The army marching toward the estate was not an ordinary military unit. Leading them was the Grand Inquisitor of the Church of Thymera in the Diamantia Kingdom, the man responsible for all security matters related to the Church across the kingdom. The three hundred soldiers marching behind him were elite paladins, each trained and sworn to protect the faith and execute the Church’s judgment when necessary.

  The Church had known the moment Riona descended from the upper world. The Saintess of Thymera and the Apostle of Courage both possessed the ability to sense divine beings connected to their Goddess. When Riona first appeared in the mortal world, that disturbance had been traced to the Forest of Souls, far from Diamantia and the Holy Lands. Because of that disturbance, both the Apostle and the Saintess assumed the Archangel had descended to deal with whatever anomaly had appeared there. That was not unusual. Divine messengers often came to correct problems in the balance of the world.

  The situation only became alarming when Riona did not return to the heavens after the disturbance in the forest was resolved.

  That was when the Church realized something had gone wrong with their prediction.

  Not long afterward, new information arrived. Witnesses claimed that Riona had been seen flying above Grant City, the capital of the Diamantia Kingdom. The moment that report reached the branch churches in the city, every church immediately went on high alert. The reason was simple. The last time Riona descended into the mortal world, the Church itself had become the target of her judgment. Her swords had cut down corrupt priests and bishops alike, turning the sacred halls of Thymera’s church into a place soaked in blood.

  Many of the clergy had repented since that time, but repentance did not erase the fear that remained in people’s hearts. When the being known as “The Judge” returned, no one could guarantee they would not be judged again.

  Because of this, the main branch of Thymera’s Church in the capital immediately contacted the Pope in the Holy Lands. An emergency discussion began regarding the meaning of Riona’s sudden appearance in Grant City. The Church leaders carefully analyzed every report they had received.

  Their first conclusion was simple. If Riona had not come directly to the Church, then the Church itself was likely not her target this time.

  That assumption held until another piece of news arrived.

  Archangel Riona had been seen entering a noble estate within the city.

  Once that information reached the Church, the interpretation changed instantly. Based on Riona’s reputation, the most likely explanation was that she had descended to punish some evil being hiding within that estate. The Church therefore decided that assisting her judgment would be the correct course of action.

  Orders were given immediately. A full formation of elite paladins would march to the estate to support the Archangel. At the same time, the Church requested assistance from the Holy Lands. The Apostle of Courage and the Saintess of Thymera were dispatched using sky carriages so they could reach the capital as quickly as possible. The Apostle could strengthen the fighting force if necessary, while the Saintess could provide miracles and healing should the battle require it.

  However, the first force to arrive at the estate was the paladin army of the Grant City branch church, led by the Grand Inquisitor himself.

  As they approached the battlefield, the Grand Inquisitor believed the fight would already be finished. After all, the one involved was Archangel Riona, the highest ranked divine messenger of Thymera.

  Yet the sight that greeted him was not what he expected.

  Riona hovered high in the sky above the estate grounds. Around her floated dozens of golden swords that moved like living guardians, circling her body and positioning themselves defensively. The formation looked less like a group of weapons and more like a pack of loyal guard animals protecting their master.

  Then the Grand Inquisitor noticed something else.

  A blurry figure was rushing toward her through the air.

  At first he assumed the attacker would be cut apart instantly. The number of swords surrounding Riona was overwhelming, and any opponent foolish enough to charge directly toward her should have been torn to pieces before even reaching striking distance.

  The swords reacted immediately, forming a dense wall in front of their master.

  For a moment the Grand Inquisitor frowned. The formation was defensive rather than offensive. That alone told him something important. If the Archangel was choosing defense, it meant the incoming attack was dangerous enough that she considered it necessary.

  The blurry figure continued forward at terrifying speed.

  The swords should have sliced it apart.

  Instead, something strange happened.

  Just before the attacker reached them, the swords moved aside.

  The wall of blades split open as if someone had unlocked a gate. The floating swords shifted position and arranged themselves into something that resembled a staircase hanging in midair.

  For a brief moment even Riona looked surprised.

  The attacking figure stepped onto the blades as if they were solid ground. Each step pushed the attacker forward faster than before, using the swords themselves as footholds to gain even more speed.

  Then the figure reached Riona.

  The impact that followed echoed like thunder across the entire estate.

  Riona was sent flying backward through the air, her body shooting toward the manor like a projectile launched from a siege weapon.

  From below, someone shouted in panic.

  “NOT THE MANOR!”

  Almost immediately a massive wall of earth surged upward between the manor and the falling Archangel. Riona slammed into the wall of dirt instead of crashing directly into the building.

