Chapter 1111
Stripping Off Claws and Fangs
Integrating into Civilization
Undoubtedly.
…That was the power of a Sixth Tier.
That sacred and fanatical aura made Haibasha’s expression shift slightly, and she tilted her little head back for a moment.
“This presence… I thought I was seeing a Sublime Judge again.”
She couldn’t help but say in a low voice.
Haibasha did not hide her apprehension towards Don Quixote’s power, but her words sounded like praise.
“Sublime Judge… That sounds like the name of a warship.”
Eivass asked with interest, “Just like ‘Cruel Preacher’ and ‘Oathbreaker Annihilator’ are names of the same type.”
“Indeed.”
Haibasha nodded. “That existed in the Dark Ages… or rather, it should have existed. A type of heavily armored Paladin clad in consecrated armor, who existed solely for slaughter. If I remember correctly, they should have all been decommissioned before humanity was born.”
She lowered her gaze with a hint of nostalgia and sadness.
In a daze, she seemed to see the glorious past of the Church of the Church…
A behemoth that reached the sky, like a mobile pure white tower.
It was a War Treant with a Petrified Elf as its core – with a church shell on the outside, which could sit on the ground and become a fortress city. Each of them was a heavy war fortress capable of operating on land or at sea… Each could house nearly ten thousand people, with three hundred and thirty-three cannons alone, capable of performing three thousand resonance chants when deployed.
These were war machines used to fight Fifth Tier Sea Monsters, Magical Beasts, and Dragons. For this scale of fortress, it was the only meaningful response against a swarm of Fifth Tier monsters.
That was the true form of an ‘Oathbreaker Annihilator’.
Not a warship in the traditional sense… but an amphibious mobile fortress.
And once they approached the enemy, the ‘Oathbreaker Annihilators’ would release a large number of ‘Sublime Judges’.
Inside these silvery white humanoid armored suits, about three meters tall, clad in heavy armor, were skilled and devout Paladins. Replenishing their power from within the ‘Oathbreaker Annihilators’, they were launched like comets to crash into the beast hordes.
Their landing alone could obliterate large swathes of ground.
The dust that billowed, the trembling earth… Haibasha would never forget it in her life.
With the protection of these high-speed mobile High-Tier Extraordinarys, the cumbersome Cruel Preacher warships could only be considered safe. These turrets provided supporting fire in the sea, or helped intercept aerial attacks, while injured and wounded Sublime Judges were teleported back into the fortress under beams of light for treatment and repair.
In the era before humanity was born, Elves were the rulers of the world.
The enemies they fought then, any one of them, far surpassed Giants – in fact, Giants were also part of the alliance’s front line at the time. It was in such an environment that the Elves, relying on their exceptional military might, annihilated all enemies and carved out gathering places on the Earth, thereby having the opportunity to establish a unified and Permanent Neutral Church of Eternal Peace…
The fear that other races had towards the Elves was largely developed from that time.
It was precisely because of this that, with the shelter of the Elves, newly born humanity could survive without becoming extinct.
In an era when hundreds of beast hordes roamed the Earth, ‘extinction’ was not an empty threat, but something that happened every month.
“Then why were the Sublime Judges also abolished now?”
Eivass asked with some doubt. “If the ‘Oathbreaker Annihilators’ were dismantled because of excessive maintenance costs… these were just heavily armored Paladins. Doesn’t the Church still retain Paladin Legions now? If this structure could have been kept… even just the armor, it could have served as proof of the Church’s past glory, couldn’t it?”
Listening to Eivass’s words, Haibasha was stunned for a moment.
Such familiar words, she seemed to have heard them somewhere before…
“—Why were these great things discarded? Isn’t this a waste? Moreover, they are proof of the Church’s primary defense against beast calamities, and they are also a part of the Church’s glorious history… Without them, how can we prove to future generations the brutality of that war? Without them, if the Church is invaded by foreign races in the future, how will our descendants protect themselves then?”
In her daze, Haibasha seemed to hear her own question from years ago.
And her mouth moved on its own, uttering words Hermes had once said to her:
“…Because the Church does not intend to leave an impression of being ‘warlike’ or ‘dangerous’.”
Haibasha said softly, “All wars the Church participated in were ‘necessary wars’. It was for the continuation of other civilizations, for those weaker races, that the Church decided to enter into this cycle of mutual slaughter. Since the problem has now been resolved, we should withdraw from it, and not cling to the status and glory brought by this sublime power.
“When you have a hammer in your hand, everyone looks like a nail. The Church’s neutrality is its core principle, and its military power is only used to guarantee the possibility of neutrality… not the other way around, to interfere with other countries with force like a high and mighty judge. That would not be a devout nation, child of the Great Tree.
“Elves are meant to make people forget past memories. Races that survived that war are not superior to those who did not, not more noble, not more significant, and should not rule over the nascent races in the new world… like humans.
“All races are equal. When flames gather, they burn brighter, and that is civilization.
“Suffering is not worth glorifying, but the spirit of overcoming suffering and the will to endure suffering are worth glorifying—and these qualities do not require these battle-scarred killing machines to prove ‘that they once existed’, but should be passed down through the words and actions of future citizens of the Church… so that they ‘still exist, continue to exist, and exist forever in the future’.”
As for the issue of the Church being invaded… Hermes had answered it at the time.
“—In this World, the principle of the Path is the source of power. If the Church does not degenerate and remains the unparalleled devout nation, it can protect itself without relying on these ancient technologies. Just as wisdom gives birth to wisdom, love gives birth to love, and devotion gives birth to devotion… If the Church succeeds, then in the future, other civilized nations should also worship that sacred fire together, which would reduce their purity, unlike Dragons and Monsters who are pure. Then it would be even more impossible for them to defeat the Church.”
This was, in essence, the pollution of other Paths by the heart of “Devotion.”
At this point, Haibasha glanced at Don Quixote again.
He still stood tall and proud, guarding Eivass with immense pride and silence.
His radiant and sacred posture was not affected in the slightest by Haibasha’s words.
—He clearly did not agree with Haibasha’s words, yet he did not argue or show anger. He guarded Eivass like a statue. No matter what thoughts arose in his heart, they did not affect his sacred duty to protect his Master at this moment.
“Truly… so alike.”
Haibasha murmured in a low voice.
Just like the Sublime Judges of the past… no, it should be said that they were exactly the same. Even the style of the armor was the same.
The Pope’s Guards of that year were like these emotionless “statues” – cold, tenacious, silent, vigilant.
Completely different from the Pope’s Guards of today, who regarded it as an honor and a profession. They saw ‘guarding’ as a mission. It surpassed life, surpassed righteousness… surpassed their own principles, surpassed their personal lives. It surpassed everything.
And now, over the long passage of time, even the Church had become weak. This empire, which had survived from the Dark Ages, had now become more “human.”
Although Haibasha felt that this might not be a bad thing… after all, the Origin River of the Path of Devotion was “Civilization.”
As a follower of the God Who Burns the Body to Chase Away Darkness, stripping off one’s own claws and fangs and integrating into civilization was an extremely important step.
Even the Candlemaster habitually harmed herself, how could an Elf, a child of the Great Tree, survive alone?
