As far as pure one-on-one combat went, Qu Xuanqing believed she could kill a hundred Archbishops in ten minutes.
After all, the Archbishop was a purebred "mage." All his attacks relied on the occult arts, and he had no close-combat skills whatsoever. Occult techniques either required materials to cast or had cooldowns or limits. By contrast, Qu Xuanqing could swing her sword as many times as she pleased.
But she couldn't kill this Archbishop just yet.
It wasn't that she was worried killing him would derail the main storyline. If the boss was killed early, the game would simply end early. She was holding back because she'd noticed that the Archbishop was connected to several different evil gods.
The strongest forces in this world weren't the True God Church, the various cultists of evil gods, or even the secret cults. They were the gods and monsters themselves. A powerful Predictor like her could confidently defeat cultists, but she couldn't guarantee she'd survive an attack from the evil gods.
This world was the domain of its native gods, after all.
The Archbishop's body was like a fuse.
If the Archbishop died, it might instantly light that fuse and draw the evil gods connected to the other end. His body itself could serve as a sacrificial offering, while his "death" would be the ritual's process, ensuring that the evil gods' arrival followed the proper procedure.
Then, even if no one could preside over the secret cult's final ritual, several evil gods arriving at once would still bring a tremendous disaster upon the world. The resulting situation would probably be countless times harder to deal with than the cult's final ritual.
With that in mind, Qu Xuanqing held back a little more, making it look as though she was on the verge of