Abe the Wizard

What happened over at the golden castle did raise some questions coming from the central continent, but Abel did manage to find excuses that were persuasive enough for most who asked. There was no major drama really happened.

Abel was just sitting on top of his starlight defensive circle, actually. Today, however, he wasn't here with just one of his bodies. His human body was sitting on a chair with a cup of the water spirit fruit juice in his hand. On the other side, his angelic body was sitting aside while practising the angelic heritage sword technique constantly. The reason that he was so open about showing an angelic body was because of his divine mask. Again, it was the one thing that made Thief God Milton one of the most stealthiest beings of this world. Actually, even Abel's human body couldn't sense his angelic body if the two were sitting next to each other. That was just how ridiculous this divine mask was.

It had been ten something days since what happened to Thief God Milton. Abel didn't let the remains stay on the central continent, which was a very smart move that made a lot of the Nation of God's investigation attempts fail. In fact, from what Abel read from the information he got from the Wizard Union Intelligence Agency, some thieves had just been captured recently by the Wizard Union. More importantly, some were found to be working for the intelligence network of the Nation of God. As little as these captured men were found to know, the Wizard Union was finally getting some hints as to how the Nation of God operated in this area.

And all of this must have had to do with Thief God Milton. Even the Wizard Union was putting their main focus onto him. Abel was a bit nervous to know this, but his actions hadn't changed. He was not going to keep Thief God Milton on the central continent now that it was his contract creature.

The holy angelic sword in the angelic body's hand stopped.. He just received a message from the Nation of God regarding his preacher. From what he heard, the Nation of God had been reinforcing their control over its followers. They wanted the followers to provide more faith power than ever. Abel knew what it was for, of course. He was the one who stole the holy crystals, so he knew that the Nation of God was trying to boost production to replace the amount that was stolen. Well, whatever the Nation of God wanted to do, he would just go ahead and not let them do that. If they wanted more followers and more control over the follower, he would just kill more preachers.

This time, actually, he might as well do it under the name of Thief God Milton. It wasn't hard to come up with a fake motive. Thief God Milton was trying to have revenge for being hunted by the nation of God. As for who was going to do the job, he obviously wasn't going to let Milton go. Milton did have special stealthy abilities, but he was nowhere yet near competent to be engaging in a fight. It would be the angelic body. The angelic body was strong and fast. It could finish the job before the Nation of God had the time to react.

Naturally, it'd be much better to hide the angelic body with the divine dagger and divine mask. Now, the biggest advantage of having the angelic body do the job was so that every time a preacher was killed, it'd be absorbed by the crystal angelic statue's hallow shadow into the book of heritage. This was a great chance to make him stronger and, at the same time, let the Nation of God get weaker. Of course he was not going to let this chance slip.

He was going to do it right away. Soon, a divine dagger quickly appeared around the waist of the angelic body. Abel's body quickly disappeared alongside it. The good thing about this dagger was that as long as it was on him, it was not going to influence him to use any other sorts of weapons.

The angelic body lightly stepped onto the starlight defensive circle. Its body flew towards the sky while the human body still couldn't sense its presence. Abel was just looking at it fly away. It was definitely one of the fastest flying figures he had ever seen. Soon, it was flying out of the continent and heading towards the ocean. The angelic body was not flying at low altitude. As confident as Abel was regarding its stealth capability, he still didn't want to risk running into Kembly the golden dragon.

The flight was a rather easy one. There was no obstacle, so the angelic body reached the beach that Abel was familiar with quite quickly. Abel was already quite used to this place by now. This was the first spot he would think of whenever he was heading into the Nation of God.

The angelic body reached out its hand and touched the defensive barrier. It was a bit of an unnecessary move, as it would just go through the barrier without resistance. Inside Abel's brain, a part of the Nation of God's whole geography was already appearing as a map inside his head. He was following some messages he received earlier to mark his route. This time, he was plotting the journey in a way that he could kill as many preachers as possible before the Nation of God managed to react. Of course, he wasn't going to pick the beach, his starting location, to begin his kill streak. With that in mind, he resumed flying again and went deeper.

As the angelic body flew deep into the inner part of the Nation of God, the day was starting to get dark. Abel just gave up on entering the dark world altogether for the mission this time. He was not going to let his human body and his angelic body in two separate worlds. He never tried that before, but he figured that the potential risk was too much for him to try. While his angelic body was, well, here, he decided to do the same thing but put his human body inside the training room of his golden castle for a wizard meditation session.

The angelic body continued on its murderous quest. It made the most out of the fact that all the important locations in all the major towns were in rest mode. Abel made a special call to pick his initial location somewhere where there were no common people. Originally, there was a time when Abel's assassination attempts attracted the attention of many sacred knights. However, given how tense the combat between the Wizard Union and the Nation of God grew, there were now locations where only preachers would occupy.

Instead of picking somewhere more crowded, Abel picked a spot with just one preacher. He was skipping the middle and large cities. He wanted to, again, kill as many as he could whilst attracting the minimum amount of attention.

