Chapter 348

Chapter 348
## Chapter 348

Scribe (3)

Kwaaa—!

An immense, savage howl sliced through the heavens, resembling the ignition of a rocket as it ripped through the surrounding air.

Yet, this phenomenon was not born from advanced technology, sorcery, or any specialized armament.

“Khahaha!”

The true origin was nothing but raw, unadulterated bodily power.

The absolute pinnacle of physical might, unleashed from a solitary human fist.

…Though calling such a creature human was certainly open to debate.

Kaboom!

“Ugh!”

A sharp breath escaped Scribe as the violent reverberation, crashing through the sacred buckler in her left grasp, forced her back several paces.

She had been hurtling forward with the unstoppable momentum of a runaway locomotive…

And yet, she had been repelled.

Even after mitigating the brunt of the strike through the celestial warding of her sacred buckler!

It defied… all belief.

‘Ugh, what madness is this? From where did he emerge…?’

A tribal giant, towering over two meters in height, his flesh painted with bizarre markings and clad in strange garments.

Girding her teeth, she glared fiercely at the brawny colossus blocking her path.

She had truly believed the end was in sight.

If she could merely hold her ground for a fraction longer, her backup would arrive to wall off the vicinity, and she would make that haughty heretic regret his pride…

‘How could this be…!’

Instead, everything had collapsed in under sixty seconds.

A challenge she was certain she could handle had deteriorated into a brutal, desperate scramble for survival.

All because of the pair of abnormalities that had abruptly entered the fray.

“Haha! You actually blocked that? You make an excellent punching bag! Why don’t we turn up the heat?”

The tribal warrior grinned, his jaws pulling back in an unnatural stretch, before dropping into a low stance and compressing his hands into fists.

Crack!

Creak—!

A bizarre, metallic grating echoed from within his frame.

Could a flesh-and-blood creature even produce such a sound?

His ultra-compact musculature flexed and tightened, while plumes of vapor drifted off his flushing skin.

“Oh, my Sovereign! Bestow upon me the fortitude to shatter any trial!”

Yet Scribe was no fragile maiden; she was a formidable battle cleric, her capabilities magnified by the depth of her devotion.

Her sacred energy surged wildly inside her, flaring up like a tempestuous blaze, as a blinding radiance, akin to a small star, cloaked the head of her bludgeon.

“Judgment!”

“Hrrrragh!”

Swish— Kaboom!

Her heavy mace, swung in a sweeping trajectory, crashed directly into his incoming fist, and the resulting shockwave—an suffocating weight of air—slammed down upon the terrain, causing the magical array Harris had fortified to shudder and groan.

“Wow! You pack quite a punch! It’s been ages since I actually cracked a bone! Hahaha!”

“…You freak! A mere fracture from a direct collision with the Hammer of God? Wait, it’s mending already?”

“Ah, my flesh knits together in a flash!”

They hurled words at each other from mere inches away, their countenances twisted with primal fury.

Scribe, her mace radiating like a miniature sun, and Harley, his bare knuckles meeting her strike without flinching, their physical forms locked in a brutal contest of strength.

The immense disparity in their statures appeared entirely trivial.

“I will break you…!”

Yet, a hidden factor remained—.

“Pardon me.”

She was not engaged in a simple duel with the colossus.

Slash—!

“Ugh!”

A freezing voice echoed, followed immediately by a piercing agony in her spine.

A stealthy strike from her blind spot sliced clean through her consecrated mail, spraying crimson across the dirt.

She had detected the presence and shifted her torso at the final millisecond, but she had been left exposed in the wake of her grand assault, her focus fractured and her guard dropped.

“Ugh! You underhanded fiends…!”

Grinding her teeth, she fought back the dark blood sorcery leaking into her flesh and leaped backward, radiating a shockwave of consecrated energy.

Had she not possessed the elemental advantage of her sacred power, that single pierce would have torn her heart from her ribcage.

