Long-term salvation

The road ahead is extremely dangerous, and it is inevitable that people will feel fear, but the priest will never be among those who are afraid.

"Now that I've temporarily taken possession of the shepherd's staff, there's no excuse for shirking my duties," Father Anderson whispered to himself. He then raised his head and charged forward. "Get out of my way, monsters!"

Father Anderson's robes billowed from his frantic charge, splattered with rancid blood, now beginning to reek of sulfur. It was the work of his gunsword blade. However, the priest didn't engage the monsters, which were gradually recovering from their stupor, but continued to charge forward.

Seeing that the wooden door was within reach, Father Anderson rushed in without any hesitation.

The space within the wooden door was distorted, turned upside down, left to right. Stairs carved with crude tools intersected and extended downward like towering towers, forming a vortex connecting to another supernatural dimension.

A stabbing pain immediately rose in Father Anderson's mind. He gritted his teeth slightly, recited the Bible in a low voice, and walked down the stairs.

But the further he went down, the more intense the sounds and pain became. Sometimes the priest felt darkness crawling on his face, and sometimes he felt the air solidifying on his exposed skin, like the strange touch of glue after it dried.

"Is this... the so-called other world?" Father Anderson exhaled slowly. He realized his actions were rather rash, but since he was already here, there was no point in hesitating. "I wonder if the communicator will work properly."

Having made up his mind, Father Anderson stopped thinking and continued forward, leaving cross marks along the way.

However, after just a few more steps, the priest found himself standing on solid ground. A stone corridor with torches burning on both sides extended deeper into the cave. Everything just now seemed to be just an illusion, the embodiment of the fear in the hearts of the people who came here.

"Is it because I'm afraid that I won't be able to complete the mission entrusted by the Holy Son?"

Father Anderson felt a little more clear in his mind, and he murmured to himself to blame for his stupidity and hesitation. Then he raised his foot and continued to move forward.

At the end of the corridor was a rather wide cavern, with a wellhead, built of rubble, standing alone in the center. A faint black mist rose from the well, carrying a hint of sulfur, as if the wellhead led to a hell filled with volcanoes and cauldrons of oil.

Walking to the wellhead, Father Anderson looked down:

Thousands of innocent hands supported a gigantic monster, as if "God used himself as a template to create humans." Its overall appearance was not much different from those sheep-headed monsters before, but it had a terrifying majesty and power that the latter could never possess.

Beneath those hands was a rolling fog, and beneath the fog was an even deeper abyss.

The abyss goes down and down, as if there is no end.

Noticing the gazes of the living, the monster—a newly born demon—raised its head, and a fishy wind like that blowing through a mass grave emanated from between its fangs, causing the entire cave to tremble. Gravel and dust flew down, making chaotic and strange noises on the ground.

The demon that has already been born said:

“Thou shalt not look directly at God.”

The next second, the saliva that Father Anderson spat evaporated in front of the monster, but this action had already angered it!

Ignoring the shrill, furious scream, the priest straightened his body amidst the even more violent tremors and sneered:

"False gods."

Chapter 411: Falling into Hell (3/5)

The earth is falling towards the sky.

Rhode felt a slight stinging pain in his eardrums, and a shrill shriek beyond human hearing echoed around him. He saw the ground crumble before his eyes, shattering into countless irregular pieces of stone that fell downwards—human corpses, monster corpses, debris, candles, everything!

The dust raised when the ground collapsed now condensed into a gray-white vortex, carrying building debris and swirling around everyone.

Those candles that had not yet almost never gone out were still emitting light, illuminating the surrounding darkness like dozens of small suns, allowing the knights to see where their companions were... and see those strange and abominable evil creatures that were ready to move.

A Covenant Knight saw horned black figures stalking the dust cloud. They resembled human infants, but with scorpion-like claws. Long, black worms wriggled from the severed ends of some corpses. A closer look revealed long, slender, slippery fingers, each one connected to form the most repulsive and unpleasant filth...

All these horrific visions exploded in the knights' minds, hammering their souls and torturing their spirits like heavy hammers, trying to make them surrender to the darkness!

"My lord!"

The knights shouted, and then they saw that Rhodes had remained steady in the fall, his eyes fixed on the rolling fog below - Father Anderson's figure appeared from the fog, his face still showing surprise and lingering ridicule.

