Gospel of Blood
Chapter 648 : Fall

Three years...

Charlotte paused slightly.

That it had taken so long to devour Harald’s power had been something she hadn’t anticipated.

No—more accurately, what she devoured wasn’t just Harald’s power, but the combined divine laws and powers of all the Gods of the Holy Court, as well as the accumulated faith energy of the Holy Court of the Myria Continent over the past thousand years.

It was a volume of energy far greater than the divine power she originally possessed herself.

Even with the assistance of the Gospel of Blood, the devouring had been immensely difficult.

But in the end—she succeeded.

Charlotte couldn’t quite describe her current state. The intensity of the devouring had forcibly raised her divine power to a new tier, and her divine core had undergone further transformation under the influence of multiple laws.

She was still a True God—but no longer in the conventional sense of the term.

Her divine power had reached a threshold where quantity had triggered a qualitative change. It had become denser, more mysterious.

It now resembled the very origin of all things. If she so wished, she could even evolve her divine power into all kinds of forces—including other Gods’ powers.

Clearly, her divine power could no longer be called just the blood divine power.

Now, it should be called Origin Divine Power.

Her divine core and soul had undergone the same sublimation and transformation. Her divine flame burned ever brighter, like a sun radiating divine might—or like a black hole that encompassed and devoured everything.

Her divine soul had become even more immense—faintly bearing a sense of transcendence.

She remembered things she had once forgotten—memories of Gods who had died for her.

“Abaddon…”

Charlotte’s expression grew complex as she finally identified the source that had warned her all along: “Be careful of Harald.”

Memories she had once lived through… had now been “restored.”

More importantly, there was her connection to the world of Myria.

If before, the entire world had been rejecting her, then now—after this further transformation—the rejection had vanished. On the contrary, the world had already submitted beneath her feet.

It was an indescribable sensation—like the entire world had become her possession. No force within it could escape her control. Everything now obeyed her will.

All laws, all energies—laid bare before her.

And if she were to face Helios again now, Charlotte wouldn’t even need to lift a finger. One glance, a single thought, would be enough to strip away his divine persona and divine flame—claiming it all as her own.

After all—everything in this world had always belonged to her!

In that moment, Charlotte comprehended—

Majestic, overbearing, omnipotent…

This—was the power of a Creator.

Creator God. Master of the World. Sovereign of the Realm.

Yet Charlotte felt little joy at having ascended.

The reason? This power was too great.

So great that even as a True God, she couldn’t immediately control it in full—so great that even she felt fear.

If not for the Gospel of Blood, and if it hadn’t also undergone some transformation during the devouring process to help her stabilize the divine power, she might not have been able to contain the overflowing force at all.

She had grown too quickly.

In less than ten years, she had gone from a mortal to a True God—that alone was astonishing. And now she had taken a leap into the Creator tier… a leap that was nothing short of tremendous.

It was like a child suddenly being handed the most advanced weapon in the world.

Having it didn’t mean understanding it. Understanding it didn’t mean mastering it.

She still couldn’t fully control her own power. And the time it would take to gain that mastery… could likely be counted in decades, even centuries.

But Charlotte likely didn’t have that kind of time.

Because… it wasn’t over yet.

She closed her eyes. The cries, screams, and prayers of her believers echoed from every direction, shaking her very spirit.

They were the calls of the followers of Nyx.

Not just the believers, but also her blood descendants—their summons were filled with urgency.

Three years was more than enough time for many things to change.

And based on what she sensed through their prayers—war had broken out.

As for the warring sides, in Charlotte’s initial perception, one side included the Starfall Kingdom and Coria Kingdom, while the other comprised the Crescent Kingdom, the Western Yunette Empire, the Luna Coast City-States, other smaller countries loyal to the Holy Court, and… the Theocracy.

The Theocracy…

Charlotte’s face remained expressionless as she turned her gaze toward the Guardian Scepter standing quietly behind her.

Sensing her gaze, the Scepter bowed respectfully.

“Congratulations on your ascension to the supreme, Your Grace.”

Its posture was reverent—but like Charlotte, now fully awakened with all memories, its tone carried no joy.

Charlotte fell silent.

“The Theocracy has turned against us?”

“Yes… they have.”

“This is the seventh reset since I arrived in this world, isn’t it?”

“…Yes.”

“In all my previous resets, I never reached this level… is that correct?”

“…Correct.”

“But things still aren’t over, are they?”

“No, they are not.”

“Then what about you? Who are you, really?”

