New Toys

"No!!!"

Looking at her younger sister, Fina cried out. The grief and pain of killing her sister with her own hands overwhelmed the God of Justice's power in an instant, and the once-dazzling light around her began to dim. At that moment, Li Lin immediately cast the spell in his hand. Pulsing magic runes shot from his fingertips and surrounded Mina.

"Banishment!"

As Li Lin spoke the word in a low voice, Mina's body began to tremble and flail wildly, shaking like a puppet being tossed about. She jerked her body and head around ceaselessly, as though possessed. The magic runes surrounding her tightened further, and then a man's furious, unwilling roar erupted from her wide-open mouth. The white light began to fade, and a faint figure was drawn out of the girl's body before vanishing into the air with a thunderous boom.

Though the spell had clearly worked, Li Lin maintained his casting posture. Only after confirming that the God of Justice had been banished from this plane did he let out a deep sigh and lower his hands.

Li Lin and Angela had originally intended to use the sisters as puppets to disrupt the harmony of the group. As it turned out, however, they had served quite a few unexpected purposes as well. Although Divine Chosen could not resist divine descent, it was also tied to their inner convictions. If they suffered a tremendous upheaval or their faith grew less devout, divine descent would lose its foundation. Li Lin's instructions to Angela just now had been to use Fina to block the sword, thereby attempting to awaken Mina's will. Sure enough, the shock of killing her own younger sister awakened Mina's soul, bringing it into conflict with the God of Justice's divine descent. Li Lin had seized the instant it wavered to cast Banishment and drive him out of this world.

Li Lin glanced at Mina, who lay motionless on the ground, then looked away. She was not far from death, with only the remnants of her life force sustaining her breathing. Forcibly stripping divinity from a girl's body was an extremely difficult and dangerous undertaking in itself. How could a mortal soul withstand a power meant to banish a god?

"Master?"

Angela's voice reached Li Lin's ears. He looked up at his familiar.

"What is it, Angela?"

"You don't need these two corpses anymore, do you?"

"You want them?"

Li Lin was momentarily taken aback. He immediately recalled some legends about vampires...

"If you want them, take them. I have no use for them anyway."

"Wait!"

The angel swung her spear and blocked Angela's path.

"This woman must be destroyed completely. She's a Divine Chosen. Who knows if the God of Betrayers might use her body to descend again!"

"Out of my way, you winged hen."

Confronted with the spear barring her path, the crimson light in Angela's eyes flared.

"Who do you think you are, daring to stand in my way?"

"You..."

"All right, don't get so worked up."

The succubus stepped forward and interrupted the confrontation. Her snakelike eyes studied Angela carefully, but even a ruler from Hell could make nothing of the girl before her. "This isn't the time for infighting. Besides, I don't see any harm in letting her live..."

"But... what if... never mind."

Perhaps realizing that nothing she said would help, the angel finally put away her spear. She still shot Angela a vicious glare, but Angela ignored it completely. Her attention was now entirely on the two dying bodies.

"Hehehe... I've always wanted two servants to wait on me. Now I finally have my wish..."

Chuckling softly, Angela bent over Fina's neck.

"Sister Fina... from today on, you'll have to dote on Angela, all right?"

Gazing at the sword wound in the girl's abdomen, Angela slowly drew out the longsword buried deep in her body. At the same time, she moved closer to Fina, opened her little mouth and bit down.

Pain. The double agony made the girl's body tremble uncontrollably. The longsword was slowly pulled from Fina's body, a torment no girl could endure. She instinctively tried to cry out, but Angela prevented her from speaking. At that moment, she could do almost nothing but show her pain through her body's instinctive reactions.

But Angela seemed completely oblivious to the girl's pain and struggles. She drank the girl's blood in a trance, as greedy and single-minded as a baby craving its mother's milk. When she raised her head, her face full of satisfaction, Fina had turned as pale as paper. Angela giggled and repeated the process with Mina before raising her head with a satisfied smile. She turned the sword around and drew it across her fingers. Blood slowly welled from her delicate fingertips like bright red gems.

