Witch trials

Trial Chamber 23.

This is the first witch trial tribunal to convene today.

The Witch to be Judged No. 1 who was brought up and tied to the center pole was a young girl, looking no more than sixteen or seventeen years old, she ah-ah-ah-ah-ah opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something, but she could only make out some broken remnants of sound.

Just like that, she was also fiercely scolded by the guard next to her, "No noise is allowed in the court of judgment! Shut up!"

"She can't hear." The bishop sitting above said coldly, "She's a deaf-mute, gag her first."

The guards gagged the cowering girl's lips with a ball of cotton, and she looked around her with a confused and frightened look on her face-she didn't seem to understand what she was going through, and no one explained to her what was happening.

"Your mother defected on the day she was pronounced a witch, so we had to try you next, and then we found out that you were born deaf and unable to speak." The Bishop spoke coldly, not caring if she heard him or not, "Of all the children born in this world, why were you the only one born deaf and dumb."

"God never chastises the good; you have been deprived of hearing and speech; it must be that you have done something to make God angry, and he has sent down chastisement upon you."

"- like you're simply a wicked witch who was born into this world!"

Although she could not hear, the bishop's expression of disgust and accusation was so obvious that the young girl subconsciously shook her head in horror, her eyes filled with tears, and she kept struggling with her hands, wanting to use sign language to argue, but her hands were firmly bound.

Someone on the side couldn't help but whisper in defense of the young girl, "Your Excellency, because this child can't hear or see, she has stayed at home since she was born and hasn't gone out much, and has never done anything bad, so she can't possibly be a witch, can she?"

"It is forbidden to clamor above the Church." The bishop gave this man a cold look, "Are you compelled by this witch to be tried in your defense, and want to be tried together?"

The man's neck cringed and he shut his mouth intolerably.

He was a neighbor of this child's family, and grew up watching this child grow up, and after this child's mother was reported to be confirmed in a witch trial, both this child and her father were dragged off to other trials, and now there was no one left on top of the trial court to speak up for this child, and so after he got his jury qualification, he thought it would be better for him to come-- so he could at least say something for this child who couldn't speak.

But it turns out that being dumb and not being dumb are no different when it comes to the Papacy - you'll be convicted no matter what you argue.

"But God is not so cruel." The bishop's words changed, "Originally, witches like you were to be tested by holy fire, but now that the war is raging and there aren't enough women in the country to digest eels, the Holy See isn't so uncaring."

"So we changed the test."

The bishop waved his hand absently, "Up the eel case."

A crate full of eels was pushed in front of the young girl by the guards, and the girl looked at the crate of eels with horror; she seemed to realize what was going to happen and struggled violently.

The bishop was unmoved, "If you can digest this crate of eels in court and still maintain your mind, not fall under the devil's spell and degenerate into a witch, swear eternal allegiance to the Holy See to always clean and digest the eels for the sake of all mankind, and come to the Holy See on a monthly basis to receive a share of the eels' digested amount-almost as much as you have before you-we will be able to acquit you."

At the bishop's raised hand, the guards loosened the young girl from the post and brought her to her knees in front of the crate of eels, held her ever-wriggling head down in front of the crate, tore the ball of cloth from her mouth, and commanded in a haughty and disgusted manner, "To prove that you're not a witch, start swallowing."

"Swallow hurry up! There are many more witches to be judged today, don't waste our time."

The young girl's teeth were clenched, her eyes red, her thin shoulders trembling, unwilling to speak.

The guard cursed and began to reach for her mouth, strong-arming her to start swallowing.

Hidden from the jury, Mu Sicheng's blood pressure skyrocketed, his fists clenched for a split second, Tang Er hit his face with a grimace so dark it could have dripped, and the gun in his hand was loaded.

"Fuck." Mu Sicheng cursed, "Are they animals?!"

This young girl reminds them of Jiayi.

"Want to do it?" Mu Sicheng turned to Tang Er to fight.

Tang Er hit shook his head calmly, "It would be easy to hurt her now, the guards are too close to her."

"But we can't watch her ......" Tang Er paused, "Wait another thirty seconds, if it doesn't work we'll forcefully attack to save her."

Mu Sicheng took a deep breath and gave an OK sign.

"Wait, Lord Bishop, shouldn't I pray for her purification before she starts?" A light, feminine voice came, interrupting the guard's movements to force the young girl to swallow the eel.

Mu Sicheng and Tang Er hit tightened the moment they heard the voice, and they jerked their heads around to look over.

