“Stop, we’re here.”

“Huh, I’ll be damned.”

It turned out that getting to the broadcast room was much easier than both Blake and Renare had expected.

They had naturally faced a little resistance when moving back through the thick of the compound, but since the majority of the angry followers were currently focused on going after Dauma at the Garden, the stragglers were easily taken care of by Blake, much to Renare’s displeasure.

With the path being relatively smooth and with no obstacles, they had reached their destination in just a few minutes, despite it being on the other side of where they were.

The building where the room was located in was quite plain and nondescript, with no features that made it stand out among the other buildings that were in its vicinity, so it was pretty easy for one to miss or mistake its location. However, Renare remained adamant that they were in the right place.

“In here,” she pointed towards a door and quickly headed towards it, but Blake suddenly stopped her before she could open it.

“Let me lead, lady. I don’t really care about you, but it would be inconvenient for me if you got shot up by any fucker now.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Compared to what he had done for entering the small storage building the previous night, this time Blake was not in the mood about exercising caution when opening the door and checking for any traps whatsoever.

When the chips were down, as they were now, all he wanted to do now was to get through and towards his objective as quickly as he could. There did not have to be any further deliberation or hesitation in his actions as he kicked the door open before immediately taking point, as he entered the narrow hallway behind it, with Renare following shortly after.

“… hm.”

Rather strangely, no one was in the hallway either. His loud entrance would have stirred up any guards or followers still inside who would then have appropriately responded, but it now seemed that the two of them could just freely walk into the broadcast room without anyone stopping them.

Regardless, Blake still kept his gun raised and ready to fire at anything that moved towards them, unwilling to take any chances as they approached their final destination.

The hallway itself was dimly lit and reeked of mold and blood, with the only bright source of light coming from the room at the end of the hallway with a slightly ajar door, the room that Renare silently confirmed was the one they needed to head towards.

“…”

Closely following her directions, and more importantly the trail of drying blood leading up to the door, Blake walked up to it before promptly throwing it open and pointing his gun at the first person he saw behind it.

“… oh, it’s you.”

As she entered the room as well, Renare paused and fell silent as she gazed at the depressing and slightly shocking sight in front of her.

Apart from the standard equipment one would normally find in a public address broadcast room, the Elder himself, the man they were looking for, was sitting on a metal chair, in front of the microphone that was used to send his message.

He was a shadow of his former self, the blood loss from his severe wound having taken its toll on his body and condition gradually and painfully. His face was pale and sweaty, and his body was slumped down in the chair instead of sitting upright, indicating his growing frailty to the both of them.

“I guess if anyone was to find me… I guess it would have been you… Mother Renare,” he smirked, showing off his red-stained teeth and bloody mouth, as he spoke in a raspy and weak whisper, completely bereft of the charisma and confidence that his voice once had.

“… I don’t think that he will be of much help to us anymore, lady,” Blake bluntly responded as he swiftly aimed his gun at him, “I say we just kill him now.”

“Wait.”

Quickly stopping him from pulling the trigger, Renare stepped forward and kneeled down before the Elder as she began appealing to him.

“Elder, please. You must convince the others to stand down. What is happening right now is going against the very values that our Church has been preaching for centuries. Once everything has calmed down again, we can work things out with Anten, the devil, and everyone else. They will listen to us, and they are not our enemies. Please, you must stop this insanity. If not, our Church is—”

“Heh, heh, heh.”

However, her plea was quickly interrupted by a burst of arrogant chuckling from him, as he slowly leaned forward in his chair, placing his hand on the microphone table to steady himself, before speaking to her in a broken and slurred mumble.

“Don’t… make me laugh. Going against… the values? Work… things out? Our… Church? You… you are the one who rejected that, remember? And you’re… telling me how to do my job? You think… you have it all figured out? You’re wrong. You don’t even know… how wrong you are…”

“…”

“… you cannot change our minds… no matter what… I… we will always believe in our Goddess. We still believe… that she will forgive all of us… even if we have done anything wrong. There is no turning back… at this point of our history… and anyone who disagrees… will be discarded and forgotten… thrown away like the trash they are…”

As he continued to reveal his true feelings and thoughts, he reached blindly with his hand on the table, silently grabbing onto a pistol that was hidden behind him in their blind spot before he summoned the last of his strength and stamina to quickly aim it towards the kneeling Renare.

“Even you… Mother Renare…”

“BANG!”

But despite the sneakiness of his attack, he was still incredibly weak in his current state, thus allowing Blake to respond first. Without anything he needed to say, he immediately fired his weapon at him, and the large shotgun rounds promptly struck him in the head, quickly exploding it into large chunks of flesh.

The death was instantaneous. There was no chance for the Elder, the leader of the Church of Enlightenment, to say any last words or recover from such an injury.

