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Chapter 519: Tragic Reality

Roel nervously stared at the envelope in his hand before finally tearing it open. His movements were careful not to awaken the sleeping Charlotte.

The report was written by Andrew, though it was divided into two parts for some reason. Perplexed, Roel examined it and saw that one part was additionally packaged with the words ‘To Charlotte Sorofya and Roel Ascart’ written on it.

“Hm?”

Getting an ominous feeling from it, Roel’s eyes narrowed sharply. After some hesitation, he decided to go with the normal report first.

After many days of investigation, the Rosaian elites eventually tracked the evil cultists of the Saints Convocation down to the southern mountain valley of the Tornio Dukedom.

They didn’t launch an attack right away, instead opting to proceed carefully and wait for further reinforcements. Newly-arrived troops were strategically positioned around the mountain valley in a calculated formation, slowly choking up all of the escape routes. It was only after forming a tight encirclement that they began closing in on the evil cultists.

Rosa had pulled out all the stops in their operation against the Saints Convocation.

When they discovered that a defensive barrier had been erected around the mountain valley, they didn’t hesitate to deplete their stockpile of precious metals and gemstones to thoroughly bombard the region.

It was a highly exorbitant move, even by the Sorofyas’ standards. This single attack had cost them the equivalent of a mid-sized country’s national treasury. That being said, the price wasn’t paid in vain.

The sheer destructive prowess caused by exploding mountains of precious metals and gemstones all over the Saints Convocation’s hideout had instantaneously breached the defensive barrier and inflicted heavy casualties on the evil cultists.

This decisive move had allowed Rosa to eradicate half of the Saints Convocation’s members at the very start of the battle. The evil cultists who survived the initial blast attempted to escape in a flurry, but they stumbled into the encirclement of the Rosaian army instead.

It might have still been possible for them to breach the encirclement if they had launched an organized counterattack, but most of them were running around like headless flies to muster an effective counterattack.

The battle lasted from sunset till daybreak.

The result?

It was a wipeout for the Saints Convocation, though some of them managed to slip away using their escape spells. Rosa conquered the mountain valley, but they suffered significant casualties in the battle from the retaliation from the stronger evil cultists.

The Saints Convocation had four Origin Level 2 and ten Origin Level 3 transcendents in that battle. In terms of high transcendents, they were on par with Rosa. It was hard to say who would have emerged victorious if not for the initial bombardment. Even so, two of the Origin Level 2 transcendents still managed to make a getaway.

It came as a huge shock to Rosa’s upper echelons that the evil cultists wielded such strength. Andrew thought about it after the battle and figured that they might have just stumbled on the Saints Convocation’s headquarters, or at least one of their key bases.

The report ended with Andrew stating that they were in the midst of scavenging the battlefield. They were also going to release arrest warrants for the two Origin Level 2 transcendents who had escaped all over the Sia Continent.

This was incredibly uplifting news to Roel.

He would have counted his blessings if Andrew and the others had apprehended the evil cultists who helped Flooding Death back then, but they went on to take down a much larger fish on top of that.

All along, Roel could only wait for the Saints Convocation to come knocking on his door as he had no idea where they were. There was truly no way to overstate how big of a deal this was. This showed just how amazing Rosa’s intelligence network was, surpassing even that of established evil cultists.

While it was a stretch to say that this was the end of the Saints Convocation, this operation had indubitably dealt a heavy blow to them. They would likely have to go underground for a period of time to recover, thus granting a few years of peace to Roel and Charlotte.

Overall, Roel was satisfied with what he had seen in the war report.

He turned his attention toward the other individually packaged letter from the same envelope, and he couldn’t help but be intrigued by it.

The first report has already covered everything there is to cover about the fight with the Saints Convocation. What could be contained inside here, then?

Perplexed, he tore open the packaging and began reading the letter. Slowly, his complexion darkened and his eyes turned cold. By the time he finished reading through the entire letter, his face was already livid.

The content of the second letter concerned Roel—or, to be more exact, the Ascart House.

…

There had been a doubt floating in Roel’s mind for a long time now.

Why is the Saints Convocation so obsessed with me?

While Roel’s Crown Origin Attribute did have a suppression effect on the Six Calamities, that wasn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world to the Saints Convocation.

Unlike most evil cults where members adopted the same Origin Attribute, the members of the Saints Convocation had a diverse range of powers that weren’t necessarily directly related to the Mother Goddess or the Six Calamities. An example of that was the Puppetmaster Guild several centuries ago, though it had been purged since then.

It would be a stretch to claim that Roel was the bane of the Saints Convocation, especially when there were much more powerful and influential individuals out there. It seemed irrational for them to prioritize Roel over other targets when he hadn’t antagonized them to date.

Of course, it was possible that the Saints Convocation was going after him for usurping the power of the Six Calamities in order to uphold the Mother Goddess’ dignity… but with how they had exploited the Six Calamities as their own tools, it was hard to believe that they truly held the so-called God’s Envoys in high regard.

Another possible argument was that Roel was competing with them to claim possession of the Six Calamities’ powers, but prior to his encounter with Flooding Death, he had only absorbed Crown’s Stones from the Witness State. The hostility he faced from the Saints Convocation went further back than that.

No matter how Roel looked at it, other than historical reasons he was unaware of, there was simply no compelling reason behind the Saints Convocation’s obsession to take him down. It was only after Andrew and the Rosaian elites launched an attack on the Saints Convocation’s base that the mystery finally unraveled itself.

