Chapter 96 - Misadventures (part.2)

Azarphy hadn't used his powers to probe humans, he despised them, he just used his powers on Emery out of sheer curiosity with the whole soul-swapping thing he witnessed and Emery's mind was a lot of fun, which made him curious to know more.

"I see"

Azarphy muttered to himself there was something in Giovanni's body, but he couldn't tell what it was.

"A soul fragment, perhaps?" Azarphy thought, trying to remember many wonderful items and things he had seen in his life.

By the way, it was too long a life.

Soul Fragment is a wonderful thing that strengthens the soul power of any being, from spirits to even angels would benefit from it, but this is almost legendary as historically speaking these soul fragments came from destroyed parallel worlds. This thing would condense all the knowledge, strength, mana, special powers, among other things of an individual, and the one who consumed it would obtain everything without the slightest effort apparently.

Soul Fragment is different from Parallel Memories, as the latter only shows a vision of what could happen in the future, and Soul Fragment increases the individual's powers.

Azarphy glanced briefly at Giovanni and thought he liked the young human even less, but he made no move.

Stealing from a human would be very shameful!

"You can go, tell your friends to stay away from the abbey" Azarphy released the Spirit of Light.

"My name is Anael, your grace. Don't worry about that, your grace, others wouldn't dare approach a war between angels and devil... I didn't know that even your high-status grace would be involved in this... I was quite greedy..."

"Wait... what are you talking about?" Azarphy interrupted Anael with some surprise.

"Weren't part of the portal guardians' bodies used to open the portal to hell? Was this not designed for your grace and others to hunt demons freely?" Anael spoke assuming a few things.

"Guardians... Do they still exist in this generation?" Azarphy was surprised.

The guardians are human dimension beings who were consecrated by the gods to guard the dimensional portals, the divine key was passed from generation to generation within the family.

Dimensional portals are where beings outside the human dimension enter, they can only be activated by beings of high status or those who have the key, normally activated to fight special battles.

These special battles in the human dimension are known as Holy Wars, Revolt of the Gods, in short, they take epic names and define an era. Luckily this kind of battle happened every 500 years the last Holy War was 200 years ago, low-status angels versus viscount level demons, which wasn't much considering the size of hell and heaven.

Yet this moved mighty armies and humans were used as cannon fodder by both species, faith-blind followers on both sides. Priests and demonic priests were the main sacrifices in the battles, but the history left was only the glory of the fight against good and evil, as the proud humans did not admit that they were used as weapons.

Normal humans have a finite and very short life, some families are destroyed over time, so it was normal for Azarphy to be surprised that there was still an even more guardian family after such a devastating pandemic.

"This…" Anael didn't know what to say as he saw the summoning circle with the guardian keys. The stranger was a being as powerful as an archangel of war not knowing about it.

"Have you seen other angels?" Yani asked suddenly interrupting the conversation between the angel and the spirit of light.

"Little human..."

"Answer what he asked" Azarphy cut Anael who felt offended at being questioned by a human.

"I only saw an angel, but he didn't see me. I didn't want to get involved in a new war... Our spirits are recovering after the war on the Death Plateau"

Azarphy was silent for a moment, he was wondering if he had overslept since he hadn't felt the presence of a weak angel who was inferior to him in rank.

"Is he using some unknown item to cover his trail?" Azarphy thought for a moment. Given the time of the last war between angels and demons, it seems that what that angel was doing was something that went against all the rules of stop fire between Hell and Heaven.

Anael felt a pressure drop on his ethereal body and looked fearfully at Azarphy.

"Your Grace..." Anael tried to speak, but the pressure grew stronger and he stopped, shaking a little.

"A war of angels and demons after a pandemic that compromised several churches, decreasing the number of priests with holy powers... Demonic relic in the hand of holy knights... Demonic possessions..." Yani started muttering, his brain working quickly putting the pieces together.

"A bishop who has a mighty angel, but hides the fact" Giovanni completed Yani's thought.

Everything was very strange, things were moving very fast and the level of difficulty in this life seemed to have increased quickly.

"Not only that, this bishop is known as a hero who defeated a Warlock and a demon…" Yani continued to reflect.

