Chapter 540: The Witch Trials

Trial Court 23.

This is the first witch trial court to be held today.

The witch on trial, tied to the central pillar, was a young girl, looking no more than sixteen or seventeen years old, who opened her mouth a little to say something, but only managed to make a few fractured sounds.

And with that, she was met with a fierce "No noise in the Court of Judgment!" from the guard next to her. Keep your mouth shut!"

"She can't hear." The bishop sitting above said indifferently, "She's deaf and dumb, let's 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 was there to explain what was happening.

"Your mother defected on the day she was declared 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 whether she heard or not, "Of all the children born in this world, why are you the only one born deaf and dumb."

"God never chastises the good, and if you are deprived of hearing and speech, it must be that you have done something to anger God and he has sent down chastisement on you."

"-like the fact that you are simply an evil witch who was born into this world!"

Although she could not hear it, the Bishop's expression of disgust and accusation was so obvious that the girl shook her head in subconscious horror, her eyes filled with tears and she kept moving her hands, trying to argue in sign language, but her hands were firmly bound.

Someone could not help but whisper in defence of the young girl: "My Lord Bishop, this child, who cannot hear or see, has been at home since she was born and has never gone out, and has never done anything bad, so she cannot be a witch, can she?"

"It is forbidden to make noise in the court." The bishop gave the man a cold look, "Do you defend this witch to be tried, are you compelled by this witch to be tried together?"

The man's neck craned and he closed his mouth uncomfortably.

He was a neighbour of the child's family and had watched the child grow up. After the child's mother was reported for confirmation in the witch trials, the child and her father were dragged off to other courts and now there was no one left in the courtroom to speak for the child, so after he got jury service, he thought he'd come - at least to speak for the child. At least he could say a few words for the child who could not speak.

But it turns out that there is no difference between being dumb and not being dumb before the Holy See - you will be condemned 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 on and there aren't enough women in the country to digest the eels, the Holy See isn't so uncaring."

"So we changed the way the test was done."

The bishop waved his hand absently, "Serve the eel boxes."

A box full of eels was pushed by the guards in front of the young girl, who looked at the box with horror and struggled violently as if she realised what was going to happen.

The bishop was unmoved: "If you can finish digesting this box of eels in court and still maintain your mind, not fall under the devil's spell and become a witch, swear eternal allegiance to the Holy See, always clean and digest eels for all mankind, and come to the Holy See monthly to receive your share of eel digestion - pretty much the amount you have in front of you - we will be able to release you without charge."

At the bishop's raised hand, the guard loosened the young girl from the pillar, made her kneel before the box of eels, held her writhing head down in front of the box, pulled the ball of cloth from her mouth, and haughtily and disgustedly ordered, "To prove you are not a witch, begin to swallow."

"Swallow quick! There are many more witches to be tried 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, forcing her to start swallowing.

Hidden from the jury, Mu Sicheng's blood pressure rises sharply, his fists clench for a moment, Tang Erda's face drips with gloom and the gun in his hand is loaded.

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

This young girl reminds them of Jiayi.

"Shall we do it?" Mu Sicheng turned his head to Tang Erda.

Tang Erda shook her head calmly, "It's easy to hurt her now, the guards are too close to her."

"But we can't just watch her ......" Tang Erda paused, "wait another thirty seconds, if we can't we'll force a rescue."

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

"Wait, my Lord Bishop, before she begins, should I not pray for her purification?" A soft, feminine voice came, interrupting the guard's compulsion to allow the young girl to swallow the eel.

Mu Sicheng and Tang Erda tensed up the moment they heard the voice, and they turned their heads sharply to look over.

The blue-eyed girl with long, curly, brilliant blonde hair, dressed in a pure, white, two-tone nun's habit, her hands clenched slightly in front of her in a prayerful gesture, looked at the bishop with crystal eyes and asked sincerely, "May I pray for her before the trial begins? It is my job as a nun, and I ask you not to refuse me."

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

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

The bishop was simply mesmerised by the rumour of the most beautiful new nun, who leaned forward and spoke to Phoebe with misty eyes, seemingly forgetting about the witch on trial on the stage: "But what brings you here so soon? You should still be in the First See, where the trial has not yet begun."

