Just as the two sides were on the verge of a fight, a deep, hoarse voice came from inside the church:
"My fellow believers, since you have come from afar, why are you so angry? This goes against the way of moderation."
This was a completely unfamiliar voice, and everyone in the caravan fell silent.
As footsteps approached, Rosago, wearing a white and gold monk's robe and holding the gold-stamped Holy Book of Redemption, slowly walked out of the church with a mask-like smile on his face:
"I did have some urgent business to attend to just now. I am deeply sorry to have kept you waiting for so long."
"...Are you the pastor here?" The leader of the caravan closest to the church frowned.
"It is me," the other party pressed the Holy Book of Redemption against his chest and bowed slightly, "a faithful executor of the Goddess's will, Rosago Xindanzhihui."
"Reverend Pastor, I think there is no need for us to repeat the contradiction between us, right?" Then, the leader broke the oppressive silence and said straight to the point:
"Please give us a convincing enough explanation."
"I am deeply saddened by the tragedy caused by our mistakes." Rosago narrowed his eyes slightly, with a slight curve at the corner of his mouth:
"For this, I am willing to provide you with appropriate compensation."
He held out a hand: "One hundred aire, each."
Suddenly, the crowd fell into a deeper silence.
It was not the kind of silence that was completely soundless, but the silence in which only breathing and heartbeat existed, and even the sound of blood rushing in the veins could be clearly heard.
The leader's face quickly darkened. "You mean you don't intend to give any explanation? You want to settle everything with money?"
"Two hundred aire." Rosago did not answer, but just read out a more tempting number.
The leader opened his mouth and wanted to say something, but after a two-second pause, no sound came out.
It was not that his heart was moved, but he was surprised to find that above his field of vision, behind Rosago, the bell tower towering above the main body of the church seemed to have undergone strange changes.
The huge dial, which should have been snow-white but had turned yellow due to the erosion of time, began to vibrate at an extremely high frequency like a cicada's wing. The slender and hard pointer shook disorderly, and there was a faint sound of small objects breaking.
It was as if... there was some kind of increasingly restless living creature struggling behind the dial, trying to break out into the outside world!
"Hmm?" Rosago seemed to have noticed something strange. He frowned slightly and turned his head to look upward behind him.
The moment he turned his head, the huge dial exploded, and all kinds of large and small fragments flew all over the sky!
"what?!"
For the first time, Rosago's mask-like smile that seemed to last forever collapsed, and extreme astonishment replaced it.
But the focus of his eyes was not on the broken tower clock, but on...
A black shadow flew out from the twisted hole!
"No, it's impossible! I clearly used the ritual... Did I lose control?!"
The tower clock was shattered by an explosive force from the inside out, and the fragments fell like raindrops.
Many of the caravan members who happened to be standing below had their heads smashed and were bleeding. They fled in panic.
In the chaos, someone suddenly realized... in addition to the clock tower being blown up, other abnormalities had occurred!
--Sunlight!
It was clearly noon, but the light cast by the scorching sun in the sky suddenly dimmed.
People looked up blankly, only to see lead-black clouds. Compared with the cumulonimbus clouds that appear when a rainstorm is approaching, they are more like a veil pressing down on the sky, giving people a great sense of oppression.
"what is that!?"
Among the crowd who came to question, Friant was also among them.
As one of the strongest warriors in the caravan, he naturally had excellent eyesight. He was the only one who could clearly see the dark shadow that Rosago was paying attention to in the dim darkness!
It's a black rock!
It was not completely pitch black. On its surface, a restless crimson flowed, like a layer of sticky liquid.
The rock is about the size of a person, with an extremely irregular shape and many edges and spikes on its surface. It looks like a fragment of some kind of stone structure.
After breaking through the dial of the tower clock, the rock rushed straight into the sky, piercing diagonally towards the black clouds at the zenith, and in the blink of an eye it merged into and disappeared.
The moment it merged into the black clouds, a sharp wind as sharp as a knife arose out of nowhere.
Then came a whisper like a dream...
Chapter 92 Beast Tide
“W-What happened!?”
A few kilometers away in the eastern suburbs of the North District, Lina, who stayed behind in the caravan camp, looked at the sudden changes in the city in horror.
Then, she vaguely heard a disjointed, vague recitation:
"...the source of all things, the origin of heaven and earth...the supreme Holy Spirit, the omniscient and almighty Lord..."
"Wait, this format... is it the name of a great being?! Is someone performing a sacrificial ritual?" She was startled, but soon fell into confusion, "No, that's not right, among the nine main gods, none of them has such a name..."
"We offer everything in this city as a gift, begging for your divine gaze, calling for your ethereal attention!"
"Strike fear upon my enemies, and grant new life to my sons!"
At this moment, the thunderous shout seemed to explode right beside her ears, scaring her so much that she almost jumped up.
"Oh no! It's a blood sacrifice! A large-scale blood sacrifice!"
This evil prayer made Lina instantly extremely alert, and she no longer cared about which great being the unknown spellcaster was praying to.
The so-called sacrificial rituals are usually divided into two types.
One is ceremonial and the other is functional.
To put it bluntly, the ceremonial sacrificial ceremony is performed for show. There is no expectation that anyone will actually show up, it is just a statement.
The nine major churches often hold such ceremonies. Every time a major festival is stipulated in the doctrines of each church, the church officials will spend a lot of resources to prepare sacrifices, environment, and personnel, and then carry out a grand ceremony under the attention of the public.
