Mage? Magic Engineer!

’So they found me after all...’ Rorschach had long anticipated this. What they called "assisting the Holy Knights against the enemy" really meant he would end up as the main muscle. It was less about assisting the Holy Knights and more about assisting Balan.

Many of his powerful spells were unusable in the dreamscape. For example, any of his Forbidden Magic spells would shatter this piece of the dream, and the Church would be "gifted" a ward full of people in a vegetative state.

Rorschach chose to trust the Double Serpent Staff in his hand. He swung the Flaming Greatsword, and what looked like a one-meter blade instantly transformed into a forty-meter great blade, for the User was actually unleashing [Molten Beam].

The power and tier of the Magic cast through the Double Serpent Staff were astonishingly enhanced. Fire spewed furiously from the mouths of the two serpents. The staff had now completely transformed. Through the outward appearance of the "Fire Sword," Rorschach could see its true form. The wings of the twin serpents were fully unfurled, and the staff’s body, originally made of willow wood, now gleamed with a metallic luster.

This fire instantly rendered the dream’s mountaintop scorching and arid. What followed in its wake was no ordinary process of combustion, but a direct manifestation of combustion as Rorschach understood its essence:

Anything that could be oxidized was thoroughly consumed in a violent chain reaction.

The Wine God’s expression changed drastically, as the fragrance of all the fine wines turned into a scorching smell that seared the inside of his nose. Then, nothing was left. In His eyes, the very Essence of wine, the Soul of grains and fruits—the alcohol and other aromatic compounds—had all been reduced to carbon dioxide and water vapor by Rorschach’s single strike.

The Holy Knights, who had just finished off most of the tree spirits, watched in solemn awe. They were now completely convinced that the white-robed youth was a messenger sent by God to help them vanquish this evil. A strike like that could only be the wrath of the Lord, capable of eradicating the Domain of another god.

The Wine God’s original plan had been a good one. Even if His hostile takeover failed, He could still escape through the dream world. He might even have been able to find the weakened Dream God and consume Him as a source of power.

Now the plan had failed. However, the Wine God had a chaotic and untamed personality to begin with. Even without Rorschach’s involvement, it was anyone’s guess how many of His plans would have succeeded or been changed on a whim.

Now, the Wine God, flying into a humiliated rage, began to display His new power. He wiped his lips, and the dreamscape instantly became a bizarre, kaleidoscopic world. In truth, this was the real nature of the unconscious realm—a place of constant, jarring shifts where disparate things interacted in irrational ways.

If this continued, the shared dream would shatter, and the consciousnesses of the Holy Knights would be scattered among the fragments, nearly impossible to retrieve.

Rorschach, however, wasn’t about to humor Him. The moment the dream showed the slightest sign of dispersing and collapsing, he immediately halted the process and restored it. Whether by using [Reversing Beam] or his Domain, Rorschach was already used to "paving his own reality with Magic." With the added power of the Double Serpent Staff in the dreamscape, it was laughably easy.

After several rounds in a tug-of-war for control of the dreamscape, a look of confusion appeared on the Wine God’s face. He couldn’t fathom where this person had come from. He clearly possessed no power of Divinity, yet he could freely wield Hercules’s Double Serpent Staff.

He tried to bewitch his opponent with song, but an insufferably loud and annoying prayer to the Lord of Order drowned out the melody. He tried to invite Rorschach to taste the most exquisite of wines, only to receive another [Molten Beam] that vaporized the divine nectar without a trace...

Finally, the Wine God, unable to bear it any longer, went completely insane. He tried to curse Rorschach, and even to devour him directly. The Wine God’s state had gone from tipsy to beet-red; he was now a complete and utter drunkard.

In the end, reason and order prevailed. Judged in the inferno, the Wine God painfully performed his final dance.

The most dangerous moment, ironically, came from the Wine God’s remains. After being roasted in the flames, they began to emit a strange, overwhelmingly tempting aroma. Even the Holy Knights found the temptation nearly impossible to resist and were on the verge of carving up the remains to devour them.

And so, Rorschach dispelled the shared dream and the hypnosis.

