Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

  The sun was slowly setting as the sky gradually darkened.

  The Mifata Federation could be found in the Southern Plateau located on the Dominant Continent, where the climate was relatively warmer. However, Green Tree City was almost at the northernmost tip of the Southern Plateau. During autumn, when it was deep into the night, the weather could get quite cold. Under such cold weather, any ordinary person would most certainly need to light up a bonfire to stay warm.

  However, for this trip, both the churches had sent only their elites. There was not a single ordinary human. All of them were either mid or high-level clergymen or experienced adventurers. Though they might not be completely insusceptible to the extremities of harsh weather conditions, at the very least, this much cold was certainly not significant enough to bother them.

  Amidst the glimmering twilight, the recitations of prayers from the Divine Positions of both churches blended as one. The roles of prayers from both sides were to generate successive strong spells. Both sides could then choose to either cast these spells successively and bombard the other party or cast these spells as their own reinforcements to gain a firmer hold over their own Divine Positions. Each spell would be useful in some way or another; not a single one was regarded as merely a flowery trick.

  At first glance, both sides seemed to have everything in good order, as though they had rehearsed everything, so all was well in place. But in fact, they had drawn out the maximum amount of power they could possibly afford to, and every spell they cast was chosen after prior studies were made. All these measures were taken to ensure that not a single spell and not a single second would be wasted.

  Such a battle was no joke. Having gathered such a sizable number of clergymen to pray together just for the purpose of casting a spell, the amount of power assembled was sufficiently comparable to the power capacity of a legendary priest. Even the slightest graze by this power could instantly kill an ordinary human, and rescue would never come in time.

  If any one side was unable to maximize the increase in their efficiency of fighting, it was very likely to see their opponent break down their wall of defense because of an accidental slip. By that time, even if the most highly-skilled masters were able to escape, the elites of that Church would have to suffer heavy losses.

  This situation was what the heads of both Churches did not want their people to encounter.

  But of course, they most certainly hoped that their opponent would run into such a situation, and so, both were trying their best to make it happen.

  So whatever they had done so far, was there any effect at all? Judging by the solemn expressions both heads of the churches wore on their faces, it was easy to tell that it was not only effective, but the effect was, in fact, ideal. It was so ideal that both sides were brought under a great deal of pressure.

  At the Divine Positions of the Church of the God of Aristocracy, the Archbishop had already handed over the task of leading the prayers to a high-level clergywoman. She stood aside to observe the battle, and after looking very carefully for a long time, she could not help frowning as she muttered under her breath, “Strange! They are just a bunch of fellows who established a church for just 20 odd years, yet they can make use of such combined spellcasting techniques so efficiently?”

  \r \r \r

  This seemed very illogical. It should be noted that nurturing a clergyman was a long-term job. If the number of clergymen was not enough, then it would be pointless to talk about “combined spellcasting techniques.” And even if there were enough clergymen, they would still require a tremendous amount of training before they could achieve a perfectly synchronized recitation of prayers in order to achieve combined spellcasting.

  The Church of the God of Knowledge was only about 20 years of age since the day it was established. During its first ten years, it did not even have enough manpower to deploy people in places to spread it teachings. It was only in the recent few years that it became comparatively more well-staffed. Yet even so, where did they find the time to assemble all these elite clergymen and train them for this rare combined divinity formation?

  This could be likened to a predicament of a particular company, one who was seriously lacking in manpower. This company was really desperate. Thus, they had to go to the extent of having to entrust the men’s work to the ladies, and the men were in turn entrusted with work supposedly given to draught animals with great physical strength. This company even had to entrust the jobs of two people to just one person. Under such circumstances, how could this company possibly find the extra time and effort to sing, dance, make a speech, deliver a report, or inject such vigor in expanding this hated “corporate culture?”

  Generally speaking, a church needed to have at least a hundred years of history, with an accumulation of four to five generations, or even more, of clergymen to gather enough manpower to train for this combined divinity formation.

  Just like how the Church of the God of Aristocracy had only started training in this aspect after it had reached its hundredth year of establishment—this was something that an upstart like the Church of the God of Knowledge was most certainly incapable of!

  The Archbishop was not the only one in for a surprise; even the God of Aristocracy, who was watching the battle from the sky in his invisible form, was surprised. He carefully assessed the clergymen under the command of the God of Knowledge, eager to find the reason for their achievement.

  But this was destined to be a waste of effort because even the gods would never be able to find out how or when these clergymen actually found the time to train…… perhaps, when they were asleep.