"Come, I know what you want, sisters... drink it..."

Angela placed the cut index fingers of her left and right hands against Fina's and Mina's lips, her voice like that of a witch enticing all living beings. A mist of blood rose with a rush, enveloping the three of them, and a red pentagram shone on the floor. A dark, evil and bitterly cold aura of death instantly filled the entire hall, making everyone except Li Lin frown. These gods had never seen such a bizarre scene, nor had they ever felt such a bizarre power.

"She's like a combination of a devil and an undead. What exactly is she?"

The Goddess of Dawn murmured to herself, and the succubus frowned slightly as well. It could not be denied that even in Hell, she had never seen such a bizarre species.

The red light faded.

Angela stood where she was, the sisters still lying at her feet. But whether it was the gods or Li Lin, they could all clearly sense one thing.

There was no longer any sign of life in either girl.

They were dead.

"I don't think any of you have much time to waste."

Li Lin's voice drew the gods' attention back. He sat down again in the chair that had originally belonged to him and watched the gods before him.

"So we'd better stop wasting time and have a substantive discussion."

He spread his hands and stared at the gods.

"I still can't believe the God of Justice would upset the balance of the entire world. We all know he used to be no more than a high-ranking god on the same level as the rest of you. How could he do that? Would the Three Supreme Gods simply ignore it?"

"In fact, that's precisely the heart of the problem."

The angel glanced with a complicated expression at the two corpses Angela had tossed aside, then answered.

"The Three Supreme Gods... have already been killed by him. The Betrayer killed them first, then came after us. We don't know where his power comes from, but no god is a match for him. Quite a few lower gods have already had their divine domains and priesthoods taken from them. The situation has become extremely dangerous."

Li Lin was inwardly startled by the angel's answer.

The gods' power came from their divine domains and priesthoods. Like the gods before him, their priesthoods came from their power. The Elf Goddess, for example, could draw power from all faith pertaining to "elves." The same was true of the God of Justice, whose power came from faith in "justice." To put it more vividly, the gods' priesthoods were rather like words combined into phrases: "just punishment," "evil murder." Alignment was closely linked to their priesthoods. The God of Justice could draw power from actions and faith such as "just punishment," but he could never draw power from an action such as "just murder." Murder did not belong to the alignment of the priesthood of "justice," so "just murder" itself was not permitted and could not exist.

But if the God of Justice really had absorbed other gods' priesthoods and divine domains, as they said, that meant he could also draw power from fundamentally contradictory and irreconcilable combinations such as "just murder" or "just deception." In that case, the balance could not be maintained. It would even affect the behavior of every species on the Prime Material Plane in turn.

No wonder these gods now reacted to him like mice faced with a cat.

Li Lin finally understood why these gods were so united against their common enemy.

The King of Hell was easy enough to understand. Because the Divine Realm had always maintained a delicate balance, he could stay in Hell without the gods troubling him. But the current situation could very well end with the God of Justice ruling the Divine Realm alone, and when that happened, he would surely launch an attack on Hell. That was certainly not something the King of the Nine Hells wanted to see.

The God of Light and the Goddess of Dawn were probably afraid of having their priesthoods taken. They represented light and hope. Once the God of Justice took their priesthoods and divine domains, those would become "just light" and "just hope." Light might not conflict with justice, but hope was another matter. Not to mention the elves and dwarves. They had been suppressed for so many years that they were nearly on the brink of extinction. As their racial gods, they naturally could not turn a blind eye to this. After all, if these races really did become extinct, gods like them would cease to exist as well.

Had things deteriorated this far?

Li Lin tapped the armrest of his chair with some agitation. The marble felt as cold and hard as it had a thousand years ago, unchanged in any way. He thought for a moment, then raised his head.

"I know why you've come here."

He looked at the gods before him and spoke slowly.

"You want me to activate the Great Book of Law, don't you?"