Chương 190: Lux Vult (20)

The first thing Simon did was grow to a colossal size. Using this ability here rather than at Frighwall diminished its power, leaving Simon roughly the size of Vouivre rather than towering over the dragon, but that was sufficient to bathe all of Agares in his Dreadful Aura. He had hoped it would free the victims from their possession. He was wrong. Unfortunately, none of the monstrous Templars regained their original forms. They flew at him and his group with single-minded focus and murderous intent.

"Glory to the Light!" they chanted, all their voices a chorus united by a single will.

"Throw down your arms and submit to the Light! Be pure! Be mindless!" Well, I tried, Simon thought as he blasted the nearest of them with Hellfire Gaze, vaporizing dozens and swinging his weapon down at others. Most attempted to swarm him, since he was the bigger target, while others clashed blades with Louis. Their blades hurt like wasp stingers that penetrated his armor of shadows. Supereffective damage! Simon put the possessed Templars at around level 30, pushing 40.

They were hardly a match for him at this point, but that still represented a great jump in power from the common Templar stock they rose from. They were fearless too, and thus immune to his aura. Thankfully, they could not ignore the law of the land.

"Flying is forbidden on the pain of beheading!" Euphemia snarled. Her Law took hold of Agares, slicing the heads of dozens of flyers and leaving the rest stranded on the ground for Louis to tear through. The Hellblade sliced them apart in a blinding dance of death, stepping past falling limbs and corpses. Euphemia smashed a handful with her warhammer, and while the remaining sane Templars focused on surrounding and protecting Mastemo, the High Confessor quickly cast a non-Prayer spell to support his allies."

Icy Stillness!" he thundered, ice magic coursing through Agares. Inches-wide blocks of ice swiftly encased the possessed Templars in place and trapped them. Louis sliced those that escaped in the blink of an eye, their light going dark. The battle had ended in moments, but such were the wages of minions fighting high-level Noble Crestone users. Simon glanced at his allies on the ground.

"Can you free them from the Maiden's control?"

"I'll try," Euphemia replied as she cast Prayers of her own.

"Waterstone of the Ancient, cleanse this wayward soul with holy water! Spirit Purification." She encircled one of the frozen victims into two streams of glowing water rising in a whirlpool around them. Holy energies capable of cleansing most ailments and impurities swirled around the transformed Templar, to no avail. The transformation remained unbroken.

"My Prayer doesn't see anything wrong with them," Euphemia said with a deep scowl.

"This is their natural state now."

"So it might be permanent," Simon said, which he took as terrible news. If everyone who had ever prayed to the Light Megalith could be infected, then the whole world now faced an awful disaster.

"At least it appears the Water Megalith is untouched."

"What's going on?" Mastemo inquired, his fingers trembling.

"What is the meaning of this?! Did Saint Pharis' angel contact us?!"

"It was a usurper," Simon insisted.

"Maublanc failed, and Anna…" His voice died in his throat, while Euphemia scowled in concern for the Paimon family.

"The Maiden Zodiac Fiend possessed Anna. I am not sure how, but she has somehow usurped the Light Megalith's power and used it to corrupt others."

"She… tricked my visions?" Euphemia asked, her skin growing pale as a dreadful realization dawned upon her.

"Can an archdemon interfere with them?"

"Good thing I never believed then," Louis mused.

"This is blasphemous!" Mastemo replied in disbelief.

"No power in this world can subvert the Light!"

"Perhaps your god is not as absolute as you believe it to be," Louis mocked him.

"Or mayhaps Your Excellency was barking up the wrong tree from the start. You should thank the Overlord for saving your soul, since his power is clearly superior."

"Silence, you wretch!" Mastemo pointed an angry finger at Louis.

"I will not allow a faithless cur to besmirch the Light's name!" Simon ignored them as he focused on his Devil Brands, contacting Shabram and his minions across the empire; or rather, answering their alarmed calls.

"Your Majesty, there is unrest in Marthrone!" Shabram warned him with rising panic.

