Passing by the "guards" outside the door—the corpses of knights who had long since died—and into the forbidden zone, the Pontiff’s face was was extremely grim.

At this moment, the century-long silence of the Church’s core secret Second Forbidden Zone was completely shattered. Piercing alarms blared, the Grand Barrier and the Sanctum reacted swiftly, and the entire cathedral had long since been completely sealed.

Under multiple layers of lockdown, not even a fly could get out.

But it was already too late.

Before the Pontiff, the device that had once been filled with alchemical solution was now completely empty. Green liquid trickled from the shattered part of the device, running all the way to the Pontiff’s feet, the puddle faintly sketching a twisted smiling face brimming with mockery.

The Pontiff silently stared at that smiling face, his gaze dark.

From the faint, familiar stench wafting up, the Pontiff had quickly understood the culprit behind it all.

Corrupted God of Love!

“How disgraceful, Hezekiah.”

Mela was likewise standing in the core zone of the forbidden area. Since the Pontiff had chosen to tell her about this, naturally he would not bar her entry.

Her ethereal figure stood above countless intricate sigils; with the slightest perception she could sense two powerful, intricate constructs ceaselessly guarding this place—protecting it, and at the same time suppressing what had originally been contained in the vessel… “that thing.”

Even she could feel immense pressure. If the Pontiff wished, he could rely on those two constructs to directly obliterate her projection then and there.

So the strongest defense had not gained its reputation in vain. The Church’s terrifying accumulation over a thousand years had turned this into the safest place in the world.

By rights, no external enemy could possibly invade this forbidden zone, and it should have been even more impossible for anyone to succeed in stealing from it.

But often… the stronger a place is in this world, the more the problem comes from within.

“Are you telling me a single Knight-Commander could make it this deep, take that thing, and only after he got out completely did you realize it?”

Mela looked back, her tone cold.

“When did the Church become so incompetent?”

“No. A Knight-Commander naturally does not have that clearance.”

The Pontiff replied:

“According to Ulrons’s report just now, everything Knight-Commander Kans did was in accordance with protocol. After a bloody battle, he withdrew with his unit to the rear to rest and rotate—an entirely normal personnel adjustment.

Neither the saintess nor the archbishops noticed anything amiss, because he was not amiss. The rotation order itself was personally issued by Archbishop Locast.

Rotation is at most a trivial matter; movements like that play out dozens of times a day inside the Church’s various secret departments.

Even if Kans harbored ill intent, he could not possibly make contact with the core…”

“But?”

Mela looked at him quietly.

“But…”

The Pontiff gripped his scepter, the veins jumping on the back of his gaunt hand. In his timeworn eyes flickered a fury and helplessness he could not conceal, as though a bone-deep wound from the past had been torn open and left bleeding again.

“In Ulrons’s records, the one who came in here just now was not Kans Lord, Knight-Commander of the Holy Sword, but… the Life Church’s true saintess, Belena.”

“Saintess Belena…”

Mela’s brow twitched as she recalled half a year ago, when the Academy was invaded by a dark god, and that former former saintess controlled by the God of Love.

She was both the Church’s saintess and Professor Pulan’s proudest student.

But she was already dead, killed by Mela’s own hand, and could not possibly return to life.

Therefore…

“Did the God of Love… hijacked that Saintess's authority?”

“Yes. As a saintess, Belena naturally had the right to enter here.”

“That’s far too easy. Since the Church already knew Belena had fallen under the Love God’s control, why keep her clearance?”

“We did not keep it. But everything leaves traces. And what the God of Love stole from the Church back then was not only saintess Belena.”

The Pontiff sighed heavily:

“At the time, Belena was still the Church’s saintess. So the God of Love piggybacked on her connection to the Church and simultaneously stole a full fifth of the Church’s holy light. That vast holy light is the root of everything.”

“Holy light? One-fifth?”

Mela was stunned for a moment, then immediately saw the light.

No wonder that mutt had looked like that the last time they met. She had thought He’d gone in for some cosmetic work, stuck a few more feathers on Himself to better scam the pure, ignorant boys and girls.

Turns out that sanctified power came from the Church’s holy light, and because that holy light was mixed with the Love God’s own power, even Mela hadn’t recognized it at once.

“One-fifth… No wonder. That’s enough for the Love God to pull the wool over the world’s eyes. Not to mention the traces left by saintess Belena—you basically handed both the key and the lock to the Love God. It’d be stranger if He didn’t proceed to work you over.”

“Indeed. It is maddening. A moment’s mistake brewed a bitter fruit that still tastes acrid even now. But even so, I still had room to respond. If I had noticed in time, I could have used the Sanctum to instantly seal both Kans and the Love God controlling him.”

Bright radiance wound around the Pontiff’s scepter. Within endless sanctity, the entire Holy City seemed projected here in every detail.

The whole cathedral, the whole Holy City, lay in his absolute grasp. In the span of an instant his sight could reach anywhere; within a single breath, his true body could arrive in person.

“But the problem is, at that moment the dark god of Plenty was playing a game with you—‘you chase me, and if you catch me I’ll let you “hehe”’—successfully drawing all of your attention.”

Mela helpfully supplied the second half for the Pontiff, her tone indescribably mocking:

“You were outsmarted by the disgrace of the dark gods.”

