Deep within the deserts of Busalet, amidst a battlefield where immense forces clashed violently, the Apostle of the Chalice who had just been completely annihilated was bizarrely reborn into the world once more.
From a space veined with blood, a fat, massive blood-red infant was born out of thin air. Amidst its cries, it snapped its own umbilical cord and began to grow at astonishing speed. As its body rapidly expanded, its blood and flesh reshaped and stretched. While becoming larger overall, the form also thinned out—ultimately transforming into a female body completely covered in viscous blood and flesh, hairless, featureless, with a bulging belly. It was the same form as Unina’s former appearance—only now, even more colossal.
“She... she’s alive again! How is that possible?! I clearly shattered her soul completely!” cried Hafdar in disbelief.
Except for Shepsuna, all the other pharaohs on the field wore expressions of stunned shock.
Seeing this, Setut on the other side suddenly raised his hand, and at once the chill in the air surged. The drifting snowflakes in the sky and the thousands of miles of frost on the flesh-covered land all rapidly converged, forming a massive crystal-clear white frost dragon over forty meters long. With a mighty roar, the dragon unleashed a barrage of enormous white beams toward Unina.
“Silent Frost Breath…”
This was Setut’s enhanced version of the Instant Freeze Beam—capable of freezing thought, soul, breath, sound, nature, and flesh alike in an instant. This was the ultimate freezing technique, producing frozen masses that would not melt for tens of thousands of years. Even the Heavenly Flame Saints of the Church and the firepower of a Holy Steel Vessel couldn’t dissolve it.
In response to the massive dragon’s frosty breath, a multitude of blood-red droplets suddenly materialized around Unina. In mere moments, these droplets thickened and merged into streams of blood, weaving together rapidly into a giant blood serpent that began slowly coiling around her.
This massive blood serpent, seamlessly connected at head and tail, circled around Unina in a slow, steady flow—its motion minimal, but continuous, guarding her.
When the white beams struck the serpent, they failed to freeze it. Though a thick layer of ice quickly formed on the surface, the blood beneath remained in motion, rapidly melting the frost as it flowed.
Setut’s freeze-all beam was completely ineffective against this flowing ring of blood.
“The sea… rivers… blood… life exists in the form of liquid, surging through all things. The flow of Chalice shall never cease… All vitality reveals itself in movement…”
With a mouthless face, Unina softly murmured. She had imbued the blood serpent with the divinity of Chalice—a conceptual divine enchantment. The essence of Chalice’s divinity was its endless flow and ceaseless motion. Here, “Chalice" represented eternal, unstoppable movement. This motion could not be hindered by any force. Setut’s ultimate freeze was unable to stop the blood serpent—unable to halt its flow.
“This is…”
Setut’s tone turned grave as he realized his attack was nearly useless. At that moment, Shepsuna spoke plainly.
“Setut, help hold off the blood rain from the sky!”
Heeding her words, Setut finally turned his gaze upward. After Unina reclaimed control of the sky with her cries earlier, the once-gentle snowfall had turned into a violent blood rain. This rain fell upon the land, reviving the once-dead flesh-covered earth and spurring it to grow anew.
But more importantly, this blood rain was soaking into the illusory mausoleum summoned by Shepsuna. And disturbingly, this ethereal mausoleum—once spiritual and immaterial—was now being stained crimson, its hue slowly shifting.
Realizing the threat, Setut immediately dispersed the frost dragon and rechanneled his strength into reclaiming control of the sky. But under the immense pressure of Unina’s power, he could only manage to wrest back a small patch of sky above their position—just enough to halt the blood rain from further corroding the mausoleum. Meanwhile, Hafdar, seeing the frost dragon vanish, shouted furiously.
“Useless! Let me!”
Hafdar slammed his withered hand onto the ground. With a pulse of eerie light from his arm, a massive spell array emerged beneath Unina’s feet. Amidst bizarre incantations, countless spectral, shriveled hands inscribed with curses burst from the formation, reaching straight for Unina—even penetrating the protective blood barrier.
Hafdar’s curses, once supplied with a medium, could bypass all distance and defense, guaranteed to take effect on the target. Given Unina’s rampant, blood-soaked combat style, acquiring such a medium from her was trivial. Thus, when Setut’s attack failed, he immediately acted, launching a lethal curse-kill against her.
As the cursed hands gripped Unina, her body suddenly split open, revealing multiple wolf heads that sprouted from the ruptures. With ferocious bites, these heads tore apart and devoured the cursed hands.
