Toyokawa Shoko doesn't want to become a witch

Page 304

The road leading to the cathedral in front of Xiangzi had become a living hell.

He hadn't felt it so strongly from up there, but now that he was there in person, Xiangzi's pupils dilated uncontrollably for a moment.

Swarms of monsters, humans, and man-made monsters piled up into small mountains outside the church, with black blood flowing down the ninety-nine steps like a waterfall or a river.

For no apparent reason, she suddenly remembered the massacre that had occurred in the chapel.

Two scenes overlapped before my eyes...

"Sigh." Xiangzi sighed, his brows furrowing slightly in sympathy.

She would never get used to this sight, no matter how many times she saw it, and she didn't want to. Becoming numb was not a good thing.

"Xiang, Chuhua".

Just then, a familiar figure emerged from the street corner. Mu took off his hood, glanced at the tragic scene on the street, and revealed the same dismayed expression as Xiangzi.

"You are here."

The Tale of the Lost: The Lost Child - Chapter 384 Xiao Gao!

The meeting with Mu was expected, after all, the Holy City was Mu's destination.

Mu's mission was simply to gather as much intelligence as possible about the kingdom before the war began, ideally figuring out the form in which the kingdom possessed the two Holy Grail fragments. But now, the war has suddenly broken out, disrupting everyone's plans. Xiangzi's journey through both the world of anger and the world of lust has yielded virtually nothing.

Meeting again at this time would inevitably be a blow to morale.

Xiangzi went up and hugged Mu, whom he hadn't seen for a month, and couldn't help but sigh in his heart.

"I've only been here a short while and they've already started fighting," Mu whispered in her arms. "I'm sorry I couldn't help Xiang."

"It's not your fault." Xiangzi patted her head. "It's normal for plans to change; no one can control that."

Mu nuzzled Xiangzi's shoulder with her cheek, then gently pushed her away.

"Xiang, are you going to the cathedral? I know a shortcut."

It's no wonder he's only half-body; Xiangzi already knew her destination before she even spoke.

Xiangzi nodded and followed Mu's steps.

The "shortcut" that Mu mentioned wasn't actually a shortcut in the physical sense. According to the design of the Holy City, all the main roads lead to the cathedral, and the widest roads usually lead directly to the cathedral. But this is a special situation. The battles on the main roads are the most intense, and taking the main roads would inevitably lead to being caught up in the battles, which would actually slow you down considerably.

Using the properties of the silk threads, Mu found the path with the least disturbance among all the routes, using the same method he had used before in Mortis's Memory Museum.

Following this route, you can reach the cathedral with minimal fighting.

The three of them navigated through Byzantine-style alleyways and streets, trying to avoid large-scale battles as much as possible.

The sounds of gunfire, screams, and fighting echoed from the neighboring street, never ceasing.

However, Xiangzi always felt that something was not quite right.

Along the way, she saw no refugees anywhere.

not a single one.

There were hardly any people involved in the battle.

puff!

The spiral gun pierced the body of a goblin, piercing through the core rat, and the rats immediately scattered in all directions.

Xiangzi frowned, threw the screw-type pistol on the spot, and summoned another screw-type short pistol.

“We’ve traveled a long way, and the traces of humans have become fewer and fewer, while the number of monsters has increased,” she said. “Now, we can’t see any at all.”

The main force on the battlefield consists of unknown monsters and artificial monster weapons created by the empire.

“Because everyone has already…” Mu said, “become monsters by the church bells.”

Compared to the Empire's fanatical personal propaganda about the Regent, the Kingdom adopted a more extreme form of religious governance, with all residents of the capital city being devout believers.

How did the kingdom treat these devout believers?

The answer is to turn everyone in the Holy City into monsters when they fall from the sky, in order to counter the Empire's blitzkrieg.

"None of them are any good," Xiangzi sighed, pulling the spiral gun out of the body of a small monster.

Black blood gushed out, engulfing the monster, but after the blood stopped flowing, the strange man who should have been inside was nowhere to be seen.

