Mage? Magic Engineer!

The Demon Monk was not dead. Quite the contrary, he had gotten what he wanted. Although the Mother Goddess was still blind and not fully awakened, the power seeping from Her had sensed Rorschach’s intentions.

In the end, it accepted Gregory, who had leaped into the mutated Black Ball. This brave child was worthy of his mother’s affection. All the power derived from the Mother Goddess’s corruption that could be preserved was injected into the Attendant Monk. It then contracted its remaining energy in an attempt to protect both him and Hench, who had been thrown in against his will.

When Gregory emerged from the "Alchemy Furnace," his entire frame was a size larger. His body had been reshaped, and his insides existed in a state of violent equilibrium. If one were to use the medical knowledge from Rorschach’s past life to evaluate him, they would find him in a state of severe carcinogenesis. However, these genetic and cellular aberrations did not affect him.

This was both an aftereffect of the great explosion and a wonderful state that allowed him to draw near the Earth Mother Goddess and receive Her power and attention. In short, for Gregory, it was clearly a positive buff. The Demon Monk had now become the most powerful Divine Benefactor in the world.

After surviving, Gregory immediately left with Hench.

Because of Rorschach’s clone exploding, his soul returning to the Boundary Land, and the matter of dealing with Richard, by the time Rorschach’s main body and the Great Mages on the perimeter entered the blast zone, Gregory had long since slipped away. Conversely, the Demon Monk also didn’t realize that such an earth-shattering explosion wasn’t the self-destruction of a main body. He, too, thought Rorschach was a goner.

Seeing the Demon Monk again, the Emperor still wore a grim expression, coldly watching his visitor.

"Halt."

"Halt!"

The first command came from William, the second from the relaying guard. Just like that, Gregory was stopped, forced to stand outside the main hall.

The monk paid it no mind. He bowed very earnestly to the young man on the throne. "Your Majesty, you are truly a Monarch with a heart as vast as the ocean, to be able to forgive my previous discourtesy."

William II snorted. "And you, you actually dare to show your face again." As soon as the Emperor spoke, the Guards surrounding Gregory immediately pressed their bayonets a little closer to the monk.

"I have simply come as promised to answer the questions you wished to ask. As for whether my words are true or false, I trust that a wise Monarch such as yourself has his own judgment."

This sentence struck a chord with William. His expression softened somewhat. "Was the final destruction related to the Mages?"

Gregory’s mouth split into a grin. "It was not. It was all the might of the Mother Goddess."

"...You destroyed the entire city?"

"No, it was General Ilysov. He is one of the Northern People, and he has his Barbarian Royal Guard. With the Mother Goddess’s impending return in recent years, they only just discovered the Divine Spirit to whom their ancient, ancestral faith truly points.

"The general, in order to defend the city, chose to pray to the Great Mother. But he did not know restraint and asked for far too much.

"If all he wanted was to protect Ovord from the Valois people, perhaps none of your subjects would have been sacrificed. Unfortunately, he wanted too much: power, status, and... eternal life."

He was fulfilling his duty as a monk, pontificating bombastically outside the hall doors. His voice carried throughout the Imperial Palace, but fortunately, William II had already dismissed anyone he didn’t trust.

Finally, he circled back to being able to remedy William II’s physical shortcomings. At this point, the proud and arrogant Emperor stopped Gregory for a second time. "Enough. I detest this perverse and heretical nonsense."

The Emperor waved his hand. "I only want to know... can such a... flawed ritual... be unleashed upon the Empire’s enemies again?"

Gregory hadn’t expected him to think along those lines. "That... is hard to say. The Great Mother’s power is all-encompassing, and the results of a flawed ritual would be unpredictable. But yes, it is possible, Your Majesty."

The Emperor’s courtier was horrified. "Your Majesty, we have learned the truth of this incident from multiple sources. It should end here." He spoke right in front of Gregory. "The Mother Goddess and her followers are enemies of the Empire, enemies of civilization! Look at the disaster they have brought! I implore Your Majesty to have no further contact with such a person."

