The falcon's blood had already turned into terrifying flames—a measure likely prepared long ago specifically against her. Yet Rielsa cared nothing for it. When one's hunger reached a certain point, one would swallow poison as food without the slightest hesitation, fully aware of what it was.
Below the Gate of Samsara, contingent after contingent gathered, forming independent phalanxes one after another. Some held over a thousand people; others had only a few dozen.
Their banners differed, as did their family crests. These were not the internal forces of the Church of Samsara itself, but the noble clans under its banner.
During the war between Samsara and Order, the clan forces had emerged virtually unscathed. The reason Samsara had surrendered to Order so swiftly was precisely because it lacked the potential to sustain the war.
Back then, the clan factions led by the Simosen family were unwilling to stake their family foundations on continuing the war against the knights of Order.
Anyone with eyes knew Samsara could never win unless the other orthodox churches intervened to help. Defeat was inevitable. Yet prolonging the conflict would have worn down Order and secured better terms in the ensuing negotiations, mitigating losses.
The clan factions, however, refused to bear that attrition.
From their perspective, they preferred the war to end quickly so they could rise anew under the banner of defeat and reclaim their former positions.
The post-war return of the Simosen surname to the office of Gatekeeper was the most direct symbol of the clans' comeback.
Otherwise, under any normal circumstances, given the overall strength of the Church of Samsara at the time, there was no way it would have surrendered after just a single day of fighting.
For this reason, the Church of Order had actively taken to heart the "lessons of victory":
A reform targeting the clan factions within its own church, spearheaded by this selection of young talents, was currently getting underway.
Only when Romir's figure appeared in the sky did the phalanxes of the various clans below begin to blend together, assembling into a proper battle array based on their affinities and attributes. The bishops, coordinating with the clan patriarchs, were organizing this by no means feeble force.
Romir closed her eyes. As Gatekeeper, she naturally understood the immense problems plaguing the Church of Samsara, yet she was powerless to resolve them—because she herself was part of the problem.
Now, however, she suddenly realized the sickness had already spread inside the Gate of Samsara.
Rielsa had reached the gate far sooner than anticipated, which meant the Church of Samsara inside had mounted no effective resistance—perhaps had offered no resistance at all.
Yet in their communications, her younger sister had continually stressed how arduous the resistance was and how heavy a price they had paid, insisting she had slowed Rielsa's advance, even pleading for Romir to reduce the quota of trial participants and the harvest of souls from the church inside the gate over the coming decade.
Looking at Rielsa now, whose arm and head were already protruding from the gap between the great doors, Romir knew her sister was not merely conserving her strength—she wanted the Church of Samsara outside to pay an even steeper price.
"Roar!"
Rielsa finally discarded the falcon's mangled carcass, more than half of which she had chewed up and swallowed. The broken remains fell into the puddles of fluid from earlier. Soon, human-sized insects began sprouting from the liquid. As the chunks of flesh melted away, the number of insects multiplied.
Rielsa began shoving hard against the doors, trying to force her chest through the gap. A harsh, grating sound rang out continuously. For the first time in countless ages, the Gate of Samsara was actually treated like a physical door.
Everyone looked up. A black hole opened above, spilling forth wave upon wave of formidable auras—the Council of Elders of the Church of Samsara.
Romir moved forward until she stood directly before the Mural God.
"Mural God, I am the Samsara Gatekeeper. In the name of the Gatekeeper, I swear that if you choose to retreat inside the gate now, my Church of Samsara will grant you everything within our power."
The Mural God ignored Romir's words and continued thrusting her body outward.
Romir chose to back away. She had known such negotiations were impossible; she was merely going through the final procedural formality.
In the next moment, twelve pillars of light descended from the black hole above, condensing into twelve colossal silhouettes.
Rielsa continued to pay them no heed. More than half her chest had already squeezed past the threshold.
The twelve towering figures began chanting. The Gate of Samsara groaned under the weight of their prayers as the massive doors slowly began to shut. This closing was not the dissolution from before; they knew simply making the Gate of Samsara disappear could not solve the problem, as the Mural God could use her power to summon it back.
Only when barely a third of her body had passed through did the safest and most effective window present itself: using the gate to clamp Rielsa in place—or even crush her to death!
After all, the Gate of Samsara itself was an exceptionally complete and potent divine artifact!
An even more violent grinding screech rang out. Rielsa opened her mouth wide. In this moment, even a god felt excruciating pain.
The arm she had pushed out first began slamming incessantly against the door's surface in an apparent fit of vented fury.
The doors continued to press inward, and Rielsa's chest began to cave.
Behind them, every Samsara priest broke into an expression of pleasant surprise. In their bones lay a deep-seated dread of gods, but if a god could truly be crushed to death by the Gate of Samsara, that was an outcome they would gladly welcome.
Crack... crack... crack...
