Desire's Vessel: My Lewd Reincarnation-Chapter 55: Pope Raynold Inca

Meanwhile, hit hard by the Pope’s counterattacks, Zaja flew through the air like a rocket. He crashed into the threshold of the dome-shaped veil he had lowered to block the Pope from getting outside help.

Or at least that’s how it seemed at first. The next second, red light flashed in Pope Raynold’s eyes. For no clear reason, he flew in the opposite direction from Zaja and smashed into the ground.

"What was that?" The Pope said before chanting and manifesting thirty-six torches in the sky, and sent a bright light over everything to show any hidden shapes.

But...

To the Pope’s surprise, the flare did not work as he had hoped. It failed to show Zaja’s real form or place. This left Raynold open to a hidden strike. It came right away, a close one-inch punch fist backed by two powerful divine auras.

Crack.

Zaja’s fist hit the Pope’s chin and broke it at once.

Yes. Even a body strengthened by being Helios’s current vessel could not fully stop Zaja’s strongest hits. Others would have flown back from the force, but Raynold stayed calm. He grabbed Zaja’s arm and twisted it into a painful lock.

At the same time, golden light flashed in the Pope’s eyes again. The same light that broke his chin now struck Zaja, making him dizzy.

Zaja’s chin cracked as well. But once more, when real harm came close, a healing took place that guaranteed a failure in the future.

Zaja broke free and entered the shadows. Coming out of the shadows, he kicked The Pope in the side, slashed at his throat with claws, and landed a string of bone-crushing punches to his face.

Again and again, the damage came back to Zaja. But each time, he applied the healing. Then he disappeared, showing up from strange angles to hit Raynold hard with delayed blows.

"You are a Jester child, you possess the Shadow Fire. That dark power proves that you have the highest gift. The robe isn’t fake. You must be truly blessed. I can’t believe one like you would get this angry over a normal man. Was he really your father?" Raynold asked with real curiosity, cracking his knuckles one by one.

"Too bad. From what I heard, he was a decent man. What was his name again? Oh yes, Shanji. Strange man. But no, I lied. The Blackfield Gorge didn’t tell me to sacrifice him alone. They also told me to sacrifice as many from the Last Wall as possible. Your father was just the first of a thousand... nothing special. Though the Gorge didn’t take his ashes, yes, now that I remember, he’s the only one whose ashes they kept. He cried a lot, you know. As we burned him when he was beaten half to death," Raynold said with a small laugh. He watched Zaja walk slowly toward him.

Zaja’s eyes turned red. Feeling he had angered a younger foe, Raynold grinned and cracked his fingers one last time.

Zaja charged forward, throwing care away. He jumped with a flying knee at The Pope. The Pope didn’t dodge. He took the knee straight on. His body flew back, pinned under Zaja’s knee as he hit the floor.

As before, the force came back to Zaja. And as before, a healing was ready to take place at the spot.

But right then...

Raynold slapped his hand on the ground. A large ritual circle formed and spread over the floor. Zaja took the full force of his own hit and flew backwards. Ten orange seals appeared around him, and they shone brightly with loud bangs echoing everywhere, followed by a huge explosion right under Zaja.

As a massive fire pillar rose to the sky, Raynold thought Zaja would turn to smoke or dust. But Zaja vanished. The next moment, he stood in front of Raynold again, one hand gripping The Pope’s neck. The other tied his hands.

"How? My spell stopped you from moving. The rebound should have hurt you badly, and my strike should have finished you off. So how are you still okay? And why couldn’t I follow your moves?" Not understanding his defeat, Raynold asked Zaja, who was now wearing a smile.

"Once turned on, your mutation lets you send any body damage you take back to the attacker... Inverse. It also sends any body damage you give back to yourself. It only works on physical harm and uses up your lifespan to keep going.

It’s pretty good for a Grade One Mutation, good in a twisted way, but good. Too bad for you, I have mastered the arts of my mutation, which means I can shrink my size and weight and force in an instant.

You thought I was using some hiding spell or teleportation move to disappear and rush you. But really, I was just getting smaller. As I shrink, my speed grows even faster, so you mistook it for hiding or teleporting," Zaja explained. The Pope now understood why the rebound had no effect.

Zaja had lowered the force of the hit at the last second, a simple move that led The Pope to his downfall.

"So I can’t kill you with body attacks? Fine. No problem. I will just burn you to death as I planned from the beginning.

By the way, I know an immolation trick too... Special Grade," Zaja said with a happy smile. As horror filled the Pope’s eyes, Zaja turned on the immolation curse, fueled by his divine flames.

"Wait! No! Arrghhhhh!" twisting in heat hotter than the sun, Raynold screamed in pain. But Zaja did not care. He drained The Pope’s life force and Arcane Energy while burning him slowly.

"Thanks for the information, by the way. You talked so much that you told me everything without me even pushing hard. Good man. I won’t waste your life force." Zaja whispered into Raynolds’ ear as it turned to hot ash. The rest of the body soon followed, becoming smoke and powder.

But the instant the Pope died, a small flame arrow slipped into Zaja’s heart without a sound. At the same moment, thousands of red dunes appeared all over the country. Millions of fire arrows and burning rocks filled the sky and rained down toward Zaja!

"Well... this is way more than I thought," Zaja said calmly. He faced a huge number of burning projectiles falling from the sky. A weak smile appeared on his lips as he did.

Every country kept at least one pact that protected its leaders from death with an impending curse to whoever tried to kill them. For Ironforge Dominion, it was the Ironblood demon; for the motherland, it was this.

If the Pope died unnaturally, the flames start up, and it would hunt down whatever caused the death and destroy it no matter what.

Everyone knew this. That was why, from the beginning, Elyria never thought Zaja would kill The Pope. Zaja had not planned to either; he saw no point in the trouble it would cause. But when the image of his father being beaten to near death and then roasted filled his mind, he acted without thinking, and even the wisdom of the Obsidian Wyrm Stallion Mutation did not prevent him from making the decision.

Memories of his dead father flooded his thoughts. Old scenes from his childhood came back vivid and clear. His chest felt tight, and an empty feeling spread through his stomach. Zaja refused to let things finish this way. But what could he do? Wipe out the Ember Crown Empire? Kill Percival Ironforge? Raid the Blackfield Gorge? Maybe even all three?

His mind wandered. He focused his mind on the abyssal flames that were about to rain down on him.

He enchanted a spell and performed a series of mudras that caused him to shrink in size to that of an ant. By manipulating every arcane energy in his body we was able to shrink every cell within his tissues to achieve this feat, like he did earlier when he was fighting the Pope.

As soon as he reached the ant scale, he casually made his way out of the veil he had lowered earlier and appeared far away.

The priests outside the veil did not know Zaja had escaped due to his small size. They kept shooting at it, hoping to help the barraging flames kill the pope’s murderer. the constant waves of burning missiles easily broke through Zaja’s veil, and alas, to the surprise of the priests, all that remained were Pope Raynolds ashes.

The projectiles, however, continued. Even though Zaja had shrunk to ant size, they turned straight toward him and aimed at him with perfect accuracy.

Zaja did’nt not wait. He summoned as much Shadow Fire energy as possible and became a tiny sun of red flames.

Streams of fire bolts flew past him, hitting the ground and making deep holes. Most of the ones he dodged turned around before striking anything else, they still chased his neck.

Naga wanted to get in the way, but Zaja knew that would defeanetly get it killed, and he stopped it. When it came to interferences, curses followed a simple scheme. Avoid if you can and destroy if you can, retreat if the previous two fail.

But one thing remained the same, and it was that the curse would always follow the person who killed the leader.