‘My body mends too sluggishly. A hex that impedes recovery…? I require breathing room. If this persists…!’

But her tribulations were far from over.

———!

Detonations, identical to the barrages she had endured earlier, cascaded down upon her, taking full advantage of her compromised state.

Flashes of luminescence, silent and lethal, punctured her frame despite her desperate attempts to ward them off.

“Kyaa! Exactly what I’d expect from a vessel of holy power! You are remarkably resilient!”

Crack! Crackle—!

The shifting aberration, its outer shell swelling as it triggered its metamorphic traits, dived back into the combat.

“Tsk, Divine Possession, is it? The essence tastes diluted. Two minutes… no, slightly under three? I must accelerate the pace to conclude this within five minutes.”

The Vampire Monarch, discarding the mouthful of gore he had drawn, dissolved into the shadows.

Every single one of them was a peak entity, a devastating adversary even in a solitary duel.

And they were coordinating with flawless precision, moving as a singular mechanism, systematically driving their quarry, Scribe, into a corner.

‘…How? For what reason? How did events turn so swiftly? Were they aligned from the very start? I never even perceived their approach… ’

Scribe’s mind whirled frantically, her consciousness a messy blur as she battled the unrelenting pressure, her reactions becoming clumsy and misaligned.

The brute standing in her path appeared entirely immune to harm, while the vampire’s unseen strikes and the marksman’s artillery were rapidly draining her seemingly boundless pool of sacred energy.

“Ugh… Oh, my Sovereign… Absolve your failing disciple…”

Five minutes.

That was the exact span required for her to ultimately sink to the earth, her defiance entirely shattered.

—

Near San Francisco, California.

Screech—!

“This is the location!”

“Move! Deploy the perimeter barrier! Stay alert!”

A line of vehicles skidded to a halt, and a multitude of individuals, clad in an array of different garments, poured out and fanned across the terrain, their actions synchronized and rapid.

They naturally sorted themselves into distinct units.

“Spatial tearing identified. We are at the epicenter!”

“Commence operations. What is the status of Pantheon?”

“They are preparing for insertion. Their focus is entirely on securing their high official.”

“Ensure we align our actions with theirs. We cannot afford to antagonize those volatile zealots.”

“Understood, sir.”

Though originating from separate factions, they cooperated out of absolute necessity.

Operatives from the California regional authority, Wardens from the United States Returnee Union, and ministers from the San Francisco branch of Pantheon.

Yet their goal converged on one point.

To extract Adeline Schneider, a prominent figure on Pantheon’s Steering Committee, one of their most vital leaders.

“To think anyone would dare strike at a member of Pantheon’s high council… Their audacity is boundless. This smells of the cultists of an dark deity.”

“Well, rumors regarding their movements have been circulating heavily. And that visitor from another world, the Saint who commanded a drake…”

“Ah! On that note, could there be a link? Did Heaven’s Turn Society…?”

“Who can say.”

With such a concentration of awakened elites assembled, isolating the origin of the spatial rift and establishing a containment field took very little time as they readied themselves to breach the perimeter.

Barely ten minutes had elapsed since they first registered the anomaly and arrived on site.

Such swift mobilization was the direct result of their existing doubts and defensive posturing.

“Moving in!”

“Three— Two— One—!”

The Pantheon ministers led the charge into the boundary.

Their singular focus was the survival of their leader, completely disregarding the deployment of ambushes or blocking escape routes.

“Now!”

Crackle—!

As they stepped through the warped threshold, suspended between hope and dread, they were met with…

“…Oh dear God.”

“What… is the meaning of this…?”

…a landscape of absolute ruin.

Great trees, torn from the soil and scorched to cinders, their limbs shattered and blackened.

Massive boulders, reduced to micro-fragments, their structural integrity completely wiped out.

The terrain itself, fractured and gouged, a yawning chasm baring the deep layers of the earth.

