The news swept like a gale bearing wind and thunder, racing through the Shadow Alliance's secret outposts scattered across its territories and onward to the Shadow Church's central sacred ground-the Shadow Holy City.
Thick black mist shrouded the entire holy city year-round. Gothic spires pierced the gloomy sky, and cold obsidian tiles reflected the eerie green soul flames flickering within the halls. Everywhere lay an utterly oppressive stillness and sinister strangeness. When a trembling messenger presented the news of his most beloved youngest son's brutal death to the Pope, a world-destroying fury instantly engulfed the previously silent great hall!
The Pope of the Shadow Church sat upon a supreme throne built from countless magical beast skeletons. His black robes billowed without wind, and impossibly dense power of the Darkness Laws surged wildly around him. Even the hall's stone pillars cracked inch by inch beneath that terrifying pressure. He had lived for endless ages and long since reached the Saint Pinnacle, his lifespan enduring alongside heaven and earth. His descendants were beyond counting, and the deaths of ordinary sons and daughters could not stir the slightest ripple in his heart. Yet this youngest son alone had possessed outstanding talent and pleased him most. Now he had died violently in a foreign land. This was undoubtedly a resounding slap across the Shadow Church's face!
Had some ordinary ant dared challenge the Shadow Church's authority, the Pope would certainly have unleashed boundless wrath, ordering its utter extermination in a fight to the death and making it pay a thousandfold. But now, learning that his opponent was a genuine Saint expert, he narrowed his clouded eyes, a vicious gleam lurking within them, and ultimately forced down his surging killing intent. Tempered by endless ages, his heart had long since grown cold and hard as