Back in the real world, the sun reached its zenith, its light so intense it seemed focused by a lens. Beneath its rays, the great chalice began to melt.

Balan was now gaining the upper hand in the contest for resurrection. It was easy to see that the Wine God in the dream had been merely a fraction of His total power. However, the actions of Rorschach and the Holy Knights had effectively cut off His power at the source, allowing the God of Deceit to overpower Him.

In the rich golden sunlight, the silhouette of Hercules was outlined. He gently shook his head. "A miscalculation... I didn’t expect you to be able to unleash such power from the Double Serpent Staff."

"Isn’t that a good thing?"

The intense light was like an overexposed photograph, obscuring the expression on Hercules’s spectral form. One could only detect a hint of difficulty in his tone:

"Originally, the Lord’s intention was to let the Holy Knights of Valois and the Eternal City fall into a crisis, to re-learn how to trust and understand each other. That would then become the starting point and foundation for mending the rift between Anion and Eternal Trace City in the future."

Now, for them, there was no crisis at all. It was Hercules’s strategic mistake: he had neither correctly assessed Rorschach’s strength when enhanced by the Double Serpent Staff, nor had he properly communicated the "script."

’Being the director for your divine re-employment agency is exhausting enough. Could you stop being so picky...’ Rorschach desperately wanted to say it out loud, but gripping the Double Serpent Staff, he calmed down a bit.

Victory and defeat had been decided. The vessel created by [Axiom Creation], having been successively tempered by the Divine Power of the Wine God and the God of Deceit, was finally complete. The moment its eyes opened, Rorschach knew for certain that it was Balan who had been reborn.

The young Balan waved towards the mountain forest, and surprisingly, a donkey walked out. He skillfully mounted it sideways.

He first nodded at Rorschach. "Even if you didn’t do it willingly, I must still thank you for helping me restore a body worthy of a god."

After speaking, Balan turned to Hercules and said, "As for you, I can only guarantee that I will never be on the wrong side again!"

The God of Deceit just snapped His fingers, and the mountain that had risen from the echoes of history instantly returned to being a valley of the present day. The Holy Knights and the allied army of the Southern Countries were all completely bewildered, as if waking from a long dream.

And what roused them was music that filled the air. The young Balan held a small qin, the same kind as Freddy’s. He plucked the Qin Strings, but the sound that emerged was a composite of many different instruments.

The song’s rhythm was lively, its notes growing progressively heavier, reigniting a sense of excitement in everyone’s mind.

At the same time, the defensive reinforcements from the National Guard’s Southern Army arrived. They also heard the intense, omnipresent music that seemed to have no source. One could even call it noise, and the soldiers just joining the battlefield found it incredibly strange.

The young Balan continued to ignore them, playing on the highlands for three days and three nights. He became the battle’s composer, witnessing how a technologically superior army crushed a ragtag mob, especially with the Holy Knights having withdrawn from the fight.

Hercules’s phantom conveyed a final message to Balan: "After the great defeat of the Southern Countries, you are to support and assist the Sardinia Kingdom.

"The Lord foresees that the revival of Mother Earth will ultimately be unstoppable.

"You must have the Sardinia Kingdom unify the Southern Countries as quickly as possible to face the coming crisis, as merely coordinating between individual city-states will not be sufficient.

"Deryats has already promised my Lord he will guard Istani. As for you, you are the second god to awaken from the Age of Silence and walk upon the same plane as the Lord. My Lord entrusts you to safeguard the unified Sardinia Kingdom."

"Then what about the other parts of the continent?"

Hercules was silent for a moment. "Their fates may follow other paths. Ultimately, they will no longer require the guardianship of Divine Spirits."

With that, Hercules’s phantom dispersed. His time was short; he needed to return to the Star Realm to "stand by a stump waiting for a hare"—to lie in ambush for the person with the Black Walking Double Serpent Staff, the Divine Artifact.

’Did I say I was lending it to him, or *giving* it to him?’ For a moment, the great Hercules Thoth actually wondered if he had been out of touch with people for so long that he was starting to misspeak.