Beneath the crimson sunset, that faint, smoke-like figure melted into the darkness, strolling slowly through fields heavy with wheat.
But after turning several times at crossroads, only to circle back to the starting point, Samael could not help stopping before a fork in the road, his brow slightly furrowed.
The scent had vanished...
The ancient serpent then closed his eyes, attempting to sense that nearly nonexistent trace lingering in the air. Yet after searching repeatedly, he found nothing.
Had it been deliberately erased with magecraft?
Was she... hiding from me?
After pondering for a moment, the ancient serpent helplessly raised a hand and tapped his own head, shaking it slightly with a sigh before slowing his pace.
Sure enough, taking this step was an exceedingly difficult journey.
In truth, he had already tried his best to give Joan of Arc an answer she could more readily accept, couching it in the indirect form of a story, half true and half false.
If he had bluntly shouted something like, "God is dead, and I am the sun!" then perhaps no devout follower of Abraham could withstand a truth so shattering to their worldview. Quite a few fanatics would probably martyr themselves on the spot just to prove it.
After all, in a certain absurd sense, if God came from demons, then Hell, ruled by Satan—the ancient serpent—was their true Heaven...
Yet even so, for a devout believer, such a subversive answer was still too heavy to bear in so short a time.
Faith required a certain distance to inspire yearning and awe. Once it drew too close to reason or reality, mystery lost its halo, and every uneven surface and rough texture of those clay and wooden idols became impossible to ignore.
The flaws and imperfections that shattered illusion would inevitably