Grey’s eyes suddenly regained their focus.
"That’s it!"
He spoke aloud, his gaze sharpening as he began to connect some dots. He realized now why the Goddess of the Empire was such a fucking raging cunt.
It was funny he was so sure about all of that, especially when he hadn’t heard anything but a story from her own daughter that actually painted said Goddess in a pretty "helpless" and "kind" light.
But Grey had always trusted his intuition. In an odd way, his greatest strength was always his greatest weakness as well.
He was someone who knew that the world around him was more complicated than it seemed, but he always just flew about with his heart on his sleeve anyway.
And so long as he wasn’t in an actual complicated situation, he could figure out a lot of things just by going with the first idea that popped into his head and riding with it.
In this case, Grey was almost 100% certain that the Goddess of the Empire, or really the Empress cosplaying as a Goddess, was someone who had backstabbed the Trolley Clan and the Giyoto Empire on purpose for her own selfish goals.
What Grey hadn’t known was what that goal was.
After all, the Giyoto Empire was a nice buffer between the Holy Empire and the Dark Kin. Only an idiot would allow their shield to die just for some minor gains.
So that meant that the gains should have been substantial.
But that was what confused Grey. What gains could be so great that it would be worth putting your empire directly in the line of fire?
Bishop Calixan was just a symptom of the problem. He probably wasn’t the only Dark Kin hiding around in the empire already.
And here was another problem. They were a lot deeper into the Holy Empire’s territory right now, but you had a graveyard of Old Ones ready to collapse one of your mid-tier cities.
Compared to Zone 234, this city was a lot more powerful, and there were only a few dozen of them in the whole Empire. You couldn’t just afford to lose them just because.
So was it really worthwhile to take down the Giyoto Empire if your own Empire would follow soon afterward?
That didn’t really make much sense at all.
That was when Grey recalled something.
—
Name: Altar of the Savages
Rarity: Mythic
Accepted Type: N/A
Rejected Type: N/A
Description: An altar of forgetfulness and erasure, but also one of hope and revenge.
Abilities: At the Sacrifice of a Blessed Item, accumulate Blessed Aura to form a Blessing Carapace, allowing perfect resistance against the Fog of Chaos and immunity to Holy Type Abilities.
—
He had seen that altar in Giyoto’s underground catacomb hideout. Originally, he had been highly focused on the "resistance against the Fog of Chaos" part, so much so that he had completely ignored the latter part.
"Immunity to Holy Type Abilities".
What if the real reason Giyoto was building up that armor wasn’t just for the sake of dealing with the Dark Kin and their Fog of Chaos control, but to strike down against the Holy Empire as well?
Grey had grasped this within the first few seconds of getting lost in the rhythm and resonance of the crown. What he realized next was something he never could have thought to be true, but should have been obvious to him by the second pair of pimp gloves he got his hands on.
When he activated the Bringer of Light gloves, it had resonated with his Holy Energy, even adding it to its fuel and strengthening it.
But the description of the gloves had said that they were a Lineage from a member of the Old Ones, a member whose path had mutated.
Even if the path had mutated, how could there be so much overlap between those who could control the Fog of Chaos and Holy Energy? Weren’t they direct, polar opposites of one another?
But then Grey recalled something else.
"Altar of the Savages". That was what Giyoto’s Mythic treasure was called.
What was the first sign of hatred for the Savage Races that Grey had seen? Was it not from so-called Holy Knight Terran?
Grey had seen hatred of the Savage Races from Holy Knights since then, but nothing on the level of what he had seen from Terran. Terran seemed to go out of his way to terrorize descendants of the Savage Races who were just trying to live out their lives.
The moment he got the slightest inkling of an opportunity from any one of them, he killed first and then asked questions later...
No, that was giving him too much credit. He didn’t even bother to ask questions in the first place.
And Terran... wasn’t he from one of the Duke Clans that the Empress had backed during the destruction of the Trolley Clan?
The final piece of the puzzle was the crown itself. Grey could finally see it clearly now, the resonance of two halves, a war between two sides, and yet two sides of the same coin.
The dividing line between Dark Kin and Holy wasn’t as great as they seemed to want to make it seem. In fact, the lines were so blurred that in a lot of ways, you could have said they were one and the same.
The rhythm of the Holy Knights and Paladins were incomplete. Grey knew that all too well. After all, the only reason his own rhythm had drums was because of the Goblins, a Race that the Holy Knights seemed to hate for some reason.
Grey was certain at this moment even without having someone to confirm it for him. He just couldn’t have been more certain.
The Goddess of the Holy Empire was part of this Cult.
Grey grinned ear to ear. "Fuck I’m going to enjoy tearing her a new one."
He finally snapped awake and his senses paid some attention to the world around him.
He blinked, his gaze landing on the arms.