper, pierced through by the sharpest blade.

Yio finally reacted, his eyes started to clear. His once muddled-headed state now awaken with the empty pain in his stomach. Now the fight was truly starting.

Reinhold could barely dodge, if at all due to his leg.

Yio had to bare the pain of an empty hole in his body.

They both had enough power to strike each other down in one shit. Reinhold might have the range advantage, but Yio’s physical abilities were now much higher than ever before. Yio might have mobility but the pain from his open stomach was still bleeding, this kind of pain was not something you could just ignore.

This was in the end, an equal duel. One move to end it all.