One Month Until the Divine Grace Festival

The day before, the Church of Dawn's Holy Mountain had still been clamoring for punitive action against the Corland Kingdom.

The very next day, people began dying in droves on the Morning Radiance Holy Mountain. One lofty clergyman after another was brought down. Their bodies were burned to ashes, their souls howled in agony amid the Holy Radiance, and their power was stripped away before they were sent to the abyssal battlefield for eternal atonement.

The entire world was stunned by the Church's move. Was that Pope actually serious?

Many believed that the Pope had come to understand the will of the Lord of Dawn through atonement. His determination to cleanse the decaying Church of Dawn was simply too firm.

Only Ryan did not think the Pope was truly like that. Otherwise, the first person he should have killed would have been himself.

"Is he planning to... use slaughter to unify the will within the Church?"

Amid the fall of those clergymen, Ryan gradually grasped Pope Solarian's purpose.

The Church of Dawn, this religious organization, was extremely fragmented.

In Ryan's view, even in a nation ruled by nobles like the Florian Empire, the Emperor's authority was not absolute.

The four Grand Dukes and the nobles shared far too much of the Empire's internal power.

The Church of Dawn was even worse than the Florian Empire.

Because it was a purely religious organization, the source of everything it possessed was not the majesty of a ruler, but devout faith in the Lord.

Within the Church, the Pope's title stood above all else because he was regarded as the deity's incarnation in the mortal world.

This had nothing to do with power. The power brought by divine authority was absolutely supreme only under the will of the deity.

Simply put, if the