The turquoise-eyed girl with the long curls of brilliant blonde hair was dressed in a pure white two-tone nun's habit, and with her hands slightly clenched in a fist in front of her body in the form of a prayer, she looked up at the bishop with a pair of crystal eyes and earnestly requested, "May I pray for her before the trial begins? It is my job as a nun, and I beg you not to refuse me."

After seeing the expression on Phoebe's face, the Bishop couldn't help but have his heart beat wildly as he almost struggled to avert his eyes from the small patch of pale skin exposed on Phoebe's chest, made an inviting gesture, and stuttered, "Of course! If you don't mind each other being dirty."

Phoebe smiled sweetly and curtsied slightly, "Thank you, Lord Bishop, for allowing my capricious request."

The Bishop was simply mesmerized by the rumored most beautiful novice nun, leaning forward with his body and mesmerized eyes, he struck up a conversation with Phoebe, seeming to have forgotten about the witches awaiting trial on the stage, "But how did you get here so quickly? You should still be in the First Order by now, and the trial in the First Order hasn't started yet."

"Yes?" Phoebe winks playfully, "Maybe it's because of my help that all of today's trials are ending extraordinarily quickly, all of those Inquisitorial witch trials are already over oh Lord Bishop."

"Believe me, your trial here today will be over quickly as well."

Phoebe ticked the corners of her mouth as she walked downward, closer to the shivering young girl, the curve of the smile on her face somewhere between saintly and cruel, and she spoke softly, "-soon you, my Lord Bishop, will be able to end your work like the other bishops of the Inquisition, with my help, and go to rest up."

"Forever oh~"

The Bishop did not hear Phoebe, and asked something in confusion, but Phoebe did not answer, but with two light leaps, trotted down the steps to the young girl.

Phoebe held up her hand as she slowly signaled, "Are you a witch?"

With tears in her eyes, the young girl looked with fear and a hint of implied anticipation at Phoebe, who had walked up to her - the first person who had been willing to communicate with her since she had been captured here - and was about to shake her head in denial when, for some reason, the shaking of her head suddenly paused, and her fingers moved as if she wanted to say something in sign language.

Phoebe glanced up at the guard next to her, "Untie her."

The guard hesitated, but untied the young girl, who struggled to get her hands, which were strangled with red marks on her wrists, to sign shakily, "I don't know what a witch is."

"All I know is that my mom was convicted as a witch."

"If she's a witch, I should be too."

Phoebe Spared a squat as she said in sign language, "A witch is about to be tried by the Church and suffer a lot of torture, and you have the audacity to admit to being a witch in front of me?"

With tears falling from her eyes, the young girl anxiously and uncomprehendingly questioned in sign language, "But they say mommy is a witch!"

"Mom is fine, so the witch should be fine too! Why try the witch!"

"You're right." Phoebe's brow arched in a smile as she signaled, "I don't see the need for a witch trial either."

After exchanging words with the young girl, Phoebe turned to the Bishop and looked up at him with what looked like regret, "My Lord Bishop, she just confessed to being a witch."

The Bishop froze, "Admit it, admit it?"

"Since she confessed to being a witch, is it customary to burn ...... oh no, test her with holy fire?" Phoebe inquired in a calm tone.

"Then since it is recognized." The bishop hesitated, "...... Then on to the sacred fire."

The torches were piled up under the posts, and the maiden, bewildered, was set back again; the neighbors turned their faces away intolerantly, not wishing to see the cruel scene, and Tang Er fought and Mu Sicheng looked at each other, ready to strike.

"She shall not speak, she shall not hear; this is the mutilation of the body; this is the sentence which God has given her; she is condemned to be a witch, to burn and go to hell, and after death her soul shall suffer the agony of burning, and she shall not go to heaven." The bishop recited the doxology with righteousness and seeming compassion, and finally made a curtsey, bowing his head and whispering, "May the Lord forgive her sins."

The young girl should have been terrified as the crowd came over with torches, but she looked at Phoebe, who stood directly in front of her, and for some reason felt a trance and peace.

She watched as the blonde nun, with a light smile, signaled to her as if making small talk:

"You know what? The fact that they used physical mutilation to pronounce you a witch is my favorite."

"You remind me of another witch."

"It's been a long time since I've prayed sincerely, but let's make an exception for you today."

The nun lowered her long, curly lashes to cover her turquoise eyes and whispered a prayer with a look of innocence, "May the Lord bless her with heaven."

[System Alert: Player Phoebe using skill (Prayer Gospel)]

[This skill can confuse all NPCs as well as players within a partial range, causing the other party to open up to the player, believe in everything the player does, feel close to the player, and involuntarily approach the player].

Phoebe's huge white feathered wings spread out behind her, and the holy light spread over the whole church, making people dazzled and in a trance, as if they were indulging in a heavenly dream.