"Is that so?" Phoebe winked playfully, "Probably because with my help, all of today's trials have ended extraordinarily quickly, those witch trials in the Inquisition are over oh Lord Bishop."

"Believe me, your trial here today will also be over soon."

Phoebe curled her mouth downwards and approached the shivering maiden, the curve of her smile somewhere between holy and cruel, and spoke in a soft voice: "- Soon, my lord bishop, you too will be able to finish your work and go to rest with my help, like the other bishops of the tribunal up."

"Forever Oh~"

The bishop did not hear Phoebe and asked something in confusion, but Phoebe did not answer, but jumped twice lightly and took small steps down the steps to the young girl.

Phoebe raised her hand and she slowly signalled, "Are you a witch?"

With tears in her eyes, the young girl looked at Phoebe, who had come to her with fear and a hint of expectation - the first person she had spoken to since her capture - and was about to shake her head in denial when, for some reason, the shake suddenly stopped 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 guards hesitated, but untied the young girl, who, with difficulty, was signalled shakily by the red marks strangled on her wrists: "I don't know what a witch is."

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

"If she's a witch, I suppose I am too."

Phoebe crouched down with amusement as she said in sign language, "How dare you admit to being a witch in front of me when witches are subject to trial and much torture by the Holy See?"

With tears falling from her eyes, the young girl questioned in anxious and puzzled sign language, "But they say mummy is a witch!"

"Mum's fine, so the witch should be fine too! Why should the witch be judged!"

"You're right." Phoebe arched her eyebrows into a smile as she signalled, "I don't think a witch trial is necessary either."

After the exchange with the young girl, Phoebe turned her head and looked up at the Bishop with a look of regret: "My Lord Bishop, she has just admitted to being a witch."

The bishop froze, "Seung, admitted?"

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

"Well then, now that you admit it." The bishop hesitated, "...... Then let's go to Holy Fire."

The torches were piled under the pillars and the young girl was confusedly set back up again. The neighbour looked away uncomfortably, not wanting to see the cruel scene, and Tang Erda and Mu Sicheng looked at each other, ready to strike.

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

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

She looked at the blonde nun with a light smile, signalling to her as if she were chatting.

"You know what? The fact that they pronounced you a witch by physical mutilation is my favorite."

"You remind me of another witch."

"I haven't prayed sincerely for a long time, but let's make an exception for you today."

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

[System Alert: Player Phoebe uses the skill (Prayer - Gospel)]

[This skill can confuse all NPCs as well as players within a partial range, causing the other party to open their hearts to the player, believe 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 throughout the church, dazzling the senses and putting them in a trance, as if they were lost in a heavenly dream.

The moment Phoebe's wings protruded from behind her, Tang Erda, a keen veteran player, caught Mu Sicheng, a novice who hadn't yet reacted, backing up sharply and quickly jumping onto the side wall of the church, climbing through the cut-out at the top and looking inside, narrowly avoiding Phoebe's evangelistic reach.

As he watched the bishop of the church roll out of his seat at Phoebe's feet, the guards dropped their torches in a daze and knelt to confess their sins, the other men crawled to Phoebe on their knees with dumbfounded expressions and reverently confided in her, Mu Sicheng patted his chest with a sense of relief, "Holy shit, that's a lot of skill, it's a lot of range. "

Tang Erda's face, however, did not look good: "She's stronger than I thought."

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

A normal control and roaming player would be the type of Muke who deliberately hides his presence, but Phoebe's presence from start to finish is significantly over the top, which is not characteristic of control and roaming players.

Phoebe is in control of the field, a characteristic of the main attacker and tactician.

"I suspect she's not just taking on the control and roaming position." Tang Erda's tone sank a little, "She may have taken on the role of lead attacker and tactician as well."

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

"She's a player in the same league as Bai Liu and Reverse God, growing up to be a formidable opponent, and this is only her first year in the league." Tang Erda's tone got lower and lower, "No wonder Jiayi assigned me to play Judgement Court, Jiayi should have guessed that Phoebe was the main attacker and would come to sweep Judgement Court, with her attacking ability, I guess only you and I with high defence can carry the load."

"It's a tough battle."

