Bear School Astartes

Chapter 943 - 925: Saintess, Crystal Corrosion

Almost the instant they saw that woman, Klimte and the Winged Knights looked as if their souls had flown out of their bodies.

Luckily, the distance between this crossbeam and that birdcage-like cell wasn’t far; otherwise Lann would’ve worried they’d just fall straight down to the floor forty or fifty meters below the dome!

Klimte and Lann were the first to jump onto the top of that birdcage-like cell, and the Demon Hunter pried open a hole just big enough for their bodies to pass through.

Then the two of them jumped down into the birdcage, while the Winged Knights, whose armor was far too bulky, stayed put on the crossbeam.

The moment he landed, Klimte stumbled forward in a panic, rushing toward that female figure.

On the way he even almost slipped on some scattered parchment.

Lann, meanwhile, stayed alert. The base of the birdcage cell was solid wooden flooring instead of bars, which meant he couldn’t just lower his head and see what was happening in the Great Library below.

So Lann could only stride quickly to the side of the cell and look down through the bars.

Because of that, Lann was able to see those mountains of books piled up against the railing.

From the snatches of text alone, the stories recorded here would be hard for any normal person to make sense of. But without a doubt, these stacks of books piled high as mountains, their bindings split open, were the very source of Losric’s Angelic faith.

Geside, the[Daughter of the Angel]—legend said she lost her sight and her voice, yet received stories imparted by Angels. From then on, she began constantly recording those stories.

And if that claim, which Klimte and Leonard never wanted to address directly, was true—then Geside was actually the real daughter of the Queen of Losric.

In other words, the real daughter of Rosalie, who went by the alias[Mother of Rebirth]...

"Given stories by Angels" was probably just them talking about the stories her mother taught her, right?

Lann watched the situation in the Great Library below through the gaps between the bars, while also glancing a few times in Geside’s direction.

It was a figure that looked frail, yet also resilient, unyieldingly strong.

Even though she was curled up on the floor in utter exhaustion, she still had not bowed to the Sages. Instead, blind and voiceless, she continued recording stories of Angelic faith.

"O gods! What have those Mages done to you?!"

Klimte suddenly let out a low, grief-stricken, suppressed roar.

He shakily helped up the Saintess of the Angelic faith. All around the Saintess lay many scattered, pure white feathers.

Normally, these feathers were a natural phenomenon that appeared when invoking the Angelic faith’s[Miracles].

But those were only fragments of light and shadow, which would automatically fade away after the spell was cast.

Yet all these scattered feathers here were entirely physical, solid feathers!

Even Lann, who only knew a little about the Angelic faith’s[Miracles], could tell: these were traces left only when one’s spellcasting power had been wrung past its absolute limit!

And clearly, what Geside had suffered was far more than just that.

Lann hurriedly stepped away from the edge of the cell and came to the center, crouching down to check on the Saintess.

But when he lifted that tattered white hood, the Demon Hunter’s mouth involuntarily fell open as well.

"Jingle-jingle..."

Just that slight movement, and from beneath Geside’s robe came a continuous, fine clinking of crystal against crystal.

Lann’s hand rested on Geside’s body—just a casual touch, yet he could already feel it: that sensation of pressing through cloth onto crystal.

He pulled the hood completely back.

"Mmm, ah-ah..."

The Saintess, robbed of both voice and sight, could only use those meaningless, babbling sounds to express her pain.

Her face still vaguely resembled Rosalie’s.

Carrying a kind of sunlit gentleness, serene and demure.

But now, more than half of that face was covered over by ice-blue crystal!

"Heretic... exterminate the heretics!"

Klimte clearly couldn’t bear to imagine what Geside had gone through. His fingernails dug into the solid wooden floor, scraping out a noise that made one’s teeth ache.

His nails were on the verge of flipping back.

"Don’t just sit there seething!"

Lann suddenly grabbed Klimte by the collar and gave him a hard shake, snapping him back to his senses.

"You know more than I do—figure out what’s happening here, how urgent it is! What good is it if you just rage and gnash your teeth?"

Forced awake by Lann’s yank, the archbishop bit down hard, looking in anguish at the Saintess who still had her eyes open, yet could only mumble and babble in mindless delirium.

He gulped deep breaths, trying to use that to clamp down on his emotions, but the bulging muscles of his cheeks still showed how hard he was grinding his teeth.

Klimte examined Geside’s body up and down.

"They... they used that White Dragon heresy’s crystallization Magic to experiment on the Saintess! The crystallization is constantly invading inward!"

So in other words, this was critical?

Lann’s brows knitted, but beneath the severity there was still a measure of composure.

"Constantly invading inward" meant she wasn’t completely dead yet.

Race the clock!

Klimte lifted the Saintess in his arms and raised his head, meeting Lann’s eyes.

From each other’s gaze, the two of them read the very same intent.

So the Demon Hunter didn’t waste a second; he directly took the Saintess from Klimte’s arms, holding her against his chest as he stood up.

