Garville did not trust his eloquence, but he trusted the madness of the inner world. He strongly suspected that the Darkness Knight and the Death Knight had both tired of their fight and were waiting for a third party to step in and give them an excuse to call a truce.

Garville believed that as the Moonlight Knight, he was entitled to and obligated to take on the role. Then he would give the Death Knight a beautiful woman so that the Death Knight could give her to the Darkness Knight at dinner to resolve their conflict.

“Have you caught Filomina?”

“...” xN

“Trash. What use do you serve?!”

Garville’s eyes turned crimson, but then, in the heat of the moment, he thought of something and hurriedly calmed himself, gripping White Night Creed. The red in his eyes gradually faded, drawing the envy of the elites at the table.

Divine artifacts could counter negativity. They all wished they could get their hands on the weapon.

Wayne looked at White Night Creed from afar. One of his tentacles writhed as he chanted silently, Come, bow.

It was more than ineffective; it had no effect at all. White Night Creed didn’t even respond, as if they were complete strangers meeting for the first time.

Wayne wondered what was going on. The White Night Creeds of the surface and inner worlds didn’t seem to be one divine artifact and its projection, but two separate items.

“Interesting, the goddesses must have gotten their fingers in this world,” he mumbled.

Meanwhile, the meeting was reaching an end. The Church of Moonlight had become Garville’s personal kingdom, and his words were law. They all got ready to move to Londan as quickly as possible.

Garville appointed two Gold-ranked mages to serve as bait, sending them out with supplies. Once Filomina appeared, he would personally capture her.

Why do you want Filomina? Is she hiding something? Wayne wondered. He didn’t see any value in the old woman. Wanting the Filomina of the surface world would be understandable since the High Reverend was beyond stunning, and no one could resist the temptation. But the Filomina of the inner world? They should have some standards.

After the meeting, the elites left one by one, some putting their belongings away, and others preparing to be bait. Garville alone closed his eyes with his longbow in his grip, giving his mind time to recover.

White Night Creed could disperse the corruption of negative information and made him stronger every moment.

Clack! Clack!

The noises of bones being crushed interrupted him. He opened his eyes in fury, checking who was seeking death by disturbing his peace. He tensed up in alert when he saw an unfamiliar face.

“Who are you?”

“The Death Knight.”

“...”

Garville’s eyes glinted with dismissal. Though he had never met the Death Knight, he knew that the Death Knight was trapped in Londan, unable to even leave the city, let alone make it to Palis.

“Forget it. It doesn’t matter who you are.”

Garville stood up and raised White Night Creed at Wayne. The moment he pulled the string, his mana conjured a blue arrow. “You’re clearly powerful, given how you’d infiltrated the place without anyone noticing. I’ll give you a chance to leave. Kneel and swear to serve me your whole life!”

“My knees don’t bend, and neither do they talk.”

“Hmph!” Garville’s gaze flashed viciously. He let go of the bow string. The deep blue arrow shot toward Wayne’s face in a flash, penetrating his body before piercing through the bone mountain and vanishing underground. Watching the body collapse, Garville made a confused sound. Something didn’t feel right. He gripped his longbow warily.

“You’re a cautious one...” The faint murmur came from below. Garville saw a large swathe of white foam suddenly rising before him. His pupils contracted as the bone mountain at his feet erupted like a volcano, launching countless bones into the air and toppling the throne.

Garville jumped up, barely getting away from the eight pale tentacles shooting out of the bone mountain. They swept around instead, spreading an ocean of white foam wherever they passed and burrowing into every seam.

“An evil god from the Astral Plane? How could there be one in this world? How did you enter?” Garville was visibly ecstatic, ready to capture Wayne alive.

Just then, a massive eye opened in the white ocean below. The intangible impact hit Garville and shook his composure. His vision went dark, and his head rang.

From the dome of the catacombs, white foam rained down, either burrowing into his hair, ears, and nose like worms or following the seams of his armor to find his skin. Garville only managed to react then. The White Night Creed radiated moonlight, the four lunar phases lining up behind him. His mana tide detonated, evaporating all the white foam covering his body.

The blinding light stretched vertically into a hundred-meter-long arrow with Garville at the center. Below, the arrow stretched through the single eye in the white ocean, and above, it went through the dome, reaching toward the sky of the ruined city of Palis.

The terrifying might swept and evaporated all the white foam in the vicinity. Garville tightened his grip on his longbow, looking around at the empty catacombs, still reeling. Aside from the threads of mist, there were only strewn piles of bones.

The evil god of the Astral Plane had died.

Garville was both relieved and disappointed about Wayne’s death. He was relieved because he had almost been corrupted. He was disappointed because he had destroyed a possible way out with his own hands. If he were given another chance, he would’ve controlled his power better.

