It's a duel, a sacred duel.
Anita and Anashilia, the twins, stood in silence at the two ends of the arena. The judge was the Pope who stood for justice and light.
"Do you have anything else to say?" The Pope asked indifferently. It was a game without spectators. The only spectators were the closed gates of the arena and the Pope as the referee.
The two girls were equally silent.
The one who confuses my heart, the one who abandons me, the one who wants to speak and swallow, the one who wants to argue... No words left.
"Let's begin." Anita looked at the gleaming holy sword in her hand, a gift from LAN, but unexpectedly, she could also receive his gift, a curse sword that even the light was drawn in.
Anna Helia, instead of responding with an attack, the black long sword let out a cheerful whine, and Anita did not hesitate to meet it.
"Really like it... Two people, the same temperament..." "The Pope said with a tinge of sadness.
Gasiah stared blankly at the sudden words, first confused, then relieved, and finally chuckled softly, laughing but unable to hold back his sorrow.
It turned out that LAN had already seen through all the outcomes, from beginning to end, it was nothing but a prearranged chessboard, just like the awkward ancient texts LAN had left him.
"If there is destiny, why bother human affairs; If I had done my best, I would have lived my heart without regret... Why ask the heavens?" Without realizing it, Garcia finally understood the meaning of these words, "If you do your best, you will not disappoint my heart... No regrets... Why ask the heavens..."
The Pope looked at Garcia in a daze, listening to these vague words, not knowing what to do for a moment.
The faint whistling of the holy sword cuts through the calm thoughts, the sharpness of the black sword speaks of the longing for blood, the magic spells lose their place, and the divine arts are cast one after another.
Gasiah heard the Pope softly reciting prayers, asking the gods to protect the two poor children.
Looking on the other side, outside the arena, it was a refreshing late autumn scene. It had been a month since LAN died, and a statue of him had been erected in the central square of Rosemary. Bards sang of his glorious deeds of asking the gods to fight at the cost of his life. Only a few knew that the truth had been distorted.
Blood dripped down the blade of the sword. As it glided across the bluish edge, it meandered like a snake, and the thick, sluggish liquid became light, as if melancholy, transparent.
"Go on." Anna Hilia's light reincarnation, black swords colliding with white swords, interlacing, creating a bloodline.
Apart, Anita looked at the torn wound on her wrist and saw the liquid gushing out from between the cracked skin and flesh. This time she did not chant the healing spell.
How long has it been since she was hurt? She smiled in disbelief. It seems that since I met LAN, I have rarely been hurt. All the injuries are always blocked before reaching his body, by a pair of slender and graceful hands and a smile that is always light and gentle at all times.
Anna Hilia was amazed by that smile, sweet, wounded smile, a smile she had once wanted to keep for a lifetime, a pure and flawless smile.
The duel paused for a moment, and Anita looked at her sister indifferently. Blue, deep, like a light from the deepest part of the soul, there is an incomprehensible clarity within.
If one could see the passage of time, perhaps it would be discovered that time is always slower in silence than in other times.
Anna Hilia tightened her sword, and fine sweat appeared on her smooth forehead, as if unable to bear such suppressed silence, she launched another attack. The terror from the suppressed silence did not affect her performance, and her swordsmanship was still as smooth and natural as flowing water.
The faint stench came only when the two of them did not pass each time, and the stench grew stronger.
The smell of blood.
His mind wandered completely away, and suddenly he recalled the days when he had studied under Gandar, the first general of the demons, in his childhood.
According to common sense, the bloodline of the demons is often stronger than that of the human, so even if it is only a faint quarter or even an eighth, it can show the characteristics of the demons, but he is an exception. He has been a complete human since birth.
So he was trained to gather intelligence, to learn tactics, but Gandar never taught him martial arts and magic. It was his senior, Annashelia, who taught him these.
But again, this senior never taught him how to meditate or how to practice fighting spirit.
This did not affect his admiration for the senior, and then he entered the temple, practiced the divine fighting qi, and while serving as a guardian knight, also gathered intelligence for the demons, not even caring that his sister Jessica, whom he had never met, had taken his place in the demon family.
Though he was so eager to be acknowledged.
Then, he met LAN.
A person he treated sincerely.
Gasiah suddenly felt a sense of bewildering, empty in his heart, yet a sense of gambling. "LAN is really gone..." As if sighing, he suddenly said this.
"Can't you stand up without him?" "He's a man who makes you want to rely on him so easily that even I can't help relying on him when I encounter difficult problems," said the Pope indifferently.
"I'm trying again." Garcia struggled to convince himself that he could do it.
"Don't be afraid of failure. Life is a gamble." The Pope calmly looked at the growing blood in the arena. "Didn't you say that? 'If you have done your best, you have not let me down. '"
Gasiah smiled with relief, "I don't know if the temple will welcome me back."
