as the words of the pope fell on people's ears, the whole plaza went silent. no one thought that the pope would be announcing something absurd like that. everyone was having trouble believing what they heard. amidst their confusion the pope resumed his speech.
"I know that all of you are wondering what I'm saying and are having a hard time believing it, but what I've said is completely true. The king is not kind like you all were thinking, the truth is that he is a treacherous man who had always been trying to eradicate the church from this kingdom."
"all this time the church had been suffering under his rule but we kept our silence for the betterment of our people. if we had come to openly oppose him many lives would have been lost in the war between us." rather than easing people's confusion his speech further increased it.
the people of the kingdom had been living peacefully under the current king's rule. in their eyes he had been a very benevolent and kind king, liked by most of the people. no one could imagine him being the type of man the pope was claiming him to be.
"but we no longer need to be silent, since lord musha has provided us with our support. he even gave us the power to fight against the vile king." the pope brought out a red coloured glass container. he showed it to the people gathered.
"what you are seeing is the 'holy blood', it contains blood of our lord himself. those who drink it will be granted Power by him. the recent incident of people transforming was due to some of our faithful devotees testing the affect of the holy blood. with this they were able to gain so much power to complete our lord's order."
this new reveal from the pope caused chaos among people. none could believe that the church was the one actually responsible behind the recent happenings. the pope led the speech for a few more minutes before ending it by saying," I'm here to ask you all to join us in this battle against the king so that we could fulfill lord musha's will."
saying that he swiftly left the plaza leaving people wondering if that really happened or not. Rehan also listened to the whole speech.
"it caused so much trouble for the Duke (Bael) to find out the culprit behind the problem, but before he could do anything the church had come out to openly admit it. it even waged war across the whole kingdom. I wonder what he will do now" Rahen wondered how things were going to turn out from there.
at the same time similar things were happening all over the kingdom. the pope from all the churches over the kingdom came out and declared war simultaneously. in just a day the whole kingdom was thrown into chaos.
The king also had a speech in which he asked people not to be swayed by the false accusations of church. he also declared that he will retaliate with full might and take strong actions against the church's revolt.
The lords throughout the land including bael asked citizens not to join the church in their crimes and that they should instead help the soldiers so that this problem can be solved as early as possible with the least amount of damage done to the kingdom and its people.
ever since the declaration of war most of the estates have already engaged in battle, bael's dukedom was one of the few lands which have yet to start battles.
since Rahen was not allowed to move freely in the castle without Liyan, he didn't know what Bael was planning to do. Instead with the upcoming war Rahen trained more diligently so that he could prove somewhat useful and return the kindness liyan had shown him.
the result was clearly visible in his status window, at which he was looking happily.
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STATUS
Name : Rahen (30% mutation)
Level : 13 (15%)
Race : Vulture
Age : 16
HP : 800/800
Credit points : 100
STATS
Strength : 22
Agility : 10
Stamina : 14
Physical Defence : 9
Mental strength : 47
QI : 7067
Special Ability : Inventory, Training dimension
Passive skills : passive heal (lvl 3), Mua language (lvl 10)
Active Skills : Inspect (lvl 4), Thermal sight (lvl 3), energy leech (lvl 4), Talon attack (lvl 3), QI search (lvl 3)
===============================
Rahen looked happily at the status but one thing stuck out as a sore thumb, that was the mutation percentage. he had asked the system about it and the answer he did was not satisfactory.
he was told that only by dying will his soul be purified and he will get rid of mutation. That means he will have to live this whole life of his with risk.
but the happiness of his growth outshone his worries and he did not mind it much. one more thing he was happier about was his QI training.
he has been progressing bit by bit and was now able to focus on his sight and improve it to a much higher level than normal. in fact he was told by the system that if he continued this way he was soon going to get a new skill related to his eyes.
IN BAEL'S OFFICE
Bael was going through reports of battles in other estates, opposite him two bullman sat. one of them was a female wearing black suit like clothes, she had a smaller build than Liyan, had bobcut black hair with a sharp face and green eyes. she looked fierce and had a short sword hanging down by her waist.
the other one was a male. he was covering his face below his green eyes with a purple cloth. he had messy black hair, was wearing a white long coat but it had no sleeves due to which his muscular hands that had a lot of cuts were visible. he had a spear hung behind his back.
"this is strange" Bael said
"what? i don't see something strange here. everything seems to be going fine" the man leaned forward to look at the report battle was reading.
"that is the problem. even though they are using holy blood, The church is still losing at most of the battles but we have not seen a change in a single one of their strategies. we are gaining advantage over them but they do not seem to be worried about that." bael explained
"maybe we have overestimated their capabilities." the woman said
"no, with the confidence they had, I'm sure they have something planned." Bael contemplated
"and if they are willing to sacrifice so much for that plan, it must be something really big and dangerous." the man added
"yes, that's what I'm worried about." having said that Bael went silent for a minute before turning to the woman
"get everyone ready, we are going to battle tomorrow" he said
"finally! I've waiting for you to say that. it's finally time to crush those bastards" the woman said with a smile.
they continued to discuss their strategy for the next day. the next morning all the preparations were complete. The soldiers left the castle, led by Zaikar and Quliv, the man and women from last night. While Bael remained behind at the castle.