“Life continues through devouring and being devoured… All living beings are devourers, and all life is also sustenance…” she whispered, stroking one of the wolf heads growing from her flesh. Seeing this, Hafdar let out a shriek.
“That thing… it can devour my curses!!”
He was horrified. The summoned hands were merely manifestations of the curse, not the curse itself—normally impervious to external interference. Yet even this intangible, metaphysical force had been devoured. Typically, devouring applies only to the tangible…
While Setut’s attack had failed and Hafdar’s curses were consumed, the third pharaoh on the battlefield—Taharka—launched his own assault.
Taharka commanded his revived ancient heroes, Aedandevin and Bartus, to launch a coordinated strike. While Setut and Hafdar suppressed Unina, Bartus channeled power into the earth and forged a new warhammer from molten minerals and rock. Aedandevin summoned a storm to propel Bartus high into the air, then launched him in a direct divebomb toward Unina, shielding him from blood rain with a wind barrier all the while.
Gripping his molten, lava-glowing hammer, Bartus plummeted toward Unina. But at that moment, she had just finished devouring Hafdar’s curse. She turned her eyeless face skyward, and merely “glared” at Bartus.
With that “glance,” Bartus froze, then instantly contorted in agony. His veins bulged, his body swelled, and with a sickening pop , he exploded into a cloud of blood mist. The newly forged hammer vanished, leaving behind only a drifting soul flame.
After reducing Bartus to mist, Unina turned her “gaze” upon Aedandevin, and the same fate befell him—his dark body swelled and burst into blood mist, dying in pain.
“What…” gasped Taharka, stunned by the instant annihilation of his revived warriors.
At that moment, Unina finally spoke again.
“In the face of Mother’s might, no other Chalice may stand against me…”
With those words, she turned her “gaze” upon Taharka himself. As her attention landed on him, the mummy’s body began to tremble uncontrollably.
“Urgh… aaah! This is…”
His desiccated, skeletal hand began to crack open, and from within the fissures… tiny sprouts of flesh began to grow.
“Spirituality… is rioting!”
As though enduring some immense agony, Taharka’s figure trembled as he spoke in a hoarse voice. From the other side, Shepsuna, who was still maintaining the illusory tomb, couldn’t help but speak up upon seeing this scene.
“This is… spiritual dominance… No good—has that thing’s mastery over divinity already reached this level?”
Shepsuna’s tone was extremely grave. This world is built upon spirituality, and above and foundational to spirituality is divinity. Divinity forms the very structure of the world; spirituality is but a derivative from that framework. Thus, divinity supersedes spirituality.
The rank of divinity is higher than that of spirituality, and the divinity of a main deity is even higher still. Each pantheon’s main deity possesses the authority to dominate all spiritualities under its domain. Simply put, the Mother of Chalice holds dominion over all Chalice spirituality, regardless of whether the source is friend or foe.
Taharka’s own spirituality was primarily aligned with Silence, supplemented by Chalice. The ancient heroes he revived were instilled with Chalice-aligned power—though not dominant, it remained a crucial component. Previously, Unina had exploited this very alignment through the divine authority of the Mother of Chalice to directly incite the Chalice within the ancient heroes into rebellion, causing them to disintegrate from within. Without any effort, she had slain two ancient warriors instantly.
Now, Unina was continuing this spiritual assault—forcing the Chalice within Taharka’s body into rampage, gravely wounding him from the inside.
“Hurry! Purge all Chalice from your body right now—otherwise you’ll be in danger!”
“N-No… I… I can’t control it anymore…”
Seeing Taharka in visible agony, Shepsuna shouted urgently. But Taharka had clearly lost the ability to suppress the rampaging spirituality inside him. At that moment, Hafdar also spoke up.
“Come, Taharka. Let me end your pain… forever. Do not resist…”
As he said this, Hafdar prepared to redirect his power to curse-kill Taharka—to annihilate both his soul and spirituality completely. But just as Hafdar was about to act, Taharka could no longer endure and opened his mouth wide, spraying a massive cloud of blood mist from the decayed remnants of his body.
The moment this blood mist emerged, it morphed into countless grotesque forms that surged toward Setut. Setut, who was maintaining control of the sky, had no choice but to split his attention to freeze the oncoming mist.
But this distraction caused him to lose control of the last sliver of sky above their stronghold. Seizing the opportunity, Unina strengthened her influence and swiftly seized back full control of the skies above the pharaoh’s position.
“Damn…”
As Setut uttered this in alarm, the dark clouds above suddenly released a torrential blood rain. With this overwhelming downpour, the illusory mausoleum that Shepsuna had maintained began to change.