"The temple is not a good place. God's servants are always too stubborn. That doesn't suit you." "If you want to reach a higher level, I suggest you go to the Four Gods, or go east, across the Strait of Clouds, to the other side of the strait, where there is also a continent that you can see," said the Pope openly.
"Do you know a way to leave the plane?" Gasiah suddenly asked.
"The time it takes for planes to flow is different." The Pope did not answer his question directly, "Another plane, perhaps you have been there for just a quarter of an hour, but here it has been millions of years. Lord Lilith, the god of the gods, has said that a year in the plane we live in takes two or three years in the other plane, and that is only a slight difference. She has also said that a year in the plane she lives in takes almost a hundred years here."
"I want to know the method, Your Holiness." Gasiah suddenly became unexpectedly persistent, a persistent determination to give up everything to achieve his goal.
"The method is described in the classics of the temple." The Pope glanced at him and said, "If you are really so eager to know, I will tell you the method, but it only leads to three planes, one of which leads to the plane where Lord Lilith lives, where the energy fluctuations are too strong for humans to adapt to; One leads to the underworld, where you must abandon your body, that is to say, you must die, and the soul is the carrier of consciousness and usually does not have the ability to think and remember; The last one leads to the plane of nothingness, the simplest one, but there is nothing there, no light, no life, no sound..."
"An endless test." Gasiah cut off the Pope's explanation. "It must be there, almost still time, in the best place of practice."
The Pope sighed. He had guessed Garcia's choice from the very beginning, but he had also lied. These three methods were not recorded in the classics of the temple, but were passed on to him by LAN. LAN had also anticipated that he would choose the void plane, because there, as long as one's will was firm, death would never occur.
"Before that, you must learn to protect yourself with magic." The Pope suddenly thanked LAN for his foresight. "Regarding the issue of crossing planes, LAN once gave me some guidance. There is a kind of magic that, as long as there is a medium, can protect oneself in the cracks of planes, even if martial arts and magic are mediocre."
Glancing at Gasiah, who was listening intently, "This magic is not a complete magic. It is also a kind of martial art, called 'Guardian of the Sword Spirit', and the condition for using it is that you can communicate with the spirit in the sword LAN gave you and make it work for you."
Gasiah drew out the long, glowing red sword from its scabbard and thought quietly.
All around was the sound of swords clashing against each other.
Then even this slight clanging sound vanished.
Anita and Anna Hilia stood at opposite ends of the arena, just as they did at the beginning, with the only difference being heavy breathing and battered bodies.
Finally, it was time for the final strike.
"Sister, if it's me who dies, please tell me the answer to the question." "Why did you kill me but not me in the first place?" said Anita, softly.
"Then you have to answer my question first." "Why don't you hate me?" Anna Hilia wrapped her body in black smoke, but the hazy black smoke did nothing to detest her beauty.
"Because you are my sister, my only relative." Anita Talia smiles, calm and sweet, "it was, it is, and it will be."
Because you are sister --
What a simple and pure reason.
"Really like what you would say." Anna Hilia said enviously, tiptoe lightly, and charged towards the opposite Anita, who did the same.
Purifying white light and devouring black light.
Colliding.
Then came a loud noise.
The smoke and dust dissipated, and before them lay an unimaginable scene, a radiant holy sword and a dark magic sword piercing through the body of their master, not the opponent.
"Hehe..." The two, whose vitality was constantly waning, looked at each other and laughed.
The Pope held down Garcia, who wanted to go up to help, and said, "Leave the last time to the two of them."
"Why not kill me?" Anna Hilia reached out and stroked Anita's hair.
"The same reason as yours." Anita Talia leaned on Anna Hilia's shoulder. "Sister, it looks like we were kids..."
"Um..." Anna Hilia watched her sister's body slowly fall to the ground and lose her life, "Because you are my sister, the sister I have guarded with all my life..." With these words, she herself fell down.
The Son of God died.
The ominous twins died. They lay in one place, curled up, like babies in the womb.
"They ended up together in the end." The Pope looked at the sky and said, "the timing was just right, about as I had calculated."
Gasiah was stunned for a moment, but saw two knights of the temple come in carrying a huge crystal coffin, and the nuns set up simple brackets, washed the bodies of the dead twins, and dressed them in splendid clothes, then laid them flat in the coffin, hand in hand.
Back in the temple, the Pope himself presided over the mourning and burial ceremony.
Gasiah sat at the entrance of the temple, looking at LAN's statue. "Did you expect such an outcome, too?" Suddenly he asked, "Isn't it? LAN, answer me!"
The statue stood still, smiling as gently as ever, and silent.