Chapter 21: Chapter 21 – Interlude

Bishop Leonard

Davos, Switzerland

The teleportation array lit up, casting long shadows at the Church complex in Davos. It was evening in Switzerland, and many of the workers were tired. However, it still prompted all those present to instantly be on guard and await whoever would walk out of the array. 

A few seconds passed, and the sizzling light allowed a white robbed man with black hair, broad shoulders, and an annoyed grimace to walk through. In a second, all the guards and priests bowed to Bishop Leonard as he made his way toward the two-story glass complex.

These days the complex in Davos was primarily used by the Schwab family members who were hosting the World Economic Forum. Leonard knew that the Pope wanted to visit Klaus before the plan's second phase was initialized; hence, he came straight to Davos. 

Leonard had to admit as annoying as the little cunt was, Klaus was resourceful, coming up from nothing. His family survived the Third Reich and established connections with business leaders and politicians. Now he helped to provide a narrative and organize these little tea parties for mud leaders called the Forum. 

As Leonard walked through the glass-windowed complex, he could already see several politicians lingering in the corridors, making connections and planning their vacations after the Church kicked off the next phase. 

Leonard hated to lounge with these little men because he saw them for what they were - leeches. Intelligent monkeys, running around, spouting fake causes, caring only for their comfort and power. 

After all, because of their greed, humanity had lost its way and turned away from the Church toward technology and science, thus polluting the Earth they collectively walked. 

One might think that the Church held all the might in their number of mages. However, it was not that easy. Humanity’s most significant power was its number. And their numbers swelled with each year. Had the Pope wiped them out at the start, the world would be a different place. However, he was a sentimental man then and had chosen not to. 

They had, of course, tried various plots over the years. The First and Second World wars were almost successful and managed to clean the masses. Nevertheless, it was not enough. And the lucky break these animals got, when they split the atom, shackled the Church further, offsetting their plans for decades. 

However, the Church was paying the cost of their mercy today. Mage children were developing rare diseases. Cancer was widespread among their number. Of course, it was manageable with skilled mage healers, who could cast spells to prevent the spread and mutations. Yet, mana was not endless, and its scarcity was causing all these troubles to the mage world in the first place. 

The children's lifespans were not as they were in the old days. The few lucky ones who managed to survive their early years faced the mana core formation ritual. Survivability was an issue lately, making Leonard feel anxious for his son and thus more vigil in believing in the cause.

In the end, not everyone was as lucky as Leonard. Mana-gathering arrays were an expensive item to have and even more costly to operate with the mana crystals mined straight out of Earth's crust. 

The Pope had always cared for his most trusted advisors and officers, Leonard being one of them. He had been sponsoring them out of his pocket for over two hundred years since the start of the industrial revolution when things got worse for the mage world. 

Leonard increased his step and arrived at the door at the end of the corridor. He stopped to make sure that his perfect robes were not disturbed and knocked on the door, 

The door slowly crept open without a sound, allowing heavy mana mist to escape and an eerily light from inside. 

Without missing a beat, Leonard walked inside and immediately bowed, for he knew that looking Pope straight in the eye without showing proper respect would be the gravest of sins. 

“Please, rise, dear friend,” the Pope said in a calm and serene voice that floated across the room like a feather on a tranquil lake. The Bishop obliged and raised his head while still not looking the Pope in the eye. 

The Pope was an unassuming Jewish-looking man with pitch black, curly hair and a beard. He had a calm, dark-skinned face and eyes as black as the endless universe. He had a relaxed posture, and his white robes laid slack on his shoulders. He stood next to the window and watched the sunset above the lake next to the complex while the mana rolled and curled around him, casting eerie light and making him float a few centimeters above the floor.

“Thank you, your excellency,” Leonard replied and bowed slightly again. 

“How is your boy?” the Pope asked Leonard, not taking his gaze off the setting sun. 

“He is well, your excellency. Thank you for asking,” Leonard replied.

“Good, good. I see that something is troubling you, dear friend. Please, tell me what it is,” the Pope asked kindly. 

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“We failed our last mission, the one reported by the Inpes head,” Leonard said, bowing, as it was not often he needed to recognize failure in his long three hundred years of service to the Church.

