Grand Lust Sovereign

Outside the puddle dimension, Amelia and Jackie were trying to find a way to bring Julien out.

They couldn’t do anything so far, and asking their constellations for help wasn’t possible either.

To talk to their constellations, they had to conduct special rituals in the real world. It wasn’t as easy as it was in the Tower.

All their efforts were in vain, add to that, a few seconds ago, they could hear cracking sounds from the angel statue in the middle of the hall.

A few more seconds, with a loud boom, the statue sprang to life and shook the entire hall.

It flapped its only wing and dashed towards Jackie and Amelia.

"Retreat!" Jackie shouted and ran towards the door.

When they got out of the room, the statue stopped chasing them and returned to its position.

The two noticed this anomaly.

When they entered the room again, the statue was back to attacking them.

"That’s so strange…" Jackie commented. "Why is it attacking all of a sudden?"

"A few moments ago, I sensed a divine power course through this statue’s body. It did not have such a thing before and was a normal statue." Amelia replied.

"Divine power? Is there a divine being nearby?" Jackie asked.

Amelia nodded curtly. "There could be. The statue might be guarding something."

"Is it perhaps guarding that puddle?" Jackie looked in the direction of the puddle and made a rough guess.

Amelia shook her head. She had no idea about this.

"Well, we can try and test it. Are you up for it?"

"I’ll do my best to help." Amelia agreed.

Jackie gave Amelia a bit of instructions and the two immediately went inside the hall.

Jackie ran in the direction of the puddle while Amelia ran in a random direction nearby.

The statue sprang to life again and chased after Jackie.

Jackie signaled retreated and the two went behind the door.

The repeated this scenario again, with Amelia running a different direction than before and Jackie going towards the puddle.

The statue once again chased after Jackie.

The two realized that the statue was protecting the puddle that had consumed their Master.

Something had to be done to get closer to the puddle.

"Master might be in danger. We need to get to him quickly." Amelia said.

"I know. But we are powerless in front of that statue." Jackie answered.

"Let’s think. There might be something." Amelia suggested.

This place only allowed low ranking beings inside. If this was a trial, then it should have limitations well suited for low ranking beings.

The two began thinking about the solution and got busy.

Meanwhile, inside the puddle dimension, Julien had felt a chill all over his body.

His scalp tingled and his mind screamed of danger.

The angel from the altar was alive and aware of the situation Julien was in!

"Dishonorable." The angel god made his way towards Julien and repeated.

Julien couldn’t move. He was frozen in place and could only watch as the angel with its face covered by hair neared him.

"You reek of blood and slaughter…" the voice was cold, but neither condemning nor enraged. "And yet, you make this choice. How is it that one such as you can act with honor?"

Julien had no answer to that. He did not know what the angel was talking about.

"The God of Slaughter’s inheritor…" the angel god said coldly as he stood before Julien.

His presence was suffocating and made Julien unable to breathe or stand still.

He fell to his knees and struggled to breathe.

"Ughhh…" Julien clutched his throat as veins popped all over his head and neck.

"Why have you not punished this man for breaking his oath?"

The suffocation was somewhat subdued as the angel seemed to be waiting for an answer.

Julien coughed aggressively and said, "Why will I? The man is not in the wrong to be punished."

"He has broken the oath and turned into a dishonorable being, one such as you." The angel said calmly yet coldly.

"How am I dishonorable?" Julien asked back fearlessly.

"An incarnation of the one who slaughters cannot be honorable."

"But my hands are not stained with blood." Julien rebuked.

The angel stepped in front of him, his towering figure casting a shadow on Julien.

This was a trial, Julien was well aware.

There were set rules to them all, and a being as powerful as this angel could not harm him even if he wanted to. The backlash suffered would not be worth it.

"Strange…" the angel commented.

Julien could understand the angel’s dilemma.

He had the Arcana Card of the God of Slaughter despite being someone who had never killed any human.

The angel wasn’t wrong to think of him as the incarnation, but reality was far from that.

"I have an Arcana Card that once belonged to the incarnation of the God of Slaughter. I have cleared a trial and rightfully obtained it. I’ve not killed any innocent person, so I don’t have blood on my hands." Julien clarified.

Jackie was the one who did his dirty work, so he was relatively cleaner.

The angel understood it now.

"To have the power of such a being is despicable." The angel commented. "Yet, I don’t blame you for it. This is rightfully yours, if obtained from a trial."

Julien nodded. He then looked around. The scene was frozen still with the bowing people staying unmoving.

"This is a trial too, isn’t it? Is it yours?" Julien asked boldly.

The angel was silent.

He took a step away from Julien and looked at the people frozen in their spots.

"Yes. This is my trial. And you are the first to have cleared the conditions to awaken a fragment of me."

"Your fragment? This is not the real you?"

The angel shook his head. "I am real, but not complete."

"What happened?" Julien asked more questions.

The angel picked up its broken wing from the ground and stared at it.

"Before you ask any more questions, tell me, why did you not punish that man? Is it not honor worthy to have punished someone who has broken an oath?"

An oath was taken willingly, while being completely conscious. It was not a joke, and breaking it had severe repercussions.

One must never break an oath or never take one if they felt like they would break it. This was the law of the warrior class.

Julien shook his head. "It is honor worthy to punish someone who had broken an oath, but not that man. It is my personal opinion, but things shouldn’t be as rigid. His subjects did him wrong, his officials did him wrong. It wasn’t wrong of him to retaliate."

"What about the innocent ones that died due to the king?" The angel asked back.

Julien shrugged. "What were those innocent ones doing when others were slandering the king’s family? Not a single person stood up to defend the king’s honor, despite him having protected them multiple times."

The angel was silent.

He gazed up at the skies and sighed visibly. His long hair still covered his face and he continued, "I thought similarly and did not punish the king. He was my cherished believer, and I do not regret making that decision. However…"

The angel lifted its broken wing.

"I fell from grace for not being true to my path. Honor and Glory… I strayed far from it. I wavered when I should’ve stayed firm. Had I punished the king, I would have remained true to my purpose, ascended even further as a god… but I refused. I turned away from what was expected of me—because I despised it."

"Now look… look where am I now…"

Julien stayed silent as the angel reminisced in its past.

He could figure out a few important things from it, but kept it to himself for now.

As moments passed, Julien said, "You honored your cherished believer by not honoring what should’ve been right. You fell from grace because you wavered and thought you did the wrong thing. No, what you did was correct, but it was your self-doubt that made you fall."

The angel’s head tilted down.

He turned to Julien and although his face wasn’t visible, Julien could feel that he was staring fiercely at him.

Julien did not falter. He continued, "Honor… it is not as rigid as you make it out to be. At the highest level, a god’s path should not be a prison—it should allow them the freedom to think for themselves."

His voice was steady as he spewed wisdom garnered from reading multiple novels and watching anime and movies in his past life.

"A god should command their own path, not be shackled by it. If a path dictates every action, then it was never a path—it was a chain. And a god bound in chains is no god at all."

The angel god’s body shook visibly.

Cracks appeared in the skies and the world suffered through a major tremor.

"I see…" the god’s voice softly rang out in Julien’s ears. "So that’s how it was… I see it now…"