A town was burning.

Corruption ran too deep in Illyria. This was already the second town that the Imperial Garrison to the torch in this kingdom, and neither this one nor the previous one had had a single subject who remembered the Oath to the Empire when questioned. The impure had been swiftly dealt with, and at least in their death, they had finally found a way to serve His Divine Mandatary.

Thousands of impaled human corpses had been placed around the burning town as a warning for those who thought of rebelling against the emperor.

The impure were countless. Since the garrison had started the Imperial Purge, ten days ago, they had met only three cultivators loyal to the Empire. Three! The Ralethean Kingdom was gone for good, its lands open for grabs to the surrounding kingdoms. Things weren't looking much better for Illyria.

But even that much corruption wasn't as bad as what the Garrison Commander was seeing in front of him.

Five dead Imperial Soldiers.

The thirty-year-old commander was a man with a serious countenance. He had short blue hair and blue eyes, and wore garrison-issued plate armor, with the Imperial Crest — a two-headed orange and red phoenix — embossed on his chest. Currently, he was holding his helmet under his arm while looking at the fifteen corpses on the ground.

"Cause of death?" he asked, his voice raspy from smoking too much and not caring for healing his throat.

" The killers stopped the soldiers' hearts with a Time skill. Only Entropomancers at Champion level or higher can do that," replied the nearby aide.

The aide was a twenty-year-old man wearing much the same armor as the commander. His hair and eyes were the same blue of his superior, and the likeliness of their faces evidenced the blood relationship between them.

"Human?" the commander asked.

"Mouth-Men or someone who can fake their auras. Three of them."

The commander kept silent for a long time before ordering, "Send the dead to their families, order the garrison to camp here and wait for me, tell my Hounds to meet me here, and send word to Regional Command that I'm hunting for possible Timelords."

"Brother, that would be insubordination. Nothing is a good reason to delay an Imperial Purge. Not even hunting for the damn Mouth-Men."

The commander shook his head. "That might be true for a mere imperial citizen like you, Amadeus, but I am an imperial officer. I was told the Timelords had an agreement with the empire to stay out of our borders for good. If they broke the agreement, this means war, and war is reason enough to delay a purge. Everyone in this kingdom would temporarily become conscripts, their trials put on hold until the end of the war."

"Then it smells like a plan to do just that," the younger brother counter-argued. "We should rush with the purge before those corrupts souls can think of anything else to delay the inevitable."

"Alas, I must make sure. This is above our authority to decide upon. A war with the Timelords might just be what sparks something even bigger. But if you insist, I'll send word to Regional Command first and ask for instructions. This shall weaken my authority in the eyes of my men, but it's better than to risk our family should my decision prove wrong."

"Thank you for listening to me, brother." The young brother bowed slightly.

The older brother rested one hand on the younger's shoulder. "I would be a stupid leader if I assigned you as my advisor without ever heeding your advice. If you must thank someone, thank our parents for their wisdom in the way they raised us. Now, send these brave men to their families while I do what I must."

The younger brother nodded and departed. The Garrison Commander frowned while looking at the corpses.

It wasn't out of wisdom that he had heeded his brothers' words, but out of fear. He knew exactly what Regional Command would demand, yet he wanted to delay it as much as possible, even at the cost of his superiors seeing through his ruse.

For he was only a Champion Shaper himself. As powerful as his Hounds were, counting with three Five Star Entropomancers and six other Five Star cultivators from different specializations, they wouldn't be enough. Not to scout three Champion Entropomancers and survive to tell the tale. That they could be Timelords only made things worse.

He hoped Regional Command would deem his Entropomancers too valuable to risk. Since it would be even more of a stupid suicide to go without them, he might be spared too. That was one of the few advantages of having people with too much status under his command.

Or he might be sent to an early grave regardless.

He sighed and turned to do his job. If he died, he died. His fate had been sealed the day his parents sold his brother and him to the Imperial Army.

And who knows? He even had a chance to escape. He only needed the Mouth-Men to let him live for long enough to activate his escape skill.

The Priestess didn't believe a single one of Lana's words, but Aaron ended up convincing her to preach anyway.

It hadn't been hard. Almost every religion he had seen was the same, the faithful just wanted to blabber on and on about their faith if given the chance. In this case, it also meant a Four Star Sorceress would stay put and listen to it, and it would be a tremendous boon for the Temple of Darkness in Illyria if Alys converted. There was no way in hell the Priestess would miss that chance.

It had taken Aaron only a couple of minutes to get utterly bored. He had never heard so much bullshit spouted with so much sincerity in his entire life. The Priestess had no idea how much of an accomplishment that was.

She claimed darkness had been around before the creation of the universe, and that the proof was that when you removed everything from a place, only the cold darkness remained. Well, they were either ignorant or liars, because when you removed spacetime itself from something, it was the void that remained.

The void had no cold or darkness to speak of. It was void of everything. Even calling it the void went against its nature, for names also didn't exist in it.

She also claimed that darkness wasn't the lack of light, but rather the opposite of light. However, both concepts were correct. Being born from the lack of another Law didn't diminish the opposite Law that was created.

The cold was another splendid example of that. It was officially the lack of heat, but it was equally terrifying if weaponized, and could be used in ways heat couldn't. It could also fight the heat, no matter if its inception was as the lack of the other.

The Priestess also claimed that the Goddess of Light was an evil tyrant trying to push her unnatural ways upon the world. That only in the natural chaos professed by the God of Darkness could one find the true justice of the world.

