Samuel waved a hand coldly and said, "Open fire."
Rat-a-tat-tat! A barrage of machine-gun fire slaughtered everyone in the church. The bishop knelt on the floor, clutching a cross, and breathed his last with his eyes still wide open.
The same scene was playing out across the city.
Floch had requisitioned a hundred thousand troops from Adonis's Aima Republic. To ensure they obeyed Floch's orders, Adonis imprisoned all their families and used them as leverage.
Floch instituted the Sacred Treasury System in the southern Fifteen Cities. Claiming that all wealth and food in the world were gifts from the Thunder God, he demanded that all Marley residents unconditionally surrender their possessions, which would then be centrally distributed by believers in the Church of Thunder.
The announcement caused an uproar throughout the Governor-General District. Large-scale protests erupted in more than ten of its fifteen cities, and Floch immediately dispatched his hundred thousand troops to crush all the protesting residents in a bloody crackdown.
More than a hundred and fifty thousand residents across ten cities were killed by Floch.
After the crackdown, some Marley residents converted to the Church of Thunder to protect their property, becoming congregants so they could distribute wealth and food as they pleased.
Floch designated these Marleyan converts as the Holy Guard, granting them authority to monitor and execute Marleyan residents. Seventy percent of the wealth they plundered was to be handed over to the Governor-General's Office, while they could divide the remaining thirty percent among themselves.
Once this rule was announced, hungry Marleyan thugs, merchants, opportunists, and collaborators flooded into the Holy Guard, helping Floch oppress their own countrymen.
The converts to the Church of Thunder naturally allotted themselves more food, leaving the other Marley residents with meager rations. Vast numbers began going hungry and grew to