  Meanwhile the golden swords still floating in the sky continued to move.

  But now their movements no longer looked like weapons faithfully obeying their master.

  They behaved as if something else had taken control of them.

  As if they no longer belonged to Riona at all.

  The Grand Inquisitor stared at the sky, unable to decide whether what he was seeing was astonishing or deeply disturbing.

  The blurry figure had stopped moving. Now it stood clearly visible in the air, balanced calmly on one of Riona’s floating swords. The rest of the blades that had once surrounded the Archangel were now positioned behind the stranger instead, hovering in a loose formation as if they had changed their allegiance.

  The figure was a blonde woman wearing unfamiliar clothes. She stood quietly in the sky and looked down at the place where Riona had crashed.

  For several seconds the entire crowd forgot to breathe.

  No one spoke. No one cheered. Even the Grand Inquisitor felt his mind stall for a moment.

  This might have been the first time any of them had ever seen an angel fall from the sky like that. And the one who had fallen was not just any angel. It was Riona, the Judge, the highest ranking Archangel of Thymera.

  The Grand Inquisitor narrowed his eyes as he studied the being standing on the sword. His first thought came naturally.

  A devil in human form.

  But his faith in Thymera steadied him before fear could take control. The teachings of the Church had trained him to act even in the presence of the unknown. Courage returned to his heart, and he turned toward the soldiers marching behind him.

  “WHO DO YOU SERVE?”

  The shout carried across the formation, meant to drag his men out of the strange paralysis gripping them.

  The paladins who recovered first answered immediately.

  “THE GODDESS!”

  “THEN MARCH!”

  “HAAA!”

  The three hundred paladins moved as one. Their massive shields came forward into a defensive formation as they began advancing toward Helena. From a distance the line looked like a wall of steel slowly pushing across the ground.

  Helena had already turned to face them. Riona had not yet risen from the ground, leaving Helena as the only visible threat in the sky.

  But someone else stood in a very unfortunate position.

  Morris.

  He was standing between the estate gate and the approaching paladin formation. Sweat rolled down his forehead as he watched the armored wall marching toward him.

  Attacking the Church of Thymera would easily be the worst decision of his life. If he harmed a paladin force in public, there would be nowhere on the continent where he and Elowen could hide afterward. The Church’s influence reached across every kingdom.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  But time was running out.

  He could not run. He could not fight. And hesitation on a battlefield was often the fastest way to die.

  Just as Morris was trying to decide what to do, the marching formation suddenly slowed.

  Not by choice.

  The paladins’ steps became stiff, their armor joints grinding with metallic noises as if the suits themselves had become rusty.

  The Grand Inquisitor felt something similar happen to him. His horse suddenly jerked and he tumbled off the saddle, hitting the ground awkwardly.

  His body refused to move properly.

  Around him the entire paladin formation stopped advancing. From a distance it looked as though three hundred statues had suddenly appeared on the battlefield.

  The soldiers themselves had not turned to metal.

  But the joints of their full plate armor had fused together like a single solid shell.

  Inside the armor, the paladins panicked.

  “COMMANDER! WE CAN’T MOVE!”

  “THE ARMOR WON’T MOVE AT ALL!”

  “WHO THE HELL MADE THIS ARMOR?!”

  “DEAR GODDESS, PLEASE HELP US!”

  The Grand Inquisitor struggled against the ground, but unlike his soldiers he had removed his helmet earlier. That small detail allowed him to at least move his neck and look around.

  His gaze slowly lifted toward the sky.

  Helena was still standing on the floating sword, looking down at the trapped paladins with an expression that suggested she had just discovered a group of very foolish animals struggling with their own tools.

  Breaking paladin armor was not easy. The suits were forged with enchantments specifically designed for battlefield durability.

  The Grand Inquisitor could only reach one conclusion.

  She did this.

  The strange part was that he had not sensed any mana or spellcasting.

  Still, anger would not help him now. He forced his voice to remain steady as he shouted commands to the immobilized soldiers.

  “PALADINS! BREAK THAT RESTRICTION WITH YOUR COURAGE! DO NOT LET THEM PASS BEHIND YOU!”

  Even as he shouted, he knew escaping the armor instantly was impossible. He had already attempted strengthening techniques, pushing divine power through his body to break the joints apart.

  The armor barely moved.

  Meanwhile the surrounding civilians had already retreated far away from the scene, leaving the battlefield strangely empty.

  Then the Grand Inquisitor noticed someone near the estate gate.

  A man standing there with a confused expression.

  A butler.

  It did not matter who he was. What mattered was that he was not trapped inside a metal shell like the rest of them.