The moment Phoebe's wings protruded from her back, Tang Er, a keen veteran player, grabbed Mu Sicheng, a novice who had not yet reacted, and quickly jumped to the side wall of the church, climbed out of the hollowed-out opening at the top, and lay on his back to look at the scene inside, narrowly avoiding the scope of Phoebe's gospel.

Watching the bishop in the church rolling down from his seat to lie at Phoebe's feet, the guards dropping their torches in bewilderment and kneeling down to confess their sins, and the other men crawling on their knees with dumbfounded expressions to Phoebe and pouring out their hearts to her with reverence, Mu Sicheng tapped his chest with palpitations, "Holy shit, this skill is too much of a top, and the range is so big. "

Tang Er hit's face was not pretty, "She's stronger than I thought."

...... is clearly a control position player, but it looks like ...... is so aggressive and imposing.

Normal control and roaming players would be of the Mu Ke variety who deliberately hides their presence, but Phoebe's presence is significantly overstated from start to finish, which is not characteristic of control and roaming players.

Phoebe's controlling the field, which is the hallmark of the primary attacker and tactician.

"I suspect she didn't just take on the control and roaming positions." Tang Er hit tone sank a bit, "She may have taken on the main attacker and tactician as well."

"Main attacker and tactician?!" Mu Sicheng was a bit incredulous, "Control, roamer, tactician, main attacker, this one takes on all of them, is she a hexagonal warrior?!"

"She's a player in the same class as Bai Liu and Against the Gods, growing up to be a formidable foe, and this year is still only her first year in the league." Tang Er hit his tone more and more low, "No wonder Jiayi wants to assign me to play Judgement Court, Jiayi should have guessed that Phoebe is the main attacker and will come to sweep Judgement Court, with her attacking ability, it's estimated that only you and I two with high defense will be able to carry it."

"It's a tough battle."

Inside the courtroom, Phoebe walks nonchalantly up to the young girl as she unties the ropes that bind her, "You leave."

"Today's trial is no longer about you."

The young girl looked at Phoebe's face in a daze and signaled, "Am I not on trial? Why not me?"

"How will you be judged?" Phoebe shrugged, she smiled, "Judge everyone but you of course, I don't like judging witches."

The young girl looked at Phoebe uncomprehendingly, but soon, induced by the gospel, she obediently left, and assisted her confused neighbor away, and before she left the young girl looked back at Phoebe, whose brain was somewhere between lucidity and chaos, and appeared to see Phoebe waving at her, smiling, and speaking in sign language:

"Bye, Ms. Witch."

Phoebe lowered her eyes to the prostrate men and ordered softly, "Let's see, what would be a better way for you to end this?"

"I've already used burning to death, so why don't we just-"

Phoebe The white feathered wings on her back vibrated lightly for a moment, flipping upwards from the low end to become black bat wings, her original light green eyes darkened in color and emitted a ghostly luminescence, two sharp teeth were exposed at the corners of her mouth, and two small red horns about a finger in length sprouted out of the front of her forehead.

[System Alert: Player Phoebe has equipped the monster book form "The Witch Who Fell to Hell"]

Phoebe grinned impishly with that innocent face, her tone playful and nasty, "How can you judge people all day long for going to hell when you haven't seen it yourself?"

"Why don't you let me pray that you all go to hell today, as part of the nun's work."

[System Alert: Player Phoebe using skill (Hell Prayer Song)]

[This skill increases the damage power of the entire team of players on your side by four hundred percent (including yourself) for fifteen minutes, with a cooldown of two hours.]

The entire Church instantly shrouded in dark shadows, the ground as if born countless ghosts general gusts of wind, cold into the bones, countless viscous and invisible form of ghosts and skeletons from the ground crawled out, they hold the hands and feet of those who are not yet awake, face to face to suck the other side of the yang energy, and soon sucked the other side only a skeleton frame.

This hellish scene made Mu Sicheng look completely dumbfounded: "...... What is this ah? Phoebe doesn't have this skill in the information given by Wang Shun! Isn't her big skill a single blood-sucking attack?!"

Tang Er hit with a frown: "Sure enough, it's a main attack, or a ranged attack, this card the King's Guild hid deep enough, Phoebe didn't use this skill in the previous matches, and Wang Shun didn't get the internal information, it should be the King's Guild's undercard prepared for the playoffs."

That bishop, briefly awake for a moment after the gospel was over, his face rapidly drying up as he was grabbed by seventeen or eighteen skeletons sucking the life out of his hands and feet, looked in horror at Phoebe standing in the center of the courtroom, and questioned dryly and with difficulty, "Why ......? "

"Aren't you a nun?!"