It was glaringly obvious that an event… of catastrophic proportions had unfolded here.

“Destruction on this scale… Had the boundary not held…”

“The neighboring sectors would have been obliterated. The body count would have been catastrophic.”

“That is irrelevant! Is Scribe-nim… Adeline Schneider… is she alive??”

“We must locate her immediately…!”

Shaking off their initial bewilderment, they began combing through the wreckage.

Yet, following an intense investigation utilizing every sensory technique and tracking art at their disposal, they were forced to accept a mind-boggling truth.

“Any findings? Have you spotted her?”

“…Nothing, not a trace…”

“Ugh, the same here. The battlefield is dense with residual energy, yet we can find no physical anchor!”

They could uncover absolutely nothing.

Psychometry yielded blank results, clairvoyance failed, and tracking arrays came up empty… nothing bore fruit.

“…It has been completely wiped from existence. The perpetrator executed thorough cleanup protocols.”

“Does that imply… Scribe-nim has already fallen…”

“No! That is unthinkable! She ranks among the apex powers of America, a pillar of Pantheon! She could not have been suppressed so effortlessly…!”

They fought desperately against the reality, but the void of evidence spoke for itself.

Even when the containment field was dropped entirely and the remaining teams reinforced the search, the results remained identical.

“An obfuscation of this caliber… It is beyond comprehension.”

“Absolute erasure, completely invisible to sensory gifts. The raw capacity required for such a feat… it borders on the transcendent level… I cannot fathom who possesses the eyes to see through this concealment.”

“The spatial manipulation, the data purging, and the combat scars… This was not the handiwork of a lone wolf.”

They went so far as to summon elite specialists, masters of divination and tracking, but the outcome did not change.

The sudden strike against the Pantheon director vanished into a complete void.

It stood as a grim notification, not merely to the remaining figures of the Steering Committee, but to the governing heads of every major order.

A freezing wave of anxiety, a creeping terror, as they recognized that an unidentified, titanic entity was moving in the dark.

—

‘The expenditure was well justified.’

A five-minute window.

It was an incredibly narrow window, even when dealing with a transcendent entity bolstered by Divine Possession.

Such individuals received an almost limitless reservoir of sacred power, elevating their combat efficacy exponentially…

‘Yet, numbers possess a quality all their own.’

A touch of doubt had lingered when Harris stood solitary, but with the secondary forces introduced, the execution proved remarkably smooth.

It was no mere storytelling trope; villains were invariably overwhelmed by groups for a logical reason.

‘Furthermore, thanks to Heinz the Second, we managed to purge the entire site.’

「Existence Denial」, a capability pushed to its absolute threshold, performed flawlessly for sanitizing a battlefield.

Backed by the upgraded capacity of Heinz the Second—a Divine Blood vampire beginning to manifest a divine spark—no tracker could possibly identify the remnants of the clash, unless the master architect of Heaven’s Turn Society chose to investigate personally.

‘Harley as the vanguard anchor, Harris managing long-range damage and control, and Heinz the Second operating as the close-quarters finisher. Quite a potent composition… Moreover, this deals a catastrophic blow to Heaven’s Turn Society.’

I offered a slow, deliberate nod, a trace of contentment touching my features.

Liquidating Scribe, the favored hand of the Master, the commander of Heaven’s Turn Society’s North American division, and a director of Pantheon’s Steering Committee, represented an immense victory.

This development would simultaneously bolster Heinrich’s leverage within the ranks of Pantheon.

‘…And the gains do not stop there.’

Resting my head against the back of the seat, I let my eyelids close.

Scribe, the direct instrument of the Master.

An elite high priest, engineered to channel his celestial essence and manifest Divine Possession.

Naturally, her physical vessel and spiritual core held a treasure trove of intelligence regarding the Master.

‘I intend to dissect every single scrap of it.’

And I have the ultimate professional on hand to oversee the extraction.

The absolute premier authority in this world… no, across all known planes.