After the ceremony, the participants will basically not get any substantial benefits, and the offerings on the altar will not be consumed.
Because it is difficult for us humans to offer sacrifices that the gods would appreciate. But as believers, we must do our best to let the gods and the world see our piety.
As for functional sacrificial rituals, they are really about expressing one's demands to a certain being and hoping that that being will respond to oneself.
Once a mysterious and ethereal great being intervenes in the mundane world, it is usually not for free...
The dark clouds brewing over Stio were clearly a sign of the latter's launch.
And judging from that resounding hymn... the price of this grand sacrifice was the cost of everyone in the entire city of Stio!
"This is horrible! The ritual must not be completed!" This was the first thought that came to Lina's mind after she understood this.
An evil ritual that sacrifices the lives of the entire city...
Lina had only heard of such things in heroic operas and mythological epics. To her, they were as distant as a phantom and had no sense of reality at all.
But looking at the extremely strange black clouds and the sudden strong wind...such a huge and powerful phenomenon does not look like a joke at all!
What if that crazy mysterious spellcaster is serious!?
"Friion, Io, the leader, Little Sharon... and tens of thousands of Stio residents, they are all in there!"
Seeing that the dark clouds were getting thicker and thicker, Lina was extremely anxious, as if some extremely powerful and evil force was about to descend from it and plunder everything below.
"We must find a way to destroy it! ... But what should I do?! Damn it, how can I possibly know how to stop the blood sacrifice?! This is totally beyond the scope!"
"Mage Lina, look!"
A terrified cry interrupted her confused thoughts.
"What's wrong again?" Lina looked in the direction of the voice in confusion.
The person who shouted was a member of the caravan who also stayed behind in the camp. His face was full of fear and shock, and his eyes were staring straight to the east. He seemed to have seen something very terrifying, and his tongue was tied:
"There! Ah! Come... Ugh!..."
Following his gaze, Lina felt as if she had been hit on the head with a blow, and her head started buzzing.
Not far to the east, the lush and green Eastern Forest was rapidly spreading outward into a large area of colorful "spots".
There are countless alien species!
Skull ghost, Gug giant, Cyclops, one-horned wolf, giant cockroach, swamp monster, alien wolf spider...
Various alien species that can only be encountered in the depths of the forest came in like ants discovering honey, densely covering every inch of the land.
Seeing this scene, Lina was stunned.
The main combat forces of the caravan went into the city and to the church. Most of those who remained in the camp were accompanying errand boys and girls, who had little combat power.
It would be impossible for her and a few other extraordinary people who stayed behind to be prepared to resist a beast tide of this scale.
"It's over..." After she recovered, she felt a strong sense of self-mockery in her heart:
"You were still thinking about sabotaging the blood sacrifice ceremony to save Stio, but now you're about to be trampled and eaten by the aliens..."
But seeing the desperate faces in the camp, she finally showed determination:
"Run! Don't go into the city, run as far as possible! Those who can ride horses, ride them, and those who can't ride horses, run! Quick! I'll give you a little delay!"
Shouting at the top of her lungs, she rushed towards the oncoming beast tide, standing in front of the people who were still in shock and unable to move.
"I haven't tried this trick for a long time. I hope I can give them a good scratch... hehe..."
She smiled bitterly, raised her staff and held it across her eyes, her face darkening a little, and she recited a long, obscure and complicated spell quickly but with a little unfamiliarity.
The people behind her finally reacted and screamed as they ran in the opposite direction of the beast tide.
In just a few seconds, the surging beasts rushed to the front. The earth trembled under their trampling, and the dust flew up like a sandstorm covering the sky and the sun.
A gust of air mixed with the stench of wild beasts blew in her face, blowing Lina's loose wizard robe backwards, making a rustling sound.
A few seconds before she was submerged by the beast tide, she uttered the last syllable of the spell, and then she nervously and loudly shouted a series of words -
"Starry Night - Level 3 Degradation!"
At this moment, it is noon.
This should be the time when the sunlight is the strongest.
This should be the time when the night realm is at its weakest.
However, the distant sky... was stained with a velvety deep darkness, and it was rapidly expanding, like ink dropped into hot water, spreading over a large area in the blink of an eye.
Looking from the ground, it looked like a small piece of the blue sky was broken.
And inside this dark "hole" that reveals deep purple, there are twinkling bright stars, forming a magnificent galaxy in the small night sky.
Brighter and brighter...
Getting lower and lower...
Getting closer!
“Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish!…”
Thousands of "stars" fell from it, plummeting to the ground below, smashing into the plains filled with alien species!
“Boom boom boom!!!—”
The moment these "stars" came into contact with the ground, violent explosions occurred like blooming flowers, dotted the vast plains into a violent picture of hell!
"Ugh!"
The aftermath of the explosion directly knocked Lina's body over, sending her flying several meters away and causing her to be dizzy.
By the time she recovered from her trance and got up from the ground, the bombing had stopped and the purple-black hole in the sky had returned to its original state.
But the scene before her left a deep impression in her mind forever.
The ground, which was several hundred meters in radius, had been shaved off by nearly a meter. In this slightly sunken pit, there was nothing but charred soil and burning embers.
It was as if the entire land had become a piece of charcoal that had burned to the end, could no longer produce flames but had not yet been completely extinguished.
As for the beast tide...
It has long since merged into the flying gray and black dust.
"I did this...?"
Lina opened her mouth in disbelief, dumbfounded.
