Black mist rose within the Office Divine Temple.
Once the black mist dispersed, Kallen saw a sea. Though the sky here was still hazy, it was far cleaner than the Black Sea in the Garden of Life.
An enormous creature lay on the sea. It was Base.
Kallen had once stood on its back as it sailed into the Garden of Life.
Now, however, it looked utterly listless, as though all its energy had been drained away. Even its shell was covered in cracks.
On the beach, Kallen saw corpses lying in neat rows, stretching beyond sight in either direction. Countless more floated beside Base's enormous shell.
These corpses all looked the same... Norton.
Even after all the grand spectacles he had witnessed, the sight before him, together with the High Priest standing right in front of him, still left Kallen shaken.
Just how many times had he killed himself here?
"High Priest... please allow me to enter slumber."
Base's voice trembled, not only with exhaustion, but with fear.
The "raw materials" for these doppelgangers came from it, so the High Priest's frenzied suicides here had actually been carving away Base's "flesh."
He had quite literally terrified this Church-Guarding Divine Beast of the Order God Church with all that killing.
It could already sense that it had reached its critical point. If this continued, it would collapse, and that collapse would mean the complete end of Base's line, because its remaining strength would not even be enough to nurture a new offspring inside its corpse.
"Sleep."
"Thank you for your mercy, High Priest."
As though granted some form of release, Base slowly sank beneath the sea.
Unless the Order God Church poured external resources into its recovery, it would sleep for at least a thousand years.
Barring anything unexpected, the