Chapter 690: A Taste of Sin

The tiny slimes Ailetta had released before the battle were considerably different from the ones she normally created.

Ordinarily, even the smallest of her children possessed something resembling an eye and mouth, giving them a certain resemblance to their mother. These slimes had neither. Their bodies were almost entirely featureless, with only a few thin veins of holy energy spreading across their exteriors, giving them a soft, iridescent glow.

Even after the Holy Field expanded and swept past them, there was little about their appearance or behavior that would’ve warranted any concern. They made no attempt to attack the humans or interfere with God’s warriors, and whatever tainted energy they possessed was too insignificant to pose a threat to the field itself.

At least, that was how it appeared to everyone else.

The Virtue responsible for maintaining the Holy Field could feel something the others couldn’t.

How many of those little creatures had Ailetta released?

Tens? Hundreds?

They had spread so far apart that counting them would’ve been difficult even without the fighting taking place. Some hovered close to the ground, while others remained high in the air, occupying different portions of the Holy Field as it advanced.

And every single one of them was absorbing its energy.

Individually, the amount was almost negligible. The Holy Field contained an enormous accumulation of divine energy, far more than any one of those tiny slimes could hope to consume. Even destroying a hundred of them would’ve required considerably less energy than what the Virtue was currently supplying to maintain the field.

But there was an enormous difference between losing a negligible amount of energy once and having hundreds of creatures continuously drawing from it.

The Virtue could feel the combined consumption increasing as more slimes came into contact with the field. It wasn’t enough to threaten its ability to maintain the field yet, but the implications were impossible to ignore.

If the battle continued long enough, an increasingly large portion of its power would be spent replacing the energy those creatures absorbed rather than supporting God’s warriors.

And that was assuming their absorption rate remained unchanged.

The Virtue had two ways to address the problem. It could turn its attention toward the slimes and begin destroying them, or it could eliminate the creature responsible for creating them.

Under different circumstances, destroying the slimes might’ve been the safer choice. But with their current consumption still representing only a small fraction of the field’s energy, the Virtue saw little reason to waste its strength chasing hundreds of tiny creatures scattered across such an enormous area.

Ailetta was still fighting one of the Potentates.

Eliminating her would remove the source of the problem, and with the Virtue joining the attack, even her newly acquired strength shouldn’t have been enough to withstand them both.

That was why the Virtue had chosen to abandon its supporting position and confront Ailetta directly.

Unfortunately, there were several things it had failed to account for.

First, their greatest advantage against tainted creatures wasn’t nearly as effective against Ailetta or her guardians.

In essence, they were still tainted beings, but in Ailetta’s transformed state, the energy within her and all her slimes had become almost perfectly intertwined with her holy power.

This created a peculiar problem for God’s warriors.

Their holy energy was supposed to purify anything of tainted origins upon contact, allowing their attacks to inflict far greater damage than their physical strength alone could achieve. Yet whenever that same energy struck Ailetta or one of her slimes, the purification was met with resistance from the holy energy already coursing through their bodies.

It was almost as though their own holy energy was defending them against the very power that should’ve been their greatest weakness.

Of course, the divine energy wielded by God’s servants was still considerably purer than anything Ailetta could produce. Her holy power couldn’t completely neutralize its effects, and a sufficiently powerful attack could still overwhelm that resistance.

But it didn’t need to.

The difference was already enough to prevent the purification from taking full effect, allowing Ailetta and her guardians to withstand attacks that would’ve otherwise been lethal to creatures of their origins. Even a direct blow from one of God’s warriors could no longer guarantee that the tainted existence it struck would be smitten.

Yet not being able to fully bring out the capabilities of their holy energy as intended was only one of the problems they overlooked.

The eyes that Ailetta possessed had become considerably stronger after her transformation. Both the one embedded in her chest and the three that had manifested around her halo possessed powers that the Holy Field could no longer completely suppress.

And that was a problem for God’s warriors.