Corrupted by the blood rain, threads of blood spread rapidly through the mausoleum. Clumps of flesh sprouted, transforming the structure from ethereal to physical. What was once a solemn, ancient, spiritual edifice now became a grotesque flesh cathedral, riddled with deformed organs and limbs.
With the mausoleum corrupted, the pharaohs’ real-time battle capabilities plummeted. Setut attempted to freeze the falling blood rain to rescue the situation, but now weakened, he found himself unable to stop even that. The blood rain fell upon them without mercy.
“Disgusting filth!”
As the rain splattered onto his body, Hafdar cried out in disgust, frantically trying to remove the vile substance. But with their diminished strength, cleansing the sticky blood threads left by the rain proved extremely difficult. No matter how hard Hafdar tried, he couldn’t rid himself of the viscous tendrils clinging to him.
With these blood-grown tumors latching onto them, the undead pharaohs found their movements ever more restricted. Combined with the loss of their mausoleum’s power, their situation grew increasingly dire.
“It’s over…”
Watching the scene unfold from afar, Unina whispered softly. As soon as her voice fell, thick, spiked tentacles suddenly erupted from the blood-flesh ground below, piercing straight into the bodies of the pharaohs. Weakened to their limit, the pharaohs were unable to resist.
“Let me… ‘resurrect’ you all, you dead things…”
Unina continued, channeling the corrupting Chalice power through the tentacles and into the pharaohs. Their souls, overwhelmed and wracked with agony, began to corrode—rapidly being consumed.
“Nnngh… stop…”
“You filthy wretch… you won’t defile my soul… ngh—!”
“This is bad…”
Pierced and corrupted by the tentacles, the pharaohs writhed in pain. But in their current frail state, no amount of struggling could break Unina’s grasp. As their souls withered, their consciousness began to fade.
At that moment, of the four undead pharaohs, three had already fallen into despair. Only the veiled Shepsuna, even as the tentacles wrapped around and corrupted her, still gazed up at the blackened sky. She strained to remain conscious, as if waiting for something… watching for something.
Amid agony and delirium, in the midst of spiritual corrosion, Shepsuna peered through the blood rain toward the distant sky and whispered faintly—
“…It’s here…”
BOOM!!!
As her words fell, a deafening peal of thunder roared through the heavens. A blinding bolt of heavenly lightning tore through the black clouds, splitting the sky as if with claws of divine fury. White radiance exploded across the land, turning this blood-drenched, foul world into a scene as bright as daylight.
“What…”
Looking up at the sky split by thunder, Unina muttered, her tone shifting. With that divine bolt, she was startled to realize that her control over the sky had once again vanished. The torrential blood rain began to slowly cease.
Some force was contesting her dominion of the skies—and that force was an Elementalist. An Elementalist wielding the power of lightning!
Realizing that a new enemy had entered the battlefield, Unina immediately channeled her senses through the regenerating flesh of the land, trying to detect any new intruders—but her search returned nothing.
Where?! Where was this new enemy hiding?
Just as Unina braced herself to confront this mysterious foe, the environment around her began to change drastically once more.
The air, once saturated with the stench of rot and blood, suddenly filled with countless faint blue lines of light. These threads of light increased rapidly, spreading into every corner of the corrupted terrain, extending toward unseen distances.
The fine glowing lines ran straight and sharp, intersecting and interweaving—gradually outlining countless shapes. These shapes slowly solidified from illusion into reality, manifesting directly in the air. And those manifested forms were unmistakably—buildings.
City walls, houses, towers, roads, palaces, sacrificial grounds… one structure after another, one location after another, emerged into space as if being 3D printed. A vast, ancient-style, uninhabited city rose out of the ground, replacing and entirely covering the blood-flesh terrain that had previously existed—leaving not a trace behind. Witnessing this, Unina couldn’t help but be startled. The pharaohs, who had previously fallen into despair, were even more stunned.
“This is…”
“The Avenue of Knowledge… why is it appearing here?”
“It’s the Sacred Land—the Sacred Land is overwriting reality… Heopolis has returned!”
Hearing her companions’ astonished voices, Shepsuna looked at the familiar city rising before her and declared aloud,
“That’s right. This city that replaced the blood-flesh ground is Heopolis—the Sacred Land of the First Dynasty!”
At this moment, the world of pseudo-history was overwriting the real world! The false history was now replacing true history! The city that had vanished into the depths of the past seven thousand years ago was now returning to its rightful moment in time!