  A few years back, Sui Xiong came up with a virtual reality game. Originally, he had intended to use this system to allow people to experience fear. He had wanted to make them face up to their fears to help them overcome their phobia for fear. As they were always so fearful of the Clergy Camp, Sui Xiong had wanted to help them overcome every form of fear possible so that they would no longer fear the members of the Clergy Camp. While testing the system for practicality, he realized that not only could this system be used for dispelling fears, it could also be used for training purposes.

  When using this system to experience various snippets of virtual life, the human body would more or less be in a state of rest. In general, one would be lying down like that for four hours, which was equal to about two hours of sleep.

  As a result, the Church of the Void Mask and its subordinate Churches of the God of Knowledge, the God of Medicine and the God of Healing all began to make use of this system to train their clergymen. Making use of these rather realistic experiences, their clergymen could gain the experience of taking risks and could also pick up some skills that they usually had no time to learn—for instance, combined divinity.

  The greatest difficulty in mastering combined divinity was the need to gather all the clergymen together to conduct the training. With this virtual reality game system, and the gods as a medium, all the clergymen lying within the numerous game compartments could be connected; therefore, joint training could still be carried out even if they were to stay put at home. This also would not take up much of their rest time.

  After undergoing a few years of training, a few churches had successfully trained many clergymen to be capable of executing a combined divinity formation. They had even managed to train their men to be adept in quite a number of attack and defense routines using combined divinity. At that very moment, if these clergymen were to work together in reality, it would be like how things worked within the virtual reality and how they had trained together in the game. Everything would be orderly, and everyone would be without a trace of panic.

  Even if anyone were to make meticulous comparisons, they would discover that the efficiency rate in spellcasting of the churches of the Void God System was much higher than their opponents!

  These were secrets that the various churches of the Void God System shared, things that the God of Aristocracy and his church would never know! Of course, they would never be able to figure anything out no matter how hard they racked their brains.

  Though Sui Xiong was suspended high up in the air, he remained concerned about the situation of the battle both sides were engaged in. Whether it was the surprised expression that the God of Aristocracy showed or the confused expression that the Archbishop of his own church wore on her face as she muttered to herself, nothing escaped him as he saw and heard everything clearly.

  The green jellyfish smiled as a sense of pride swelled up his chest.

  Ultimately, technology is the first productive force, and you turtles are still far from it!

  But the power of technology was not limitless. In fact, even if they were to rely on the virtual reality system and trained enough clergymen who could execute a combined divinity formation, the lack of manpower was still a problem that troubled the Church of the God of Knowledge.

  Apart from anything else, the Church of the God of Aristocracy had almost 200 people praying, but this was merely half the number of their opponent.

  The essence of combined divinity was to combine the energy of the prayers from the crowd and transform it into a powerful spell. This was, of course, a situation that supported the concept of “the more, the merrier.” The more people there were, the higher the efficiency could be. With one side outnumbering the other by double, the difference in the amount of power was made very obvious.

  If not for the fact that the efficiency rate of the Church of the God of Aristocracy was slightly higher than its opponent, as well as its speed of spellcasting being relatively faster by only a tad, the Church of the God of Aristocracy would have lost the battle much earlier.

  Yet even so, the Church of the God of Aristocracy was already gradually heading towards a downturn. At the very beginning, both sides were mutually attacking and defending, then slowly, the situation changed, with the Church of the God of Aristocracy having to observe and react according to circumstance. Out of ten spells cast by the Church of the God of Aristocracy, around seven or eight would be used for the purpose of defending. There would also be one or two for assistive purposes, but as for counter-attacking, only occasionally, would they retaliate as a way of warning their opponents to not to get complacent.

  Olian Geerteng watched the scene before her with a deep frown.

  She waited for quite a while, then finally, she could not help but ask, “Can the Oracles attack now?”

  “Wait a little bit more,” a voice replied from the altar. “We have yet to summon an elite Oracle. Without an elite Oracle to lead the army, merely relying on the mass-produced Oracles, it is impossible for us to fight against the Legendary Masters.”

  Olian took a deep breath to allow her tone to sound as peaceful and calm as could be, but her speed of speech was still hastened as she asked, “Kabbalah, don’t you usually have a white face, why is it suddenly dark today?”

  Over at the altar, the young priest, who usually had Lady Luck smiling upon him, smiled bitterly. He was unable to answer her question.

  Luck, who truly knew what that was all about?

  Just as how the possibility of attempting to alter one’s fate was as low as trying to retain the trace amounts of Krypton found in air, the possibility of rounding up enough luck to summon an elite Oracle seemed to be as good as zero. And this was an undying fact that no one could do anything to alter, because if there was really a way to resolve the problem of bad luck, then there wouldn’t be such a large number of high-ranking Dark Masks. They were known as the unluckiest group of “Dark Masks.” If there was a solution to them being so unlucky, then their number would not be so great to begin with.