A Decent Haul

"So this is the difficult choice you spoke of." Isolde's eyes were utterly indifferent.

"Since you believe sacrificing a few for the peace of the many is 'the right thing permitted by the gods,' then sacrificing you alone to let these Unicorns rest should also be a mercy tacitly approved by the gods, shouldn't it?"

She bent slightly and hurled the Silver Robe's own words back in his face, unchanged.

"The weak need rules. Now it's your turn to make this difficult sacrifice for the Holy Court."

Terror and fury appeared on the Silver Robe's face.

"...May... Holy Radiance—"

Before he could finish, Isolde abruptly clenched her fingers.

"Strangulation."

The Silver Robe's soul collapsed within his body. The pupils in his eyes gradually dilated, filling with the gray decay of death.

The staff, no longer controlled, fell to the ground with a clatter. The horn core at its tip gradually dimmed.

Isolde panted. The wound on her shoulder had yet to heal, and the backlash from the holy light reduced her health by another 5 points.

She had thought that with the abuser's death, the resentment she had unleashed would finally subside.

Yet the black phantoms circling around them not only failed to disperse, but seemed to have tasted the blood of vengeance and became even more violent and frenzied.

The ground beneath her feet began to shake wildly, and cracks spread across every wall of the Stillbone Prayer Room.

At the core of the shattered Moon-Crown Lock, black-red resentment erupted skyward like a volcano. It smashed through the sealed dome of the Stillbone Prayer Room and shot into the sky outside.

The massive beast formed from countless vengeful spirits exploded in midair.

Part of it lunged directly toward the clergy on the upper level of Grey Dove Monastery.

The larger part, however, surged like a swarm of locusts toward the night sky. With an unstoppable, terrifying force, it brutally broke through the monastery's outer protective magic array and spread madly in every direction across the continent.

Meanwhile, on the upper level of Grey Dove Monastery.

The once holy and solemn courtyard had long since become a chaotic battlefield.

Luo Jiuge cleaved apart a church knight charging at her. Just as she panted and prepared to curse, a piercing cry that made even her soul tremble suddenly rang out above her.

She jerked her head up.

Black-red light poured down like a tidal wave, its target crystal clear as it surged straight into the bodies of the monks around her who were shouting praises of light.

"W-What the hell is that?!"

The monks who had been holding Holy Lamps and savagely surrounding Luo Jiuge and the others only moments ago had their vicious expressions replaced by extreme terror the instant they came into contact with the black-red current. They threw aside their weapons and fled in every direction.

Phantom holy beasts radiating cold, deathly energy stepped out of the void one after another. They passed precisely through the monks' bodies, stripping away and tearing apart the long-hidden sins beneath their sacred robes inch by inch.

"Holy Radiance! Save me—!"

"Don't come closer! Ah! My eyes!!"

Miserable screams filled the entire monastery. The sacred ground that had seemed so solemn moments ago became a living hell in the blink of an eye.

Luo Jiuge gripped her sword tightly, letting sweat soak her palm.

"What... happened down there...?"

Aiven's face was deathly pale from weakness. Leaning against the wall, he nearly lost his footing.

Hewen grabbed his arm, looked at Luo Jiuge standing frozen in place, and shouted a warning.

"Stop staring! While everything's in chaos, we need to get out of here!"

Luo Jiuge snapped out of her shock as system prompts appeared before her.

[Warning: The area ahead is in a high-risk state of collapse.]

[Warning: An unknown torrent of resentment is erupting.]

[Current status: Entering this area carries an extremely high risk of friendly fire.]

Luo Jiuge stared at the scarlet messages and said in alarm,

"My god... what kind of huge mess did my fellow countrywoman make down there...?"

"No... I have to go in and take a look!"

She tightened her grip on her sword and made to charge back in against the flow, but Hewen immediately pulled her back and said quickly,

"If you go in now, you'll only die in there."

Luo Jiuge whipped around. "So we're just leaving her down there and running away ourselves?!"

Hewen did not avoid her gaze. Amid the screams filling the air, he said word by word,

"If she dared to sneak in here, that proves she understands the dangers here better than any of us. Trust her. She must have left herself a way out."

Those words calmed Luo Jiuge's mind a little.

That fellow countrywoman truly did not seem like an ordinary player. Perhaps she should finish the task at hand first, so as not to let her down.

She looked deeper into the corridor, where the black-red resentment still churned like a tsunami.

A stray current swept past her, and the wind blade it carried even grazed her arm.

Luo Jiuge gritted her teeth, turned around, and supported Aiven's other arm.

"Let's get out first."

After a pause, she looked back once more at the darkness swallowed by resentment.

"Fellow countrywoman, once I finish the mission, I'll come back for you."

"Alive, I want to see you. Dead..."

Her voice stopped, and she did not finish the rest.

In the end, she merely muttered quietly,

"Fellow countrywoman, you'd better really have a way out."

By the time the Stillbone Prayer Room returned to silence, the entire secret chamber had become utterly ruined.

Broken bone pillars, shattered stone slabs, and the scorched smell lingering in the air all proclaimed how brutal that Causal Reckoning had been.

Isolde stood amid the ruins of the prayer room. Her excessive exhaustion and the piercing pain from her wounds left her somewhat unsteady.

She raised her head, her dark eyes piercing through the shattered dome to gaze at the murky sky above.

She closed her eyes slightly. In the cold wind filling the chamber, she seemed to sense hundreds of souls finally freed from their chains, running toward their end without looking back into the frigid wind of freedom.

[You obtained: Sin Soul ×1]

A system prompt lit up in her vision.

Isolde lowered her gaze. From within the already lifeless Silver Robe's body, a strange flame as black as ink trembled as it floated out.

The black fire flickered in the cold air. Looking closely, one could vaguely make out a twisted human face belonging to the Silver Robe at the heart of the flames, struggling madly within them with the angry unwillingness he had felt in life.

Isolde lightly beckoned with her fingers in the air, and Soul Thread wove a cage that imprisoned the black flame within it.

She vaguely remembered that when the Blood Feast judgment had been completed and triggered Home-Field Advantage, activating [Judgment Synthesis], the system had given her a prompt.

If she wanted to synthesize that kind of fruit capable of raising attribute limits again, it seemed she needed to gather three Sin Souls.

"Though there's only one for now, it's still quite a decent haul."