This boundless, massive city emerged within mere seconds. The blood-flesh earth Unina had painstakingly spread—along with the true historical setting—was completely overwritten by the false historical world. All of it vanished at once. Without the support of the blood-flesh ground, the tentacles binding the pharaohs immediately lost strength and collapsed. The four pharaohs, whose souls had been gravely wounded, slumped to the ground. Stunned and overwhelmed, they began to take in the familiar scenery etched deep in their memories.
“This… this really is Heopolis!”
“This is indeed the Sacred Land! Heopolis, which should’ve remained within history, has now appeared here… Which means… Viagetta!”
Amidst their shock, the pharaohs suddenly sensed a familiar aura. All of them turned their heads in unison toward its source—and saw in the distance, a massive pyramid, hundreds of meters tall!
Atop that pyramid, at the city’s highest point—on a giant slab of Benben stone over 700 meters high—a small figure hovered in the air. She wore a luxurious robe adorned with countless intricate jewels and ornaments. Mysterious scroll-like strips printed with arcane script fluttered from her body. Her face was concealed by a white mask of unknown material, and she wore an enormous, exquisitely crafted crown.
Her appearance bore a striking resemblance to the pharaohs' own style of dress, yet was far more refined, regal, and immaculate. Her robe swayed ceaselessly in the wind, and the gaze behind the mask looked down upon the world in solemn silence. This outfit was unmistakably that of the city's former sovereign—the titleholder of Heaven-Anointed Sage.
“So it’s you… the dead ones’ reinforcements…” murmured Unina, still completely blood-red in appearance. She could feel it now—her true target for this battle was right there! That ancient inheritance from seven thousand years ago… lay in that place!
Having identified her final objective, Unina immediately began her seizure attempt. From beneath her feet, blood threads and flesh masses began spreading rapidly, devouring the tiles and structures of the city and expanding at high speed. The previously erased blood-flesh terrain was once again being reconstructed under Unina’s power, launching a renewed assault upon this ancient domain.
However, her blood-flesh ground hadn’t spread far before something strange occurred: once it extended too far from Unina, its expansion rate sharply declined. It not only failed to spread further—it began retracting. The buildings that had been eroded into flesh quickly reverted to their original forms, returning the city to its prior state.
The pseudo-history world’s overwrite of reality was continuous… When any deviation from the intended historical state occurred, it was instantly corrected. In the version of Heopolis recorded in pseudo-history, there was no blood-flesh terrain—therefore, the overwritten real world could not contain it either. For now, Unina’s expansion had been restrained!
“A sanctified land, is it…”
Seeing that her blood-flesh terrain could not spread, Unina fell silent momentarily, then changed tactics. Behind her, a pair of enormous flesh wings sprouted. Flapping her wings, Unina soared into the air, speeding directly toward the top of the distant pyramid. Her velocity was astonishing.
In a flash of crimson, Unina arrived at the front of the great pyramid. She extended one arm, transforming it into a massive clawed hand, and lashed out viciously toward the Heaven-Anointed Sage at the pyramid’s summit. The strike was infused with overwhelming power and incredible, near-invisible speed.
Unina’s claw came crashing down toward the Heaven-Anointed Sage—but just as it was about to hit, the Sage’s body suddenly turned into a bolt of lightning, flickering briefly before vanishing. Unina’s claw struck the pyramid instead.
BOOM!!!
With a deafening blast, a full third of the towering 700-meter-tall pyramid was instantly blown apart. Cracks split across the pyramid, radiating in all directions, carving immense fissures throughout the city.
She missed!
Seeing the result, Unina was stunned. But before she could react, a streak of lightning flashed behind her—and in that moment, the Heaven-Anointed Sage reappeared.
With a wave of her hand, lightning burst from her fingertips, enveloping Unina in a blinding radiance. Every inch of Unina’s skin was scorched into charcoal by the high-voltage currents.
Just then, numerous wolf jaws lined with sharp fangs abruptly opened across Unina’s body. These mouths devoured the surrounding lightning in a single gulp. Simultaneously, Unina’s wounds began healing rapidly, and several wolf heads extended from her back, lunging to bite the Sage. Yet the Heaven-Anointed Sage once again transformed into lightning and evaded the strike, reappearing on Unina’s other side. At this moment, a thin metal sheet floated in her hand.
With a whoosh , the Heaven-Anointed Sage fired the metal shard in her hand, blazing with orange incandescence. It struck Unina’s head dead-on, blasting it apart. Yet Unina, seemingly unfazed by having lost most of her skull, extended her hand and summoned countless blood droplets around the Sage, instantly trapping her in a massive orb of bloodwater.