Celestial beings were supposed to be devoid of sin. At least, that was how the Church understood them, and for the most part, it wasn’t entirely wrong.

These warriors had been created without the desires and emotions that so often led mortals astray, allowing them to carry out their purpose without being influenced by the very things they were meant to oppose.

Yet there was a contradiction in their existence that few outside Heaven understood.

The sins of the world were part of what allowed such beings to be created in the first place. Heaven had learned to use the very things it sought to eradicate, turning the sins of the world into weapons it could wield against evil.

In a way, it wasn’t so different from using poison to fight poison.

But there was an enormous difference between possessing something and being capable of experiencing it. God’s warriors were never meant to connect with the sins used in their creation, much less allow those sins to influence their actions.

That was why the behavior of the two celestial beings fighting Ailetta had become so unusual.

The Potentate’s attacks against Nightmare and Hubris were growing increasingly erratic. Its movements still possessed the speed and strength expected of one of God’s warriors, but there was something almost desperate about the way it pursued the two shadow guardians.

Strange, unrecognizable sounds began escaping it with each attack. They were hardly enough to resemble speech, yet the changes in their intensity made it difficult to believe they were entirely meaningless.

Was the Potentate angry?

Or was it afraid of something?

Neither possibility should’ve been reasonable for a creature incapable of experiencing such emotions, but its behavior was becoming increasingly difficult to explain otherwise.

And the Virtue wasn’t behaving much better.

The celestial being had always prioritized maintaining the Holy Field and supporting God’s warriors. Even after joining the fight against Ailetta, it should’ve continued providing that support whenever the opportunity arose.

Instead, its attention had become almost entirely occupied with Ailetta herself.

It still responded when another celestial being required assistance, but those interventions were becoming increasingly reluctant.

There were moments when it could’ve acted sooner, only to delay until helping became absolutely necessary. And whenever it was forced to divert its attention, something about its movements suggested an unmistakable displeasure at having to do so.

The changes were subtle enough that neither celestial being recognized anything unusual about its own behavior. Their actions still seemed reasonable to them, each response justified by what was happening in front of them.

Neither realized that Ailetta was responsible.

Of the three enormous eyes surrounding her halo, two had begun glowing with an ominous light. The one directed toward the Potentate shone violet, while the eye watching the Virtue radiated a golden hue.

Only the third remained inactive.

Meanwhile, the eye embedded in Ailetta’s chest had never stopped working. Its gaze continued shifting between the two celestial beings.

The eye within her chest had always drawn upon doubts buried deep within another being. Even feelings that someone refused to acknowledge could be brought closer to the surface, gradually influencing their thoughts until those doubts eventually corroded their existence.

But the eyes surrounding her halo possessed something different.

The transformation Ailetta had undergone had allowed her to incorporate divine power into her demonic existence, granting her abilities that neither her original nature nor the holy energy alone could’ve produced.

And those three eyes were the clearest manifestation of that change.

Rather than creating emotions from nothing, they took whatever the eye in her chest uncovered and directed those doubts toward particular feelings, exaggerating them until even the smallest uncertainty could become something overwhelming.

Each eye represented one of the emotions that had come to dominate Ailetta’s own existence.

Fear. Pride. And Lust.

The violet eye had already begun drawing upon whatever uncertainty existed within the Potentate, turning it toward fear. Meanwhile, the golden eye did something similar to the Virtue, except it sought to invoke pride.

And because those feelings originated from something already present within the celestial beings, neither recognized them as foreign influences.

All the while, Ailetta was buying her time.

Either she’d eventually get one to break, potentially allowing her to gain an additional guardian, or the roles of the attacker would change by the time her babies grew up enough to impact the battle.

And it wasn’t long before her babies began to grow, and with that growth, their bodies changed to their normal eerie appearance. Each one grew one giant eye, while their sinister smiles were in full bloom.

But what was important was that the veins of golden energy that were barely noticeable before were now throbbing along their bodies as the rate of absorption grew along with their size.

What followed was the field weakening.