Across the scorched earth of South Vantina's northwestern district, pure rising currents of air whipped up dancing tongues of flame, sending ripples through the quiet of the night. A man's voice rang out alongside them.
"Do you want to fight me?"
It was like a soft whisper, yet carried the weight of an almighty decree.
Lanqi's otherworldly gaze, brimming with compassion, swept past Salomon and turned toward the Rotting Alchemical Beast. It was as if he did not care about them in the slightest, merely observing the flow of the wind and speaking his mind.
In whatever sense it was taken, only one thing was abundantly clear—
No matter who fought him, the outcome would be no different.
"No, Loren, you can't kill me..."
Salomon, Son of Destruction, halted the circulation of his mana, as if desperate to erase his aura and presence entirely. His expression darkened by degrees.
He surveyed the battlefield.
The Tier 8 Rotting Alchemical Beast crafted by Farmer, the Decay Cardinal, was slightly stronger than the gray-haired Tier 8 woman. Salomon was far from a match for her on his own, but once he supplemented the beast with crowd-control magic, he had posed a lethal threat to her.
After that clash, the alchemical beast had burned through a good portion of its energy, and Salomon himself had taken several hits of Tier 8 curse backlash. His current state was terrible.
Were it merely an ordinary Tier 8 arriving, he might still dare to fight to the death.
Yet Loren was a monster capable of taking down three Rotting Alchemical Beasts without breaking a sweat!
The only beings capable of matching a High Priest were Cardinals at full power!
"Let's make a deal," Lanqi sighed, tinged with a faint distress and weariness. Even when facing a Son of Destruction, he still wished to redeem him through love; his love knew no bounds. "Order all those Destruction Great Clerics in the city-state to stop killing innocents and withdraw completely, and I will not pursue you.
"However, if you challenge me, I guarantee you will die in South Vantina today in utter misery. Before you die, you will experience a terror far exceeding the greatest horror the Bishop of Destruction could ever inflict upon you."
Lanqi gazed into the distance, his tone conveying that he genuinely did not want this to happen.
"What are you talking about?"
Salomon's eyes darted frantically.
He could not understand why Loren seemed to have seen through their entire layout, nor could he decipher the cryptic threats Loren was uttering.
Yet at this moment, Salomon actually felt that Loren was not deceiving him. Loren seemed to have his best interests at heart—or was simply declaring his imminent, unavoidable fate.
A noble High Priest of the Church of the Goddess of Fate would never stoop to bullying a Holy Son. Otherwise, Loren would have long since hunted down the Holy Sons and Saintesses serving the Cardinals of the Southern Continent.
If a Tier 8 powerhouse of a High Priest's standing went out of his way to eliminate Holy Sons and Saintesses personally, it would only drive the Cardinals into a frenzy, triggering ruthless hunts of low-tier priests in retaliation.
In a sense, this was the balance and compromise Loren had chosen to maintain.
Salomon knew this well.
Even though every half-second of hesitation caused his chances of survival to plummet, he still had to weigh whether he truly had an opportunity to escape.
At this moment, he had two choices. One was to put up resistance, using the Rotting Alchemical Beast to buy time for his flight. The beast could hold Loren off for a while, and the Great Clerics could slaughter indiscriminately across the city and self-detonate at any moment. Loren could never sit idly by, which would grant Salomon ample time to flee.
The other was to believe that Loren would truly let him go, surrender any resistance, and run immediately.
If he chose the former, the initiative would remain in his own hands, but Loren would no longer hold back and would strike with full force. Since Salomon would have initiated the challenge, Loren could counterattack and kill him without anyone accusing the High Priest of bullying the weak.
At this thought, Salomon's brow twitched slightly, as if an epiphany had struck him.
"A High Priest wouldn't go back on his word, right?"
Salomon swallowed hard and dared to ask.
He had long heard that Loren was benevolent to the point of foolishness—a trait that even the Bishop of Destruction and the Decay Cardinal openly mocked.
"Naturally. Do not allow that alchemical beast to move again," Lanqi said with a nod.
His gaze toward Salomon remained completely placid, as though he had never regarded a mere Son of Destruction as an opponent. It was the look of a deity looking down upon a tiny mortal.