Rielsa's ribs began snapping one by one. Everything seemed to be unfolding in favor of the Church of Samsara.
...
"They still underestimate divine majesty," Lord Dal said, draining the milk wine in his cup. "Or rather, because the gods have remained absent throughout this era, they've forgotten what a terrifying existence a god truly is."
"Is their approach wrong?"
"The moment they adopted a method an ordinary person would deem viable, it was already wrong."
"Then what next...?"
"It depends on whether they realize it in time. Otherwise, Rielsa will have gotten out far too easily."
...
Crack... crack...
The cracking sounds grew denser, and the gate closed at a speed visible to the naked eye. Caught between the two leaves of the door, Rielsa seemed mere moments away from being severed in two.
None of the colossal figures within the twelve pillars of light showed any sign of stopping; they continued exerting pressure to force the Gate of Samsara shut.
...
"The people outside are truly foolish," Gatekeeper Sumir of the inner Church of Samsara said, gazing at the gate ahead. "How dare they believe a god can be dealt with so easily?"
Lango nodded. "If they weren't so foolish, they wouldn't have lost so humiliatingly in the war against Order."
Positioned inside the gate, the two of them could clearly see that the lower half of Rielsa's body left behind was withering rapidly.
The god was channeling all the strength in her body into her upper torso, prepared to abandon her lower half entirely. She was waiting—waiting for the people outside to keep helping her, using the gate's power to set her free!
Boom!
With a thunderous crash and a furious roar from Rielsa, her body was severed by the doors. Her upper half fell directly out—retaining only the portion from midway up her chest, her head, and her two arms.
Yet despite being cleaved in two, Rielsa was not weakened. The moment she landed in the pool of fluids on the ground, the dense swarm of insects that had just bred surged into her body.
Before long, Rielsa gained a new lower body. Though her legs were only as long as her palm, though her feet were no larger than a single finger, and though she now looked both deformed and comical, the sight of her lunging toward one of the colossal phantom silhouettes still struck terror into all who saw it.
Bang!
The pillar of light shattered. Rielsa landed atop that elder's head, opened her jaws, bit straight down, and jerked violently upward.
An existence on the level of a Temple Elder had his head torn off, his soul and the fleshy essence of his body sucked into Rielsa's mouth in a single stroke.
Immediately after, she pounced on another elder. Likewise, this elder's barrier of light was as fragile as paper before the Mural God. She opened her mouth and bit down directly on his neck.
Rrrrip!
With another wrenching toss, head and shoulders were severed completely.
It was an utterly absurd spectacle: an exalted god behaving like an ugly, brutal aberrant demon, while Temple Elders, who held transcendent status in any church, were as flimsy as ordinary mortals.
Inside the black hole, two Temple Elders in divine robes collapsed onto their knees, vomiting blood with a golden sheen. The godhead fragments floating before their chests bore stark, glaring cracks.
"We cannot fight a god like this."
"Against a god, attrition is the only way."
...
A massive gray axe materialized in the air, wielded by a figure who brought it crashing down.
Slash!
The axe bit into Rielsa's shoulder. Rielsa snapped her head up, glaring at the one controlling the axe, and lunged with her other hand to seize him.
At that exact moment, each of four towering silhouettes extended a hand, pressing down in unison against Rielsa.
Hummm!
A terrifying barrier coalesced instantly, pinning Rielsa beneath it.
With the Mural God suppressed, the military formations below advanced toward her, unleashing a dense barrage of spells and magic arrays.
Rielsa thrashed her arms wildly like a madwoman, but as four more figures in pillars of light joined in, her body remained bound.
Throwing back her head, she unleashed a piercing screech.
Down among the ranks below, Samsara priests began detonating one after another—first by handfuls, then in entire swathes.
Two of the pillars of light collapsed outright.
Yet Rielsa's screeching did not cease. Caught within the sonic shrieks unleashed by a god, mortal life was utterly fragile.
Two more light pillars shattered. Rielsa finally broke free once more. Her body surged upward, reaching into another pair of intact pillars. Their defenses proved entirely negligible before her hands.
Bang!
Bang!
A feather stabbed into one colossal silhouette; a pond smashed into another.
The feather and the pond began rapidly changing colors.
Inside the black hole, eight Temple Elders in total lay prostrated, but two of them began to contort. Their condition had progressed far beyond grave injury—their souls, flesh, and godhead fragments were all decomposing in that very moment.
"No... no!"
"Stop! Please, no!"
Crack!
Crack!
With two crisp cracks, two Temple Elders perished completely.
"Aaaagh!"
Color bloomed across Rielsa's feather, and vibrant hues filled her pond.
Swinging the feather swiftly, she began to paint.
In an instant, she painted the divine falcon, Amisido.
The blood on the ground rose into the air and merged into the painting, and the newly rendered Amisido came alive, stepping out from the canvas.
