Chapter 1157: Instigate
Just like that, after the promotion ceremony ended like a joke, Abel was going back to his everyday life.
If there was anything that changed, it’d be that the number of class holders making reservations at the golden castle restaurant reached an all-time high. The latest reservation was put in after more than 6 months. All kinds of people tried to make different maneuvers to push themselves to the front of the waitlist. Some of them used connections. Some tried to come in as spectators to learn about the foods that were served. Some just went to spectate the legendary light. There were all kinds of people who were trying this. On the central continent, there were more smaller groups than there were for middle to large groups.
Still, Abel was just watching as the light stones inside the warehouse increased bit by bit. Much of the work inside the golden castle was for Butler Meyer and his three followers to take care of. He was just standing on top of the “starlight defensive circle.” He was just using his worship pathway to select a suitable follower to assassinate the preach of the Nation of God. Since he was already pretty experienced at doing this, it didn’t take him much time to find a knight that had a pretty good fighting ability.
Abel went ahead and extended his power of the Will onto the knight. Although it was not the same as when he was synchronizing with his contract creature, he could still do a fairly good job at sensing what his follower was experiencing. With that, he used a divine message to command the follower to leave his resilience and ride onto another warhorse to go towards another city.
Now that the Nation of God had taken control of the teleportation circle, most regular people couldn’t get access to the teleportation circle without going through a very strict application process. It was becoming harder than ever for the follower to kill multiple class holders at once because 5 to 6 would make him exposed immediately to the detection of the sacred knight. Abel had to pick only the followers that were living in the most commutable cities so they could travel across different towns in a short period of time.
Right now, the knight was just riding horses. His mind and body were both completely taken control of by Abel’s crystal angelic statue. His heart was full of devotion towards the divine spirit, such that he would push himself to the edge of his life to finish any mission that was assigned to him.
Abel was just having his rest right now. He was quite bored, so he would use his worship pathway to enjoy the scenery of the Nation of God through the vision of his followers. While he was enjoying the view that was looking very different from that of the central continent, he realized that the sky he was looking at seemed to have changed a bit. The knight he was possessing seemed to have noticed as well showed. He raised his head and Abel that the guardian wings, although it hadn’t been moving the entire time it was there, were now flapping its wings. For anyone living inside the Nation of God, this was about as strange as seeing the sun rising out west.
The shock was actually too great. It was destabilizing the knight Abel was possessing and the worship pathway.
Abel thought to himself, “Something went off with the Nation of God!”
They moved lasted for 30 seconds. Like before, the wings were just going back to normal. Abel didn’t know if something similar happened before, but he realized that the changes were affecting his crystal angelic statue completely. In his sense, he noticed that apart from followers that were looked after directly by his preachers, a third of his followers were lost in a matter of thirty seconds. This had a lot to do with how “impure” the faith of these followers was. Most of them weren’t devoting their worship to the demon from beyond nor the guardian wings for various reasons. For the demon of beyond, its inactivity had already made most of them pay little to no attention to it. For the guardian wings, since it was a being that was so ingrained into the everyday lives of those who lived inside the Nation of God, care for it was already in the state of being too much that it was numb.
When a lot of the followers were worshipping, they would often have no image to visualize. They would most often pray while visualizing the demon from beyond inside their heads. Originally, the worship power that was generated from this method of prayer would also belong to the guardian wings and the demon from beyond. This was under the premise that the crystal angelic statue was not there so that it was taking some of the worship power away.
Anyways, the guardian wings just started moving today. Although it was just for thirty seconds, that was already enough to change the beliefs of many worshipers. Technically, praying to the guardian wings wasn’t so different from praying towards the demon from beyond, but the number of followers Abel had lost control of was already up to a third of his total number. Since he still had his mission to complete, he could only bear the loss and continue possessing his followers.
The change happening was influencing much more than what Abel knew. On the frontline, while Wizard Larking and Wizard Luke were exchanging some of their thoughts on training, they suddenly stood up and teleported themselves out of the room.
Wizard Larking said with a serious look, “It’s about to wake up, isn’t it?”
Wizard Luke also looked very serious, “The wings were probably causing some sort of indirect effect. There should still be a while before it wakes up.”
They didn’t say the name of the demon from beyond. This was to pay their respect to the great being that was their worst enemy.
Wizard Larking shook his head, “Let’s just report this and see what the higher-ups have to say.”
They were legendary wizards, but this was really out of their control.
Wizard Luke sighed, “The peace we’ve had for several thousand years now is about to end—very quickly from the look of things.”
Wizard Larking sighed as well, “Yeah, just when we’re hoping that our strength would increase over the several decades.”
