Under the influence of such a large concentration of the God’s Stone of Retaliation, the inside of the mountains could be regarded as being a magic free area. The God’s Stone of Retaliation that were sold by the Church had all been mined from this place.
The space within the cave was large enough to accommodate five or six of Hermes’ basilicas, and down here they had indeed built an exact replica of the cathedral that was above ground, called the Pantheon. But the temple looked much older than the one that was on the top of the mountain. From high up in the air, Mayne could see a black iron gate in the mountain wall behind the temple. It led to the entrance standing at the foot of Hermes connecting it with the Old Holy City. So in a sense, this ancient building could be called the actual core of the Church, it has already existed long before the New Holy City had been established.
The cage took a quarter-hour to reach the ground. When Mayne could finally walk out of the cage, he straightened his robes and followed the messenger to the temple.
The conversion ceremony would be held in a hall of the temple.
Stepping into the hall, the light surrounding the Archbishop was no longer a cold blue-lavender but was instead an orange that was created by thousands of burning candles. Overhead there hung a three-tiered tower-like chandelier, and candle holders had been placed all around the hall. Looking at them through devote eyes they seemed like countless shaking stars. Thanks to all of the flames, the chilliness had been completely dispersed from the cave.
The man standing in the middle of the two conversion tables was the Supreme Pontiff of the Church, Pope O’Brien. He wore an eye-catching red-gold robe with gold-colored gemstones on his head and at the moment was carefully checking the conversion equipment, and finishing the last bit of preparations for the ceremony.
“Your Holiness,” standing before O’Brian, Mayne immediately kneeled down in worship and kissing the pope’s fingers.
“Get up, son.” the pope slowly responded with a hoarse voice. “Besides the guards, no one else is here, there is no need for elaborate rituals.”
“Right,” Mayne stood up, but still couldn’t stop himself from becoming shocked. Compared with last time, the Supreme Pontiff now appeared to be much older, he had gotten deep wrinkles all over his face, and his skin now seemed to be an unhealthy shade of white, both loose and dull. Lastly, a lot of dense and eye-catching brown spots had appeared all over his body. Seeing the pope in such condition, the Archbishop’s eyes immediately became hot, “You’re… suffering.”
“This is a trace of time,” O’Brien muttered, “no one can fight against time, my life is running low, I’m afraid that I will never see the day when humans can defeat the devil. But, in this way I also don’t have to face the pain of the unknown anymore. Be that as it might, you have to keep on fighting until you’ve finally defeat the enemy or you’ve been defeated by them.”
If we fail again, we will ultimately perish, Mayne nodded, “I will do my duty until even the very last minute.”
“Very well,” the old man smiled in satisfaction. “You’ve been doing very well lately, you’ve even increased the Army of Judges by more than thousand soldiers. Today we have sixty-two applications for the conversion, which can be regarded as the biggest number within recent years.”
“Can you tell me how many members of the God’s Punishment Army we will need to overthrow the Devils?” Mayne asked, and after hesitating for a moment, he continued. “All the information I know about the Devils comes from the Holy Book. But the record in the book aren’t complete, within them, there isn’t any information about their origin, quantity or combat style recorded. I know that to know these secret I will have to wait until I become the next Pope, but…”
“You are too anxious, you have to show more patience,” O’Brian reminded him, “and it won’t be long before you can take over the title of Supreme Pontiff, becoming the next Pope. You will find all the answers to your questions in a secret library at the top of the Pantheon. For now, I can only tell you this, the more there are, the better it will be.” He sighed.
“Also, I’m not really looking forward to you presiding over the conversion ceremony, but since you’re already here, this session of the conversion, you will try to host it while I will be looking at it from the side. For later, this way you can also accumulate some… Keke… experience.”
Mayne promptly patted the Pope’s back and when his breathing had become slightly smoother, he then bowed and said: “As Your Holiness commands.”
Chapter 179 Conversion Ritual
To become the next Pope, it was necessary to grasp all knowledge about the God’s Punishment Army’s Conversion Ceremony. A year ago, after O’Brian had declared that Mayne would be the one to become his successor, he had given him books about the ceremony to read. Only when he had obtained all the knowledge within would he have the qualifications to succeed him.
Because of this, the contents of the book have long since already been memorized.
To create a new soldier for the God’s Punishment Army, it was necessary to sacrifice a witch’s life. A mixture was made out of her blood and out of the God’s Punishment Stones, which was then injected into a warrior of the Army of Judges. During the centuries the pattern of the ceremony had been improved many times, but the essence of it has never changed — while the number of witches decided the upper limit of the possible number of new member for the God’s Punishment Army, it was the devotion and will of the Judges which decided its rate of success.
After reading this book, he finally came to understand why the Church would accommodate so many young women every year. There was no outward sign to indicated that they would turn into a witch, before the moment they started to gather their magic, they were completely the same as any other human. But once they began to converge into their magic power, their body, organs, and blood would all be changed. So, in addition to expanding the scale of the breeding, there was no other way they could raise the number of witches.
This was also the reason why he had approved of Heather’s way of speaking — everything they had ever done was totally evil, the hands of the people within the higher ranks of the Church were all soaked in blood. They had killed more witches than any executioner. But in order to defeat the Devil, to avoid the destruction of humanity, they had no choice but to do so.
Only the victorious would be qualified to obtain God’s favor.
…
There were two Judges placed on the conversion table, and Mayne knew both of them, namely it was Dylan from the first battalion and also Tucker Thor, a Holy City guard, who was still a Presiding Judge.
Even though both of them were smiling and trying to display their faith, but because of their tensed muscles and clenched fist, the Archbishop could still see just how nervous they truly were. So he tried to calm them by stepping up to them and patting their shoulders, “Relax, I believe both of you will succeed.”
“Your Excellency, as long as we endure the pain, will we make it?” Dylan couldn’t prevent himself from asking.
“That’s right, you only have to hold on,” Mayne laughed. “Your name is Dylan, right?”
“You remembered my name,” he became totally excited.
“Of course, you are a member of the First Battalion, which had participated in the war to defend Hermes last year. The captain of your unit is… Alica, am I right?”
“Yes,” Dylan nodded over and over, “During the battle, our unit suffered heavy casualties, half of my comrades died under the claws of the demonic beasts. I thought that if I could get the ability to kill those mixed species like I’d seen the God’s Punishment Army do, Your Excellency, I would also want to become a member of the God’s Punishment Army!”