However, before the blood sphere could fully form, the Sage once again turned into a flash of lightning and vanished, reappearing elsewhere in a teleportation-like burst, and immediately launched another attack on Unina.
Thus, the battle between the Heaven-Anointed Sage and Unina fell into a temporary stalemate. With her overwhelming regeneration and devouring abilities, Unina was practically undefeatable. Meanwhile, the Sage’s lightning-speed movements rendered her immune to all of Unina’s attacks. For the time being, they were evenly matched.
Down below in the city, the weakened undead pharaohs silently watched the spectacle unfolding in the sky.
“Haah… haah… is that… Viagetta?”
“I… I don’t know. The power feels familiar, but that fighting style… something feels off…”
Seated on the ground, Setut and Taharka murmured to each other while watching the battle. Meanwhile, Hafdar turned to face Shepsuna, speaking bluntly.
“Hey! Shepsuna! That figure in the sky… is that Viag—huh?”
Just as Hafdar looked toward Shepsuna, he suddenly froze. He stared in her direction, his voice full of surprise.
“Shepsuna… you…”
Unlike the other three pharaohs, Shepsuna no longer appeared weak. She stood tall, eyes fixed on the battle in the sky, and an aura radiated from her body—an aura an undead should not possess.
“…My deepest thanks.”
Still gazing upward, Shepsuna spoke softly. In a strangely sacred atmosphere, she reached up and removed her veil—and what appeared underneath was not the mummified face of an undead, but that of a dignified, beautiful human woman, graceful and elegant.
“This face from history… how nostalgic, wouldn’t you say, Hafdar?”
She glanced at her reflection in a handheld mirror, then smiled gently at Hafdar.
Having returned to her human form from seven thousand years ago, Shepsuna once again turned her gaze to the red figure in the heavens and slowly closed her eyes.
And then, on her forehead, a faint golden Eye of Revelation gradually opened—gazing at the heavens, at that profane crimson. Through that crimson veil, she saw something deeper—something far more profound.
“I see it now… the milk of the God of Chalice… dripping endlessly upon its kin. Under this nourishment, its followers shall never taste defeat…
“However… the supply of this divine milk… it is not entirely stable. The God of Chalice… is obstructed—by some barrier that lies between it, its child, and this world. It is struggling through countless constraints, just to deliver its sustenance…”
Seeing these truths hidden behind the battlefield, Shepsuna couldn’t help but murmur to herself.
…
Elsewhere in the sky above the Sacred Land, the battle between Unina and the Heaven-Anointed Sage raged on. In her attempt to capture the Sage, Unina had conjured countless massive blood serpents in the air—roiling and thrashing at high speeds, scattering blood mist and altering the atmosphere in a hunt for her target.
But the Heaven-Anointed Sage, able to transform into lightning, moved and reacted with utterly absurd speed. No matter what Unina tried, she could not catch her. Seeing this, Unina finally barked out.
“Is running all you know how to do, Priest of Heaven’s Arbiter?!”
“Weren’t you the one who once ran to escape the Radiance Pope’s purge? The greatest traitor of the Radiance Redemption Faction… one of the former Seven Living Saints of Holy Mount… once called Amanda, now Unina Dottina...”
As lightning flashed around her, the Heaven-Anointed Sage taunted. Unina paused for a moment—then sneered in response.
“Heh… I didn’t expect a relic that’s been hiding for thousands of years to even know what the Radiance Church is. So, who told you I used to be one of them? Ivy? Was it you who saved her—and that little nun too?”
“In times like these, no one needs to say a word. Isn’t it obvious? Just look at what you’re wearing right now.”
At that moment, the Sage’s flickering form paused. She pointed straight at Unina and spoke. Hearing this, Unina hesitated slightly. It seemed… she truly felt something different about her body.
She instinctively raised a hand—and instead of a blood-slick, crimson monstrosity, she saw a normal, pale human hand. Even her wrist was clad in a sleeve—a red sleeve.
Unina froze.
She immediately summoned a curtain of water before her and looked into its reflection. What she saw in the watery mirror was an entirely unexpected appearance.
What stared back at her was not the crimson horror of the Apostle of the Mother of Chalice, but the image of a normal human woman—mature and gentle-faced, with softly curled chestnut hair, and upon her shoulders, a robe: a grand red cardinal’s robe, ornate and majestic.
This… this was the very image of Unina when she had served as a cardinal of the Church.
“This… what is this…”
“This is… the you from over four hundred years ago, the one preserved in the annals of history,” said Dorothy, dressed in the regalia of the Heaven-Anointed Sage, gazing at the stunned Unina.