The Shepherds Are Dense – Chapter 973

Chapter 972
My Immortal Best Friend
—Time stopped.
Not just one person, but the entire span of space-time had frozen!
This near-miraculous spectacle startled all of my teammates around Master Amber!
Everyone knew him as the Preserver that Eivass had invited, an old man who appeared ordinary, silent, and decadent. They said he could cast shields with exceptionally strong protective abilities and even resurrect the dead… but people didn’t realize how powerful his abilities truly were!
Weren’t you supposed to be support?!
“—What are you waiting for!”
Lixia shouted and lightly slapped Yulia’s buttock.
Yulia was instantly startled awake, feeling ashamed for losing focus during the battle. At the same time, she resolutely grabbed the dark red bow-knot on her head.
The moment the bow-knot was removed, it ignited in flames. The dark red flames gathered between her fingers, as if converging into a small reactor.
“—Lia!”
Yulia shouted and hurled the sphere in her palm upwards!
The dark red scorching flame expanded into a massive vortex in the air, transforming into four gradient-colored dark red butterfly wings.
Then, the Butterfly of Cursed Flames appeared from within!
Clad in wings of ash and a skirt of flames—its dark red irises, resembling insect eyes, slowly opened, gazing at the frozen demon flies in the sky.
Her hands were held high, her index finger and thumb forming a triangle. This triangle was then completely filled with flames.
Golden-red flames gathered within, converging into a beam in front of the triangle, shooting towards the sky!
The air was pierced by the flame beam, emitting ring-like shockwaves.
A chaotic storm spread in all directions, Yulia’s silvery-white long hair billowing and flying wildly in the storm.
Her crimson pupils burned with unquenchable fire!
She glared at the sky, and somehow, she seemed to resonate with the Butterfly of Cursed Flames—the golden-red flames instantly tripled in size, transforming into a platinum-white flame beam!
The beam swept from west to east, meticulously scanning the entire swarm of flies, but it seemed to have no effect.
“…It’s up to you now.”
Master Amber said softly, swaying slightly, appearing somewhat weaker. The Grand Guardian, quick to react, immediately supported him.
Then, the suspended time resumed its flow.
Explosions erupted in the sky!
Burning demon flies fell like a meteor shower, exploding before they hit the ground; it was as if many missiles had been intercepted.
Although they were so far away, they couldn’t strike precisely, and couldn’t even see where the Winged Demon was hidden within the layers of demon flies… However, the Butterfly of Cursed Flames had roasted everything from head to tail, so it was bound to have hit at least once.
As the sky filled with roasted demon flies and theswarm thinned, they finally saw where the Winged Demon was.
The Winged Demon, despite being a Sixth Tier being capable of completely avoiding the Butterfly of Cursed Flames’ power-halving effect… was now emitting a hysterical swarm of insect noises, as if it had suffered tremendous, unavoidable damage.
It madly spewed plagues and curses, with visible green and yellow mist constantly falling and spreading from its vicinity.
But unfortunately… even though the Winged Demon seemed enraged, it maintained its rationality and did not descend to fight them.
Instead, it began to fly upwards, attempting to escape to higher ground.
—This won’t do!
At this moment, Cardinal Galatea’s pupils suddenly turned into two mirrors.
Her divine art couldn’t affect the Winged Demon, but it could affect their group!
The sky above the Winged Demon suddenly transformed into a clear, transparent mirror.
Immediately after, with a disorienting sensation of extreme dizziness, everyone was surprised to find themselves standing above the clouds, with the sky now being the ground!
The Winged Demon, which had been far away, was now rapidly approaching them!
The Winged Demon clearly realized this, but it was already too late—
“—Hah!”
The first to charge forward was Siegfried, roaring.
The Grand Guardian hesitated, not wanting his partner Philip to inhale spores into his mouth and get poisoned; but he quickly reacted – they seemed to be upside down in the sky now, and the Winged Demon’s spores were falling away from them!
Siegfried stepped forward, accelerating with each step—the ground beneath him turned into an icy surface with a curve. He accelerated like a skater, eventually abandoning his push-off, as if ice skating or surfing, charging forward with the newly formed ice wave!
The Winged Demon, surprised and enraged, did not retreat but advanced!
It took Siegfried’s charging slash head-on. Its body seemed much more fragile than a Greed Demon. This single blow almost cut it in half.
However, just as this happened, its left arm rapidly extended, transforming into root-like, tentacle-like sharp structures, stabbing fiercely towards Siegfried’s heart!
If this strike landed, it could directly drain Siegfried’s life force and regenerate its demonic body!
—This was a fight of exchanging injuries for injuries, exchanging lives for lives!
