Chapter 15: Expedition

A huge crowd had gathered at the Holy Church branch, the commotion that the explosion Lucius's corpse caused was the main culprit of everyone gathering here. Even though it was close to daybreak, it was still dark so when the explosion happened, many people came as quickly as possible. 

The current cathedral church appearance didn't look awe inspiring of emitted the light of holiness. The entire church's structure had cracked, the marbled floors, crystal walls and even the surrounding area was full of cracks. If one didn't know, he or she would assume that they'd come to an abandoned church building. 

City Lord Mazal looked at everything with a calm expression. He was the first person to arrive here but even with his authority as the City Lord, he couldn't investigate what had happened here. Being a City Lord had its own benefits and being able to reverse time was one of the pecks. 

And it wasn't exactly reversing time, you see every city has a massive magic array formation that encompasses the entire city. This magic array formation has a number of functions that come with it. The magic array formation records everything that happens inside the city, of course Mazal can't just browse through all the information. 

He only receives the authority to look at recorded events if someone broke the city's rules, if there's a terrorist attack, an invasion, an anomaly or anything that might pose a threat to the city and its civilians, that's when he could use this feature. 

Today, he'd tried to investigate the cause of this incident but instead received a mental message that he didn't have enough authority to look at the events that happened here. He kept a calm front but was shocked internally. The only other option he had was to ask the witnesses. 

Unfortunately many of them were dead and the view alive didn't give him any substantial information because of their horrible states of mind. As fanatics, they'd live and die for their Holy Mother but now, her statue had been destroyed. 

The lady statue wasn't just a statue. It was also an item to collect faith and proof that the believers actually believed in something or something real. The statue had a glow to it that only the most devoted could see and this was how they verified the existence of the Holy Mother. The statue also allowed them to interact with the Holy Mother and receive rewards from her after presenting a worthy sacrifice. 

Now with the statue gone, Father James dead and the cathedral destroyed, these guys were like lost lambs without direction. City Lord Mazal did obtain somethings useful of course which could help with the investigation. They only gave him two pieces of information, a name and surname. 

Lucius Lothra!

This name was very familiar to him and in just seconds, City Lord Mazal remembered who this Lucius Lothra was. 

'Isn't he the one my investigation team deemed as trash? Since he's an ordinary person, how did he manage to destroy the church in one fell swoop and even managed to escape?' he thought to himself. 

It was also because Lucius was far stronger than him that City Lord Mazal didn't receive the information of Lucius already having been teleported away from the city. 

Apart from this, City Lord Mazal had long known about the church's "way" of doing things which was through sacrificing others. He only kept a blind eye to this because the city also kept a blind eye it. 

'Hehe, you've kicked an iron plate this time. Someone whom my Guardian Knight recognises isn't so easy to deal with. Speaking of him, I wonder how the expedition is going.' thought Mazal to himself. 

…

Ignis had been tasked with exterminating the neighbouring monsters in Ash Valley by Mazal five days later after meeting Lucius. They were currently deep in the valley and the temperature of this place was very high. There was a reason why Fire City was called Fire City and Ash Valley called that. It was because the lands these territories occupied was of the Fire element. 

Fire City occupied the centre place, north of it was Ash Valley, east of it was Fire Forest, south of it was Inferno Mountain and west of it was Red Sands. These four territories surrounded Fire City and the inhabitants of these territories always attacked Fire City to occupy it. This is because the Fire element is mostly concentrated there so for those with Fire affinity, it was the best place of meditation to increase and boost their strength with half the time.

Unlike Earthlings, the natives of Lumina couldn't kill to improve their strength but instead meditated or practised for a long time to become stronger. So with the appearing of Earthlings and their quick and efficient way of growing stronger, who wouldn't hunt them down. 

There were also rumours that those who kill the Earthlings with Systems gained this ability of killing to grow stronger. This is why Earthlings had died in such massive numbers and mysteriously without anyone bothering to investigate. This was also why Ignis became Mazal's Guardian Knight but he didn't tell Lucius this information for various reasons. Number one reason being that Lucius was assumed to be an ordinary person so there was no point in revealing this piece of information to him.

"The temperature has drastically increased again, we're very close to the target so everyone pay attention. Do not alert the enemies of our rivals!" spoke one of the knights in bronze armour. He seemed to be the leader of this expedition. 

The temperature of Ash Valley was estimated to be in the thousands of degrees Celsius. Ignis and the hundreds of knights travelled here without being affected by the heat but the armour of the knights was bright orange, a sign of metal smelting. Only Ignis's armour remained yellow and wasn't affected by the heat of this place. 

"It's estimated that we'll reach our location in an hour's time, use the Blue Liquid but use it sparingly!"

There was a reason why Ash Valley was called Ash Valley. It wasn't because the place was covered in ash that it was called Ash Valley. It was because anyone or anything that entered this place would be burned to ashes if they stayed too long or entered the place without countermeasures. There were trees here, completely black in colour but without leaves, the earth was brown but if one walked barefoot, they'd think they'd entered the Netherworld. 

…

An hour later, Ignis and his team finally reached their location. They stood atop the mountain and watched everything that happened below. 

Below the mountain was a village or a tribe, whatever you want to call it. Kids played happily while the adults took care of their farms and gardens. The village was bustling with activity and there wasn't anything out of place about this village. But if a normal person descended the mountain and went to this village, they would find themselves in a completely different world where everything was huge and they were small.

"Warriors, we've been tasked with completely exterminating these subspecies of Fire Giants by the City Lord. I have two orders for you. First, kill as many of these creatures as you can! Secondly, don't get stomped by them or we won't even be able to bring back your remains for your funeral! Now go!"