Chapter 54: Magic, Divine Arts, Alliances, Astonishing Truths (part 1)

Centuries ago, when the Bayerzost Empire still thrived, it joined forces with the elves at the northern edge of the forest to establish a defense against the demonic disaster, engaging in a desperate struggle against demons from another world.

At that time, the Elven Forest covered the entire Monster Forest, and the Bayerzost Empire’s territory stretched from deep within the forest to the southern coast and even further to the southern islands. 

But the demons, being intelligent beings from another world, were no easy foes.

They were incredibly powerful.

However, in the early stages, even the immensely powerful demons found their invasion of Elusia unsuccessful.

One reason was the tenacious fighting spirit of both the elves and humans. The youth army of Bayerzost would sacrifice their lives and bodies to prevent towering demons from trampling and contaminating the forest floor, while the elves fought valiantly alongside their allies, willing to give their lives to create a perfect killing opportunity for Bayerzost’s war machine.

But the most crucial factor was the equally fearless Light Priests and Crusaders.

The Light Priests and Crusaders used divine arts to target and kill elite demons and employed various supportive divine arts to protect their comrades. This attrition strategy gradually led to the demons’ defeat.

The demons were not afraid of death. But the elves and humans of that era feared death even less.

In the layers of bodies upon bodies, mountains were split by demons, and the northern lands were cracked with countless fissures. Further north, a demon known as the “Ice Calamity” plunged the entire northern continent into perpetual freezing temperatures and snow.

But the demons never broke through the defense line of Bayerzost and the elves. Never.

Human and elven bodies piled up to fill the cracks, blood and fire turning the entire land red. Although they could not restore life to the eternally frozen land, at least after the “Ice Calamity” was completely killed, the land of ice and snow no longer spread southward.

The demons pushed the front lines with all their might, while humans and elves crazily pushed forward in turn.

Every place was littered with countless human and elven corpses. On top of these bodies, there were always remnants of demon flesh and blood.

Even the demons could not withstand such losses. They retreated. They were returning to the Great Rift, the origin of the demonic scourge. They pondered how to break through the enemy’s defense line and how first to eliminate one side.

The land of the elves was as toxic to the demons as natural poison. So, they chose to first deal with the Bayerzost Empire, whose borders were extensive. To deal with Bayerzins, they had to eliminate the priesthood.

Whether it was the concept of Light as a god, a faith-based deity, or an usurper—as long as they were divinity-based clergy, they all shared a common trait.

“The more believers around, the stronger the priest’s power.”

“The stronger the priest’s power, the better they can protect their followers.”

This troubled the demons at that time. After all, compared to priests, while mages could continuously cast high-power spells by cycling mana, they couldn’t be as versatile as priests when there were many people around.

“How can we counter the priests? How can we break these shackles?”

After much pondering, a demon later known as the “Slayer of Clerics” came up with an idea.

Priests seem almost invincible among their believers. But they couldn’t perfectly and completely cast two divine spells at once. This was a common trait among clerics.

They drew divine power from their believers and used this power to cast spells.

However, priests could only manage two channels at most. They couldn’t cast multiple spells simultaneously like mages. At most, they could reserve one spell on themselves.

In other words…

When it came to protecting oneself and protecting comrades, they could only choose one. Either focus on self-protection and watch their comrades die.

Believers were crucial for priests to cast divine spells. As believers died, the priest’s power diminished, eventually rendering them powerless and easy prey for demons.

“A priest without followers is a lamb to the slaughter, utterly useless.”

Or focus on protecting comrades and get killed through precise targeting.

This was even better—as once the priest dies, the holy guard centered around the priest will collapse.

The holy guard might be well-trained, but their primary purpose was to supply power to the priest.

“A Holy Guard without a priest is just a bunch of ants. They might be a nuisance, but without a priest, they are nothing to demons.”

Alternatively, try to manage both, only to be overwhelmed by the demon’s power. In this case, they all died together, without distinction.

Thus…

“The demons developed an Area and Point Tactic specifically to counter clergy. This tactic allowed them to break through the Bayerzost’s defensive line in a short time and infiltrate our major cities before the elves could arrive.”

Out of desperation and to prevent greater damage to their allies and the world, Emperor Constantine XII decided to drag the demons underground, along with all of his people and cities.

And it was at that time that the barbarians, whom they were protecting, also attacked their city from the rear.

St. Petersburg was raided by the barbarians, leading to the massacre of all its inhabitants. As a result, the city’s descent stopped at less than 50 levels.

“I am unsure if the demons inside St. Petersburg were completely cleared, but that is not the focus of our discussion today. The key point is that the area and point tactics developed by the demons during the last demonic calamity were a complete counter to priests. We can learn and use this tactic. If nothing goes wrong, we can apply it to the Bright Church’s army as well.”

Teresa coughed twice after her long explanation of the history. She took the sweet juice handed to her by Kenna and drank it all in one gulp before sitting back down.

The elderly elves exchanged looks. They had never understood why the defenses of the Bayerzost Empire had collapsed so quickly. Now, knowing the truth, they looked at the Purple Princess with more guilt in their eyes.

An elderly elf, leaning on his cane, stood up and bowed to the Purple Princess.

“Apologies, Purple Princess. We couldn’t arrive in time back then.”

“No, you don’t need to apologize. Frankly, if the elves had been there, my parents’ manual would probably have one more entry. That the elves, as brotherly allies, chose to perish with the Bayerzost. Besides, I have no particular feelings about the Bayerzost. After all, it’s been a thousand years. The empire is long gone, and I don’t care much. Please just see me as a nun and focus on the current issues.”