No matter what kind of injury it sustained, it could quickly recover by absorbing the opponent’s life force!
“…What?”
The Winged Demon was suddenly shocked.
Its tentacles indeed pierced Siegfried’s heart with ease, passing through his left arm, which he had instinctively raised to block.
However, there was no “flesh and blood” sensation he was familiar with, and its roots could not take root within the opponent.
Instead, it felt like “he was still a mortal”—or rather, like when Reivhen was a child, punching through a glass window in extreme anger, only to hurt himself!
That “Siegfried” in front of it shattered with a cracking sound like ice!
Before the Winged Demon could think, it extended another arm and sent Lixia, who had transformed into a dragon, flying back again—realizing it couldn’t absorb life force, it immediately changed its combat strategy, transforming its right arm into a flexible, barbed black whip, lashing out at the enemies who had not yet approached it!
These strangely mirrored enemies would shatter after taking just one attack!
However, at this moment, several scorching beams shot out again and converged, almost cleaving its body!
The Winged Demon exerted all its strength, only managing to shield “Reivhen”‘s body beneath it and forcibly take the blow with its upper body.
But suddenly, it felt intense pain coming from “Reivhen”‘s side—
A mature dragon, at least five or six times larger than Lixia, with a huge scar across one of its eyes, emerged from nowhere and bit into Reivhen’s body!
“—Damn it?!”
The piercing pain of its body being torn apart struck, and the Winged Demon, in extreme fear, watched as Reivhen’s limb was bitten off and torn away by the dragon!
“No, no…”
It immediately realized that the dragon was an illusion!
The flame explosion had not completely annihilated the swarm of demon flies around it, so there was no way a dragon could have bypassed them and silently approached it!
These people were also illusions!
When it realized this, the mature dragon froze and gradually dissipated into a phantom. Simultaneously, those people blocking its way in the sky and the mirror that had appeared out of nowhere also vanished.
However.
—”Reivhen” had already been bitten off by the illusory Fafnir!
The Winged Demon, steaming with purple smoke and gradually becoming weak, desperately lunged towards the expressionless youth with vacant eyes, his back flesh spread like butterfly wings, trying to reconnect itself…
But at that moment, that familiar golden-red pillar of fire struck again.
Just before it could reach the youth’s body, it was completely engulfed in flames!
“No, no…!!”
The Winged Demon let out overlapping buzzing sounds like cicadas.
It wasn’t sadness, but fear.
Because it knew it was doomed—
The Fallen Heavenly Envoy did not lack demonic servants; he wanted “human proxies.” Therefore, he injected his power into these two humans, and this also allowed him to bypass the restrictions of the Hourglass’s Wall of Balance—
Any extraordinary being who reached the Sixth Tier would have their power suppressed in the Material Realm, so Sixth Tier powers had a time limit; however, “demons” within the Fallen Heavenly Envoy’s domain would not… Due to the influence of the Ouroboros Ring, this place had partially merged with the Fallen Heavenly Envoy’s territory in the Dream Realm, allowing the Fallen Heavenly Envoy himself to retain his Sixth Tier power.
But his domain had not yet fully manifested, so the powers of those Upper Demons were temporarily suppressed to the Third Tier. Only the power of Material Realm servants was not restricted.
However, even the Fallen Heavenly Envoy couldn’t bypass the Ascension Ritual out of thin air to directly inject Sixth Tier power into mortal beings in the Material Realm and forcefully promote them to the Sixth Tier; if he directly promoted the demons’ power, it would be equivalent to making them his followers and would instead suppress their power to the Third Tier.
But the rigid rules of the Hourglass had never stumped the Fallen Heavenly Envoy.
As a breaker of rules, the Fallen Heavenly Envoy quickly thought of a way to bypass this rule—which was to imprint the Mark of Sin onto humans, continuously transmitting his power to the Upper Demons gestating within the “Demon Avatars”!
The Fallen Heavenly Envoy commanded tens of thousands of demons and could arbitrarily bestow or strip demonic power; although the demons gestating within the Demon Avatars were hostile to their hosts and wanted to seize their bodies at any opportunity… as long as the Fallen Heavenly Envoy personally instructed them to protect their hosts, they would not dare to misbehave.
Once the host died, it meant they had lost the Mark of Sin that transmitted power!
Not only did it mean they had lost their Sixth Tier power… it also meant—
“—It means you’ve disappointed me.”
A lazy, somewhat disappointing voice echoed out of nowhere: “That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”
“No, Master, my Lord… Great Lord! My King—”
The Winged Demon shrieked, but its body was tightening and making creaking noises under an invisible restraint: “Save me—forgive me—”
It didn’t even dare to cry out in pain, only imploring constantly.