"Fires have risen in the cathedral district! The city's priests and templars have gone mad, and are attacking our troops!" It's happening worldwide, Simon realized to his horror as his minions in Telluria, Magvolia, and other places reported similar happenstance: anyone capable of casting Light Megalith Prayers—namely the empire's entire religious establishment —had transformed into those crystalline knights and then started attacking imperial troops.

Only the Templars and Priests inside Frightwall appeared unaffected due to Simon's power blocking their Light Megalith's connection to them inside the fortifications. War Party-controlled areas would unironically be the safest places in the entire empire in the coming days, with one cruel exception: the Goetia Research Facility. Templars had been deployed there to ensure the War Party couldn't fully control it, which meant the Maiden's thralls were inside the base and within reach of Lauriane.

His sister was in danger.

"What of Maublanc?" Simon asked Shabram, his fist clenching.

"Is he still alive?"

"We have lost contact with his forces," Shabram admitted.

"Queen Remedia teleported them to Serras as asked, though she refused to join them to avoid participating in a potential international incident. Princess Norbelle was supposed to handle the return trip." Maublanc must have failed to prevent Anna's merging with the Maiden, which meant he was either dead or worse, under her control. Simon immediately checked Norbelle's Party System entry to find that she was now in an imperial safehouse in Valendre rather than Lore or Cocagne.

She had probably teleported away when the battle turned against her. What of the Lighthouse, which now probably crawled with transformed Maiden thralls? And if Helel was free, then she might try to free Nodens, which meant the Sanctuary was in imminent danger too. There were too many open fronts all at once.

"Kill or capture those monsters for study," Simon ordered Shabram. Considering the Maiden controlled them, they couldn't allow them to properly organize.

"The enemy can transform anyone capable of praying to the Light Megalith. Those who are still sane will be safe inside Frightwall. Wipe out all the others." Simon cut off communications and then turned to his allies.

"This is happening across the entire world, as far as I can tell," he warned them while he shrank back to normal size.

"Everyone capable of casting Light Megalith Prayers is being affected."

"This is… impossible…" Mastemo held his mirror-mask as if struggling with a headache.

"This cannot be happening…"

"What of Norbelle?" Euphemia immediately asked with concern.

"Is she alright?"

"She retreated to a safehouse in Valendre, but she's alive."

"Lauriane will need our help," Louis pointed out.

"She is surrounded by zealots."

"Yes… yes she is," Simon conceded as he proceeded to outline his plan.

"We must disperse and protect all of our strongholds. Our people need our leadership." The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"I must… I must return to the Lighthouse," Mastemo said immediately, still holding his skull.

"We must… must protect the Water Megalith."

"That is madness, Your Excellency!" Simon countered.

"You will fall back under the Maiden's influence the moment you leave my aura's range."

"I fear no demons… nor mental influence in my Cleric Temple. The enchantments will protect us." Mastemo gripped his staff with a mix of rage and resolve as his hand let go of his mask.

"Too many fiends lie sealed in the depths. We cannot allow their brethren to free them." Simon was about to protest when an idea crossed his mind.

"Lotan the Isolator, come forth!" he called out to his grimoire. The demon materialized in a cloud of miasma in front of the group, his eyes filled with hatred.

"Put His Excellency and his Templars under your Crushing Loneliness!" Lotan glared at him for ordering him around, but the grimoire compelled him to obey nonetheless. He cursed Mastemo and his allies with his magic, and Simon then asked them to walk out of his aura's range. They did so without falling victim to Helel's Crown of Control.

"What an awful feeling, to be deaf to the Light…" Mastemo complained.

"Yet I do not hear the false idol."

"None of my Prayers are working either," Beatrice said after attempting to cast a spell.

"My pleas go unanswered." Simon nodded with enthusiasm. This opened a possibility for a counterattack.

"Lotan can provide the same protection I can."

"Then I will take the grimoire, join His Excellency in traveling to Valendre, and regroup with Norbelle," Euphemia said with a tone that brooked no disobedience, then faced Simon.

"You must go back to the capital and show our people our regime remains in control. They must see the Overlord in action, or they will panic." Simon nodded warily. This was a truly disastrous outcome, and only the first day in what he feared would be a long war. Euphemia glared at Louis.

"I trust you are not foolish enough to stab us in the back?"

