Ever since the Holy Church Orb disappeared a year ago, Beinz Diocese seemed to have fallen into a disastrous state. In the span of just one year, a string of major events had taken place on this land twisted by supernatural forces—the collapse of the Dragon Ridge Mountains, the Stone Giant's siege, the Firstborn's awakening, the destruction of the diocese, the death of a Diocesan Chief, and finally, the transformation of the entire Sacred Lake into a massive crystal quarry under orbital bombardment. Any one of these incidents would have been enough to go down in history if it had happened elsewhere, yet they had all occurred in such rapid succession within this tiny stretch of land. Now, the diocese that had once been designated a holy land had become utterly unrecognizable. Nearly all civilian settlements had been evacuated, replaced by various knight order garrisons and monasteries hastily established in their place. The population was still about the same as it had been a year ago, but its composition had almost completely changed into soldiers and clergy. Even the bold, reckless mercenaries of the past now kept their distance from this place.
However, Beinz Diocese's troubled period was not yet over. Not long after the extraction and utilization of the crystal quarry had just begun, the place had once again become the front line of the Radiant Church and Return Sect's "holy war."
Beinz Diocese and the "Holy Mountain" west of the diocese, which lay beyond Horleta's sphere of influence, had now become the battlefield between the Radiant Church and the heretics. Centered around the crystal quarry, the remnants of the Dragon Ridge Mountains left behind after their collapse lay to the east, where the main forces of the Church Knights' Order and Kingdom Knights were stationed. The towering mountains