Inside the confidential document addressed to Roel and Charlotte was the continuation of the first war report. It contained the findings of the Rosaian elites after scavenging the battlefield.

The intentional choice of descriptions and terms used in the first war report had created an impression that the entire mountain valley had been blown to bits over the course of the battle, which discouraged further questions about the matter.

However, the actual situation was very different from what was described.

In truth, Andrew and the Rosaian elites had managed to capture quite a few injured evil cultists, and they discovered that the Saints Convocation’s base had an underground section.

Through grilling the evil cultists, they learned that the base’s underground section was a secret facility known only to the leadership team. There was a self-destruction function to avoid confidential information leaking out if the base were overrun by enemies, but the person in charge of that had died in the initial bombardment.

Andrew and the others were overjoyed. They quickly dispatched a team to ransack the secret facility and successfully secured a huge amount of records and magic tools.

The magic tools had restrictions that made them unusable to transcendents outside of the Saints Convocation, but they nevertheless had huge value as research material.

The records were a treasure trove of information, especially since the Saints Convocation’s history predated most of the existing human countries.

These returns were more than enough to justify the resources Rosa had devoted to the operation, but these weren’t all they had found there.

In the innermost depth of the secret facility, the Rosaian elites unexpectedly stumbled upon a human experimentation facility containing oddly well-preserved blood samples and body parts. They carried out an appraisal on them and found that both the blood samples and the body parts had more than a thousand years of history behind them.

Andrew initially thought that the blood samples and body parts were from the ancient races, which would have justified the elaborate care the Saints Convocation took to preserve them. However, after running some analysis on them, he was shocked to learn that they belonged to humans in the Second Epoch.

In particular, the blood samples shared a high level of similarity to Roel’s blood.

In other words, these blood samples were acquired from awakeners of the Kingmaker Bloodline. That was also why Andrew had written a second confidential letter to Roel.

Roel fell into deep thought after reading the report.

By piecing together the bits and pieces of information he had gathered to date, he was able to form a picture that gave him some leads to the Saints Convocation’s antagonism toward him.

Blood had been one of the most common spell mediums used by human transcendents since the ancient era.

Human transcendents often used their own blood to amplify their own spells. There were also certain bloodlines that possessed intrinsic qualities that granted their possessors special traits. An example of this would be Charlotte’s High Elf Bloodline, which was the basis required for her to cast Arbiter of Fate.

It was possible to use the blood of others as a medium too. This was usually done with the intention to acquire something or a specific trait from the transcendent’s bloodline.

It was obvious what the Saints Convocation wanted from Roel’s Kingmaker Bloodline—its ability to control the Six Calamities. They knew better than anyone else about the humongous latent power harnessed inside the eggs of the Six Calamities, and they wanted to claim that power for themselves.

As a result, the upper echelons of the Saints Convocation created the Holy Sons.

The Holy Sons were a rather peculiar existence within the evil cult, in the sense that they were placed on a pedestal within the organization despite their generally low Origin Levels. However, this special treatment made sense if one simply considered their role.

In the Witness State depicting Leinster four hundred years ago, Roel had impersonated a Holy Son who was entrusted with the job to awaken Tempest Caller’s egg. Back then, he still had no idea how the Holy Sons came about, but Andrew’s discovery made the answer apparent.

Most likely, the Holy Sons were an artificial imitation of the Kingmaker Bloodline’s awakeners. They were probably produced by injecting the Kingmaker Bloodline into young children through some special means in hopes that their bodies would eventually assimilate it and inherit the traits of the bloodline.

It went without saying that the process was extremely damaging to the human body. On top of that, the Holy Sons wouldn’t truly gain the powers of the Kingmaker Bloodline even if the procedure was a success. All they received was an aura similar to the Kingmaker Bloodline’s awakeners, though that was already enough for them to control the eggs of the Six Calamities.

It was worth noting that the Saints Convocation’s blood samples were extremely old and had been reused many times now, possibly because there hadn’t been many awakeners of the Kingmaker Bloodline ever since the Ardes’ downfall in the Second Epoch. That greatly reduced the success rate of the blood transfusion procedure.

However, what Roel was more concerned about was the origin of the blood samples.

Only the blood of the Kingmaker Bloodline’s awakeners would have the power to suppress the Six Calamities, which meant that those blood samples were produced at the expense of his bloodline kin’s lives.

Roel could hardly calm himself when that thought came into his mind.

The Ardes had devoted themselves to protecting humankind, and their efforts were what had laid the foundation required for the prosperity of humankind back in the Second Epoch.

Be it the Saints Convocation or the Savior’s worshipers, most of their members were a part of humanity as well, which meant that they had benefited from the blood, sweat, and tears of the Ardes too. Yet, they bit the hands that fed them and repaid graciousness with malice in the worst way possible.

It had always been taboo to use one’s brethren as a magic medium, even back in the lawless ancient era. This was believed to be an act of gross disrespect to the deceased.

However, the Fallens saw their awakeners as fodder to unseal the Savior, whereas the Saints Convocation viewed the Kingmaker Bloodline as a suppressor to control their God’s Envoys.

Neither carried the slightest respect toward those who had protected them thus far.

His ancestors’ corpses were still being exploited even after a thousand years had passed, not granted the peace they deserved. The thought of that filled Roel with overflowing indignation and anguish.

Before Roel could snap out of his rare agitated state, he suddenly heard a voice below him.

“What’s wrong, darling?”