"Why would I?" Louis smiled from ear to ear. The whole situation delighted him, and he alone looked unbearably happy.

"I applaud your decision to purge your own party, and I will gladly support it." Euphemia seemed to contemplate smiting him on the spot, but then exchanged a wary glance with her husband. Simon reluctantly opened his Inventory and tossed his half-brother his Warrior Crestone. He grabbed it with the eagerness of a man long deprived of his beloved wife.

"Do not make me regret this," Simon warned him.

"Are you doubting me still, brother? I promised I would not betray you." Louis put on his Warrior outfit and took a deep breath.

"I must say, Simon… this is the best of all worlds." The bells tolled for bloody weeks. The group split up after their discussion, with Mastemo's group taking the airship back to Valendre while Simon returned to Frightwall and Louis was dispatched to Magvolia to rescue Lauriane. The very first thing Simon did on arrival was to summon his dracozombie and then hunt down the 'angels'—as the population had begun to call them—by blasting them out of the sky. The worst part?

He had grown so strong that murdering his own brainwashed subjects yielded little experience. The Overlord Class now treated such matters as a chore expected of his position. It took two days and nights to purge all the monsters from his capital, and they had to torch a good chunk of the cathedral district to do so, after which Simon proceeded to purge the countryside.

Almost every city in the empire had a small group of Inquisitors or Priests tasked with spreading the teachings of the Light to the people, though thankfully not all of them could cast Prayers. Vassal Crestones weren't that common, and tributaries like Scaland or Fablan had such a small church presence that they remained unaffected. However, the death toll was immense.

While a level 40 monster was a mere annoyance to someone like Simon, it was a walking disaster for unclassed citizens, not to mention that the angels could cast Prayers and organize. Their tactics changed as days went by. Whereas they simply rampaged in the name of the Light during the first days, they swiftly began to regroup and strike imperial facilities, blowing up railroads, bombarding garrisons, and torching storehouses. Someone had organized them into a proper army with a global strategy.

Someone with intimate knowledge of the imperial war machine. Simon could only think of one candidate, which meant they could expect an invasion sometime soon. Moreover, watching messengers of the Light rampage around caused mass hysteria among the people. Some believed it was a test from the gods, while others believed that Endymion was being punished for serving the Overlord. Simon had to decree martial law across the entire empire to keep the peace.

In hindsight, Simon realized he should have gone with the strike team. He thought the elves and Illusea would have had defenses in place to seal the Maiden, considering how confident they had been that she couldn't escape in his previous reign. Did the Oracle hate him so much that she allowed this outcome to happen in the hopes that they would kill each other? She would be mad to sacrifice Lore, but her behavior made so little sense that Simon couldn't exclude the possibility.

Either way, they abruptly stopped receiving information from Lore. All of Shabram's spies there began to fall silent one after another. A dark cloud had fallen over the Holy Kingdom, and Simon had no doubt that they were facing an even worse crisis than their own. Cocagne was too swamped with its own insurrections to provide assistance. There were at least some silver linings.

The low Church presence in Telluria meant Dassein quickly pacified the region and then dispatched troops to assist others elsewhere, and while all Templars inside the Goetia Research Facility had indeed transformed, Simon's decision to allow Lauriane to retain full control of the security forces played in her favor. His sister's troops and warbeasts purged the Crestone factory with only minor damage to its infrastructure, and Louis gleefully massacred pockets of resistance in Magvolia.

"Secure and blockade the Dragonsea ports," Simon ordered him through messages.

"Don't allow any ship from the west to cross over, whether from Lore, Valne, or even Muse. Great trouble will come from that side." A full week passed before Euphemia's group returned to Frightwall, with Norbelle among them. Simon only had to take a look at his sister and notice the lack of a smug grin on her face to tell that they had bad news, alongside the fact that they were short of a High Confessor.

"The Lighthouse has fallen," his empress said the moment they reunited. This just keeps getting better and better, Simon thought.

"What happened?"

"It fell, literally," Norbelle replied. Perhaps the most frightening thing about this entire ordeal was that the brat looked serious.

"It collapsed into the sea alongside a good chunk of Valendre."