That was dumb. Chaos was natural, but it didn't make it automatically an expert judge. Eating was natural too, yet there was no justice to be found in it.

The lies continued, and Aaron was surprised to find almost nothing of value in them. Most religions did better when weaving lie and truth together to attract followers, but there was no attempt here. The alias God of Deception was clearly as true for the God of Darkness as his "elemental" title.

At least such lies were enough for him to understand more of the divinities of that world. They were weak and ignorant, inexperienced and arrogant, children playing with things they didn't understand, like the power of religion. The Priestess mentioned a lot of holy wars, showing the deities were more interested in having fun by moving their paws in a game of theirs than in growing more powerful.

Aaron considered that a pathetic mindset.

Finally, about two hours later, he deemed it enough. He stood up from his chair and put it in his spatial ring. The Priestess hadn't even offered them a seat.

"...and the Great Darkness shall envelop the world to bring forth an era of prosperity—" the Priestess had been saying.

"Enough," interrupted Aaron. "My maid has heard a lot and must now think hard about it. Please, tell your hidden warriors to attack so I can at least get rid of the drowsiness before leaving."

From the moment the Priestess had started preaching, he had felt more and more cultivators gathering behind the hidden doors and stairs of that room. They were all weak, One or Two Star Devouts, which made Aaron even more sure they would attack; the God of Darkness wanted to try something, but not lose his strongest on the attack.

"We are not hypocrites of the Light," the Priestess replied disdainfully, showing no surprise at Aaron being able to detect the hidden cultivators. "They are waiting for you to leave so they can safely move around." She turned to Lana. "Feel free to visit whenever you want, I have much more to teach." Then she turned to Alys. "You too, Sorceress. It would be a great honor to keep teaching the ways of the Darkness to such an esteemed guest."

Aaron didn't reply but merely turned around and stored Lana and Alys' chairs when they stood up, walking to the stairs right after.

Everything went well until they were about to reach the stairs. There was a huge spike in the room's ambient Holy Energy, and the doorman appeared upstairs and slammed the door shut with a smirk. The door let out a wave of Space Energy, showing it was well locked.

"Oh, I almost forgot. The God of Darkness demands a price for his teachings," the Priestess said as the hidden Devouts started pouring into the room, and the formations on the floor and walls lit up. "Leave the beasts behind."

Aaron turned. "What if I don't?"

Her beautiful smile contrasted with the venom of her words. "Then we will be forced to collect ourselves. And we all know how such collecting always leaves a corpse or two behind, don't we?"

Aaron sighed in relief. One of the reasons he had come was to start toppling the board, but assassinating someone who had done nothing against him went against his beliefs. Now, she gifted him with a most perfect opportunity.

"I disregard many things from weak people like you," he said with a sense of dejà vú, "but I warn you that anyone who tries to kill me, no matter how pathetic the attempt, finds only death."

"Are you really stupid enough to threaten me in my temple?" She asked haughtily. By now, Aaron's clan was completely surrounded.

"Yes." He said. She smirked and opened her arms as if daring him to attack. He counted to three and smiled. "Well, thank you." The Priestess frowned. "Alys, protect Lana and yourself but stay in this room. Leave the rest to me."

And he ran straight at the high elf.

A cacophony of Dark Holy Energy flew towards him as all Devouts used skills. About half the restricting and attacking formations on the walls were activated too, saturating the entire room with all nine energies. The Priestess herself pulled an ugly-ass wooden doll from her spatial ring, and an enormous amount of Psychic Energy left it to try to link with Aaron.

Aaron turned half the energy of his active perception into thousands of Arcane needles, while the other half helped him analyze all incoming attacks. The needles shot towards the weakness in all skills, destroying them with overwhelming ease. He was vicious, attacking more than one weakness for each skill and doing it in the most damaging manner possible. The rebound was enough to make almost all the weak Devouts fall unconscious on the ground.

The tricky part was dealing with the formations.

They were being fueled by pools of energy from deep underground. He could temporarily disrupt them, but that would leave him without Arcane Energy. He could also directly scratch their inscriptions, as they were relatively close inside the walls, but he had nowhere near enough Arcane Energy for that. If he wanted to destroy them, he would need to do it physically, which would waste precious time.

Aaron decided just emptying his Arcane Energy was better than wasting time or dealing with a constant barrage of incoming attacks. Who knows what nefarious formations the temple still had in reserve? It was a Temple of Darkness ballsy enough to exist in an empire that called itself the Capital of the Light of the World and attack the Herald of Light. They must have some kind of trump card.

All the Arcane Energy in Aaron's dantian left at once, becoming a thick barrier between that room and whatever was below, then forcibly disrupting the formation's "fuel pumping system." The formations were immediately deactivated, and even the attacks they had already released faded away as they lacked the energy to move further.

As for the Priestess mind attack, Aaron didn't even bother with it; his willpower was enough to take them head-on without so much as a scratch.

In the end, the voodoo doll did nothing, most Devouts had fallen unconscious, and all formations had stopped working. The Priestess widened her eyes in surprise and fear. It was too late for regrets though.

Aaron was already in front of her, swinging his sword to behead her.

Just as the blade was about to touch her neck, Dark Holy Energy filled her entire body, and a thin black layer covered her skin like protective armor.

His sword bounced harmlessly off of it, and Aaron jumped back, just in time to avoid a tendril of darkness that detached itself from the armor and turned into a sharp spear, going straight for his heart.