The blood from his burst-open head was mercilessly splattered across the room, landing on most of the broadcasting equipment, including the microphone, though by a lucky break, none of them had been damaged as accidental collateral.

“…”

As for Renare, she was well and simply frozen in shock, unable to say anything else as her face was stained with his blood. Deep inside her head, even though she knew that it had to happen, she knew that she had failed.

“Well,” Blake nonchalantly remarked as he finally had the chance to lower his weapon, “we tried, but look at what happened. Too bad for you, lady. I guess there’s no other choice left, right?”

“… no.”

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“Excuse me?”

“I said no,” she took a deep breath and stubbornly replied without turning back to look at him, “I believe that there is still a way to fix everything peacefully. No one else has to die.”

“Are you fucking kidding—”

Out of the blue, as Blake shook his head and began to swear in frustration, he was suddenly interrupted by a shout from outside.

“Blake! Renare! Are you guys inside the building?”

“… uh… guh… guh…”

Lost in a mess of anger and confusion upon hearing Dauma’s voice, Blake’s loud exclamation rapidly devolved into a mixture of strange noises and grunts, so Renare quickly took it upon herself to answer for the both of them.

“Yes, we are, but I have some bad news.”

However, it did not seem like he had heard her reply at all, as Dauma continued to shout at them without waiting for her to finish her update.

“If you are, listen to me. Come outside now, I have a plan that might be able to fix this whole situation, and I need your help if we are going to successfully pull it off, Renare! Hurry and be quick!”

“… uh, ok!”

Slightly flustered but nevertheless not questioning his supposed plan, Renare unhesitatingly listened to him and quickly ran out of the broadcast room with a still slightly muddled Blake, leaving the headless corpse of the dead Elder and her now-worthless plan behind without a second thought.

**********************

… and that’s the plan. You got it?

“Yeah, I got it.”

Bzzt.

As Dauma hung up their connection, Anten felt a renewed sense of determination welling up inside of her, even as she remained trapped under several layers of dirt and filth, facing an imminent attack by Simon.

So, it all comes down to this, huh? I have to do it.

One last chance that it could all end peacefully, without bloodshed, assuming that the theory Dauma came up with was correct. A plan that was hastily worked out based on a hunch.

If it could all work out in the end, and there could still be a good outcome, she automatically knew that she had to do everything she could to make it happen without any question.

“MISS YUU!” she therefore yelled as loudly as possible, not at all concerned about the loose dirt that fell into her open mouth as she did so, “LEAD BROTHER SIMON AWAY FROM ME! I’M COMING OUT!”

“Got it!”

“!!!”

Having put all his focus on using his staff to fire at her, Simon quickly moved to defend against Yuu, who was speeding towards him, with the sword in his other hand.

However, the spirit girl did not go straight at him, but instead, she dipped slightly lower to the ground just a few feet away from him, before digging her scythe into the dirt and swiftly dragging it towards him in an arcing motion.

“Agh!”

The action soon stirred up a pile of dirt that flew at him in a wide splatter, obscuring his vision for just a slight moment, and she quickly used that momentary distraction to slam into him, dragging him away past the crater and towards the building at the side.

With that, Anten took her chance to free herself from the dirt surrounding her and fly out of the crater, back towards the open sky and free to counterattack once again.

“How dare you!”

Noticing that his target was loose, Simon quickly panicked and reacted, using his strength to break free of Yuu’s hold and, following up with a spontaneous launch, he charged towards her in the sky, simultaneously readying his weapons at the same time.

However, he had not realized that relentlessly coming at and subsequently forcing him to stop was no longer Anten’s plan anymore, as she responded to his attempted attack by doing something he did not expect her to do.

As she watched him come at her with a blazing rage and persistence, she took a short breath before immediately taking off in the opposite direction, flying away from him as fast as she could, forcing him to quickly give chase.

“Get back here right now!!!”

To her horror, although she had a head start and a distance advantage, she soon realized that he was already catching up with her, prompting her to fly harder and much faster, rapidly swerving to and fro multiple times to try and feint him, as she rushed towards her objective at breakneck speed.

Damn it! Dauma, you better be ready!

As long as she reached the place Dauma had told her, as long as they were prepared and he saw what they needed him to see, then even if Simon had managed to reach her, the plan could still be pulled off. However, it was still much easier said than done.

She could see the building that Dauma had mentioned to her in plain view, in fact she was right above it as well, but as she slowed down and began to descend, he took the chance to strike from above.

Ditching the staff and instead using both of his hands to grip his sword tightly, he stopped and loomed above her for a second before he brought the weapon down on her, easily piercing through one of her wings and into the right side of her waist.

“Gah!”

“You thought that you could run away, impostor!?”

Feeling the radiating, searing pain, much more severe than when he had used his staff on her, course through her body, she temporarily lost control of her focus and her senses. Combined with the sudden injury to her wing, she began to fall without control, as he simultaneously followed her down and firmly kept the sword inside her body.

