Church, Holy Mountain, Temple of Punishment.
The pale yellow light of the setting sun streamed through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, slanting across the hundred-meter-tall statue of the God of Retribution. Seated upon his divine throne, wearing a blazing divine crown and holding the Scepter of Retribution, the God of Retribution gazed down with grim majesty. He was clad in an enormous suit of pale golden armor inlaid with countless gemstones and magic crystals, gleaming brilliantly beneath the sunlight.
Inside the temple beneath its enormous circular dome, a full twelve hundred Temple Bishops dressed in blood-red robes of punishment stood in solemn silence. A faint blood-colored divine radiance shone around them. Those Punishment Temple members qualified to stand here—among them, even the weakest had reached the high demigod realm.
Yet this terrifying force, capable of instantly destroying any empire on the Western Continent, was merely an insignificant fraction of all the military might the Temple of Punishment concealed beneath its heavy black curtain.
Even among these twelve hundred demigods, only thirty were members of divine-bloodline families. All the rest were born without divine bloodlines, commoners who had clawed their way upward through their own strength in the vast, stern, and harsh system of the Temple of Punishment.
Only those of divine bloodline were the core strength of a temple. Thus, these twelve hundred demigods were no more than the outer forces of the Temple of Punishment.
So many demigods stood quietly there, their power continuously pouring through the air into the statue of the God of Retribution. At the statue's brow, a golden-red vortex the size of a water vat spun at high speed. It was a tunnel leading to an unknown space. Each opening consumed immense power, and maintaining this tunnel required the combined efforts of every demigod present.
Even