"Looks like this is the final hurdle."
Armstrong showed no sign of nervousness in the face of such a formation.
With a hearty smile on his face, he was the first to step past Guiche and move to the front of the group, meeting Father Anderson's gaze head-on.
He tore off his blue military uniform in one motion, revealing his powerful muscles as he struck a bodybuilding pose.
"Come on!"
"Witness the art passed down through generations of the Armstrong family!"
The atmosphere immediately turned awkward.
Guiche turned his head away, Dietrich's cheeks reddened, and Aburame Naoki silently lowered his head.
Their captain was far too unreliable.
Father Anderson and the others opposite them fell into an even deeper silence.
"Looks like an irredeemable idiot."
Father Anderson came back to his senses and sneered. Then he shouted, "Traitors!"
"Hah----"
The hundred priests and nuns behind him, all members of Section XIII under the Holy See, answered in unison.
"We Apostles are not Apostles, believers are not believers, faithful are not faithful, traitors are not traitors! We serve but one thing, bowing only to receive grace, bowing only to punish rebellion!"
Before his words had faded, Father Anderson gripped his twin blades glinting with cold light and charged at Armstrong first.
Yet his chant continued.
"A lowly dead man who wields daggers in the dark and poisons dinner!"
"We are the dead, a gathering of the dead! We are assassins, Judas the 'Traitor'!"
In an instant, he swung both arms, flinging throwing knives from between his fingers. They streaked through the air in dense trails of light.
The whistling of blades tearing through the air was unending.
Armstrong refused to be outdone. His refined steel fists, marked with transmutation circles, flashed with golden lightning as they slammed into the lawn before