Chapter 270 (2): Sun Knight Leo

“I’m not yet the Sun Knight, so let’s talk about that later. This is my promise to you that the Watson family will continue to be the knight’s squire going forward.”

Wayne helped Cushing up from his kneeling position, explaining his relationship with Vera.

Cushing fell silent. To his knowledge, Vera had a complicated history with Wayne. His daughter was a latecomer who tried to steal someone else’s boyfriend.

He had been away for years and didn’t have the right to point fingers at his daughter, and although he would like to lay into the black-haired man for seducing his daughter as her old man, he couldn’t do that when said man was the future knight.

In the end, Cushing decided to leave it to Carter to worry about their girl.

“Can you still use the medal, Cushing?” Wayne handed him the medal.

“Yes.”

Cushing took it and gave it a try. The authority that Leo the Sun Knight granted him remained. With this power, he would have a better chance of sealing Thoggua.

Without wasting any time, he rushed toward the dark abyss in big strides. Wayne quickly followed, asking about the seal.

“Thoggua is a follower of the ancient god...”

“Which ancient god? What’s the name?” Wayne interrupted curiously.

“I don’t know the name, but... are there many ancient gods?” Cushing asked.

Wayne fell silent. Thoggua had used many words to laud their master and described their great, ineffable form in hushed whispers. If Wayne hadn’t heard Thoggua wrong, the ancient god they worshipped wasn’t the one he had encountered on Dragonheart Island.

In the vast universe, it wasn’t surprising for there to be multiple ancient gods, was it? Or did everyone believe there to be only one ancient god?

Wayne considered a different possibility: perhaps the ancient god’s ineffable form appeared differently to different people, and he had actually met the same god as Thoggua, only they saw the ancient god through different lenses, shaped by their individual interpretations.

“My bad. There’s just one ancient god. Keep going.”

“Thoggua resided in the ancient god’s Vassal Realm. A millennium ago, the space Thoggua inhabited overlapped with the Frozen Land. The five goddesses worked together to apply a seal...”

“After that, the chosen knights took turns guarding the Frozen Land to protect the seal and prevent Thoggua from descending...”

“Yet later, something went wrong with the seal. To stop Thoggua from awakening, the chosen knights divided Thoggua’s body. What we’re seeing now is Thoggua’s head.”

“Before my attempt, Holy Maiden Anastasia of the Church of Darkness failed to seal it and ended up corrupted by the Golden City...”

When Wayne asked, Cushing told him everything he knew. However, he knew nothing about the exact time the seal was created, when the Life Alliance broke apart, and why the goddesses didn’t reinforce the seal personally. Those were mysteries that directly involved the deities, which Cushing wasn’t privy to and had never considered. Any speculations about those questions would be sacrilegious to his faith.

The five goddesses had sealed Thoggua together; their five chosen knights took turns guarding the Frozen Land, and the five faiths continued to work together on the seal. That proved that the goddesses had had a friendly relationship, or at least they hadn’t been hostile toward each other like they seemed to be now.

In the Chosen Land, though, the Life Alliance, consisting of three faiths, clashed with Darkness and Death with no friendship to speak of. Wayne guessed that the five goddesses had a fallout. Though they had been close like sisters, they had now split into two factions or more.

However, Thoggua, or the ancient god supporting Thoggua, was powerful and could overturn the foundation the five goddesses had built in the Chosen Land once they descended, wiping out the slaves—followers who sustained them. Thus, the five goddesses maintained their partnership after their falling out, allowing their chosen knights to gather in the Frozen Land and play cards together.

Sixteen years ago, there was no Darkness Knight. Receiving the goddess’s oracle, the Holy Maiden of the Church of Darkness crossed the Ocean of Mist to seal Thoggua’s head.

Suffering a defeat, she became Thoggua’s vessel instead. Then the Church of Sun took the stage.

Wayne went over the timeline and planned to discuss the matter with Auston once he went back. The seal of the Frozen Land required all five chosen knights to maintain, making Twilight Despair a hot potato that should be passed to the real knight as soon as possible.

So what if he were to become helpless against his wife? Auston couldn’t ignore the crisis facing the Chosen Land just because he selfishly wanted to be a dominant partner!