"Fine."
A chill running down his spine spurred Salomon to spin around. Transforming into a streak of black shadow at top speed, he fled this scorched purgatory, slicing through the violent wind and vanishing into the night.
Long after.
Having put several kilometers between them, Salomon dropped into a dark alleyway in South Vantina. Suppressing his mana, he walked forward alone like an ordinary pedestrian, offering Loren no opportunity to sense him.
Only now did Salomon feel certain he had escaped successfully.
"Thank you, High Priest Loren..." Salomon murmured in all sincerity.
In the shadows, the corner of his mouth twitched as he struggled to hold back a smirk.
No matter how he looked at it, running first had been the wiser move. Once he reached safety, he could command the Great Clerics to begin their indiscriminate slaughter across the city-state, at which point Loren would be forced to intervene.
Once Loren was foolishly drawn away, Lady Hyperion would no longer have that Tier 8 woman to protect her, and her trump cards for survival would be spent, plunging her into true vulnerability right under their noses.
Loren was merely an outsider guardian of the Hutton Kingdom, not Hyperion's personal protector. To him, the safety of the kingdom's people took precedence over everything else.
When the time came, the Great Clerics could double back and strike again, and Lady Hyperion would be doomed.
Salomon's pounding heart reminded him of how fortunate it was that his opponent today had been a foolishly benevolent man like Loren, rather than some twisted, sadistic psychopath.
Unfortunately, benevolence always came at a price.
Tonight, he would teach Loren a lesson.
And the tuition... would be something Loren remembered for the rest of his life.
Salomon's eyes grew profoundly dark.
At last, a chuckle broke from his throat.
***
In the northwestern district of South Vantina, along Guardian's Path, the surrounding estates lay completely shattered, resembling a recent battlefield.
After a long while.
"..."
Lanqi watched the direction where Salomon, Son of Destruction, had fled in panic until his figure disappeared entirely, a faint smile gracing his lips.
"Meow, meow, meow! Tata!"
Boss Cat instantly darted out from the shadows, flying over to administer slow healing to Talia. Although it could not comprehend why Tata was so powerful—a full Tier 8—it had no time to dwell on that now. Even with its mana nearly drained, it frantically cast healing spells on her.
Seeing that Tata remained conscious, Lanqi breathed a sigh of relief.
Originally, had he not intervened, Hyperion and the duke's entire household would have perished. Tata likely would have fallen into darkness, acquired the ancient demon relic known as the Hymn of Compassion, and grown into a terrifying Tier 9 great demon in a far distant timeline.
Now, however, she seemed to have been pampered into complete uselessness. She had never obtained her ultimate cheat, the Hymn of Compassion, and had shown no signs of growing stronger over the past year. The only noticeable change was that she might have gained a tiny bit of weight.
"..."
Talia lay on the ground looking at Lanqi. She tilted her head to cast him a glance, but having no strength left to speak, she simply remained sprawled out flat like a board.
"You finally scared him off... That was close..."
Having held her breath against Lanqi's chest for what felt like an eternity, Hyperion finally dared to exhale in relief.
She knew Lanqi had been playing psychological warfare again, taking a dangerous gamble to frighten away Salomon, Son of Destruction!
"Huh? I didn't scare him," Lanqi said, looking down at Hyperion in confusion.
"Huh?" Hyperion stared up at Lanqi, dumbfounded.
"If he'd dared to fight me just now, he really would have died," Lanqi answered as if stating the most obvious fact in the world.
"..."
Hyperion instantly understood.
The Three Phantom Demons were likely on Lanqi right now. The very first thing he had done after discovering the Destruction Great Clerics in South Vantina was summon the three great demons over from Ikerite.
Wait.
Given Hyperion's understanding of Lanqi, since he was guaranteed to win either way and had subtly steered Salomon into choosing to flee, what on earth was waiting for Salomon down the line?
"Lanqi, you aren't going to do something that burns through massive karmic merit today, right...? I haven't accumulated much merit lately..."
Even though Hyperion was nestled right against Lanqi's chest, her timid voice was so faint he could barely catch it.
Chapter 509