This Rescue Mission... Didn't Look Good!

In the end, after wrapping up their investigation, Bishop Karl and his group left the Fire Nation and returned to the Holy City.

Before leaving, they had hoped to reconcile the relationship between the two sides. However, the Fire Nation clearly had no intention of making peace with the Zerg. No matter what Bishop Karl and the others said, the Fire Nation authorities' stance remained clear—the Swarm must die!!

With no other choice, Bishop Karl and the others returned to the Holy City. After several days of closed-door meetings, the Holy Temple issued a public statement—they openly acknowledged that the Swarm was part of an orderly civilization and called for both the Swarm and the Fire Nation to cease hostilities and sit down for serious talks.

Naturally, the Fire Nation was furious at the Holy Temple's statement. They angrily accused the Holy Temple of deliberately concealing the truth and spreading lies due to the discord between their two nations. They even directly declared that they suspected those monsters had some unspeakable connection with the Holy Temple. From a certain perspective, they had actually guessed right.

At the same time, the Fire Nation began aggressively shaping public opinion at home, telling its citizens that not only would the Holy Kingdom refuse to help them, it was even siding with those monsters. This drove relations between the two nations to an extreme level of tension, and some Holy Kingdom citizens in the Fire Nation were even expelled and beaten.

Naturally, the Holy Temple strongly condemned this, but aside from that, neither side took any overly drastic action.

The Holy Temple understood very well that, despite the Fire Nation's current bluster and its apparent attitude of "I'm going to wipe out the Swarm tomorrow," the truth was that the Fire Nation could not