After noticing Rhodes and his group, Father Anderson and Rhodes looked at each other in silence. After a few seconds of silence, the latter shrugged and said helplessly:

"What a coincidence, Father Anderson."

"...It's really a coincidence." The priest took a few deep breaths. He could hear his lungs gasping for air in pain. "We're going to fall to our death."

Death was not something Rhodes needed to worry about, but falling to death was definitely not one of them.

Fortunately, the fall did not last too long. The layers of fog that seemed to be tangible were constantly weakening the falling speed, and the ground that was getting closer and closer was definitely not without cushions - countless corpses were piled up on the rugged rocks, and those pale limbs were entangled with each other, weaving into a large web of flesh and blood. The faces of every innocent person maintained the despair and hatred of their death - it seemed that perhaps it would be more comfortable without the cushions.

Landing somewhat awkwardly, Rhode's feet stomped on the corpses, sending the beetles living in the empty eye sockets burrowing deeper in panic. Broken ribs pierced the festering flesh, like some strange white thorns growing in the swamp formed by the melting rotting flesh.

Rhodes, who smelled the scent of sulfur, looked into the distance and saw a erupting volcano. Every time the volcano erupted, countless corpses would be spewed into the sky, and then fall like raindrops in a rainstorm.

Looking up, Rod saw the Polish fields where he came from. It was raining there too, real rain.

Although it can only be seen from a well-sized hole, the hole is constantly expanding... Perhaps this is why the system issued an emergency task:

If the rifts in the inner world are not stopped from getting out of control, then the "rain" that will fall in reality will not just be drops of water.

"You've been doing this kind of evil off and on for nearly eight hundred years... You idiots, you're just too obsessed with dragons. You're really going to cause me so much trouble," Rhode muttered, carefully calculating his backworld pollution points and the potential cost of the upcoming battle. "I'm wondering why even a trivial matter like exorcism now has a special side quest, and there are also emergency quests to execute high-threat bosses."

“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell (Matthew 10:28).”

Father Anderson's voice came from afar. He and the other Covenant Knights were horrified by the scene before them. But when they saw Rhode's figure, their trembling hearts calmed down. They suppressed their nausea and slight fear and walked over, whispering, "What are you talking about?"

"My Lord, are we... in hell now?"

"Hell doesn't look like this. This is deeper into the underworld," Rhode said calmly. He summoned the golden flame sword in his hand and glanced at the system prompt "You are in the middle layer of the sunken city." "Stay closer to me. The pollution in the underworld here is much more serious than those places."

The system's instructions described the Sunken City as a complex, ever-changing area. Modern skyscrapers, feudal stone castles, and even primitive animal hide tents could all appear here, interweaving and merging to form the lairs or territories of the monsters of the otherworld.

Every idea of ​​intelligent life and every trend of thought in civilized society will be magnified hundreds of times and materialized here, becoming a part of the area forever.

Because of this, even those beautiful visions will be distorted, torn apart, and filled with endless malice, turning them into the most real hell - from a point of view, perhaps somewhere we can find the same "hell" as recorded in the Bible, and the same "Satan".

In the infinitely deep inner world, it is difficult to find the hell in the Bible, but places that can be called hell are everywhere.

For Rhodes, maintaining the flaming sword here was quite easy - the income from the pollution points in the other world could barely cover the consumption, but using the [Spear] was not so easy - not only maintaining it, he even felt that his strength had been slightly enhanced!

"Don't stray too far from me. My flames will protect your spirits and souls," Rhode emphasized again, his eyes etched with an unprecedented seriousness. "Although humans can move about here, staying too long will lead to a long-lasting nightmare and suffering, the kind that will last for years."

"...I thought we would die here in battle, or become wandering souls."

A Covenant Knight whispered. He had already lowered his mask, but the built-in data interface was trembling slightly, constantly refreshing the report of abnormal life reactions detected - the number was constantly increasing, so fast that it almost made him cry out in surprise.

This area of ​​the otherworld is shrouded in a gloomy sky, with only a hole above the heads of these fourteen humans. With the ever-expanding hole as the center, dark clouds continue to flow in a vortex shape, like a spiral tower reaching into the sky.

"If you don't take it seriously, you'll really die here."

As Rhodes spoke, he turned the sword upside down and stabbed it into the corpse below. The next second, flames like a high wall spread out from him, turning the corpses into ashes!

