The Evil God Summoned by the Saintess-Chapter 41 - 39: Lord Rose, Save Me!

"None of them are."

Hearing Hilia’s denial, High Priest Dylan’s face darkened a bit.

The people below, and all the pile of polluted things around them.

No matter if they really are heretics or not, this would be a great achievement, maybe even a shot at getting promoted to Archbishop.

For the possible promotion to Archbishop, they had to be heretics.

A remote village, a bunch of people gathered around unknown polluted materials, something weird even happening at the nearby lake.

If that’s not heretic behavior, what is?

But Hilia’s arrival shattered Dylan’s hopes of promotion.

Of course, he conveniently ignored that if Hilia hadn’t sought him out, he wouldn’t even have had this "opportunity".

Still unwilling to give up, he pondered for a moment, then said:

"I see. But Miss Hilia, these people still need to be taken to Xue Shan Town for interrogation just in case we miss anything. Please help us bring them back so we can properly purify these evil pollutants. Rest assured, we won’t wrong any good person—we’ll be sure to set a good example."

The Holy Daughter of the Holy Court—no way she’d have time to drop by for investigations. As long as he got these people into the Divine Hall, there was still hope.

"No!" Hilia refused without hesitation, staring at Dylan. "Sir Dylan, if you were the kind of High Priest Vanessa’s mom is, I’d choose to believe you—but unfortunately."

The girl thought of what happened in the Divine Hall earlier and rage boiled within her: "What happened in the Divine Hall this morning, I’ll never forget. I’ll personally report what you did to the Judgement Court and the Sacrificial Institute."

Below, hearing Hilia say this, Rose made the magic puppet stand up straight and started flexing its joints.

The pre-fight trash talk was finally over.

Time for a fight.

Couldn’t wait any longer.

As Rose expected, hearing Hilia’s words, Dylan’s face slowly turned colder.

If not for this last bit of honesty—if Hilia only refused—he would’ve let these people go for a while, then waited until she left before coming by to round them all up.

But now, if the Holy Daughter-in-training were to report his actions to the Holy Court, it wouldn’t be a promotion awaiting him, but a noose.

It might even be this girl herself presiding over his judgement.

Whether or not he let these "heretics" go today, he was dead either way.

So, he might as well...

Dylan pretended to turn his ear to hear what the nearby knight was saying, then his face changed, "So you’re a fake. I knew it was suspicious that the Holy Court’s Holy Daughter would show up here—it was an impostor all along."

"How dare you impersonate the Holy Daughter right in front of a High Priest—this is blasphemy! Once I catch you, I’ll take you back for a proper interrogation."

"Holy Knights, listen up! Seize the fake Holy Daughter, then kill all the heretics! May the light of the Gods shine upon you!"

Five knights shouted loudly, "Kill!"

"How dare you..." Hilia’s face went pale. She hadn’t finished her words before the five knights charged toward her.

She hurriedly flew downward, jumping to the ground.

"Lord Rose, save me!"

A knight rushed over, swinging his sword at Hilia, but the next second, a hand blocked the attack.

Rose had already manipulated the magic puppet to appear behind Hilia, intercepting the five knights.

"Five Tier One knights, you can handle them yourself... Well, just use your magic to assist me from the back."

Rose muttered, then thought better of it, realizing Hilia had never fought before, and this was a one-against-five situation, so he didn’t say more.

Since arriving in this world, apart from sparring with himself by manipulating clay puppets in the sealed ground, he’d never actually fought—only possessing rich combat experience in memory, not practice.

Now, finally, he could fight for real.

And it was high-difficulty micro-control—couldn’t use too much force or he’d accidentally blow Hilia up.

As for the challenge of facing five opponents?

He’d use his feet.

Rose expanded his spiritual power, locking onto the five knights. In the spiritual vision, their movements were like old men doing Taichi in the park—slow and powerless.

While blocking the first knight’s sword, a hand had already smacked a fireball right into the guy’s face.

At the same time, the other knights charged up.

Amidst the attacks from all the knights, the magic puppet Rose controlled was like a slippery eel—dodging their attacks easily and gracefully, with plenty of energy left to counterattack with magic.

Marina, who had been planning to help, stopped in her tracks, jaw dropping in surprise.

"Th-this, is this what a magic puppet can do?"

Never before had she wanted so badly to have a magic puppet of her own.

The thought of controlling a magic puppet to fight enemies while watching from the side—maybe even munching snacks—was the height of envy.

Hearing her words, Hilia merely glanced at her.

Wishful thinking. It’s the Evil God’s combat power, not mine at all.

Hilia had originally wanted to assist in the fight, but seeing Rose so relaxed, she couldn’t even get in on the action, so she decided not to bother with support magic.

What shocked her even more was her magic power consumption when Rose used magic.

Using Fireball Technique as a reference, Rose’s fireballs consumed less than a tenth of what she used!

With the same amount of magic power, Rose could cast more than ten times as many spells as her!

What was even stranger—she was the owner of the magic puppet, so she could directly feel feedback from it.

The puppet’s reactions, the way magic power cycled within it—all fed directly into her mind, as if she was commanding it herself in battle.

She vaguely felt like she’d gained fresh insight into the flow of magic power.

Hilia was stunned too.

"Pathetic!"

A furious roar cut off the two girls’ shock.

They looked up and saw Dylan, who’d been watching, now descending in a rage.

Turns out, Rose had already dealt with the five knights—they were all sprawled on the ground, groaning.

Rose hadn’t killed them, just disabled them.

After all, they were on the same side as Hilia—if he killed them and Hilia’s main quest got stuck, that’d be bad.

This unexpected outcome forced Dylan to take the stage himself.

He looked at Hilia, doing his best to hide his panic.

"Didn’t expect you to be so powerful. But I’ll show you the difference between Tier One and Tier Three!"

Dylan raised his hand, and a streak of light appeared. From the glow, a magic puppet leapt out.

A magic staff also appeared at the same time.

The staff and magic puppet restored his confidence.

"Spatial Magic only available to Tier Two Mages—Puppet Storage Skill," Hilia stared in envy at the scene.

Apparently knowing that the more nonsense he spewed, the sooner he’d die, Dylan summoned his puppet and immediately controlled it to charge at Hilia, while he silently chanted, and the earth began to tremble.

Rose blocked the path of Dylan’s magic puppet, their fists colliding, and he furrowed his brows.

This magic puppet’s strength was still way too low.

He said to Hilia, "Hilia, he’s using Tier Three Magic: Earth Shock. The puppet’s strength is too low to beat him—give me control of your body and let me fight."

He glanced at Dylan, shaking his head.

People nowadays are really missing the point—relying totally on magic puppets in battle, neglecting their own cultivation. That’s no good.

Only by strengthening oneself is one truly strong.

At the same time, upon hearing Rose’s words, Hilia’s body trembled.

From the moment the Evil God possessed her, Hilia had been rehearsing this scene—

Having her control taken by the Evil God.

Hilia groaned inwardly.

Finally... Is it happening?