Hearing this, Wimbledon closed his eyes in pain, trying to shut out the world. After a long time, he finally whispered, “Why do you do all this? You took advantage of the prayer day, brought me into the compartment to pray in isolation, there you stripped me of my clothes… and also took my God’s Stone of Retaliation. Then you used the ability of a witch to replace me with another person. So with this replacement, you could have obviously slowly taken over the country, let the Church gain control of every town. So why did you need to give out the order for the Battle of the Throne?! I, I cannot… Keke”, because he got more and more enraged, he began to cough severely, shaking throughout his whole body.
“We just couldn’t issue the command which would lead to massacring your children one after another!” Mayne continued his verbal attack to finish off the former King. “Maybe you wouldn’t have worked against us, but your children mostly wouldn’t act the way you want them to. They would grow up, develop, and have their own thoughts. Just like you see from your third daughter, Garcia. She already started her project to take over the Port of Clearwater five years ago, so even without the Battle of the Throne, at the point when you would naturally die, do you think she would just stand at the side and look how Gerald would ascend the throne? But the most important reason for us to act, was that we don’t have the time to wait for the natural cause to get rid of you, you should have already noted that the power of the witch isn’t permanent.”
“Damn you, what would the Church get from the fight between my children? The Church will also sink into a sea of fire, many of their believers will get killed during the war, and the kingdom will become a total mess…” talking until here, Wimbledon suddenly got a distracted look, not believing his upcoming thought “Do you want to —” another burst of severe coughs interrupted the king’s speech once more. When he was finally able to speak again, his voice became as thin as a gossamer, as if that array of coughing had consumed all his remaining energy, “You… want to destroy the royal family!”
“Exactly, but it would be more accurately to speak about the royal power.” Mayne couldn’t help himself from praising the king within his heart for his keen judgment.Even after staying for six months in the completely dark dungeon, by not losing his consciousness he could already be regarded as strong willed, but he has even managed to keep his intelligence. The only other people who would be able to do this can be counted on one hand,
“The monarchy will always be a hinderance to the development of the Church, no matter how weak it becomes, it will always rise again just like weed. So only by completely eradicating it, will the Church be able to ‘genuinely’ control the Kingdom.”
“…” suddenly Wimbledon looked a lot more aged, previously only his outer appearance seemed to be old, but now it seemed that his spirit had left him and his eyes dimmed.
“The Kingdom of Graycastle is the kingdom with the largest territory in the mainland, it has also the largest number of soldiers, so in the case of a full-frontal war, my church can only be at a disadvantage. We had already planned all this for a long time now. During a civil war, your kingdom will lose a lot of soldiers and mercenaries, after waiting for only two to three years, our God’s Punishment Army will be able to easily take over the whole territory of your Kingdom. But you don’t need to be sad, your kingdom isn’t the only one we are subjugating. The other three kingdoms are all facing the same situation. Soon the mainland will no longer have the four kingdoms. Instead of the “Wolfsheart Kingdom“, the “Kingdom of Eternal Winter”, “Kingdom of Dawn” and the “Kingdom of Graycastle“, there will be only one regime, “the Church”, ruling over all the countries.”
Wimbledon turned completely silent, the man who had won the throne from his brother by force of arms was now like a man who had lost his life, even for Mayne it was hard to bare, but in his mind, he hadn’t the slightest thought of regret. The Church had also invested a lot into this plan — a large number of outstanding believers had been willingly used as pawns, regardless of the danger to themselves.
For example, the man who had played Wimbledon III was a devoted member of the Judges. He was a strong believer and absolutely loyal to the Church, and would have originally received the transformation ceremony, becoming a member of the God’s Punishment Army. However, in order to complete the mission, he got his appearance changed by a witch into that of you. So when he died in the castle he didn’t receive any honor. Before the mission, he could have carved his name on top of the Church’s monument on Hermes, but now the Church could only bury his name forever.
When Mayne came to the conclusion that Wimbledon wouldn’t speak any further, he took a small porcelain bottle out of a pocket and gave it to him to drink.
When Wimbledon had collected himself and drank the potion, he spoke ist final words, “Curse…”
“Yes?” asked Mayne, waiting for the King to continue.
“I curse you… I’ll be waiting for you in the depths of hell.” Wimbledon’s voice grew fainter with every word, in the end, Mayne had even to concentrate if he wanted to understand what was said.
“It’s a pity that there is no hell in this world. Even if there is one, it isn’t a place where I belong to. Everything we are doing is for the continuing of humanity. Only by unifying the four Kingdoms, are we able to get enough power to confront the true enemy, or else… ” The Archbishop stopped his speech when he saw that Wimbledon’s hand had lost all of its strength and had fallen to the ground, his head twisted to one side, and his chest stopped to move.
This was the end of a king, but it’s our beginning, he thought.
Mayne took up the bottle and put it back into his pocket. Then he opened the door and stepped into the quiet corridor, which gave the feeling like there had never been any cries. He only explained to the member of the Judges how to deal with the aftermath, and then he left the castle without looking back even once.
Chapter 86 The Choice of the Witches
Leaves didn’t know how long she could still hold on. Her return to the camp in the Impassable Mountain Range from the wildland took her nearly half a month. In order to avoid detection by demonic beasts, she carefully hid inside the thick and solid trunk of a tree to confirm that there were no demonic beast activity within the vicinity before running to the next place to hide. Despite her worry of the slow marching speed, she had no other choice. Once she was detected by demonic beasts, she wouldn’t be able to survive alone.
More than a dozen sisters had fallen under the attack of the Devils, and the sisters who survived weren’t good at fighting. During the time when Ironhand jumped into the crowd and started his massacre, they had scattered in all directions, but in the end, there were only a few who were still alive and able to come back to the camp. Thinking of all the death, the pain within Leaves’ heart didn’t stop.
The action of having to always hide herself during the escape consumed a large amount of magic power, thus she was only able to cover a distance of ten miles daily. In particular, she always had to save enough power to survive the night. Since all of the rations she had at hand were eaten, she also had to look for wild fruits to sate her constant hunger. In addition, the heat spell within her Witches Cooperation Association emblem had also run out of power, so she could only use bark to wrap tightly around herself. Every time she thought about the deaths of the young witches, who weren’t even allowed to mature and who she had promised to protect, she couldn’t stop her tears from falling.
And as if all of this wasn’t enough, during one night, when she was wrapped in her tree trunk she was constantly attacked by the demon’s bite — after the constant attack of mental and physical blows, she had completely forgotten about this. Suddenly, she felt as if her chest was torn open, and the pain quickly spread throughout her whole body. The pain attacked her so suddenly that she almost instantly lost her consciousness. She was only able to fight back when she bit her tongue tasted the blood flowing in her mouth. Under the constant torture, Leaves thought of giving up several times, but the thought of the possibility that more than twenty fleeing sisters, with serious injuries which only she was able to heal, were waiting in the camp for her return gave her the power to fight against the bite.