Stepping on the warm, smelly ashes, Rhodes felt that he was standing on a raised hill. Then he snapped his fingers, and piles of weapons, equipment, ammunition and explosives appeared beside the knights.

"Keep out of the way, knights. I'm going to get some big guys."

罗德如此说道，他打了个响指——LAV-25装甲车，227毫米的M270多管火箭装甲车、122毫米的BM-21“冰雹”火箭炮，以及四台使用20毫米火神式机关炮的M167A1拖拽式防空系统出现在圣约骑士们的身后。

Reaching out to pat the vehicles, Rhode smiled faintly at the excited faces. He then fixed his gaze on the figure in the depths of the demonic tide in the distance and said with emotion:

"It's a shame the battlefield isn't on the plains. Otherwise, I'd give you a taste of the power of a cruise missile—Knights, prepare for battle, the demonic tide is approaching!"

The stench of decay mixed with sulfur rolled in, like materialized mucus enveloping everyone's nostrils. Cold sweat oozed from the palms of the swords held by the fully armed Covenant Knights, and they could clearly feel the ground shaking beneath their feet.

It was not an earthquake, but thousands of rotten bodies moving; it was not a tsunami, but thousands of sheep-headed monsters roaring.

A monster far larger than the one in the real world is approaching, eager to utterly kill that sacred being—if one wants to become "Satan," then one should fight against Christ the Savior, right?

In this case, since the demonic tide has arrived, then...

"Let's start saving the world."

Chapter 412: The King of Hell? (4/5)

The rocket took off into the sky with a whistling explosion.

The moment the first wave of M26 rockets launched, the successive tail flames completely blew away the ash behind the M270 vehicles, exposing the dark brown cooled lava ground. Even at a distance, the Covenant Knights could feel the scorching impact, forcing them to take shelter behind the LAV-25 armored vehicles.

The terrain here is still changing - changing with the negative thoughts accumulated over the past eight hundred years, as well as the nameless demon who is gradually being given the name "Satan".

For Rhodes, it must die, the big red dragon must fall from the sky!

Now, twelve Death Grim Reapers, each loaded with 644 improved dual-purpose submunitions, swung their scythes and disintegrated precisely at 310 meters. Cluster munitions rained down like a metallic rain shower from the gods, exploding into a blood-red mist amidst the waves of monsters.

The forty launch tubes of the BM-21 "Hail" rocket launcher immediately began to spew out flames, and the 122mm rockets drew a nearly perfect arc trajectory. The high-explosive warheads equipped with delayed fuses exploded after penetrating deep into the magic tide.

Flames erupted, dust billowed, and the corpses and limbs of low-level demons that once covered the ground flew everywhere, then fell with a crackling sound, falling into the still-advancing demonic tide, and were crushed into minced meat by thousands of hooves.

In the smoke that had not yet dissipated, the middle section of the demonic tide was cut off!

But soon, the howling of low-level demons could be heard faintly, and more demons born from the corpses filled the gaps in the losses, as if there was no end.

"Get ready, everyone. The toughest battle is about to begin."

Rhode recovered the two self-propelled rocket launchers. After setting the firing parameters and pressing the launch button, he no longer had to worry about such trivial matters. At this moment, looking at the Covenant Knights who had already rearranged their positions, Rhode said calmly:

"Don't fall into the hands of these low-class people. I don't want to write some stupid cause of death on your epitaph."

"I will obey the Holy Order!"

The Covenant Knights shouted loudly. Four of them operated the 20mm M167A1 anti-aircraft guns that had been leveled, two operated the turrets on the two LAV-25 armored vehicles, and the rest would use heavy machine guns, flamethrowers and other heavy firepower weapons.

Rhode even got a mortar specifically designed for firing high-explosive and white phosphorus bombs. At this time, just a random shell could kill a bunch of low-level demons!

The demonic tide was getting closer and closer, with unmatched momentum, and then stopped in front of the horizontal line drawn by the guns - the storm-like sound of machine gun fire gathered into a low muffled sound, and then disintegrated into groups of explosive roars, while the monotonous volleys of heavy machine guns continued, filling the gloomy sky with invisible pursuits, screams, roars and roars!

The energy of the other world became increasingly active, causing more demons to breed from the corpses covering the ground.

However, the newly born low-level demons were killed before they could come into contact with the flesh and blood they had longed for. They fell in rows and groups, like soldiers charging under machine gun fire in the Battle of the Somme, like wheat cut by the Grim Reaper's scythe!

