Otaku Witch
Chapter 829 - 829: 538. Noah's Choice

In this underground cathedral, which could only be reached by a single passage, there should not have been any wind. However, Noah distinctly felt the piercing cold carried by the chilling wind.

This was not a coldness of temperature, but a chill at the level of life itself, a natural fear of death felt by living creatures.

This wind did not belong to the natural world; it was the breath of death from the world of the dead.

"This...."

Pope Loli widened her eyes, staring blankly at her teacher in front of her and the half-opened dark door behind her teacher.

There were three unfamiliar characters on the door, but in an instant, Noah understood their meaning.

Ghost Gate.

This was the gateway to the afterlife.

But wasn't this world supposed to lack an afterlife? Once life ends, shouldn't the soul decompose and merge into the river of souls?

At this moment, Noah felt both shock and confusion. This was completely different from what she had learned in the past. As the Pope of the Glory Sect, she was well-versed in the world's mysticism, and there had been no records of an Underworld or similar afterlife. The concept of an afterlife did not exist in this world.

Sophia had once told her that this world was still too low-level; an Underworld was a high-level rule possessed by complete great worlds.

When a world has an Underworld, it signifies an extent of liberation from death's impact on life. It's an important feature of world transcendence and civilization evolution.

But hearing is not believing, seeing is. Now that she had witnessed the door to the afterlife with her own eyes, the so-called common knowledge of the past was no longer accurate.

This process of having her worldview shattered and then corrected left Pope Loli momentarily dazed.

But soon she felt a surge of joy, for if an afterlife truly existed, did that mean that the comrades who just sacrificed themselves had found a place of rest?

However, when Noah's gaze shifted from the Ghost Gate to the girl in a nun's habit with a lascivious figure standing before the door, she grew worried again.

Even if an afterlife existed, it was clearly a domain with an owner, and an owned territory naturally had entry requirements.

Was Dorothy, the teacher, the Prime Minister of the Magic Republic? Did that mean the afterlife only allowed souls from the Magic Republic to enter?

Thinking of this possibility, Noah became somewhat anxious.

Moreover, she immediately thought of other things related to this afterlife, such as the End of All Things Cult, which had been causing unrest in the Magic Republic.

The terrifying speed of this cult's expansion was absurd. Just a week ago, it was a small underground sect with fewer than ten thousand members. Now, its membership was nearing a million. A cult that should have been operating in the shadows was now openly active.

Even the Armed Heroic Spirits and Magic Armored Knights of the Magic Republic could do nothing about them, as there were simply too many people to kill them all.

The rampant cult activity in the Magic Republic had reached the Glorious Divine Kingdom. It had been a hot topic on the Ark in the past few days. The citizens of the Divine Kingdom openly ridiculed the Magic Republic for being weak, calling it a paper tiger, saying that a country that large being messed up by a cult was incomprehensibly useless.

Yes, there must be something wrong with that country, most likely a systemic issue, a disaster caused by the lack of faith.

Many citizens of the Divine Kingdom thought so.

Of course, as a more informed Pope, Noah could not be that ignorant. She knew that the chaos in the Magic Republic was caused by Sophia dispatching Divine Envoys to spread chaos, so she didn't actually think the Magic Republic was incompetent; she simply believed the Divine Envoys were too powerful.

Although Dorothy was impressive, she was a mortal. It was only natural for a mortal to lose to a Divine Envoy.

Pope Loli used to think this way.

After all, she grew up in the Divine Kingdom, her worldview shaped from a young age by faith in the Lord of Glory. The fundamental logic was that deities were great, and mortals should bend their heads in reverence, even gazing upon them was a great profanity.

Even though Sophia's teachings in Genesis had stirred rebellious thoughts within her, they were just thoughts, not even seedlings. The reforms she hoped for were just aimed at enabling the lower people to escape oppression by the nobility. As for the oppression by the Church and deities....

It was really just something to think about, with no real possibility of success. How could mortals possibly resist the deities?

But now, the more she thought, the more terrifying it seemed.

If the afterlife truly existed, could the ideology promoted by the End of All Things Cult still be considered heretical?

The fact that the Magic Republic couldn't handle the End of All Things Cult—was it truly because they couldn't manage, or because they didn't intend to? Were those "failed captures" all just staged for the Glorious Divine Kingdom?

And what about the Divine Envoys Sophia sent over? Were they doing well? Did they know about the existence of the afterlife, or had they been used as pawns while remaining completely ignorant?