Chapter 72: BATTLE OF THE SWAMP (9)

The fires in the tar-mud basin slowly burned down to a violent, smoldering orange. The screams had stopped. The elite vanguard of the Sun Spire were gone, reduced to scrap metal and ash.

Behind the invisible barrier of the Sun Shrines, Aurelius fell to his golden knees in the pristine, dry dirt of his temporary domain. His hands clawed at the invisible wall. He had stopped screaming. He was hyperventilating, his eyes wide, staring at the absolute annihilation of his military assets.

From the thick, choking smoke of the Bastion side, a small silhouette emerged.

Iron-Scale walked casually up to the border line. His black suit of leather armor was pristine. He hadn’t even drawn his stiletto for the final clash. The Kobold Inquisitor adjusted his pose, looking down at the kneeling, broken Rank 9 God.

Iron-Scale reached into his pouch and pulled out a single, heavily tarnished Sun Amulet he had looted off a corpse days ago. He flicked it and it sailed through the barrier and landed in the dirt right in front of Aurelius.

“Your stock just crashed, Golden Boy,” Iron-Scale hissed. “That’s what the Lord just told me to tell you.”

Aurelius stared at the rusted amulet. His jaw trembled. “You… you are vermin. I am the Sun. I will raise another army. I will burn your entire sector…”

Iron-Scale chuckled.

“With what budget? You spent your entire treasury trying to keep those dead men walking. You’re broke. You’re trapped on a tiny patch of dirt in the middle of a toxic swamp.” After a pause, he added, “That’s what the Lord told me to tell you.”

Iron-Scale leaned close to the invisible barrier, his vertical yellow pupils contracting into slits.

“My Lord didn’t even have to use his miracles to help us.”

Iron-Scale turned his back on the Golden King and walked away into the smoke.

High above in the Void, Red sat motionless in his throne, evaluating the board.

Aurelius was humiliated and trapped, but Red knew the mechanics of the System. The Golden King still had approximately 14,000 followers safely entrenched back at the Sun Spire, who were mostly civilians, artisans, the elderly, and children.

They were useless to him.

Red’s analytical mind calculated the risk. Leaving 14,000 zealots alive under Aurelius’s banner was a long-term liability. In ten years, those children would grow into Paladins.

A crude, warlord mentality would dictate a simple solution, and that was to march the Bastion army to the Sun Spire and slaughter the non-combatants to permanently zero out Aurelius’s follower count.

But Red was not a butcher. He was a supply chain engineer.

“Extermination is the tool of a failing business model,” Red muttered, his violet eyes narrowing at the glowing map. “Killing the workforce is a waste of assets. If you want to destroy a CEO permanently, you don’t burn down the factory. You sever his connection to the shareholders.”

Red understood that Aurelius’s power, his Rank 9 status, and his ability to descend physically all relied on one singular currency: Faith. The citizens of the Sun Spire only worshipped Aurelius because their city was perfect, golden, and pristine.

“You want to see a god die?” Red whispered to the empty Void. “Watch what happens when his miracles bounce.”

Red opened the interface and focused on the Spore of the Omni-Web, the root network that now stretched deep beneath the continent.

[ INITIATING SYSTEM OVERRIDE: RUST & ROT ]

[ TARGET: THE SUN SPIRE FOUNDATIONS ]

Red funneled every last drop of his remaining DP while keeping 100,000 so he wouldn’t get demoted to a Rank 2 Deity. Through the Omni-Web roots directly into the heart of Aurelius’s capital city. He bypassed the people entirely and attacked the gold itself.

Miles away, in the perfect, shining city of the Sun Spire, the disaster struck silently. The golden streets suddenly began to tarnish. The massive, enchanted mirrors that reflected the perpetual noon shattered into a million pieces. The iron supports beneath the marble palaces flash-rusted, expanding rapidly and cracking the pristine walls.

The citizens woke up in terror. Their perfect, indestructible city was rotting from the inside out.

They prayed and screamed for their Sun God to deliver a miracle. They begged for a [SOLAR PURGE ] to cleanse the rot.

But Aurelius, trapped in a mud puddle miles away with zero DP reserve, could not answer them.

Back at the edge of the Black Swamp, Aurelius felt it happening.

His physical avatar flickered violently. The golden light radiating from his armor began to dim. He looked at his interface in absolute horror.

[ WARNING: MASSIVE FAITH ANOMALY DETECTED ]

FOLLOWER COUNT: 11,000… 8,500… 4,200… ]

His citizens weren’t dying. They were simply losing their faith. Their God was silent while their city crumbled. They were abandoning his shrines. They were abandoning him.

“No… wait…” Aurelius sobbed, clutching his chest as the Divine Power literally evaporated from his veins. “I am the Sun! You cannot turn away from the Sun!”

Up in the Void, Red opened a direct, one-way audio channel to Aurelius’s location. The deep, absolute voice of the Ka-Lam-Tee boomed from the shadows of the swamp itself.

“Faith is a contract, Aurelius,” Red stated coldly. “You failed to provide the service. Now, your investors are pulling their capital. Do you know why you lost? It’s because of your arrogance. You and your paladins relied solely on divine powers. They didn’t master their weapons, nor did they hone their skills. They were walking corpses.”

[ FOLLOWER COUNT: 1,500… 500… 0. ]

The counter hit zero.

Aurelius stared at the interface, his golden eyes wide with an incomprehensible, suffocating terror. He wasn’t just losing a war. Rather, he was losing his right to exist.

[ FATAL ERROR: FOLLOWER COUNT AT ABSOLUTE ZERO. ]

[ DIVINE CLAIM: SHATTERED. ]

[ PHYSICAL DESCENSION ANCHOR: LOST. ]

Aurelius could have used his DP to heal his sick paladins instead of sending them back. He could have helped his followers and answered their prayers, but he didn’t. If he had, he would have de-ranked, and he didn’t want to become a rank 8 deity.

Till the end, it was his ego and arrogance that destroyed him.

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