With a few sighs, he righted the throne with a wave and returned to his seat arrogantly. He hadn’t noticed that the white mist that he had mistaken for hot steam had slowly spread until it covered the entire dome, and that as it sank in vapor form, he had inhaled some through his nose.

“Sir Knight!”

A group of elites of the Church of Moonlight hurried over after hearing the loud noises. When they saw Garville perched on the towering throne of bones, unhurt, they all looked disappointed—no, relieved.

Their change in expression didn’t escape Garville’s notice. He scoffed silently, dismissing all of them with a wave. He needed to rest for an hour, and none of them were to disturb him in the meantime, no matter what they heard or how loud the noise was.

“Where did the Astral life come from? How did he enter the inner world?”

“Is there a hole in some part of the inner world, connected to the Astral Plane...”

“Maybe it came from the surface world?”

Garville murmured to himself, shaking his head to deny that speculation. He chided himself for overthinking. “Impossible. Even if there’s a summon, it should be a one-way street going from the inner world to the surface world.”

Only then did he realize something was wrong. That wasn’t his own thought!

Garville started, gripping White Night Creed and unleashing his mana tide once more, but the white foam had already entered his body and circulated through his blood vessels, corrupting parts of his internal organs and making home in his brain.

His explosive mana halted in but a moment, and white foam gushed out of his nose and mouth. His handsome face slowly melted. An eyeball drooped down beside his collapsing nose as he melted out of the white armor.

A thread of blue light shot out. Garville’s thoughts had escaped his body at the last moment.

Around the dome, the vaporized white foam reformed into tentacles, descending to meld and assimilate with the slimy flesh on the throne. Wayne put on the Moonlight Armor with White Night Creed held in his hands. Looking at the incorporeal body of thoughts in the air, he cocked his head and smiled. “My bad. I’m actually the Moonlight Knight rather than the Death Knight.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The White Night Creed has always been mine.”

Garville raged, not realizing that the low whispers had influenced his thoughts and amplified his negativity, making him lose control of his emotions and putting him in an irrational state. He retrieved an alchemy puppet from his personal storage and inhabited it with his thoughts, giving himself a shell.

It was only temporary. It couldn’t even maintain the most basic balance, much less accommodate his thoughts. He raised his voice and spread his thoughts out, calling on everyone to rush over right this moment.

No one responded, and no one showed up.

It wasn’t because Garville had ordered them not to disturb him no matter how much commotion they heard. That would be stupid. The elites of the Church of Moonlight all knew that Garville was under attack and that he was in such trouble that he had to call on cannon fodder for help.

If even the Moonlight Knight was having trouble, what could they possibly do? Ha, they would just lose their lives uselessly!

Therefore, they all played deaf and continued to put away their belongings or prepared to be bait. If Garville won, they would say that they were following his orders and didn’t dare to disturb him; if the attacker won—well, then they wouldn’t be an attacker, but the rightful leader taking out a troublemaker. The Pope had finally arrived in Palis and found his loyal subjects!

Garville trembled with fury when no one responded to his call, not realizing that a few drops of white rain had fallen on the puppet. With a wave, White Night Creed turned into light and went to him.

As a result, the Moonlight Armor cladding Wayne vanished, too. Such was the legacy of chosen knights. The current knights had absolute control over their divine weapons, and as long as Garville refused to let go, Wayne couldn’t do anything with White Night Creed other than use it to adjust firewood.

Wayne wasn’t disappointed. He had only tested the water, and Garville’s incompetence was already exposed. He didn’t even deserve to be Darienne’s servant. Though both were Moonlight Knights, the all-rounder archer, Darienne, dwarfed Garville in every aspect, so much so that he couldn’t even catch up in this lifetime.

Garville’s incompetence didn’t lie only in his raw power, but also in the corruption of the negative information that the inner world inflicted on him. Wayne was able to influence him discreetly with his whispers.

In the air, Garville stood proud while the two magic stones serving as the puppet’s eyes stared at Wayne. There was no epic fight or deafening explosions. They simply stared at each other for ten full minutes.

Garville was slowly falling apart. His thoughts were beyond recovery, and under the continuous harassment of Wayne’s whispers, he gave up on White Night Creed.

His thoughts collapsed, and he died just like that. The now-empty puppet fell to the ground and shattered into pieces, disappearing into the scattered bones.

Wayne sat in the throne of bones with White Night Creed in his hand. Hearing the Book of Greed gulp, he smiled.

“Kekekeke—”

***

Meanwhile, in a corner of the inner world, an icy beauty looked up in the direction of Palis. She said derisively, “What’s going on? White Night Creed changed hands again? Where are its standards? Is it so hungry that it would just take anyone?”

She bet it was another piece of trash, or she would eat all the chips in her storage!

“Thankfully, this is the inner world. You can’t pay me to accept such a successor.”

Darienne huffed before going back to her mission. “I need to hurry. The world is near its doom. If I don’t get out of here soon, I’ll end up caught in it.”