"The Church has spent so much effort to train you, why are you siding with the witches?!"

Phoebe shook her little legs as she sat on the high judgment table top, she cocked her head and repeated the Bishop's words in a puzzled tone, "Why?"

"It's true that you can win games with a nun's identity, and kinda win them too."

"But I can win by being on the witch's side, and I chose to be on the witch's side-" Phoebe spread her hands innocently, a good-natured smile on her face, "That's because, naturally, I like witches a lot. "

"Even though they're not the same kind of witches, using the same title is very much to my liking."

Phoebe jumped down from the judgment seat and laughed as she stomped on the Bishop's dry head:

"And again, killing cowardly and dirty men like you is just too easy, it doesn't take me much effort, it's just a matter of going along for the ride, and I'm more than willing to do something for that little bit of enjoyment I have."

The bishop stared at Phoebe in death, struggled twice unwillingly, and turned into a skeleton.

"The two who are peeking." Phoebe carelessly crushed the skull's head with one foot as she looked up to that empty spot at the top of the court of judgment and smiled a harmless smile, "You guys didn't think that I was turning on my big skills just to kill these inconsequential NPCs, did you?"

Tang Er struck his eyes and quickly grabbed Mu Sicheng's shoulders in a reverse jump and jumped off the top of the Church.

At the very moment Mu Sicheng was caught jumping, a loud popping hammer sound came violently from behind them, and Mu Sicheng looked up to the location of the huge hollow where they had just been hiding, and there stood a man covered in flames, holding up in his hands a huge bone half a man high, which was also ablaze with flames.

[System Alert: Player Liu Ji equips Monster Book Identity "Burning Freak"]

[System Alert: Player Liu Ji is using the skill (Flaming Bone Hammer)]

[This skill burns forty points of the player's life value, tripling the original S-rank killing power to SS-rank].

[Player Liu Ji is in the range where (Hell's Prayer Song) is in effect, the boosted killing power is quadrupled again, increasing the killing power to twelve times its original value, and a single blow can penetrate the protection of the current top tier of players, dealing between twenty and twenty-five percent of their life value in damage].

The location of the dome where they had just been standing had now been completely smashed open, and there was a huge cavity at the top of the Holy See, as if it had been bombarded by some kind of missiles, but being in the range of Phoebe's skill made the Holy See remain shrouded in darkness, and not a single ray of light could penetrate through it.

Liu Ji, who was burning, leapt and jumped down from the hollow of the dome, the bone hammer he was carrying hit the ground heavily, creating a deep depression in the ground, the movement was so loud that Tang Er Fight and Mu Sicheng, who were standing firmly on the ground, were shaken.

Mu Sicheng felt this huge attack power and sense of oppression for the first time, and his scalp went numb as he looked at the Burning Freak on the opposite side - it wasn't his illusion, was it? This guy's attack damage was so high, it felt like his blood bar was going to go down by half when he ate an attack.

When I saw Liu Ji in the Rose Factory before, it wasn't like this, what happened in between?

Tang Er hit's back muscles had completely tensed, he took out his gun and stared dead at the witch Phoebe standing in front of him : "So it's not that the King's Guild didn't recruit a main attacker this year, it's not that you guys didn't prepare for a main attacker, you beat a dead horse and had Liu Ji as your main attacker, it's that you guys cooperated, and that's what made you guys in your full main attacker form, right?"

Phoebe's wings vibrated pleasantly, and she smiled briskly with her hands behind her back, "Not oh."

"Rather, as long as I'm around, anyone in our guild can be the main attacker, so no matter how much of a waste of space they are, they can put up a pretty good fight with my assistance."

Liu Ji who is burning his life value: ......

Granted, it's true, but ...... so hurtful Miss Phoebe QAQ.

"Now I believe you are clear on what the key to the confrontation between our two sides is." Phoebe walked nonchalantly towards Tang Er Ta and the others, the smile on her face looked very friendly, but Tang Er Ta and Mu Sicheng stepped back repeatedly, "We are both undertaking the task of the main attacker, and we are both the key main attackers in the team."

"--That means that if that side resolves their opponents first, and is able to return to the large force of the Pope's Palace to rendezvous and suppress their opponents with their numerical superiority, whichever side gains the upper hand first will be able to snatch the key to the Heavenly Staircase."

"That is to say--" Phoebe's wings vibrated and disappeared in place, and in the next second, she appeared almost out of thin air in front of Mu Sicheng, gripped Mu Sicheng's neck, and said in a cold tone that "Whichever side is reduced first, that side loses."

"--Then let's take care of the weak newcomers on your main attacking team first."

Mu Sicheng's pupils tightened.