No sooner had Abner taken his seat than the hall erupted. Somewhat surprised, he remarked, "Quite lively."
As he spoke, his gaze flicked to the side.
To his right, Baiji Pope sat quietly, smiling as ever. Though the Amaterasu Pure Land still needed True God to hold up the battlefront, as long as someone from the Amaterasu Order attended, they had not entirely lost face.
As for the vacant seat, someone who almost never attended meetings had finally come, filling it.
This man sat to Abner's left. He was a red-skinned Caucasian, with several slightly raised marks resembling rust stains scattered across his exposed skin. He had once been the king of Northeast Asia, and was now the leader of the New World's Wilderness Vagrants—the Skull Demon King's defeated foe, the powerhouse reputed to have undergone the deepest degree of bodily mutation, Steel Rust. He was the Queen of Hearts in the Extraordinary Card Deck.
He was also the mortal enemy of the Association's second vice president, the Slaughterer, Louis.
That was why Louis had not attended today.
Steel Rust's rare attendance made him, in a sense, a representative of the Wilderness Vagrants. Abner gave a light cough, intending to introduce him properly as a show of respect—and, in a sense, to offset the immense pressure brought by that young "god." But he quickly realized that his "light cough" meant nothing. The commotion in the hall had nothing to do with them. No one was paying attention to this side now. Even the Justice Chief Priest and the others, who had arrived at the same time as them, only looked toward Ronan, seated diagonally across from Abner, after getting a rough grasp of the situation.
The yellow beard beside Abner's cheeks trembled twice. He maintained his composed smile and ultimately