Clearly, the technology the kingdom used to turn people into monsters couldn't even leave behind a human form; it was incomplete, a kind of "residue" that couldn't even be considered a monster.

Xiangzi had already killed his way through such scum.

As they drew closer to the cathedral, battle became increasingly inevitable. Spells, arrows, stones, and bullets rained down. The Imperial soldiers and the artificial monsters had some degree of coordination, but the Kingdom's monsters were so frenzied that they didn't distinguish between friend and foe.

The few kingdom soldiers who were not affected by the bells had to face pressure from both their own side and the enemy, and it was unclear whether the kingdom's self-destructive act could be considered a success.

Regardless of whether it succeeds or not, it's a good thing for Xiangzi.

Although they had to enter the vast battlefield, the indiscriminate monsters made it incredibly easy to infiltrate the kingdom's army—the soldiers were so desperate that they considered any conscious living person as one of their own. Xiangzi, Chuhua, and Mu were nothing more than three insignificant flies in the vast battlefield.

The little flies successfully fished in the chaos at the forefront of the battle between the two armies, sneaking into the church amidst the fighting.

Once inside, Xiangzi discovered that things weren't peaceful there either.

Despite the absence of man-made monsters from the Empire, there are still quite a few monsters inside the church, and the process of climbing upwards involves encountering many obstacles.

......

"I'm sorry, Xiang," Mu said softly, "I didn't know it would be so complicated."

"I'm exhausted." Chu Hua was physically and mentally drained.

"Who says otherwise?" Xiangzi wiped his sweat.

"Who on earth has such a twisted sense of humor to set up so many insane traps on the road?" She angrily punched the wall. "The door is right there, but you just can't open it from the front; you have to go around in a huge circle to get there. I'm really—"

"—Sigh." Chu Hua sighed.

"Sigh..." Xiangzi sighed, as if he had been climbing a mountain and was feeling sleepy. When he looked up, he realized that he was still halfway up the mountain. He said helplessly, "Let's continue."

......

After clearing away all the monsters and other random things that attacked them on the way, they encountered a monster that popped out from around the corner, a group of monsters that fell from the ceiling, a monster that seemed defenseless but actually had another one crouching in an unnoticed corner, a monster standing at the end of the corridor with a large bow, a monster that looked like a rotting brain with a bunch of eyes on it and that caused headaches when it sang, a monster that could not be knocked down by any attack, and a monster that held a lion's head and pretended to be a lion and could generate lightning and thunder.

Xiangzi and his group finally arrived at the top floor of the cathedral.

=========

Squeak—

Push open the heavy doors and step into the magnificent chapel.

Even at the top level, the dome is still over ten meters high, and you can see the arched, colorful murals depicting the story of the goddess creating the world.

Dozens of well-placed light wells allow sunlight to flood every corner of the chapel. A holy statue of a goddess stands at the very back of the chapel, and a long red carpet stretches from the pulpit all the way to the floor beneath Xiangzi's feet.

Rows of neat chairs were arranged on both sides of the red carpet.

On the walls on both sides, braziers were lit for illumination.

The sounds of battle were kept out by the excellent soundproofing materials, with only a small portion drifting into the prayer hall along with the light well, making the prayer hall even quieter.

Tick ​​tock…

Tick ​​tock…

The sound of dripping water echoed in the quiet space, accompanied by the familiar stench of blood.

The Lost Tale: The Lost Child: Chapter 385 If you want it, come and take it yourselves.

The stench of blood filled Xiangzi's nostrils, but he was already used to it.

The smell of blood here is less intense compared to outside. However, besides the smell of blood, there is also a pleasant fragrance mixed in.

Xiangzi had heard that the smell of perfume and the smell of stench are essentially the same thing. The strong perfume scent mixed with the smell of blood at this moment did indeed smell like some kind of indescribable stench.

A battle seemed to have taken place here; most of the neatly arranged seats were destroyed, and the end of the red carpet was twisted into a mess, lying pitifully in a pool of blood, stained black by the blood.

