Meanwhile, the two on the other side had stalled for about an hour.
Luo Sha stood beside Mili, a trail of dark red blood seeping from her right eye.
The Holy Guilt Eye had tried to search for the enemy’s wounds, weaknesses, and openings—it had examined everything.
But the result was chilling: the monster before them had no weaknesses.
At least, not in any ordinary sense—the thing before them didn’t resemble a “living” enemy at all.
It wasn’t like a demon beast, wasn’t like an undead, and wasn’t like any magical life form Luo Sha had ever seen.
It seemed more like some hollowed-out shell, only its skin moving.
Mili leaned on Omnis, her expression grim.
“What a disgusting monster…”
For someone who had already seen the Church’s underground chambers, the former Pope’s remains, the Book of Necromancy, and all kinds of absurd inheritances to feel genuinely sick to the stomach was enough to show just how troublesome this thing really was.
But just then… dawn broke. The first ray of morning light pierced through the leaves and fell upon the priest.
And that black-red priest stood in the middle of the clearing.
At that moment… her silhouette was violently contorting in the sunlight.
The black-red priestly robes clung to her body as if soaked in water, while her wings shrank, melted, and then began to reassemble.
Her body, which should have been humanoid, twitched ceaselessly, as if the morning light weren’t light at all but a poison, forcing the hidden things deep within her out through every inch of skin.
Her pitch-black hair gradually faded, finally turning a deep crimson.
But that red wasn’t vivid—instead, it closely resembled the color of venous blood.
Luo Sha gripped her gunblade, her voice low.
“So her weakness is light.”
Just as she finished speaking, Mili raised her hand, a white-gold holy spell formula flickering to life in her palm.
‘I hope this move… actually works!’
Then she said in a deep voice:
“Scatter, evil spirits! Reveal your true form beneath the glory of the Oracle!”
Luo Sha glanced at her—a look that seemed to say: Your Excellency, are you sure you didn’t just make that up on the spot?
Mili pretended not to notice. The next second, she gripped Omnis tightly and, like a golden arrow loosed from a bowstring, shot toward the priest in an instant.
The dark-gold lance, wreathed in holy light, tore through the air and struck the priest square in the chest.
squelch
Omnis pierced through her, but Mili still didn’t feel like she had struck something solid.
The moment the priest’s chest was run through, there was no pain on her face, no fear, not even anger.
She merely lowered her head slightly, looked at the lance embedded in her body, and slowly curled the corners of her mouth into a twisted smile.
Mili’s pupils contracted slightly. She saw what was inside the priest’s chest.
It wasn’t a heart. It wasn’t ribs. And it certainly wasn’t flesh and blood.
Inside the chest cavity torn open by Omnis was a tangled mass of razor blades, broken metal needles, white bandages, and certain bullets that did not belong to this world.
Mili recognized those things. Or rather, she shouldn’t have recognized those things in this world.
They were creations of Earth—things that only appeared in modern hospitals.
But why were they inside this monster’s chest?
Why was this world’s Celestial Wing Tribe priest stuffed with instruments that had absolutely nothing to do with the Kalacel Continent?
The Book of Revelation still hadn’t written anything about what this monster was.
A vein pulsed at Mili’s temple.
‘Book of Revelation, pull your weight!’
‘Why is everything different at the critical moment?!’
Then she suddenly put all her strength into it, and the priest was sent flying, slamming through a thick tree.
The trunk toppled with a crash, splinters and morning mist scattering together. She spat out a mouthful of blood—but that blood wasn’t ordinary red. It was a black-red liquid mixed with dark silver fragments.
Then she slowly rose to her feet and raised a hand.
A pure, unsettling blue mana gathered in her palm.
Luo Sha was the first to notice the anomaly.
“Your Excellency, be careful! Something’s wrong with that mana!!”
“I know!”
Mili raised a hand, used mana to pull the lance free, and immediately retreated.
The priest leaped into midair, dozens of ice crystals spreading out above her before condensing into a massive crystal of ice.
That crystal didn’t have the structure proper ice magic should have. Instead, it looked pieced together from some kind of translucent bone, with countless chaotic shadows reflected within.
Mili gritted her teeth and raised her lance.
The words had barely fallen when she charged out first, Omnis thrust toward the sky.
The lance tip struck the center of the ice crystal.
crack
The massive ice crystal shattered, turning into a sky full of tiny ice flowers that sparkled in the morning light.
After quickly shooting Luo Sha a look, Mili seized the moment and hurled her straight at the priest.
Luo Sha drew her gunblade, adjusted her posture in midair, and swung her blade down in a horizontal slash.
clang!
The priest actually blocked the attack with her hand.
Just as Luo Sha was about to marvel at that, she noticed a flood of symbols suddenly surging from the priest’s sleeve.