  The Grand Inquisitor shouted toward him.

  “HEY! YOU!”

  The butler looked around slowly, clearly unsure who was being addressed.

  “I’M TALKING TO YOU!”

  The butler pointed at himself.

  “Me?”

  “Yes! YOU! HELP US GET OUT OF THIS ARMOR!”

  The butler nodded thoughtfully.

  “Oh. Right. I’ll go bring someone who can help.”

  Then he turned around and ran away without helping any of them.

  The Grand Inquisitor’s face twisted with disbelief.

  “AT LEAST HELP ME FIRST, YOU IDIOT!”

  ---

  Riona remained seated on the ground where she had landed, one knee bent while she steadied herself with one hand against the broken earth. The impact itself had not seriously injured her, but the situation left her genuinely confused.

  Her eyes lifted toward the sky where Helena was standing.

  What troubled Riona was not the punch. She had endured worse attacks before. What troubled her was the behavior of the Nirvana swords.

  They had helped Helena.

  Riona replayed the moment in her mind. The blades had clearly opened a path instead of blocking the attack. They had rearranged themselves like stairs in the air and allowed Helena to step on them. That should have been impossible.

  Those weapons only obeyed her.

  Riona extended her senses toward the floating swords and confirmed something even stranger. The swords still belonged to her. She could still feel the connection between them. Their existence was tied to her divine power.

  But their movement had followed Helena.

  It made no sense.

  Riona turned her gaze toward Helena again and focused carefully. As an archangel she could read mana flows and spell formations easily. Combat arts, magic circles, divine techniques. All of them had recognizable patterns.

  Helena showed none of those.

  There was energy coming from her body. Riona could feel it clearly now. But it behaved in a way she had never seen before. It did not form a spell structure. It did not follow any magical formula or combat art sequence.

  The energy simply appeared and then disappeared, as if it dissolved into nothing before it could be traced.

  That alone meant Helena had found a method of using her power that could not be detected through normal magical senses.

  Even then, one question remained.

  How did she influence the Nirvana swords?

  They were divine weapons. No mortal should be able to command them.

  Riona could still feel the bond that proved the swords belonged to her. Yet their actions had followed Helena’s intent. The contradiction irritated her more than the attack itself.

  Helena spoke while still standing on one of the floating blades.

  “Are you done thinking?”

  Her tone sounded almost bored.

  “Then get up. If all you have are these floating pieces of metal, I’d say you’re a disappointment.”

  Riona’s expression hardened.

  Divine power erupted from her body in response.

  The burst of energy was so intense it was painful to look at directly. Light flooded the battlefield like a golden flash exploding in the sky. Even people standing outside the estate felt their eyes sting as the sudden brightness made it seem like daylight had returned for a moment.

  Riona slowly rose into the air again.

  This time the swords behind her multiplied far beyond what they had been before.

  Not hundreds.

  Thousands.

  Then tens of thousands.

  The sky behind her filled with golden blades until it looked like a radiant storm waiting to descend.

  One of the greatest differences between beings of the upper world and mortals was energy reserves. Most upper world beings possessed enormous power simply by existing. Their strength was not only the result of training. It was something they were born with.

  Mortals called it unfair.

  From the perspective of the heavens, it was simply nature.

  That was why most mortals could never defeat beings from the upper world unless they were extraordinary exceptions.

  Helena stood quietly on the sword beneath her feet and looked at the vast army of blades now surrounding Riona.

  She sighed.

  Increasing the number of swords would not change much.

  If the objects were physical, Helena could manipulate them. If she had truly intended to kill Riona earlier, the archangel would already have become fertilizer for the garden below.

  The real problem was something else.

  Helena could feel an intense gaze coming from the sky.

  Someone was watching.

  Possibly the goddess herself.

  But the presence did not frighten Helena.

  What held her back was hesitation.

  Religion.

  The word itself brought back memories she preferred to forget.

  During the apocalypse on Earth, a strange religion had risen among survivors. Its followers believed that becoming a mutant was the true path to salvation. They worshipped mutation as if it were divine evolution.

  The leaders of that religion never intended to mutate themselves.

  Instead they forced other survivor groups into the transformation, convincing people they were receiving a blessing.

  From Helena’s perspective, it had been complete nonsense.

  The real problem began when that cult tried to attack Helena’s own survivor group.

  They had outnumbered Helena’s people by nearly ten to one. On paper the battle should have been one sided.

  But Helena’s group had never been made of ordinary awakened survivors.

  Every member was elite. Each one possessed unique abilities and enough combat experience to survive the worst parts of the apocalypse. They rarely fought openly for territory like other factions, so their reputation had remained smaller than groups of similar strength.