"The entire tower was already overrun when we arrived," Euphemia said quietly.

"Everyone who hadn't been transformed was dead, and the invaders were breaking into the vaults below."

"His Excellency… His Excellency decided they couldn't be allowed to escape the tower with the Church's treasures, or disturb the vaults," Beatrice said. The Templar leader wasn't the kind to cry, but her voice betrayed her sorrow.

"He… stayed behind to trigger a self-destruct mechanism. The Water Megalith poured out a holy flood that sank the tip of Valendre into the sea."

"Is Mastemo…" Simon grit his teeth.

"Is he dead?"

"We do not know," Beatrice admitted. Which meant his Noble Crestone and Zodiac Fiend crystal were unaccounted for.

"All of Valendre remains infested with the creatures." Euphemia took a deep breath.

"At this stage… I fear that airship and eidolon bombardments are our least destructive options left." It was truly the end of the world when Euphemia Agares-Magnos was suggesting tactics straight out of the War Party's playbook.

"What happened?" Simon asked Norbelle.

"Any detail matters."

"The faceless man and his cronies were already inside the Serras Cathedral when we arrived," Norbelle admitted.

"They were let in, while we had to fight our way inside." Verney was a heavy supporter of the Lorean Orthodoxy, so he probably had priests in his pockets, Simon thought as he put the pieces together. He was laying the groundwork for the day he found a suitable host for the Maiden.

"Obviously, they were no match for Uncle Maublanc and me, so we broke in. The faceless dick and the Paladin's party were fighting in the nave."

"The Paladin?" Simon inquired in surprise. Had the Oracle finally realized the disaster she had unleashed upon them all?

"And like all of his predecessors, he was too late. Some rotting mummy was pressing Anna's face against the Light Megalith, and she… drowned inside?" Norbelle scowled.

"I swear the shiny stone absorbed her, then all hell broke loose."

"Absorbed…" Simon's eyes widened.

"Could it be?"

"I reached the same conclusion," Euphemia said.

"I suspect this Maiden was sealed inside the Light Megalith. It must have seemed like the perfect prison for the strongest of these Zodiac Fiends; the very nexus of all the world's holiness, strengthened by the faith of millions." That… that made a disturbing amount of sense. The more people believed in the Light, the stronger the Megalith would have grown and thus the tighter the seal. That was the reason why the Oracle had been so confident the Maiden would fail to escape even with the comet's power at her back.

A pity Helel had four hundred years to subvert her prison from within. And not just any host could have freed her, or Valravn would have found a Maiden-sign darkblooded person years ago, Simon realized. It had to be Anna and her inner light for some reason. Helel needed a key.

"Everyone started falling under her mental control after that," Norbelle said.

"Well, everyone except the Paladin and Uncle Maublanc, but the old fart was too shocked to do anything useful. My Contingency activated and teleported me back to one of my safehouses, after which I chastised that stupid crown for trying to enter me without permission and dumped the Light Megalith."

"Everyone?" This rang alarms for Simon, since Maublanc's team included Vassals from multiple Classes that couldn't cast Prayer spells, which suggested a horrifying possibility.

"She doesn't need a Light Megalith connection to control people at close range."

"No," Norbelle confirmed, "And poor Anna has all of Lore for herself." If she could transform anyone into an angel slave and also controlled Maublanc, then they could expect an army to pour out of the west. Any day wasted meant she could recruit more slaves, more thralls, more cannon fodder to throw at Endymion. Every war prisoner would become a new foe to kill. She could kill the old, the sick, and the young for levels, or transform them into monsters. They weren't fighting a state, but a thinking plague.

Simon considered his options, and quickly reached a simple conclusion: all of his dreams of peace through diplomacy had been dashed. They were now facing an existential threat that demanded total commitment. Hesitation and half-measures meant death or slavery. Saving the world… would require sacrifices. Euphemia sensed his unease and resolve, then asked, "What do you have in mind, Simon?"

"Recover all the Zodiac Fiend crystals in our territory for immediate weaponization… and call Isabelle Barbatos." Simon took a deep breath.

"We will slow down their advance with fire and brimstone."