Chapter 1073 The Bishop's Plan 1
An hour before the confrontation, in the Mainland.
Jonah had been busy carrying reports and updates to the various commanders of the Army gathered to raid Angaria. On the way, he often found himself fondly thinking of all the threats leveled at him by the eunuch in the infirmary who was doing everything he could to rid himself of that status.
The best healers available were tending to him, but the damage was extensive. Everyone had asked how he had allowed Jonah to get inside his defenses, and the answer had been met by much ridicule. Most agreed that only he, himself was to blame if he had been going about doing such shameful things. After all, the Church did have a considerable number of proud and powerful people who looked down on such acts, for the most part.
That had been the cherry on top of the pie for Jonah, but right now, he knew that he was only thinking of it because he wanted to distract himself from the scary thoughts that threatened to come to the fore of his mind if there wasn't something else to occupy it.
After that fateful day when he had seen the Bishop in such a vulnerable state, he had spent hours in continuous torture, so much so that even the healers whom she called to get him back to normal had urged her to stop or hold back, lest she shatter his consciousness and kill him forever.
She had finally relented after a while, just when Jonah had started to believe that he would die soon.
Thankfully, that had been followed by a period of blissful rest where he had been allowed to stay by himself and use the resources of the Church to heal his consciousness as much as he could.
It was after coming out from this that he had found out the news about the drastic measures taken by the Bishop: she had sent an expeditionary force using her very own reserves.
Everyone had been struck by surprise by this move, and when someone from the accounts department had leaked the fact that she had cleaned out all of her savings, the entire Church had begun to gossip about her decisiveness, or as most called her, her foolhardiness.
As someone at such a high level, she drew a considerable allowance, all of which Bishops tended to save as they could let it accumulate and use it later for precious objects that might help them breakthrough if they ever hit a wall in their training.
No one knew why she was going to such lengths… Except Jonah.
He could not tell anyone about the communiqué that he had chanced to see, so he kept his thoughts to himself. It was obvious that she had analyzed the situation and seen that all of her savings would be taken away by that creep anyway, so it was better if she spent them now.
She was basically going all out, but because he did not know the extent of how much she was spending, he had not been able to accurately judge the threat to Angaria that this presented.
However, he did know one thing: he, too, had studied the standard procedures of raiding a continent, so he knew that if this force succeeded, there would be a base that could repeatedly hammer Angaria until it fell.
It had to be stopped at all costs, so Jonah was hoping that his disciple would rise to the task.
The Army had been allotted a large gathering ground, of sorts, where all of those who would be setting out were ordered to stay and live together, so that they could learn to work and fight together better.
This gathering ground was so large that it could have fit the entire city of Lanthanor inside it. It was located in the feet of the giant statue of the Saint, which was made up of multiple such places.
It was basically just a large, empty room, but in the middle, there was a smaller area of residence in which only the commanding officers who answered to the Bishop gathered.
It was in this direction that Jonah kept shooting glances while he went about his tasks, with the hope of finding out updates regarding what was going on with the expeditionary force.
He knew the allotted time at which they were supposed to finish setting up the base, so the closer they got to it, the more anxiety he felt.
At one point, when they were just three minutes away, he even stopped everything he was doing and stood a few meters away from the building, hoping that he could see something, anything that might indicate how it was going.
And that… Was how the Bishop found him.
The building was in the perfect shape of a cube, so no doors could be seen. Hence, when she opened one, Jonah did not have enough time to move.
The moment she laid eyes on him, the same fury that she had tried to quench by stripping his skin during those hours of agony that still plagued him whenever he was asleep appeared again, but shoving it aside, she pointed a finger at him and beckoned towards her.
By this point, Jonah was pretty much apathetic of anything they could throw at him, so he simply walked towards her with his thoughts still on his home.
This attitude changed, though, when she spoke.
\"Come in. I said that you would be there to watch when your home burns, right? Well, this is the first step to that, so you should be in here.\"
Her confidence was worrying, but more than that, he felt content as he would at least be in the loop.
He had to hide that, though, unless he invited even more pain.
So, putting on a scared expression, he bit his lip as if he was terrified of even stepping inside.
With a humph, she cast a spell that pushed him in, and as he tumbled to the floor inside, he expected to hear mockery from the rest of the commanders.
However, when no sound came to his ears, he quickly got up to see that they were all busy staring at an image in the center of the cube.
And seeing it… Jonah lost his breath and began to stammer.
\"H-how…\"