Wizard Luke thought about Grandmaster Bennett, “Well, at least we have Grandmaster Bennett. His presence is already doing all of us a great favour.”
“Maybe it’s time to increase the reward. Grandmaster Bennett doesn’t seem to be interested in 10000 low-tier lightstones for every mission.”
It had been some days since Grandmaster Bennett had his promotion. Still, Abel did not accept any of the missions that were assigned specially for him. The wizards didn’t bother to push him, because they didn’t want to cause any drama. Things would be very difficult if they got on Grandmaster Bennett’s wrong side, especially when he was the only producer of many types of potions.
Wizard Larking smiled and spoke, “Should we just increase the number of light stones, then? Now that we’ve got this many inside the warehouse, let’s just give whatever amount Grandmaster Bennett wants. If 10000 is not enough, make it double. I don’t think people would object to that as long as the potions are there.”
The Wizard Union did have the biggest collection of light stones on the central continent. For just Wizard Luke and Wizard Larking, since they’ve been on the frontline for so long, they’ve stored hundreds of thousands of low-tier lightstones over the past few centuries. Combined with the ones the other wizards collected, it could even be said that the Wizard Union contained several million in total. None of them went to the continent, as the wizards would use them purely for their own promotions.
Due to the quality of the light stones, the progress of many wizards had been fruitless when they tried to use them for their own training. So, instead of using it for themselves, they decided to use the light stones as a reward for when they were handing out gifts. That’s why the number went up so much inside the warehouse.
Wizard Luke didn’t know what to say, “Let’s just report the change of the guardian wings. I’ll be back to change the reward.”
The knight Abel possessed was captured by the sacred knights after the fourth successful assassination mission. At the very last moment, he ordered the knight to commit suicide to hide away all the tracks. As immoral as this seemed, the knight was not Abel’s, to begin with. Also, apart from towns that Abel’s preachers were directly in charge of, it could even be said that all the followers inside the Nation of God were not real followers. There was no hypocrisy in removing the followers, as most followers weren’t even that faithful, to begin with.
If anything, Abel cared a lot more than he was earning four new heritage books with the cost of one. He was also worried about the change that was taking place at the guardian wings, just like the many others. He was worried that maybe the demon from beyond would wake up soon. Given his current strength, if the demon from beyond was to take up, he would’ve had no ways of fighting back if it decided to go after him. He could go hide inside the dark world, but he couldn’t stay there forever. The only one he was looking at, he should just increase his power.
At night, he had been extra tenacious in his fight with the hell creatures of the Fire River. Because of this, the progress he was making in ten days was actually the equivalent of the results of twenty days. By this point, the demon from beyond was already hanging on top of his head. He had no other way except to boost his own power with all that he’s got.
On the second morning on the central continent, he would head back to have his breakfast inside his dining room. When he was about to brew his potions, he heard the sound of the research spirit.
The research spirit reported, “Wizard Hume is waiting for you inside the guest meeting room, Master.”
Abel didn’t seem to know what Wizard Hume was doing, so he just passed through the short-distance teleportation circle and went over there. As soon as he went, he could see that Wizard Hume was busy taking steps back and forth. He seemed to be quite worried.
Wizard Hume bowed, “So sorry to bother you in the morning, Grandmaster Bennett.”
Abel could see that something was up, “Anything in particular today, Wizard Hume?”
Wizard Hume bowed, “I’ve got a very urgent order I need to make, Grandmaster. Can I just get some light recovery potions and mana potions?”
Abel was confused, “Why are you in such a rush for these? What happened?”
Before, Abel’s been supplying all these potions every month. These were actually the potions he produced the most.
Wizard Hume was very open, “I’ll be honest with you. Something abnormal happened to the guardian wings of the Nation of Evil. The Wizard Union has been trying to clear off the resource points on the frontline, but as you know, since Wizard Dolan was poisoned, we’ve got all the potions stored used up very quickly. We’ve been low lately. We don’t have enough to keep fighting on the frontline, let alone in a full-scale war!”
Wizard Hume would’ve never been this open if it was in front of other people. Still, Abel’s current status was the honorary elder of the Wizard Union. There was no point keeping an operation this big from him. As a matter of fact, Wizard Hume was gathering up law-defying wizards since yesterday to join the frontline. Still, a lot of the class holders did not know about the specifics as of yet. All this time, the Wizard Union had known about how far the Nation of God’s intelligence network ran on the central continent. If the Nation of God was to learn about the operation this time, things could get very troubling.
Abel pretended that he didn’t know, “What! What? What? The guardian wings? You mean that of the Nation of Evil?”
Very quickly, Abel calculated the number of potions he had on hand and made a decision.