The angelic body was just standing in the air of the teleportation point. There was no emotion in its eyes. Abel did not feel guilty about slaying some preachers that were brainwashed for the majority of their adult lives.

"Commence," the angelic body said quietly.

As the operation commenced, the angelic body started accelerating and rushed towards the preaching point that was on the ground. It was changing to the form of Thief God Milton. As its body made contact with the defensive barrier, it just tackled the barrier with its raw body and in a very ridiculous manner. It broke through the barrier and rushed straight into the teleportation point. The preacher that was praying was holding a holy book in his hand. He was performing a prayer and did not notice any danger that was closing in on him.

The angelic body was moving too fast. It was rushing from high altitude. As it broke through the barrier, it passed through the preaching point and went beside the preacher. There was not even time to breathe. The angelic body was going beside the preacher while switching the holy crystal sword into the divine dagger. The dagger was stabbed into the preacher's heart. The preacher died without even letting out a scream. It all happened too fast. There was not even time to change his facial expression.

Abel was not so merciful as that, though. With a sweep of the angelic body's power of the Will, the preacher's soul was sucked into the crystal angelic statue and was turned into a book of heritage. He just got the first book of heritage. The angelic body didn't stop there. The assassination happened in an instance. For a preacher that was no more than a commoner, this was a very easy job. Abel wasn't just trying to kill one preacher, however. He needed to race with time to get to the maximum kill he was aiming for.

The angelic body flowed out of this location and searched for the next target. It left the people living in that area to find out themselves that their most respected preacher was just killed. In a few minutes, it went to another location and did exactly the same thing. It found the defensive barrier, broke it, went in and stole the preacher. Then, it was the third one. One after the other, the preachers in different areas were just slain.

Because it was nighttime, the Nation of God really had no ways of guarding against something like this. No one would expect a divine spirit to just do something this underhanded. Most class-holders had no business going after ordinary people, so what business would a divine spirit have killing so many innocents? Abel wasn't the type to play by the rules, actually. He was even planning to have Thief God Milton take all the blame for the atrocious act he was committing. Just like that, one preacher would be killed every five minutes. The night was concealing everything.

Of course, some of the barriers would be installed at the preaching spots. The residents wouldn't get close to it, which was why they would very often be as far away from the preachers even if they were all living in the same area. Preachers had very few friends and families, too, because of the nature of their work. It would take at least the next day in order for most of their corpses to be spotted.

The angelic body did not stop working the entire night. Until daytime, there were about 100 preachers that were dead to its hands. Not all of them were killed. Some spots had no one in them when the angelic body visited, and it wasn't like Abel was going to take the extra time trying to find everyone. Well, he was still very satisfied with the heritage books he was getting. The more heritage books he would get from killing preachers, the more followers he could generate with whatever spares he was making.

The next morning was very unlike usual. The residents of the town did not hear the bell that they were so familiar with. Whether it was the storm or if it was raining, there was not a single day that the bell stopped ringing. It was always the job of the preachers to make sure that bells ring on time. It was supposed to show the dignity of the divinities that everyone worshipped. The job was too important to miss out on.

Because of this strange situation, some residents went towards the preaching point to see what would happen. The residents that arrived the earliest started screaming when they noticed something. Their beloved preachers were dead. Their bodies were lying in a pool of blood. The same thing was found to be happening all across many towns. All the law enforcers made it a top priority to let the temple know this.

Abel was not done, though. He was not satisfied with 100 preachers in one night, so he decided to go after more. Meanwhile, the Saint was just receiving the news.

The Saint shook his head, "What? Mass killings of preachers?"

There had been similar incidents before, but those only happened because the followers went insane. It was hard finding the right explanations, but at the end of the day, the effect wasn't that major. This time, however, a very concerning close to 100 preachers were killed in one night.

Knight Maugham was very careful with his words, "Master Saint, should an inquiry be made to the guardian wings?"

The Saint was concerned, but he still went ahead to contact the guardian wings. He didn't want to use what little divine power was left in storage, but this was a very dangerous and detrimental incident they were encountering. The Saint closed his eyes for a bit as his expressions became angrier and angrier.

He eventually opened his eyes, "Why. Is. This. Happening? Thief Gold MIlton!"

From what the guardian wings found out, a divine spirit's presence was found within the borders of the Nation of God. Only one divine spirit would do something this disciple and bold. Yes, Thief God MIlton. It all made sense. The Saint was the one who ordered to annihilate one of Thief God Milton's hideout, so it would make sense that revenge was on its way. Still, he never expected the revenge to come in such a dirty manner. This was actually worse than Milton showing up at the temple again. It was one thing to be confrontational and obnoxious to someone's face, it was something much worse to go after that someone's wealth behind his back, when he was still sleeping or focusing on something else.

The Saint quickly commanded, "Open up all the contact circles! Report any sightings of the thief god!"

There were only two ways the Saint could rely on. One was to use the guardian wings to track any location where Thief God Milton voluntarily unleashed his presence. The other was to use the law enforcers in different ways to do the search and tracking manually.