Tick. Tick.

Black blood dripped into the pool of blood on the ground, creating ripples.

The towering statue of the goddess faced the gate, its indistinct face now smashed to the ground, shattered into pieces. Behind the statue were circular stained-glass windows depicting the goddess leading humanity to a happy life after creating the nine worlds.

Beneath the broken statues and stained-glass windows, the metal claws covered in black blood and the scarlet spear stood out starkly.

"Hand over the shards of the Holy Grail of Sloth and Lust." The already deep voice sounded even more distorted by the armor, and the extremely calm tone instilled fear in anyone who heard it.

If you add that heavy, ferocious, inhuman armor, the fear would be amplified even further.

Wolf Knight

Xiangzi remembered what the regent was called before he became regent. Now she knew why he was called that.

The wolf-head-shaped helmet completely covered the man's face, with a scarlet hood covering it. Metal ears peeked out from two pre-drilled holes, securing the hood of the cloak so it wouldn't fall down.

The menacing metal armor didn't seem designed for humans at all. When it was worn by the wolf rider, he looked like a monster. The enormous armor, more than three meters tall and two meters wide, seemed to make the earth tremble with every step. Standing in front of this armor, one couldn't help but think of being stared at by a vicious wolf.

The wolf rider, wearing a red hood, was holding a white-haired woman. She appeared to be severely injured; blood trickled from her toes, pooling on the ground.

Tick. Tick.

"I...I absolutely will not...give them to you..."

Cough cough--

The woman coughed up black blood that dripped onto the jet-black armor, as if it had seeped into the armor itself.

The wolf rider remained silent, clenching his right hand and continuously churning and twisting the wound on her abdomen. The white-haired woman, whose face was obscured, let out a piercing scream.

A cracking sound came from between his palms.

suddenly.

With a crack, the White Queen could no longer feel the pain in her lower body.

"Pfft—!" She vomited a mouthful of blood.

His back was broken, his lungs were compressed, and he vomited black blood mixed with fragments of internal organs all over the ground.

The woman was on her deathbed, lying limp in the wolf rider's hands like a piece of trash.

The eyes beneath the wolf-head helmet seemed to say, "If you don't talk, I have plenty of ways to make you talk..." Or, he could simply avoid the effort.

A scarlet light shone from his right arm.

Whoosh!

A whooshing sound interrupted the wolf rider's actions, forcing him to throw the white-haired woman aside to block the unstoppable shot.

when!

A crisp metallic clang rang out as the spiral gun and the crimson spearhead collided, sparking a bright flash of light, and countless cracks appeared on the spiral gun's body.

Then, with a crack, the flying screw gun shattered into pieces on the ground.

Xiangzi conjured a spiral gun once again in his hand, and stood upright in the center of the hall, meeting the wolf rider's gaze.

Those eyes.

"Who are they?" The wolf rider looked at the spear on the ground, then turned his head. "Are they your backup plan?"

The wolf rider is talking to the woman on the ground.

"Hehe..." The White Queen chuckled weakly twice, spitting out two mouthfuls of blood. "...Those traitors stole our beloved treasures, didn't you know?"

My beloved baby, what about us?

Does it refer to fragments of the Holy Grail, or...?

Xiangzi felt that the White Queen's face looked familiar, just like seeing the Regent's face on the poster. She felt like she had seen both of them in the real world.

"You know me." Xiangzi frowned. "The White Queen."

If the Wolf Knight is the Regent of the Empire, then the white-haired woman is most likely the White Queen. It seems they fought here, ending in a complete victory for the Regent.

“Of course… cough cough… how could I not recognize that petty thief who disrupted everyone’s plans?” The White Queen lay on her back on the ground, staring helplessly at the ceiling, her eyes gradually losing focus. “Thanks to… you all, Saint Seiya was completely… out of control.”

The wolf rider remained silent.

He seemed to dislike talking, only uttering a few words when necessary. However, it appeared that he had already recognized Xiangzi and the others.