After they were about a foot or two away from the ground, he finally pulled the blade out of her and let her go. He hovered in the air and watched as she painfully hit the surface once again, though not strong enough to create a crater like the last time.

“Ahg… gah…”

Despite being in utter agony as she lay on the ground bleeding, she remained resolute. No matter what happened to her, she was still going to finish her part of the plan.

Don’t focus on healing, don’t focus on healing. I need to… conserve my energy for what I need to do!

She did not look back at Simon, but instead kept her gaze straight ahead towards her goal as she slowly began to stand, her hand on her side and the blood from her forehead, which went into her eyes and blurred her vision.

The building was just around the corner, it was painfully and excruciatingly close, but even as she tried to get up, the young man had landed on the ground behind her as well, ready to strike again.

“No hard feelings, Sister Anten,” he unforgivingly remarked as he planted his feet firmly down before raising his sword over his shoulder, seemingly aiming to finish the job in one more blow, “but I never trusted you anyway.”

“Gah… gah…”

“Goodb—”

“Brother Simon, stop!”

However, before he could strike, he abruptly stopped as an unexpected voice called out to him, one that he himself did not want to acknowledge but still did out of human instinct anyway.

His friend, or his enemy. A liar, or a trustworthy person. That was the grey area he had been struggling with for the entire day, and even if he had given everything up to the Goddess’ Gift, he still hesitated for a moment as the girl who had called out to him began to walk closer.

“Sister Renare…”

“Brother Simon, I’m sorry.”

“What? Hey!” he suddenly yelled as a pair of large, burly arms wrapped around his shoulders before pulling him back with immense strength, breaking his concentration.

Unbeknownst to him, he had already fallen into the trap that had been set up specially for him, and he had unwittingly been forced to take part in the plan that was going on at the moment.

“Let me go! Sister Renare, what is this?!”

“…”

Had he been betrayed by his trust towards his former companion and mentor? It almost seemed like that was the case, as he watched her quickly look away, seemingly unable to maintain eye contact with him.

“Hah… hah…”

He attempted to break free of the mysterious person’s grip as he did with Yuu earlier, but he had no time left to do so as Anten finally stood up, having recovered enough to do so. As they stared at each other, she breathed heavily before she started to lift her hand towards her mouth.

“What… are you doing?!”

“This is for your own good,” she solemnly replied back to him before she closed her eyes, placed two straight fingers up to her lips, and began to chant.

“For the eyes that see the present…”

For Dauma, the one who was currently holding Simon in place while she prepared her technique, the question as to how the Belief Particle worked was easily solved after some deduction.

Since belief powered it, the stronger the followers’ and the user’s beliefs were in it, the more power they would gain from it, all the way to the point where they could perform supernatural feats that could even rival the strength of an enhanced human or even an underpowered angel and devil.

Consequently, the followers who wholeheartedly and truly believed in said user and the Particle would also grow stronger based on the magnitude of their individual beliefs, granting them powers such as immortality and quick reflexes.

Those beliefs could then be passed back over to the Particle itself, allowing it and therefore the user to gain even more power, and so on and so forth, creating a seemingly perpetual cycle.

So then, how could anyone break the cycle of endless power? The answer was also surprisingly simple.

“… for the ears that hear the world…”

If a strong belief was what it took to power the Particle, then surely if one stopped believing in it, it would lose its power. To that end, they could either be willing or forced to do so.

To force someone to stop believing without their consent, the easy solution would be to force them to stop thinking entirely. To shut them off from conscious thought would be to effectively strip them of their strength and powers, so by therefore damaging or destroying the frontal lobe of their brain, they would die instantly.

That was why the followers could not die when any part of their body other than their brains was hurt, as the Apocalypse Cleaners had found out the hard way.

If that was the case, what about for the user of the Particle himself, who was protected from most physical attacks and could not be forced to somehow change his beliefs as a result?

“… for the mouths that reveal people…”

That would be the hard part then, convincing him to let go of his stubborn beliefs. They would act as a ‘shield’, blocking him from any kind of changes whatsoever, and no one could be able to deal with that.

Still, as long as there was a fluctuation in the beliefs, for example if the user’s mind was thrown into conflict for a short while, there would be a gap in the ‘shield’, and hence, if one was able to break and pass through that gap, they might be able to get through to him.

Now that they had done the first part of the plan and created the gap, it was time for Anten to use her ultimate technique, the one she had learnt about from the god Michael himself but had never used before on another person.

“… let the unbroken truth clear your mind.”

A technique that, under the right conditions, could be used on anyone including Simon, one that was powerful enough without any need for elaboration, and one that had the potential to solve any conflicts by itself.

The Unbroken Truth.

“Wha—"

As Anten finally finished the chant, Simon suddenly found himself being thrown into a black and empty void without warning.