“I see,” the Pope said, unperturbed, and observed the sun finally set below the horizon, painting the room in orange colors. “Tell me more; what happened?”

“As you know, the daughter of the Inpes reported that her husband had found a heretic in the old pagan lands. Clan Aer’s head brought this heretic back to his manor in Berlin. Inpes coordinated with us to make a capture. We failed, your excellency,” Leonard said.

“And why is that?”

“The Aer head had a protective spell stored, and he managed to react to our initial attack. This distraction allowed his daughter and the heretic to escape from the complex. Along with the Codex.”

The Pope was silent for a minute before saying, “Hmm, that is both fortunate and unfortunate then. The book has resurfaced after all those years since Alea hid it. And they took it away from us yet again. What happened next?”

“We cleaned up the complex, searching for any clues we might find as to where the heir of Aer could go. We could not find anything. We also interviewed the Inpes' daughter, who gave us a detailed account of the events before our arrival. It seems that the boy was able to form a core. How is that possible, your excellency?”

“Well, because of his pedigree, my dear friend,” the Pope said, smiling coldly at the Bishop. “That wench Walpurga seems to have laid roots in the pagan lands and mustered an heir of her own. One with innate magical capacity and talent.”

“That means we cannot allow him to roam free,” the Bishop said hurriedly. “We will organize a task force to find him immediately.”

“Indeed, my friend, that would be a wise course of action,” the Pope confirmed. “If he is an heir of the Walpurga, then we must capture him. Along with the book, if possible. He cannot be allowed to read it and learn from it.”

“I understand your excellency. We have managed to capture the head of Aer and bring him in for questioning in our dungeons. We will get the information on how the Codex came to be in his possession.”

“Good, good,” the Pope said, floating over to the exit to the garden. “I will visit him by the first light to hurry the process along.”

“Thank you, your excellency.”

“That will be all, Bishop Leonard. You have done well, as well as you could, given the circumstances,” the Pope said and waved him away, exiting the complex.

Leonard bowed to the Pope’s departing form and waited for him to be out of view before going to the door and walking out of the room. From the brief exchange, he understood that the gravity of the situation was much worse than he feared. 

The heretic was not just another abomination birthed by the world but someone who free mages put in the grand scheme of things by design. And by no other than the cursed Walpurga. To keep their plans in motion and undisturbed, he had to remove all unaccounted variables, including the boy.

Leonard returned to the teleportation circle, meeting no lingering muds, and saw no one bowing as the hour was late. He entered the ring, arranging the runes for Kaiser William's church in Berlin, and fed the circle mana required to activate. It lit up, the array checking the medallion on his neck for access, finding it valid, and opened a portal to the church in Berlin, transferring the thinking Bishop. Then it winked out.

Meanwhile, the Pope floated above the lake's water, watching the light of the teleportation array flashing, leaving him alone. The hour being late did not disturb the Pope, as he had stopped sleeping when he achieved the transcendent stage after converting his core to purple. The move almost killed him all those hundreds of years ago, and that was with so much mana in nature at the time.

Now he was stuck. His progression stopped due to the ants and their technological progress, raising the pollution in the world and crippling the natural mana generation. Time meant little to him now. It stopped meaning anything thousand years ago. Things were constantly changing, though. These changes seemed trivial to him, as only achieving the divine stage mattered.

At the moment, however, it was out of his grasp, even with all the resources available. He just had to wait a little longer for the cleansing to begin, bringing back the natural order of things. It did not matter that few of the ants would tag along, believing they were part of the new world order, its masters. 

The ants were trivial. The boy was not. If the Walpurga had mustered a way to grow a core to the green level and beyond without anyone noticing and being aware, it was a threat to the Church. 

The Conclave fell apart because they were not only scattered but also because of their greed to progress, while resources were limited. Had they banded together, they would have shared Walpurga’s secret to core progression. 

‘I will find you, Leon Monti, and uncover your secret. First, I will hear what your benefactor has to say about you, even if I have to break him,’ the Pope thought and gathered mana from his core. He quickly expelled it around him and opened a portal above the lake, winking out with a faint pop, leaving ripples on the water.

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