Teresa’s shrug made the elves feel even more ashamed. 

But as she said, the more important matter now was the feasibility of the area and point tactics.

However, expertise was specialized. Elves were powerful mages, but they truly did not understand the system of clergy.

Thus, Teresa, seeing the noisy elves, had no choice but to stand up again under Fen’s gaze and personally explain the system of divine arts to them.

In this world, magic and divine arts were two entirely different systems.

From the perspective of mages, casting spells was a cycle and was regionally constrained.

After a spell was cast, the nature of the mana changed, creating a base conducive to casting another type of spell.

Among the four elemental magics, casting fire spells enhanced the earth element. Earth spells, in turn, benefited wood spells, and wood spells benefited water spells.

The essence of basic magic lay in the cyclical linkage between the four elements—for mages, their ability to cast more powerful spells depended on their accumulated mana and the local mana reserves.

The best way to prevent mages from casting spells was to directly affect the mana cycle of an entire area, turning the mana into something almost unusable by mages—mana residue.

In contrast, priests were special individuals who relied on believers to perform divine arts.

Like mages, they needed to undergo rigorous training, but they had an advantage over mages in that priests could create conditions of abundant divine power for themselves.

The key lay in the believers themselves.

“If a mage in an area with a mana limit of only 100 can only cast a small fireball, while in an area with a mana limit of 10,000, they can cast strategic-level spells, then a priest can forcibly raise the limit from 100 to 10,000 by leading their followers,” Teresa explained, demonstrating with a faint glow of divine light.

“By varying the number of followers, priests can access spellcasting resources more easily than mages. Conversely, if a priest’s followers are fixed in number and cannot be replenished, then while a mage waits for the area’s mana to recover to 10,000, the priest will become increasingly weaker due to the continuous deaths of their followers. From 10,000 to 9,000, and then directly down to 2,000. At a certain threshold, the lives of followers may seem insignificant. But beyond a certain threshold, each follower’s life or death will significantly affect the power of the priest’s divine arts.”

“So, Lady Teresa, you mean that as long as we manage to reduce the number of believers to a certain threshold, the priests of the Church of Light will eventually collapse?”

“Yes, not only collapse but it will also trigger a chain reaction. Those beneficial group barriers are also tied to the number of believers. If priests are coordinating certain divine arts, the death of believers could reduce their effectiveness by tenfold. But the core issue lies in how we execute the area and point tactics. We need to pose a significant threat to both the believers and the priests simultaneously. As it stands, the only strategic spells capable of posing a deadly threat to regular troops seem to come from the elven mage corps.”

Due to their different mechanisms, mages could flexibly cast strategic spells, but besides their own mana reserves, they drew from the total mana of an entire region. This often led to situations where a large-scale spell cast by one person could deplete the area’s mana.

Teresa optimistically estimated that the number of mages in Caparia was quite high, allowing them to cast wide-area spells indiscriminately in the Elven Forest. However, the mana reserves of the Monster Forest were lower than those of the Elven Forest.

To put it simply, the mana reserves of the Elven Forest were like a normal adult male who hadn’t released in seven days, whereas the mana reserves of the Monster Forest were like a young man who released daily without any nutritional supplements.

Facing the same woman, the former might perform seven times in one night, while the latter might not even get started before losing stamina.

Though crude, the elves nonetheless understood and accepted Sister Teresa’s lewd analogy.

“So, we must engage in a decisive battle against the diocese in the Elven Forest?” an old elf asked worriedly. “While we do have ways to force the priests to cast divine shields on themselves, we lack large-scale destructive weapons that can threaten large numbers of zealots.”

“Can’t rifles work?”

“Idiot! Have you ever seen anyone use a longbow to kill hundreds at once?”

“Those golems…”

“The numbers are still too few. And to be honest, they’re too cumbersome.”

“The demon folks…”

The elves started arguing again. This time, Teresa didn’t need to stand up and explain.

She sat back down, watching the commotion, while also pondering solutions to the problem.

Indeed, the area and point tactics used by the Demon Scourge relied on having both large-scale and pinpoint destructive capabilities.

However, the elves didn’t possess sustained large-scale destructive capabilities outside the Elven Forest. This time, the northern expeditionary force of the diocese was clearly a formidable opponent that couldn’t be defeated with just one or two strategic spells.

What should they do? What should they do?

Sister Teresa pondered, and inadvertently, thoughts of the things Yang Hao would mumble to himself every night while lying in her arms came to her mind.

He had told her many trivial things.

Divine soldiers descending from the sky, flying beasts made of iron constantly dropping explosives from above, metal boxes that could fire a rain of bullets in an instant, and many more.

Teresa thought of the griffin they had ridden.

Though not exactly a flying beast, it could fly. And aside from mages and priests, there shouldn’t have been many units in the Roman Empire capable of harming a high-flying griffin. But the griffin couldn’t swoop down to attack the enemy, could it?

Then…

Dropping explosives from above…?

Explosives… explosives…

The ammunition for the Capa 1404 rifles was made from the explosive minerals of the Elven Forest, wasn’t it?

A sudden inspiration hit Teresa like a bolt of lightning, bringing a smile to her face, but it quickly turned into a frown.

Because she had the inspiration but didn’t know exactly how to implement it.

Indeed, she needed to discuss this in detail with Yang Hao. But when would he return from the front lines?

Sister Teresa looked at the noisy meeting before her and sighed heavily.