Fortunately, Yani still doesn't know about Emery's contract with a greater demon... Nor Arabeth's contract... Well, not even Emery knows about it.

Already Azarphy who had more information than Yani was thinking about all the chaos that was being generated in recent days.

"Ouch..." Naill moaned in pain when he felt something grab his leg, a black root appeared in the ground and tried to pull the human.

Of course, Azarphy just looked at the black root and it was totally burned off, but with that interruption, he realized that now was not the time to unravel anything.

"In whom do you feel the powerful item?" Azarphy asked Anael that he was still shaking.

"On the blue-eyed human... The other human has an interesting item for a human..." Anael pointed to Giovanni. Yani felt the eyes of both supernatural beings on him ended up getting tense and worried, would the angel do something to him?

Well, the worry was futile as it would hurt Azarphy's pride too much. He was the kind of BOSS who if he wasn't provoked would do nothing.

Of course, he was also powerful enough to find the Soul Fragment interesting to study, but not so much to gain powers as he was already very powerful. Fortunately, he wasn't one of those power-obsessed BOSSES.

"What item?" Azarphy asked after it was confirmed what he thought about Giovanni being something weird around Emery.

"In his body, there is the key to activate a gate to paradise... Well, it's no big deal after all it takes at least five keys to open such a big gate..." Anael continued to speak.

Really a single solitary key was no big deal, it was just a useless key without the others, so even if humans became greedy there would be no way for them to dangerously open a dimensional portal of such magnitude.

In theory, this would be okay, but a portal to hell has been opened with the keys which means someone is gathering the keys and killing the guardians in the process.

"Your grace must know that there is a great gate to paradise where the temple is, this human has one of the keys. I heard that about three days ago one of the five keys disappeared, the other three families that must have the keys are not here... That's why..."

"So you were wandering through a temple of the God of Light at your leisure?" Azarphy interrupted Anael ironically.

However, he was worried since if there wasn't a portal to paradise nearby, how the hell were angels hunting demons at Matteo Abbey right now?

Since when did this little abbey have so many mighty priests who could summon angels?

"If there is no gate to paradise open... How are there so many angels here and now?" Yani interrupted the conversation between the two powerful beings. He forgot for a moment that he was now a simple weak novice and no longer the mighty Warlock of yesteryear.

Well, before Azarphy could say anything, he received a mental call from Arabeth.

"The human woke up, but he doesn't look too good." Arabeth was voice a little strange, he wasn't behaving rudely and tsundere.

"He is dying?" Azarphy asked a little worried, after all, he still hadn't solved all the mystery that Emery brought with him... Years of boredom made him cling to the only thing that made the world he knew to shake like an earthquake.

Literally, so much so that angels and demons are fighting right now when they should be in a stop fire, Azarphy couldn't help associating the soul shift in Emery's body with what was happening now.

"I think you better come here now"

Arabeth said nothing more, Azarphy was a little stunned for a while, and using his powers he tried to feel Emery's soul, what he saw made him even more worried and even more fascinated.

The perfect balance of three conflicting powers made Emery's soul even brighter and more colorful, but he felt a power that wasn't there before, he tried to probe a little, but the power didn't seem to react to him and remained stable it was a mass strange turquoise blue that in the middle balanced the three powers within the human's weak body.

From a distance, it looked like a precious gem with the light falling in and showing various prisms of color.

Azarphy's curiosity had been pricked and he wanted to feel up close how Emery was, he looked at the spirit and the two humans for a moment, he couldn't throw them away, could he?

"Your grace?" Anael asked feeling a chill in his heart, despite not being able to see Azarphy's body shape he felt something heavy about him, something like a look or even the sacred power surrounding him dangerously leaving him tense and nervous to keep his life.

"Let's go back," Azarphy said suddenly. He could put Naill in an empty room next to Emery's room, he also wanted to know more about Naill's family and the key to a dimensional portal.

He would leave Anael to take care of him, he was more eager to get back to the interesting human's side.

"Has something happened to Bishop Darcy?" Yani thought suddenly, after all, he thought the angel was Emery's partner, hence the strange action of the angel wanting to come back so suddenly.