Rielsa opened her jaws and bit into Amisido, whose vibrant colors instantly blackened into a morbid dark red.
The moment Rielsa released it, Amisido took to the air, soaring toward the black hole above.
"Close the passage!"
"Shut the passage!"
The black hole closed swiftly; fast as Amisido was, it could not outpace the Elders' desperate haste to protect themselves.
Yet with a shift in Amisido's heading and a flurry of wingbeats, the black hole that had already sealed itself unexpectedly opened once more.
Watching this unfold, Karen could not help thinking back to Diss. The reason the Temple of Order had found Diss such a headache and felt so helpless against him was that, by the laws governing the temple's operation, whenever someone condensed an Order godhead, the temple gates would sense it and manifest automatically before them to usher them inside.
This was originally a completely normal operating law, but it was precisely because of it that the Temple of Order—and the entire Church of Order—had no defense against Diss's ambition to blow the temple up.
They could neither stop it nor defend against it, let alone cut it off.
Whenever Diss wished, he could simply sit up in bed and activate his third godhead fragment, and the gates of the Temple of Order would manifest right before him.
The falcon Amisido operated on the very same principle: as the descendant of one of the three great divine beasts under the God of Samsara, the innate ability in its bloodline naturally granted it access to open that domain.
The black hole opened, and Amisido flew right in—bearing the curse of the Mural God!
Boom!
...
High Priest Norton finished his day's reviewing duties. Inside the grand hall, three cardinals and the heads of various departments gathered around him. Displayed atop a crystal pedestal before them was the battle taking place over Samsara Valley.
The Church of Order had already dispatched an escort delegation for the trial participants to Samsara Valley, alongside its local liaison office staff, so transmitting the visual feed posed no difficulty. They had even set up teleportation arrays on the perimeter to send war apparatus to the trial participants inside the gate.
Yaruk, retired commander of the Seventh Knights and reserve member of the First Knights, was briefing the true church leadership on the battle. As he spoke, he found himself at a loss for how to proceed;
for his military doctrine could no longer keep pace with the Church of Samsara's tactical rhythm.
Normally at such a moment, a prudent commander would begin questioning his own limitations, wondering if he was the foolish one. But watching the battle unfold—especially seeing the falcon Amisido fly straight into the black hole—the commander was finally certain: it was not his limitations at fault, but that the Church of Samsara's stupidity had exceeded the boundaries of human comprehension.
Kred chuckled. "Samsara's elders actually chose to fight a god using projections at a time like this. They truly do cherish their precious feathers."
"Your Eminence speaks the truth. In our knight order's War History: Chapter on God Wars, it is explicitly recorded that when facing a deity, one must charge fearlessly toward death.
The Samsara elders are terrified of dying; they are only willing to risk getting injured. It is like fighting with gloves on for fear of dirtying their hands. Yet they are facing a god!"
High Priest Norton smiled faintly. "Imprint this visual into a scroll and send it to the Temple of Order in my name. Let our elders enjoy the show as well."
...
"Hehehe," Lord Dal chuckled. "How does this make you feel?"
"It subverts my understanding of what a god is."
"That's because Rielsa doesn't know how to fight. If you think of her as an elegant female artist driven into a corner who starts tearing people's hair out, it'll make sense."
"Alright, I understand."
"Yet even a god who doesn't know how to fight—even one who is both incompetent at brawling and terribly weakened—is still a god." Lord Dal rose and began pacing back and forth. "Right now, I feel that if the Church of Samsara outside continues to be this useless, I might actually have an opportunity."
"What do you intend to do?"
"I told you earlier that I cannot leave this gate."
"Yes."
"In truth, there has always been a way, though it is exceedingly difficult to pull off. My past and my future are trapped inside the gate, so I cannot leave. But what if I ask Rielsa to paint me out?"
"Paint you... out?"
"Yes, paint me out. Once Rielsa recovers, she will definitely possess the ability."
"And that way, you can leave this place."
"Yes. Hmm, aren't you going to ask what I'll do to my true self once I manage to leave?"
"I think I should first ask why you believe Rielsa would do you such a favor."
"Hmm, fair point. My true self has a feud with her. If Rielsa had just awakened, I certainly wouldn't dare show myself before her. But if Rielsa successfully leaves the gate, triumphs over the Church of Samsara outside, and feasts to her heart's content, things will be different.
By then, she will be far more composed and will consider the future. My appearance won't provoke her wrath or revenge; she will weigh my value, which makes it possible she'll help me.
As long as she isn't blinded by hatred, I can attempt to trade and negotiate with her. There is enmity between us, but it is far from irreconcilable, wouldn't you say?"
"Yes, you're right. I hope you succeed."
Lord Dal clapped his hands, and that body stood up. Full of anticipation, he said:
"If all goes well, I will use my new body to negotiate with Rielsa. I think Rielsa will like this new face of mine."
Chapter 378