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Typically speaking, the “Joyful” airship wasn’t available for rental. It had never been rented out even once in its history.

That was because the ship was actually the armed aerial fortress of the Grail-holding Church.

It was 160 meters long, with a maximum diameter and height of nearly 30 meters — roughly as tall as a six-story bell tower. Because of this, it was honored as the “Our Great Bell Tower” and “The Respectable Joyful” by the Grail-holding Church.

Although it was unlike Red Knight’s airship, carrying so many weapons and explosives… it did not mean it would be inferior.

The most advanced technology on the “Joyful” was its shock absorption and soundproofing. The “Joyful” even had a dedicated restaurant, ballroom, study, bathhouse, and rec room to play cards, play chess, read books, and enjoy dances.

The Joyful airship had two levels of cabins. Each room had a huge, soft double bed. Apart from not having a private bathroom and the rooms being a bit cramped, the airship was no different from the most luxurious hotels.

The maximum flight speed of the “Joyful” would reach 80 kilometers per hour — and if it entered the “quiet mode”, it would maintain a speed of 60 kilometers per hour.

In the quiet mode, the Joyful’s stability even allowed for a game of pool in the rec room. The stability in this mode made it possible for the ritualist to use the ritual in the air.

Performing rituals was risky. If it failed, it could trigger an explosion. Certainly, conducting a ritual while on a turbulent flight was certainly not a safe course of action.

However, the challenge could be overcome.

The “Joyful” ritual room had a unique design — it catered to the secret number “9” of the Grail-holding Lady and could accommodate up to nine ritualists to collaborate in large-scale joint rituals. Moreover, it could dissect some rituals into nine components.

In this way, everyone only needed to complete a part for the ritual to be carried out stably.

Thus, the possibility of ritual failure would be significantly reduced.

As long as every component was treated without issue, the ritual would generally not have problems in the end. It was like breaking down complex problems into smaller, verifiable steps and calculating each step separately.

Conversely, if the ritual failed, the ritualist only needed to bear one-ninth of the negative feedback. Generally, it posed no danger to the ritualist’s life.

The “nine layers of ritual” that split the ritual into smaller components was also a large-scale auxiliary ritual developed by the Grail-holding Church. It was called the “Feast of All Love”. Besides dissecting, it could also be used to amplify and project Grail-holding Lady’s ritual.

This approach could only be used by the priests of the Grail-holding Church… However, only the Grail-holding Church might need this kind of assistance.

According to a record, [The Secret About the Grail], the Grail-holding Lady was the only upright deity that required “sacrifice” to complete the ritual.

Just like praying for the power of “the Purifying realm”, one must sacrifice high-purity Gold — similarly, carrying out the Grail-holding Lady’s ritual, [Ritual: Roaring Heart] required self-sacrifice.

To hold an advanced ritual, it was easy to injure and disable yourself.

Of course, for some people, obtaining a large amount of high-purity gold might be more difficult than donating their blood and limbs.

This airship allowed ritualists to hold rituals continuously at the lowest cost, the fastest speed, and the least risk.

Moreover—

A giant airship glided over the Great Barrier at sixty kilometers per hour—since it was above the Great Barrier, this meant that almost all attacks from the ground would likely miss.

Meanwhile, it could continually exert influence on those directly below it.

As long as the Grail-holding Church held the “Joyful”, the church could intervene on the battlefield anytime.

Many of the divine arts in the “Blood” Realm had considerable lethality and interference in battles.

For example, it induced mass sleep, mass insomnia, mass hysteria, mass madness—or caused vines to grow from one’s heart, turned the blood within the body putrid, or transformed the blood that left the body into scalding, strong acid to counterattack the enemies, and so on.

It was just like the air force bombing the infantry. The victims were left unable to resist and unable to counterattack… They couldn’t even dodge large-area ritual attacks. The only thing they could do was to escape as soon as possible.

However, this was an airship with a speed of 60 kilometers per hour.

If the airship wanted to pursue its enemy, the infantry couldn’t run away.

How could such a killing machine be borrowed casually?

Worse still, it was even lent to outsiders. The worst part was that the church didn’t even leave a cardinal on the airship to watch over it.

Only the four poor priests were on the airship.

Their authority was too low even to know what behaviors were not allowed.

It must be a conspiracy. The four priests thought sadly.

Fortunately, the church only lent their four priests onto the airship instead of nine ritualists.

At least the current situation was not the worst scenario.

Just as this airship had advanced weapons, at least no engineers could operate the weapons on board.

It wasn’t too ridiculous, in a way.

If the church gave them the ritualists too, the four priests would have suspected that the Grail Holding Church was planning to bomb other countries with the excuse of “lending airships to tourists”— for example, the capital of Denizoya.

It just so happened that the relationship between Denizoya and the Papal Kingdom was not good.

In that case, maybe the four priests were the unlucky ones who were used as pawns to take the blame after the Grail-holding Church triggered the war.

But that isn’t quite right either. One of us is a direct disciple. I haven’t offended anyone, and the teacher doted on me.

What is happening?

Who am I supposed to build rapport with? Where is this airship going?

This airship is the bombing airship with the highest configuration in the world. Why is it driving toward the Elegy Dukedom? Are we going to bombard the grave of the Venerated Skeleton?

The four priests discussed it secretly but still couldn’t figure it out. On the contrary, the four of them became more and more nervous.

Fortunately, one of them had become acquainted with Longjing Tea and successfully told her name.

“—Irene.” Longjing Tea ordered, “We are dropping here.”

After the “Joyful” entered full speed, it took only eight hours for them to fly from the center of the Papal Kingdom to the sky above the Elegy Dukedom.

The priest with beautiful long brown hair, who had been standing beside them and listening to their chat, had a complicated complexion.

The more she listened, the heavier her heart became.

I don’t think I can maintain this professional smile anymore…

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Why are they talking about Austere-Winter’s Grand Duke and Noah Kingdom’s royalty? Are their identities really that high-ranking? Which country are they from, anyway? And they’re calling the Venerated Skeleton ‘Old Bone,’ using such a familiar and almost audacious way of addressing him… It seems like they also know Silver Sire.

The most outrageous thing was that she also heard this group of people discussing how to assassinate the Noah Kingdom’s prince and how to rob the underground cities.

Why are these people chatting so unscrupulously?!

Who are these people, really? Where did these lawless rogues come from?

Will I end up being silenced for good?

Probably, yes…

Irene shivered slightly, her expression growing increasingly fearful.

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