"Regarding your courtier, if I may be so bold." Gregory bowed to the Emperor again. "In days past, the gods vanished, the Lord of Order fell silent, and the Old Empire crumbled."

"Your Majesty’s new Empire was able to cast aside superstition, recognize the changing times, and expel the Church. This was an incomparably correct and great act, but it was predicated on the gods having truly withdrawn from the mortal world."

"Now, the Mother Goddess has clearly returned. Why can’t the Empire adapt to the times and change once more? Blind hostility is not a wise choice. On the contrary, to say the Mother Goddess is evil is nothing more than propaganda spread by enemy nations and the Magic Guild. They are afraid of another nation receiving a god’s protection. They are afraid your nation, like the Old Empire, will have the support of a powerful Divine Spirit and sweep across the entire continent."

The Emperor’s close courtier immediately cursed, "You’re full of shit! Killing tens of thousands of people—is that not evil enough?"

"Your Majesty, how can you still keep such a fool by your side—one who measures a god by mortal morality?" Gregory put on a look of confusion and surprise, then shouted to the people in the main hall:

"A god raining down fury to destroy a city is but a trivial display of Her power."

"The god who proclaimed himself the Master of Light and Order once rained down celestial fire to destroy cities, turning both the guilty and the innocent into pillars of salt. This is a well-known tale. But the people He protected won victory after victory, and His followers recorded these events as proud miracles, singing His praises and worshipping Him."

"The ancient god of the sky and thunder was debauched and capricious. His followers, the tellers of his myths, would argue: ’This is simply how a god born of nature is! A god is like the sky—there is dew and there are storms, there is sunshine and there is thunder.’ The bards, poets, and playwrights who yearned for those ancient times could forgive Him, even glorify Him."

"And now, a real Divine Spirit, one who is about to descend upon this world, has begun to display Her power. Yet you, you simpleton, have been swayed by the deceptions of enemies, Casters, and god-haters, and you dare to slander and belittle Her!"

As Gregory delivered his denunciation, he was so furious his hair seemed to stand on end, his greasy, dark curls flaring out. He spoke with righteous conviction, exuding an incredible aura that made the courtier who had been advising William II falter and withdraw.

"My apologies, Your Majesty. Forgive my outburst." Gregory’s bristling rage subsided, and he offered another feigned apology to the Emperor.

The Emperor stared at the monk for a long moment, then suddenly spoke. "Come inside."

...

The Empire was currently enduring its most difficult winter in recent years.

The Mages of the Tower of Forest had received reports from Rorschach and others, and their own findings confirmed it: there were traces of Sect activity all over the Empire, most notably using methods akin to contamination to increase crop yields.

Due to the Empire Army’s grain requisitions, this tainted food was being gathered on a massive scale. The Mages quickly implemented screening and Purification measures, attempting to mitigate the risk through various methods.

In the process, some grain was unavoidably "rendered harmless," and the Empire’s solution was to impose another round of requisitions on production areas where no contamination had been detected.

Immediately, cries of discontent rose from the countryside. At the same time, life for city residents wasn’t easy either. The disappearance of Ovord left them in a state of panic, and the stock exchange and other markets plummeted amid the fear.

Some media outlets dug up fragments of the truth behind the Ovord disaster. For the first time, the Earth Mother Goddess and her faith received unprecedented attention in the Empire, with connections being drawn to the attacks on the Empire Parliament Building and the Empire Palace several years prior. News from Bayern then revealed to the Empire’s populace that this Evil God and its followers had long been active in Valois and Istani, both of which had been ravaged by them.

Many calls emerged within the Empire to halt the war with the Republic and focus instead on post-war reconstruction and dealing with the threat of the Evil God’s cult.

However, the related motion submitted by the Council was vetoed by the Imperial Palace.