novelraw Chapter 377 : Flying Airship
Chapter 377 : Flying Airship
Chapter 377: Flying Airship
The body of the 【Compassionate Mother】 was vast as a mountain, yet the airship above her was like the entire sky itself.
Now, this sky was raining.
The Celestial Behemoth hovered directly above the 【Compassionate Mother】, its dropped bombs falling like raindrops.
Each bomb streaked through the air with a shrill scream, and the booming explosions etched the scene deeply into everyone’s mind.
The once-arrogant 【Compassionate Mother】 could not even make a wailing sound at this moment, her entire body engulfed in the firelight of explosions.
She had just devoured countless people, reaching her strongest state and restoring all wounds, but it was useless. The behemoth in the sky simply kept dropping bombs, pressing this Heretical God firmly into the ground.
The Holy Guard cheered. They knew what the arrival of the Celestial Behemoth meant. With its payload, it was enough to blow the 【Compassionate Mother】 to death ten times over.
Blood Harbor lay shrouded in a storm, dark clouds covering the sun above, yet now a new sun was rising from the ground.
The explosions flared with crimson light, painting half the sky and illuminating every face red.
The Harbor Guard and the ordinary people of Blood Harbor were struck silent. They had endured the previous round of struggle, proving themselves strong-willed, yet before this apocalyptic bombardment, individual will seemed laughably small.
This—this was the will of industry and science. This was the will of Castel.
At the docks.
This was the center of the battlefield. When they had fought the Banshees, most of the buildings here had already been smashed flat, and now, there was no dock left at all.
The terrain was permanently altered. The entire square had become a massive crater, into which seawater slowly poured. In the future, perhaps it would become a new dock.
The flesh of the 【Compassionate Mother】 was blown everywhere. This time, no believers came to revive her with their lives. In the end, she was blasted into nothing but a pile of rotten mud.
No one knew exactly when the 【Compassionate Mother】 had died. The massive monster, the Heretical God who had thrown all of Blood Harbor into chaos, did not even have her final end seen by anyone. Only the endlessly falling bombs, like the scythe of Death itself, slowly swept across the harbor.
Even after shattering the 【Compassionate Mother】, the airship above did not stop its bombardment. It bombed for a long, long time, until the entire dock district was engulfed in a sea of fire, and only when the mountain of flesh had been turned into a crater did the bombing gradually cease.
It slowly ascended higher into the sky and hovered there, its descending shadow covering a vast portion of Blood Harbor.
The airship was primarily controlled by the Banshees. Earlier, Nini had directly communicated with the Banshees aboard via Mind Link, participating in everything from the approach to the calibration of the bombardment.
One could say that the Banshees on the ground were merely distractions. From the very beginning, Nini’s strategy had been to make the airship the main assault force.
At some point, people were surprised to find the black threads binding their bodies had vanished. The suffocating strands, like nooses hanging around their necks, disappeared completely.
There was no next round. This rebellion of the Life Mother Church had ended with the near-total annihilation of the Mother Goddess’s followers. Though many mysteries remained unsolved, though Blood Harbor had lost seven or eight parts of ten, at least they had survived.
Most of the Life Mother Church’s followers had perished, but a small portion survived. They had been starving masses, wild and resilient like weeds. Even in the repeatedly ravaged ruins of Blood Harbor, traces of them could still be seen.
These believers’ expressions gradually cleared. They silently watched the explosions at the distant dock, unmoving, like stones embedded in the ground.
The Harbor Guard and the Holy Guard secured these surviving believers. They offered no resistance at all, letting themselves be tied up without struggle.
The violent explosions stirred up fierce winds, agitating the airflow. Even the heavy clouds piled nearby were gradually blown apart, and a patch of blue sky was forcibly carved open above Blood Harbor.
The suffocating gloom was swept away, and sunlight spilled across the scarred, devastated earth.
The Prince rose from the ruins. He waved off Galahad’s offered hand, dusted himself off, and looked around.
Roughly half of the Harbor Guard remained. The horses were all lost, and most weapons were buried in the rubble.
The entire Blood Harbor had become ruins. The battle against the 【Compassionate Mother】 had lasted too long, spreading across nearly the whole city. Eight-tenths of the buildings were destroyed, several districts completely flattened.
Most of the common folk had died in this rebellion. The survivors walked numbly through the ruins, almost all of them having lost everything in the chaos.
The Prince’s lips pressed tightly together.
Years of scheming and accumulation, wealth and supplies gathered through desperate measures, the fragile order he had built—all had been wiped clean in this rebellion. Once again, he was left with nothing, forced to start from the beginning.
He looked up at the Celestial Behemoth in the sky for a very long time.
In the Mystics’ hideout.
The believers’ faces were fanatical, their eyes brimming with piety. Many even crowded around Josh:
“Great Ritual Master, is… is that Castel’s creation?”
“Nonsense! That is clearly a heavenly envoy, sent down by my Lord Hughes to punish the Heretical God!”
“That is not wrong either. Castel is indeed the Divine Kingdom of the Earl!”
Some believers turned toward Zoe. They knew this young lady, like Josh, also came from Castel.
“Miss Zoe, you know, don’t you? The Banshees, and the heavenly envoy above—they all come from Castel, right?”
They had all heard Nini and Mira speaking earlier.
Zoe’s eye twitched, and her tone carried a trace of helplessness.
“That is the Celestial Behemoth Flying Airship. Yes, it comes from Castel. And the Banshees are indeed residents of Castel. However, I must clarify one thing—Lord Earl Hughes himself has said he is not a God!”
The Holy Guard had also spread various strange claims before, and Hughes had suppressed them all. He had indeed said those very words.
“Hurry, write it down! Record it into the Holy Text—our Lord said he is not a God!”
“Yes!”
“Wait, isn’t the Holy Text supposed to be written only by the Great Ritual Master?”
“Forget the Ritual Master! Josh is just a porridge-cooker, what does he know of the Holy Text? Did you not see the heavenly envoy flying in the skies? What more explanation do you need!”
After this commotion, the faith of the Mystics’ refugees grew even more fervent. They began sincerely chanting passages from the Holy Text. No matter how Zoe tried to explain, it was useless. The Celestial Behemoth hanging in the skies was the best sermon and the strongest argument. No one could stop it.
As for Josh, he was already studying escape routes. Just imagining Hughes’s reaction when he found out about this made Josh feel he could sprint from Blood Harbor to the Northlands in five minutes.
What Josh did not know was that Hughes had been soaking in the sea not far away all along, and had just now set foot into Blood Harbor.