“Yes.”

Once the anger had ebbed, knowing the matter was a foregone conclusion, the Pontiff nodded quietly:

“This time we were indeed outmaneuvered by the Love God. I fear the only reason He aided Plenty was to use him to draw the Church’s gaze. He couldn’t care less whether Plenty succeeded.”

“An old trick.”

Mela snorted coldly.

How similar this plot was to the last time the Moon of Silence attacked the Academy.

And yet, even the stalest gambit still works.

Because when facing a dark god going berserk—especially the dark god who is the goddess’s mortal enemy—the entire Church could not possibly fail to be on full alert.

Moreover, this time the Love God had clearly learned from last time’s lesson and acted even more insidiously. When Plenty was a step away from breaking through the Church, He still held back and didn’t act, instead lying low in a place like this.

And the result was worlds apart.

Last time, failure, and a tail-between-the-legs retreat.

This time… success.

“Heh. As expected of that damn mutt—really does love handing people impossible problems.”

Mela tilted her head back and opened her crimson eyes, as if gazing through the sealed forbidden zone toward something.

Perhaps not something in the distance, but something from the distant past.

In that instant, her bearing no longer resembled a pajama-clad little lolicon. That ancient dignity and gravitas even briefly overshadowed the scepter-bearing Pontiff:

“The Love God’s success in taking that means the gears of fate have begun to turn again.”

“No… in truth they had already begun to turn. The dark gods’ frequent activity was already an omen—or perhaps… because of some shadowy hand we do not know.”

Whether speaking to herself or telling the Pontiff something:

“But regardless of how nebulous those things are, the most important fact now is… the Love God has already succeeded once. We absolutely cannot allow Him to succeed again.

Because what He took…”

“Is the Demon God’s remains.”

In the cold, silent forbidden zone, the Pontiff lowered his gaze and softly spoke that taboo term.

“The only one in a thousand years to successfully descend upon the mortal world, who brought an era of chaos sweeping across the continent, spread death and despair like a plague, and can even be said to have directly extinguished a brilliant age…

The First dark god, the Demon God.”

“Yes. The Demon God.”

Mela enunciated every word.

Those were two words that inspire dread.

His true sacred name has been buried in the river of time, but the pain He inflicted on this world endures.

A millennium of history fractured like a fault line; countless crippled ancient relics; brutal accounts that weep ink and blood in old texts; the Abyss that still exists to this day… and the demons within it.

Mela’s eyes flickered; her expression was complicated.

Unlike the Pontiff, who knew of the Demon God only from tomes preserved by the Church, she had lived through that era.

She personally took part in the Demon God’s suppression campaign; no one knows better than she how terrifying that Demon God truly was.

“I’m heading back first. The Academy can’t afford another incident.”

Unable to indulge in schadenfreude and instead forced to work overtime, Mela let out a bitter sigh. “The Demon God cannot return to the world—at least not now. Otherwise, given the pitiful strength of all sides at present, we might as well stop resisting, hold hands, and end ourselves together.”

“Understood.”

The Pontiff nodded, watching as Mela’s figure gradually faded.

He hesitated, then still asked:

“You… don’t seem very angry?”

“Angry? Why? Because the Church lost something that important, I’m supposed to get angry?”

Mela, her body already half-transparent, looked back, her expression mocking:

“If I got angry over things like that… I’d have died of rage a thousand years ago.”

“…Is that so?”

“Relax a little, Hezekiah. The burden on your shoulders is too heavy.”

Mela looked deeply at the Pontiff and said:

“One person cannot save the world. Likewise, one person cannot destroy it. The Life Church should have more important matters to attend to, shouldn’t it?”

“…Before your eyes, there really are no secrets, are there?”

“The longer you live, the more you naturally know.”

Mela’s nearly vanished fingers stroked those precise alchemical instruments. She cocked her head and traced a meaningful smile:

“After all… for you, this is only the Second Forbidden Zone, isn’t it?”

...

...

After Mela left, the Pope lingered in this cold and tranquil space for a long time.

The acrid smell still drifted in the air, and though the stench was foul, it always kept one's thoughts all the clearer.

After pondering and deducing something for a long time, he finally walked out the main door.

The corpses of those knights had already been cleaned away; only the white-robed old man stood with his hands at his sides, as if he had long been waiting here.

"Lorcaster."

The Pope spoke this archbishop's name:

"Is it done?"

"Yes, without any slip-ups."

Archbishop Lorcaster replied respectfully:

"Everything as Your Majesty wishes."

"Very good. In that case, it seems the bait has been successfully cast."

In the depths of the Pope's time-worn eyes, a keen light flickered; Archbishop Scarlot did not dare meet his gaze and quickly lowered his head.

Only before Mela, that millennia-old lolicon, would he ever find himself in a situation where both his presence and seniority were simultaneously pressed down a notch.

At any other time, he was the Pope.

The one of highest standing among humankind, the Life Church, His Majesty the Pope.

"Then... let everything start moving, whether gears or anything else."

The Pope lightly tapped his scepter and walked forward; on both sides of the path was unfathomable darkness, but his gaze did not deviate in the slightest.

In his eyes, that was the only light on this pitch-black road.

...

A single person, of course, cannot save the world.

But what he wants to save is not the world.