The fact that The Unreachable Gate, Anote, had allied himself with Red Tears made perfect sense.
Earlier, it was The Unreachable Gate that restrained Killer J for Red Tears to take Lisa away, and due to The Unreachable Gate’s unique characteristic, his chances of taking the Divine Artifact for himself was the lowest. After all, he couldn’t come into direct contact with reality and could only ever linger just outside of reach. His only goal for coming here this time was to show himself, consume as much information from Pathways as he could, slowly strengthening himself.
If Red Tears paid a good enough price, it was possible for her to invite The Unreachable Gate to help her.
Using only one perspective to judge a Righteous God meant you were prone to being deceived by them. The Unreachable Gate indeed could not directly interact with reality and only use the slowly approaching method to consume one’s existence, but that didn’t mean this ‘approach’ couldn’t be exploited beyond all imagination.
He might not be able to consume your entire existence and ability, but he could still cause your abilities to lose their effects.
Every ability needed a different medium and catalyst to interact with the world. For example, Negary’s [Ray of Obliteration] was in essence the use of Impurity and Error with a bead of specialized germs as the restraining core.
But the [Ray of Obliteration] itself was mobile, up until the very moment when it came into contact with the target and each other to produce the ‘obliteration’ effect, this ray of energy must travel through space in the material plane.
The Unreachable Gate couldn’t consume the [Ray of Obliteration] itself, but he could consume the catalyst, stripping away the catalyst’s capability of restraining the two different energies.
By doing this, the trajectory of the [Ray of Obliteration] was altered, the germs in the center was changed and caused the spiral structure to be ruined. The two rays of energy thus struck one another prematurely and obliterated that region of space.
The grey power of obliteration quickly exploded before collapsing on itself and returning to its original forms. From this, the [Ray of Obliteration]’s immense power could be seen, but that essentially did nothing because it missed its mark.
The Unreachable Gate’s ability could be said to be nauseating. While he couldn’t consume the unique properties of various abilities, every ability required a certain level of interaction with the world. The Unreachable Gate could easily take advantage of these interactions to change their effects.
Both Negary’s and Eternal Heat’s attacks were interfered with, giving Red Tears a bit of time.
『 Saarschloss, it’s not too late to let go. You might be genderless, but due to your Pathway of breeding life, your soul had been affected by your Pathway and trend towards female. I might not be able to take the Divine Artifact with me, but no matter how high the price I’d have to pay is, you’d only pay an even higher price 』
Red Tears openly stated Eulogy of the Ocean Depths’ true name, threatening them while also unleashing her abilities towards Eulogy of the Ocean Depths.
“Do you really think Anote can stop Eternal Heat?” Eulogy of the Ocean Depths didn’t care about Red Tears’ threat. While what she said made sense, the fact that Red Tears’ form of existence wasn’t complete was also her weakness; so if they truly fought, the determining factor would be their techniques.
Following Eulogy of the Ocean Depths’ words, Red Tears couldn’t help but recall her past.
“I shall add to the pain of your pregnancy, you shall endure much suffering during childbirth, you shall love your husband, and your husband will have jurisdiction over you”
This was what a certain woman heard when she woke up. It was the voice of her husband reading from the Sacred Text, a book that a merchant had left her husband when they passed through their village.
The village didn’t have a cathedral, nor a missionary who came to preach their doctrine, so her husband had to try and study the book by himself with what little words he knew.
The woman tried to struggle but found that she had been tied onto a stone table. On the other hand, her husband had already put down the Sacred Text and approached her with a devout expression while holding a special tool.
He drew her blood and scattered it onto the surrounding altar, stripped off her skin, cut up her flesh into small pieces on top of the altar, washed her feet and innards with clean water before hanging them on the side of the altar.
Her sin would then be cleansed by the flow of her blood, the sacred flames would sacrifice her cleansed body to God, leaving only her skin left with him.
The burnt offering, one of the methods of asking for salvation that the husband read from the Sacred Text. His wife’s infidelity meant that she was a sinner.
In this era, X [1]still hadn’t been born, so the burnt offering still required human sacrifice. It wouldn’t be until Y wanted to sacrifice X but ultimately decided to replace them with a mountain goat that the ancient tradition of human sacrifices would slowly phase out.
The woman tried to struggle, but her husband still held down her head and slit her throat, letting her blood of sin spill out. The woman was full of hatred, her infidelity was nothing but a rumor that the dirty men who coveted her body had made up, but her husband believed it to be true and prepared this burnt offering in order to make reparations for her.
Indeed, her husband still loved her, he loved her so dearly that he believed it was his duty to make reparations for her after believing that she was sinful. He believed that by offering her as a sacrifice, God would feel delighted and absolve his wife’s sins, accepting her into heaven; at least, this was what the husband believed from the barren religious knowledge he had.
The woman’s eyes became bloodshot as tears of blood flowed from her sockets, causing her hatred and curse to also flow out at this time. When the husband saw this, he instead felt relieved that his wife’s sins had flowed out with her blood.
As the flames burnt bright and the smell of cooked meat radiated, the husband knelt by the altar with an expression of ease.
The ritual was actually real, but the ritual wasn’t conducted properly. The sacrificed party wasn’t willing to be sacrificed, in fact, she carried immense hatred and grudge with her, so it created the opposite of the desired effect. Following his unorthodox burnt offering, the grudge of the woman created a unique life form.
Half a year from then, the women of the village successfully achieved a 100% rate of infidelity, turning the entire village green, and then naturally red. Every man who contributed to the greenness of the village was affected by a strange compulsion to kill their wives and let their blood flow after finding out about their infidelity.
From this, the newly-born Red Tears grew increasingly more powerful and eventually obtained her ability: Soul of Infidelity.
Or rather, Soul of Irregularity.
Red Tears was able to cause the majority of female minds that weren’t firm to become irregular, using that to influence their minds and harvest the power created from this irregularity; after that, she would also guide their husbands to kill them and strengthen herself.
After that, Red Tears was caught by a witch and became that witch’s belonging, during which Red Tears learnt and matured, gaining a lot of Mysticism knowledge. Finally, when the witch finally died, she regained her freedom and even became a local God somewhere.
Even after achieving her Pathway, Red Tears was still a life form created by the phenomenon of an irregular soul, she could naturally stimulate irregularities in all souls, but it was much easier for her to do so with female souls.
All women who had ever committed acts of infidelity were her worshippers. Under her influence, these women enjoyed the sense of pleasure gained through their acts of infidelity, creating irregularities in their hearts to eventually be harvested.
In fact, the Mystic Demoness organization that Shengnai had a run-in with before was initially established by a worshipper of Red Tears. While the organization itself didn’t worship Red Tears, their actions were nothing but the best sacrifices for her, as well as the main reason why Red Tears’ church was so secretive.
[1] the X and Y are probably biblical references of some sort, but the author completely messed up the naming and wrote some nonsensical things in the RAW. If anyone knows what this might be referring to, please tell me.