They weren’t the holy sigils she had seen before, nor the texts the Holy Council commonly used for prayer.
Mili only needed one look to realize these were passages from the Holy Scripture.
“Bringing out the Holy Scripture—do you think that can blind me?!”
She struck before Luo Sha could, sweeping Omnis in a wide arc that shredded the flying scripture symbols directly, exposing the core.
Meanwhile, Luo Sha struck the core structure of those characters from the other side.
boom!
An enormous number of symbols detonated at once.
Shattered light in gold-white, black-red, and pale blue exploded through the forest, the shockwave blasting Mili back several steps.
Scripture fragments whirled through the air like scraps of paper, then quickly burned to ash.
However, the ashes didn’t fall. They rearranged themselves in midair, transforming into tiny symbols that lunged at Luo Sha.
Luo Sha retreated to create distance.
Mili seized the opportunity, spinning her lance to seal those scriptures within a ring formed by the spear’s edge.
But the priest had been waiting for that exact moment. She then spread her wings and lunged straight at Mili.
Only, her target was the shaft of Mili’s lance.
“Sh—”
Luo Sha tried to come to her aid, but it was already too late.
The priest accelerated with her wings, forcibly carrying Mili up into the sky.
Mili clung to Omnis with both hands, trying to wrench the lance back, but the other’s strength pressed down on the weapon like an inverted tower, giving her no chance to swing it free.
The priest drew in close, those deep crimson eyes staring at Mili without blinking.
“We meet again… Mili.”
Mili’s breath stopped for a moment. She didn’t know this monster at all.
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know you… you monster!!!”
The black-red priest didn’t answer. She just kept smiling. A chill ran through Mili’s heart.
‘I should have worn the Pope’s gem cape!’
She suddenly released one hand, letting her body drop with the momentum, while forcibly recalling Omnis with her mana.
Once the lance, trailing dark-gold light, tore free of the priest’s grip, Mili hurled it back with a reverse throw.
The spear reversed its position in an instant, piercing through the priest’s abdomen and nailing her from the sky down to the ground.
boom!
The ground was smashed into a massive crater, surrounding trees snapped by the impact.
Luo Sha steadied herself, casually caught the returning Omnis, and squeezed off three consecutive shots at the priest’s head.
bang! bang! bang!
The holy bullets detonated.
The black-red priest’s skull was blown apart.
However, inside the shattered skull, there was still nothing.
The priest’s voice came from within that hollow void.
“Haha… hahahaha, so that’s how it is.”
Luo Sha’s pupils contracted slightly.
“An unnameable thing…”
Mili immediately shouted:
“Watch out!”
But it was already too late. The space around them twisted violently.
Trees snapped in silence. The ground began to tremble. Both Luo Sha and Mili lost their footing at once, dragged deeper by some force.
The next second, the forest vanished. They appeared inside an enormous hospital.
The moment Mili landed, her stomach lurched.
Rows of ventilators flashed with cold blue light, their steady, piercing beeps filling her eardrums.
Newspapers lay scattered across the floor, their pages soaked with water and blood. On them, one could vaguely make out unfamiliar words—dates, accidents, deaths, investigations, minors. Luo Sha frowned.
“This isn’t a normal time-space.”
“No kidding!”
Mili covered her mouth.
‘All I wanted was to hole up in the church and laze around—why is everywhere so dangerous…!!’
The walls began to flicker, then split open from within, and a flood of blood gushed out like a fountain.
At the same time, rust-covered iron fences grew out of the blood, sealing the path back.
Mili reached out, trying to recall her lance. No response.
‘Where’s my disciple?’
By the time she snapped back to her senses, the priest had already vanished from her spot.
Before Mili could even blink, something pierced through her abdomen.
cough…?!
She looked down and saw a lance jutting out from her lower abdomen.
The thing had a smooth surface and precise construction—the spear tip and shaft were clearly modern industrial products, as if pieced together from some surgical instrument, fence spikes, and an unidentified metal rod.
The black-red priest stood behind her.
Her right arm was covered in blood.
And inside that arm, packed densely, were more of these lances.
Luo Sha spun around immediately, firing three shots in quick succession from the holy shotgun in her hand.
The bullets struck the priest’s body, a gold-white explosion tearing open half of her body in an instant.
The monster’s right arm snapped, her right face scorched, and beneath the flesh were countless cut marks along with white bandages soaked into the meat.
The priest raised her head, her voice turning shrill.
“You… you disgusting monsters.”
“The deity you serve is nothing more than a demon wearing the skin of a god.”
Mili gritted her teeth and pulled the lance from her abdomen, blood dripping through her fingers. She recalled her weapon with mana, then assumed a combat stance.
“What you speak is nothing but blasphemy against the divine.”
She took a deep breath.
“Die!”
Omnis was hurled forth, striking the priest square in the chest.