  When the battle finally happened, the result surprised everyone.

  It took Helena’s group one night to wipe out the entire attacking force.

  They did not stop there.

  Afterward they hunted down the central branch of the so called Salvation religion. The leaders who had been manipulating survivor groups were dragged out one by one.

  In the end Helena personally killed the man those believers called their Messiah.

  Originally the plan was to capture him alive and expose him.

  Things had not gone according to plan.

  The real trouble back then had not been the battle itself.

  The problem came afterward.

  The influence of that so called salvation religion had spread far beyond the members Helena’s group had fought. Rumors began circulating almost immediately. Somehow the story twisted until Helena’s survivor group was labeled as a band of bloodthirsty demons who slaughtered people without reason.

  Helena never figured out exactly how that rumor had grown so quickly, but once it spread, it stuck.

  The damage was not catastrophic, but it lingered.

  For years people spoke about that night as if Helena’s group had committed some unforgivable massacre. Only much later, when the truth about the cult surfaced and the world itself started asking Helena’s group for help, did the accusations finally disappear.

  Until then Helena had endured years of complaints from her own teammates. They reminded her repeatedly that killing the cult’s messiah had not been part of the original plan. For almost a decade she had to listen to them argue about whether capturing him alive would have changed the public narrative.

  Because of that experience Helena had become far more careful whenever religion became involved.

  Now, facing Riona, the thought crossed her mind again.

  Maybe killing an angel connected to a goddess might cause the same kind of trouble.

  Still... maybe a little beating would be fine.

  Helena looked again at the enormous storm of swords behind Riona. Thousands of blades waited there, shining like a golden cloud in the sky. In theory it would not be difficult. All Helena had to do was seize control of them the same way she had done earlier.

  She activated her ability quietly.

  Aether drained from her body in proportion to the number of swords Riona had summoned. The moment her power touched them, the manipulation began spreading through the physical structure of each blade.

  But before the effect could finish spreading, Riona started chanting.

  Divine power surged outward like a rising tide.

  Helena instinctively lifted a hand to shield her eyes.

  “Really?” she muttered with irritation. “Do you have anything other than these flash bangs?”

  The light faded.

  Helena lowered her hand.

  Nothing happened.

  The swords did not move.

  For a moment she wondered what the purpose of that display had been.

  Then her senses caught something behind her.

  Danger.

  The Nirvana swords she had previously taken control of suddenly turned hostile. The blades that had been hovering behind her rushed forward to strike her instead.

  Helena reacted immediately. From the rings on her fingers she released a thin stream of metal that spread outward and formed a floating shield. The incoming swords crashed against the metal barrier and scattered away.

  Even the sword Helena had been standing on began to shake violently. She had to jump off it and drop back to the ground as the weapon broke free from her influence.

  One by one the swords returned to Riona’s side and joined the massive formation behind her.

  Helena frowned slightly.

  Riona hovered above the battlefield again, looking down at Helena with her usual indifferent expression.

  “Your trick has been exposed, girl,” she said calmly. “Manipulating and controlling physical objects is certainly an impressive ability, but that does not mean there is no way to counter it.”

  What Riona had used moments ago was not actually a combat technique.

  It was Divine Art Correction.

  The same divine art she had used earlier to repair the dimensional fissure in the Forest of Souls.

  When a dimensional fissure appeared, it meant the threads of reality itself had been disturbed. The purpose of Divine Art Correction was to restore those threads to their original state.

  Helena’s ability worked through a similar principle. Her manipulation of matter altered the threads of reality connected to physical objects, allowing her to take control of them.

  When Riona had tried to analyze Helena’s power earlier, she noticed something unusual. Helena’s strange energy did not leave behind any traceable magical structure, but the swords themselves showed signs of alteration in their connection to reality.

  It was not damage like a dimensional fissure.

  It was controlled modification.

  Once Riona realized that, the solution became obvious.

  If Divine Art Correction could restore reality after a fissure, it could also undo Helena’s alterations.

  The moment she used it, the swords returned to her control.

  Riona’s voice carried quiet confidence now.

  “What do you think, girl? Would you like to submit now? Her Majesty might still overlook the trouble you have caused.”

  Helena stood on the ground below, brushing dust from her sleeve. She then took one of her rings from her finger and twisted the outer band slightly, as if switching it to a different mode.

  Then she looked up again.

  “Tell me something first,” Helena said casually. “Have you ever heard of a certain monkey?”

  She tilted her head slightly.

  “A very troublesome monkey who caused a lot of problems for heaven.”