Like crushing and rolling up an empty plastic bottle.
In the sky, the Winged Demon’s body twisted, shrank, and deformed with creaking sounds.
In the blink of an eye, it transformed from a three-meter-tall giant demon into a black mass the size of an adult’s fist.
“Then you guessed correctly.”
That lazy voice sounded again.
A ferocious claw extended from nowhere and crushed it!
When the right claw opened again, only a clean, deep red rune remained, quietly rotating. It looked like an exaggerated lip print, as if smiling, or as if eating something.
It transformed into a red light and flowed into the palm of the claw.
An overwhelmingly strong pressure emanated.
A four-meter-tall, slender, and elegant man stood in the sky out of nowhere.
Standing quietly. Looking down at all beings.
He had no wings behind him, nor was there a hurricane swirling.
He wore a dark gold helmet resembling a blind ox-head, only revealing his mouth and the outline of his lower face. His entire body was clad in a form-fitting black bone-like light armor—but the armor outlined the contours of muscles. His hands were not as slender as a human’s, but were ferocious claws, like a dragon’s, or like a bird’s.
His purplish-black hair was tied into bundles of thin strands, like optical cables, trailing down his back, nearly reaching his ankles. Each bundle of “optical cable” was tied with a different colored ring at different positions, and a single strand of hair could have up to seven rings of different colors. The number of these hair bundles alone was nearly a hundred.
At this moment, the end of one of these hair bundles gradually condensed into a dark red ring.
Undoubtedly.
Even without having seen him, and even though he had no wings of fallenness behind him, people could immediately understand—this posture was that of the Fallen Heavenly Envoy.
The man slowly descended from the high sky.
After the Winged Demon died, the remaining demon flies did not die with it. But they seemed terrified and driven away by something, scattering in all directions.
However, as one of the demon flies, in its panic, wobbled past the Fallen Heavenly Envoy’s head, his already unhappy mouth corners turned down again.
The Fallen Heavenly Envoy said nothing, and the demon fly above his head instantly turned into nothingness, along with all the other demon flies, transforming into black dust and dissipating simultaneously.
He merely looked down at the earth and said, in a tone of surprising calmness even to himself, “This is the ‘brave team’ you used to challenge me, you immature snake tail?”
“—What, not qualified?”
A mature and deep voice suddenly echoed from above.
Yulia froze for a moment, feeling that the voice was incredibly familiar.
She immediately looked up, following the sound.
But the next moment, she froze for an instant, her pupils trembling violently.
It was Eivass.
He stood on the canopy of the giant tree, propping up a meteor. The antlers on his head had swollen to several times their size from a few days ago, so large that one might worry they would throw off his body’s balance and cause his head to fall forward.
…But at the same time, it wasn’t the Eivass they were familiar with.
Because the details of his appearance were completely different from Eivass’s—
Yet, even so, Yulia could recognize him!
—Even if he had aged decades overnight, she could still recognize him!
Yes, for some reason, Eivass had become forty-something years old. From a boy of eighteen or nineteen, he had transformed into a resilient and world-weary middle-aged man!
His appearance was still handsome, but it lacked a certain androgynous quality. Standing against the light on the high treetop, he looked solemn and sacred like a Sacred Statue.
“…Don’t worry,” Saint Joan said softly to Yulia, hugging her, “This is normal. Every priest goes through this. Using one’s devout power to its limit burns lifespan… Using Fire Worship Magic can slowly replenish it.”
Hearing this, Yulia thought, “I know about that… But when my brother treated others, he never paid a price… I’d forgotten…”
“…Hmph.”
The others remained silent, but the Fallen Heavenly Envoy responded disdainfully, “That’s natural. After all, he is no mortal.
“He is the snake that has survived since sunset!
“The snake that confuses people’s hearts, incites conflict, and makes people fight each other endlessly!
“The snake that teaches people about decadence and vanity, that intoxicating snake!
“Before him, all with blood are like grass. There is nothing that cannot be betrayed, nothing that cannot be deceived, nothing that cannot be plundered—
“—For he is the immortal snake, and all mortal things will eventually perish!
“My immortal best friend!”
With bone-chilling hatred, that grinding voice rang out from the sky.
This was the Fallen Heavenly Envoy’s first emotional fluctuation since his manifestation—and it was an incredibly intense one.
Filled with hatred, yet mixed with inexplicable pride and unwillingness.
He originally thought he wouldn’t be so agitated.
But when he saw these mortals flocking around the snake tail…
He couldn’t help but think of his past self.
…Or rather, another self.
His younger, innocent, pure, and good self.