Charlotte looked directly at the Guardian Scepter and asked calmly.

It was a sudden question, but one that Charlotte very much wanted answered.

After all, following her ascension to Creator-tier, Charlotte had recovered those long-lost memories.

She truly hadn’t crossed over into this world just once—she had actually reincarnated seven times, and each time, she had awakened in the manor, climbed to the Mythic tier, and every time… she had lost in her confrontation against the Primordial!

However, in the memories of the previous six cycles, the Guardian Scepter had never appeared.

The Scepter only emerged during this seventh cycle.

Charlotte’s question received no response from the Scepter.

The wisdom artifact merely stood there in silence.

Silent… yet respectful.

“Sigh…”

Charlotte let out a long breath.

She could see it—this was something the Scepter didn’t want to talk about.

No… perhaps it wasn’t that it didn’t want to speak, but rather that it couldn’t.

After all, even though she had recovered “memories,” Charlotte still couldn’t be certain whether those memories were complete. What if… the Guardian Scepter had been a countermeasure left behind by her former self?

After all, it alone knew of Charlotte’s multiple resets.

Suspicious as it was, at the very least this intelligent artifact truly stood on her side.

Her newly transformed divine power was sensitive enough to discern this as fact.

“Speak. What’s going on? Why did war break out? And why… is it the Theocracy?”

Charlotte no longer pressed the previous topic.

After a brief silence, the Scepter’s reply carried a faint bitterness:

“It is… the Origin. Though you succeeded in devouring the Lord God Harald, the origin corruption, the Creator’s Will… still influenced the holy believers.”

The Creator’s Will…

Charlotte fell into thought.

She tried connecting to the faith network of the Holy Court—but immediately discovered that, even after devouring Harald’s power, the network had been entirely severed from her.

As though… its control had been usurped by some unknown force.

Not just the network. Even Harald himself.

She had not forgotten Harald, which was to be expected—she was special. With the Gospel of Blood, she could purify and devour the Origin; retaining memories was a trivial matter.

But even the Guardian Scepter, a native entity of this world, also remembered Harald!

What did that mean?

It meant that Harald… had not truly been devoured in the full sense!

In other words—her devouring had been incomplete.

Charlotte recalled the look on Harald’s face just before being devoured.

That fleeting, eerie smile.

A smile that, as it magnified in her mind, gradually aligned with those distorted expressions of the priests she’d seen in “future” fragments—burning in flame, praying toward the sky.

It was the Origin. The Origin… escaped.

She murmured in her heart.

A growing unease stirred within her. Charlotte had the creeping feeling that she had… done something wrong.

“Return to Starfall.”

She drew a deep breath—and gave the order.

…

Starfall Kingdom, Starfall City.

Three years was enough time for many things to happen.

Three years had allowed Charlotte to partially digest the power she had devoured. It had also been long enough for war to break out, for armies to be wiped out, for cities to fall.

Without Charlotte’s intervention, the combined strength of the Starfall Kingdom and Coria Kingdom was ultimately not enough to stand against the coalition of nations and the Theocracy.

Now, the capital of the Starfall Kingdom had become a sea of flames.

Black smoke billowed skyward. Fierce fires raged throughout the city. The outer and inner districts had both fallen. Only the Red Palace, the Royal Palace, still held out.

In the square before the Red Palace, knights wreathed in black flame charged with lances raised high, clashing against phalanxes clad in silver armor.

The banner of the Crescent fluttered in the wind, hanging behind the black-flame knights. Grotesquely mutated warhorses raised their hooves, trampling the standard of the eagle and the lilac beneath their feet. Black-red blood soaked the entire plaza red.

The palace guards fell one after another. Templar Knights and Judgment Knights, their armor engraved with black sigils, shielded crazed priests and surrounded the last of the defenders.

Sebastian, Nice, Bardock, Albrecht.

Each of them bore wounds. Their auras were faint.

“Sir Sebastian, surrender! The Eternal Night Monarch has abandoned you! Only by embracing the Great Creator can your sins be cleansed!”

At the front of the allied army stood Angus de Valva, once Grand Commander of the Templar Knights and one of Charlotte’s most loyal followers—now the Pope of the Holy Court.

His face bore a strange smile—identical to every other clergyman and soldier of the allied forces. A smile of fanaticism and madness. They looked like puppets, controlled by a single will—an eerie, horrifying sight.

And yet—apart from the surrounded believers of Nyx, no one noticed that something was wrong.