Klimte, meanwhile, strode quickly toward the cell door of this birdcage prison, which hung suspended in midair.

The amulet in his hand flared white, and in a burst of white-feathered radiance, a white-glowing twin-pronged spear materialized and flew straight at the cell door.

"Crack!"

That was the echo of the white twin-pronged spear shattering—and the sound of the cell door being blasted open from within.

Instantly, all the scholars who had been wandering and studying among the maze-like bookshelves on the floor of the Great Library raised their heads toward the domed ceiling overhead!

They were exactly as Klimte had described.

They wore ornate, cumbersome Wise Man’s Robes, trimmed with golden sashes, but those robes were crusted all over with congealed wax.

There was a filthy, sticky feel that completely clashed with the fine clothes.

Their heads and faces were no longer recognizable at all, because a thick layer of wax covered their entire skulls.

This was the protective method the Sages used to deal with the dangerous knowledge within the Great Library.

And as if driven by some faith in lamplight and flames, the Sages not only held candlesticks in their hands, but also had a tiny flame burning atop their wax-sheathed heads.

Now, all the Sages scattered throughout the Great Library raised their heads at the same time.

Each of those ball-of-wax heads turned toward one single direction.

With no facial features, their heads couldn’t show malice, cruelty, or any other emotion.

But precisely because their faces were completely hidden, the scene became even more uncanny and sinister.

Yet in this moment, neither Klimte nor Lann nor the squad of Winged Knights behind them cared about the Sages’ gaze anymore.

The birdcage door holding Geside wasn’t sturdy at all, apparently because the Sages believed that the Saintess, after being studied by them, no longer had any power to resist.

So when Klimte smashed it from the inside, it was easy.

Quietly retracing their steps was already impossible—by now, the garrison on that bridge must have noticed something was wrong.

Thanks to Lann and the three Golden Armor Feathered Knights acting decisively, they probably still weren’t sure how serious the situation was.

But without a doubt, if they tried to fly out the way they came, they’d be hunted down by the bridge guards immediately.

And on the way down to the lower levels, the alerted Sages would surge out of the Great Library in full force, boxing them in right in the middle and cutting them off completely!

Now there was only one path left—cut straight down through the Great Library from above!

As long as their breakthrough speed outpaced the pursuers coming up behind, then in actuality they’d only have to deal with this one wave of enemies, the Sages!

That was why Lann hadn’t stopped Klimte, letting him hammer the cell door with near-unrestrained fury.

They had already given up on stealth!

"Wedge formation! Clear the way!"

Cradling the Saintess in his arms, Lann issued the order without looking back, and the Winged Knights, long driven half-mad with anger, all beat their wings at once, gripping their axes and halberds tight!

The Saintess wasn’t as large as her mother, though maybe her soul damage had reflected onto her body, shrinking her form.

Either way, when Lann scooped her up in a princess carry, she seemed wilted and frail.

They jumped down from the cell door hanging in midair onto another broad crossbeam that helped reinforce the domed ceiling.

"Waaagh!"

A few of the small slaves Lann had seen many times before were stationed on these beams, apparently serving as guards.

They shrieked nonsense in high-pitched voices and charged Klimte at the point of the formation, weapons thrashing wildly.

Their little axes and Short Curved Sabers seemed enchanted, the striking ends glowing a furnace-hot dark red as if just pulled from the forge.

Klimte’s fury had long since boiled over.

He smeared tarry, salve-like coked pine resin onto the spear in his right hand, his face expressionless.

Just like Yan’an’s "fire paper," a layer of flame burned along the coated section, yet did not harm the weapon.

Relying on the reach of his spear, Klimte skewered an onrushing small slave clean through in one thrust, nailing it to the floor!

The slave’s grotesquely round belly, which didn’t match its withered limbs at all, burst like a punctured waterskin, spraying blood outward.

With Geside shielded in his arms, Lann’s leg under his skirt armor swept out, trailing a faint blur of compressed air.

First came a metallic clang; sparks flew as the Valyrian Steel Plate mounted on his boot knocked aside the slave’s swing.

Then he kicked forward, and the small slave—smaller even than an ordinary human—went flying like a football.

It happened to cross right beside Klimte and slammed into a bolt of blue light, a Giant Soul Arrow fired at him!

"Waaah!"

The slave’s shriek was shrill and agonized.

The impact of the Giant Soul Arrow knocked the low-mass target into a wide arc; it plummeted from the crossbeam forty or fifty meters above and hit the Great Library’s floor, bursting into a splash of meat paste.

No one spared it a glance now.

The whistling "whoosh whoosh whoosh" never stopped.

This was the Sages’ and Mages’ stronghold—if they lacked anything, it wasn’t casters!

Azure attacks of every shape shot up toward the dome.

There were so many that it felt like a rain of blue light was about to start falling upward from below!

[Giant Soul Arrow], [Powerful Soul Giant Arrow], [Soul Spear]...

All kinds of deep, specialized Magic came lancing up at the dome overhead!