Book 8 - Waning of the Moon Chapter 70
Battle Of Light
Even as the paladins from the Church of Glory grew stronger, the normal soldiers within range of the pope's powers felt like they had been put in flames. Their eyes started watering as well; while they didn't actually drop in level, the effect was no different.
However, Richard's expression didn't change in the slightest as he continued to size up the pope that seemed to have become a being of light, "It's the robes and sceptres."
"Mm," Martin nodded, "They're the Saintly Robes and Sceptre of Glory."
"Knights of the Lord, Charge!" Saint Thomas roared. Tens of thousands of cavalrymen spurred their horses forward, picking up speed as they crashed into Richard's troops like a violent tide. Up in the air, almost a thousand paladins started chanting hymns as they rushed towards Martin's group.
Be it on the ground or in the sky, Richard and Martin were vastly outnumbered. Michael led his angels in a battle against the three Midrens, acting as the core of the entire battlefield with every swing of his sword sending an opponent flying away. Swords and holy flames blazed in the sky, every clash holding the potential to kill.
The paladins quickly surrounded Martin's forces, giving Richard an opportunity to see the divine child in battle for the first time. The youth had a very unique approach to combat— he had somehow gotten a thick tome that was nearly a metre tall, cursing his opponents until they could barely move before whacking them with the copper spine. Numbness, blindness, all sorts of strange effects bogged down his opponents before the heavy tome crushed their helmets and the heads within.
The strange thing was that Martin's muttering was clearly a prayer. There were no signs of anything affecting the paladins themselves, but they all turned clumsy enough to be struck by even ordinary fighters. Richard himself felt his head vaguely hurting from just seeing this, and even using the Field of Truth he didn't manage to understand just what the guiding principles behind these prayers were. All he understood was that even his own resistance to curses would likely be overridden by this power.
"You shall not be able to walk, and you shall not be able to lift your arms... Your axe will grow a tonne heavier... Your handsome face will be warped by the pain of a stomach ache..." After a long time, the muttering alone could hurt one's mind.
"HERETIC! REPENT FOR YOUR SINS!" a furious roar interrupted Richard's thoughts. He turned around to see a glowing paladin bringing a two-handed hammer down towards his body, the sheer power behind the attack comparable to a saint's.
To the paladin, it seemed as though Richard had no time to dodge, barely lifting an arm to try and block the strike. He grunted even louder as he increased the force in his arms, the flesh already on his weapon from a previous target sloshing as he struck.
*Thud!* The paladin's eyes went wide as Richard stopped his strike with one hand, not moving in the slightest. For a moment, he questioned reality; had time stopped?
That hypothesis was disproved in the next instant. His hands went numb like he had just struck a divine mountain, all of his might rebounding while the hammer almost flew out of his grasp. He roared in fury, barely managing to keep his weapon in control and the recoil from destroying his organs. His arms immediately filled with blood, rupturing his veins and curling his muscles.
While the man went speechless with shock, Richard grunted in surprise as well. He shook his head and swatted the man away like a bug, sending him flying a full kilometre away. A mangled corpse was all that reached the ground, with the point of impact having sunk in completely.
Reaching out, Richard grabbed a hammer from another paladin and waved it around casually, taking him down. He waved the weapon around like a toothpick, sending everyone who wished to attack him flying. Anyone even scraped ended up dead or dying.
After a dozen paladins were sent flying in quick succession, the hammer creaked and its head snapped off. Richard froze for a moment, but then he shrugged and tossed the handle into another paladin before looking around and grabbing a heavier flail. The three heads turned into a black blur as he swung it around, but before he could attack he felt the chain grow lighter. All three heads flew off in different directions, two of them killing some unlucky attackers.
"Tch... Piss-poor quality..." he mumbled in annoyance. He was now stronger than even Tiramisu, able to rival an adult dragon. Although he couldn't equal someone like Tiamat yet, he could still hold his own. Moonlight was the one weapon that would handle his power no matter how strong he got, but it just felt so much more fun to swing a heavy weapon around.
Surprisingly, Martin wasn't much slower than himself at taking out these paladins. However, even with the two of them killing dozens of opponents, the situation steadily grew worse. A third of Martin's followers were dead or disabled within a few minutes of the battle starting, while the pope and archbishop had yet to move. Some of the cardinals had grown weaker with age, but most of them were still beyond level 18. Archbishop Ruford himself was level 21, and the pope even stronger.
On another battlefield, the three Midrens were showing signs of defeat. They were already wounded all over, blood staining their armour. On the other side, Michael had retained command of the various angels and ensured that Raphael was the only one who was even slightly injured. His golden radiance was practically filling the skies, the red lustre from Midren suppressed to within ten metres of the user. Both Martin's subordinates and Richard's troops were in great pain, unable to battle to their full capacity.
On the ground, Richard's soldiers had been surrounded by a wave of enemies and were now at a critical stage. Knights and horses were toppling down with dozens of weapons sticking through them, but even with such a rough battlefield Richard's forces weren't the ones with the advantage. He had already lost multiple rune knights and 600 ordinary knights, defeating a thousand opponents in the process. Considering that his men were a few levels above the enemy on average, he was suffering a huge loss.
At this point, the angels were the key to the battle. Richard snorted, launching a dozen blue fireballs towards the six-winged celestial. Michael immediately sensed the danger and swung his flaming sword to try and disperse them, but they weren't so easy to deal with. They spread all over him and started burning his body, but his divine light quickly eroded them into nothing.
The single attack depleted a good chunk of the angel's divine energy reserves, but Richard immediately turned gloomy. The distant pope finally made his move, and a single wave of his sceptre covered the celestial in a thick pillar of white that returned him to peak state.