But even so, there was no joy on Rhodes' face. He looked up and saw that the hole above his head was still expanding. The cold wind from the real world had already blown in, bringing a slight chill.

Demons surged forward from all directions, many even piercing through the gunfire and rushing to Rhode or a Covenant Knight. Although these lucky ones quickly turned into corpses lying on the ground, this would not be a one-time event.

There are still too few human warriors here, and the firepower is still not fierce enough.

If it weren't for the Covenant Knights and Father Anderson being here, and if it weren't for the fact that the crack in the inner world above his head hadn't been dealt with in time, he would have wanted to just take out the nuclear bomb from the storage space and give these blasphemous creatures a surprise!

With this in mind, Rhode made up his mind. He locked onto the tallest, nameless demon in the demonic tide and exhaled slowly:

"I'm going to destroy it. I can't put it off any longer."

"My Lord, what are you going to do?" Father Anderson asked. He pulled out his blunderbuss from a demon's body and shouted amid the roar of gunfire, "The demon is approaching. In its own kingdom, it ignores the counterattacks from the human world!"

"Ignore?"

Rhodes shook his head slightly. He looked at the nameless demon that broke through the smoke and dust. Its body grew taller and stronger, and it seemed that it was about to become the existence described in religious texts or Christian history - it must not be allowed to appear, and it must not be allowed to break through the crack in the inner world!

"I can't ignore it. I won't allow it." Rhode gripped the flaming sword tightly, his gaze sweeping across the demonic tide that was crushing around him like a millstone. The nameless demon was using its minions to protect itself. "We must kill it before it fully bears the name of 'Satan'. Otherwise, the harm will be endless... Prepare to cover me, Father Anderson, knights."

After saying that, Rhodes stepped forward and swung his sword.

When Rhodes swung the first horizontal slash, the air in the entire battlefield suddenly became sticky. In the fan-shaped area swept by the sword, golden flames rolled like waves - igniting corrupted flesh and blood, igniting twisted spines, and igniting the demons that finally screamed in fear. They pushed and squeezed each other, as funny as clowns in a circus - just a few seconds ago, these abominable monsters were still rubbing their hands, ready to swallow fresh flesh and blood into their stomachs.

The second slash was made vertically, and the demonic tide was suddenly split apart, just like the sea split by Moses!

Rhodes walked quickly forward, darting through the twisted salt pillars, raised his revolver and knocked over the low-level demons blocking his way, then jumped high on the twisted heads that were emitting a warm, burnt stench, and quickly approached the nameless demon under the cover of machine guns and heavy machine guns.

After noticing Rhodes's strides, the nameless demon flinched slightly, but then reacted and took a step forward in anger, rushing towards him at a faster speed than the former.

Just as the two sides were about to come into contact, Rhodes swung his sword upwards and the demon swung his claws downwards!

Blades and claws collided, flames and shadows clashed, and the resulting shock waves spread out in all directions, stirring up a dust cloud like a sandstorm.

A figure suddenly broke through the dust and mist, twisted a few times in mid-air, and stood in a somewhat awkward position on the ground filled with charred corpses and salt pillars. Rhodes spat a mouthful of bloody saliva to the side, with an unprecedented seriousness in his eyes. Just like the strengthened him, the nameless demon's control over this place also brought him unparalleled power!

"Tsk, this is troublesome."

Rhode exhaled slowly, calming the chaotic energy within his body. He raised his head and met the gaze of the equally embarrassed-looking nameless demon. The monster was now over four meters tall, and Rhode was like David versus Goliath.

"A mere rift in the otherworld within a time-honored monastery could cause me such a horrific event... If Jerusalem explodes again, it could drag the entire Middle East into it."

Taking a deep breath, Rhode sincerely hoped this wouldn't happen. Gritting his teeth, he glanced at the remaining points of contamination in the other world with determination, and began to slowly lengthen the hilt of his sword as he pleased.

[Additional loadout of Iron and Fire Powers - Deduction of pollution points from the other world begins]

【Concept Attachment】

【? ? ? ? ? ? 】

"In that case," Rhode raised his head and gripped his spear tightly amidst the surging demonic tide. "Then let's end this fight with this one strike. I don't believe you can withstand it as well as that fat deep-sea creature!"

Rhodes would definitely be in a weakened state after using this attack... but he believed in Father Anderson and the Covenant Knights.