Muhaha, wait for me to give you your just dessert once you lose Twilight Despair!

Wayne’s eyes lit up, determined to give Auston a lecture on the importance of order once he returned to Londan. Without order, there could be no sex life. The old man would surely understand.

Wayne and Cushing rushed ahead with Valkyrie floating behind them. Once they reached the edge of the abyss, Cushing raised the medal. Golden light overflowed from his palm and drew a complex, esoteric magic circle. It had always existed; only Cushing had activated and reinforced it with Sun’s divine power.

Wayne narrowed his eyes, identifying the projections of five faiths in the numerous complex magic circles. Due to a lack of maintenance over the years, the projection of faiths had dimmed, giving Thoggua the chance to rise from slumber.

Strange, it would make sense for a regular mage’s seal to fail, but were the five goddesses this bad at their job, too? Did one or some of them slack off or intentionally lift the seal?

Growl—!

The ancient being roared, the sonic waves converged into a cacophony of low, discordant voices that corrupted anything and everything, violently sweeping toward the two humans and a spirit at the edge of the abyss.

Wayne felt a headache forming. Valkyrie could withstand the impact, but not Cushing. His skin paled gradually, and his body was on the verge of melting. White foam dripped down like sweat.

He’s reverting to his true form!

Wayne placed a hand on Cushing’s shoulder to help him maintain his human form, all the while injecting the seal with his own Sun’s mana to quicken the reinforcement.

Whoosh!

A massive tentacle fell toward them as if the pillar that propped up the sky had toppled. Booming currents shot out as the tentacle moved with unstoppable momentum. Valkyrie teleported to the tentacle like a streak of lightning. Scorching light radiated from her as she swung her knightly greatsword with both hands.

Swoosh!

Valkyrie was far smaller than the tentacle. The difference between their sizes was that between a regular human and a skyscraper, and her sword swing was akin to using a toothpick to redirect the sea. It would look like a certain defeat to anyone.

As the golden blade aura whipped toward the tentacle, though, it broke in the middle, oozing fluids from the cut surface. The broken part fell into the distance. Black, pungent fluid rained down. The blood was incredibly active and lively, morphing into monsters brandishing tendrils on the ground. They made unintelligible noises as they lunged at Wayne and Cushing.

Wayne conjured flames and imbued them with the divine power of the Sun, igniting an ocean of fire on the ground. The intense heat distorted the air, instantly incinerating the psychic barriers that the monsters had created and then going on to burn the monsters to ashes.

The broken segment of the tentacle transformed. Its incredible vitality allowed it to remain active and reshape itself after being severed from the main body, morphing into a monster.

Eyes glinting with golden light, Valkyrie raised her sword and charged at it.

Wayne glanced at her and stayed put. Although the knight sister wasn’t at her peak, her capability—

Bam!

Golden light streaked across the ground, leaving a deep ditch. Thoroughly humiliated, the knight skittered toward Wayne. Wayne turned around and stepped on her pauldron to stop her from rolling further, looking at the morphing tentacle in surprise.

His bad. He shouldn’t have set up a flag.

The Golden City that had melted into the ground as black sludge had moved to the edge of the abyss at some point, filling the area with its low whispers. Wayne had failed to notice its existence.

The city’s rotten black flesh and tens of thousands of slimes burrowed out of the ground and merged with the severed tentacle, forming a black serpent with countless tendrils on its head. A single eye opened on its forehead to freeze everything in its line of sight and flip space, aiming to transport Wayne, Cushing, and Valkyrie to another dimension.

Wayne narrowed his now crimson eyes. His heat vision had finished charging up.

Swoosh!

Before he could attack, a spatial disturbance originating from another dimension heralded a flash of golden sword aura, decapitating the serpent with a horizontal slash. From the cut surface, fierce flames vertically burned through the serpent’s lively body, reducing it to scattered ash almost at the blink of an eye.

The rift in space had yet to close. Amid the overlapping layers of blurry light and shadows, a figure clad in golden armor could be seen standing on a snowy terrain with a spear.

It was the Sun Knight, Leo.