Inside the courtroom, Phoebe walked unhurriedly up to the young girl, she untied the ropes that bound her: "You leave."

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

The young girl looked at Phoebe's face in confusion and signaled, "Isn't it my trial? Why is it not about me?"

"How will you be judged?" Phoebe shrugged her shoulders and she smiled, "Everyone but you of course, I don't like judging witches."

The young girl looked at Phoebe incomprehensibly, but soon, induced by the Gospel, she obediently left and helped her dazed neighbour away, and before she did so the young girl looked back at Phoebe, whose mind was somewhere between lucidity and chaos, and seemed to see Phoebe waving at her, smiling and saying in sign language.

"Bye-bye, Miss Witch."

Phoebe lowered her eyes to the prostrate men and ordered softly, "Let me think, how would you better end this?"

"Burning I've already used, how about just-"

The white feathers on Phoebe's back vibrate lightly and flip upwards from their low end to become black bat wings. Her originally pale green eyes darken in colour and give off a ghostly luminescence, two sharp teeth show at the corners of her mouth and two small red horns about a finger long grow out 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 to hell all the time and not have seen it yourself?"

"Why don't you let me pray you to hell today, it's part of the nuns' work."

[System Alert: Player Phoebe uses the skill (Hell's Prayer Song)]

[This skill increases the damage of your player Team Quan by four hundred percent (including yourself) for fifteen minutes, with a cooldown of two hours.]

The whole church was instantly shrouded in darkness, and the ground seemed to be filled with gusts of wind and chill as if countless spirits had arisen, and countless slimy, invisible ghostly corpses and skeletons crawled out of the ground, holding the hands and feet of the men who had not yet come to their senses, sucking their yang energy face to face and soon reducing them to nothing more than skeletons.

Mu Sicheng was completely dumbfounded by this hellish sight: "...... What the hell is this? Phoebe doesn't have this skill in the information given by Wang Shun! Isn't her big skill a single bloodsucking attack?

Tang Erda frowned: "It's really a main attack, and a ranged attack, this card is hidden deep enough by King's Guild, Phoebe hasn't used this skill in previous matches, and Wang Shun doesn't have any inside information, so it should be King's Guild's card for the playoffs."

That bishop, briefly awake for a moment after the Gospel, his face rapidly drying up as seventeen or eighteen skeletons grabbed his hands and feet and sucked the life out of him, looked in horror at Phoebe standing in the middle of the tribunal and asked, dry and hard, "Why ......?! "

"Aren't you a nun?!"

"Why do you want to be on the side of the witches when the Holy See has spent so much effort to train you?!"

Phoebe sat on her little legs shaking on the high judgment table, she cocked her head a little and repeated the Bishop's words in an uncomprehending tone, "Why?"

"It's true that you can win games with nun status, and it's kinda nice to win too."

"But I can win on the side of the witches, I chose to be on the side of the witches-" 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 witch, using the same title is right up my alley."

Phoebe jumped down from the judgment seat and stepped on the Bishop's dried up head with a smile.

"And it's too easy to kill cowardly and dirty men like you, it doesn't take much effort on my part, it's just a handy thing to do, and I'm happy to do something for that I like."

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

"The two people who are peeking out." Phoebe carelessly stomped on the skull's head as she looked up at the empty spot at the top of the tribunal court with a harmless smile, "You guys don't think I turned on my big skill just to kill these inconsequential NPCs, do you?"

Tang Erda's eyes gleamed as she quickly grabbed Mu Sicheng's shoulders and reversed the jump, plunging off the top of the clerestory.

At the very moment Mu Sicheng was caught and jumped, there was a loud popping hammer behind them, and Mu Sicheng looked up at the huge hollow where they had just been hiding, and there stood a man covered in flames, holding up a huge bone half a man high, which was also ablaze.

[System Alert: Player Liu Ji has equipped the monster book identity "Burning Freak"]

[System Alert: Player Liu Ji uses skill (Flaming Bone Hammer)]

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

[Player Liu Ji Ji is in the range where (Hell's Prayer Song) is in effect, the boosted killing power is quadrupled again, raising the killing power to twelve times its original size, and one hit can penetrate the protection of the current top player, dealing between twenty and twenty-five percent life damage.]

And where they had just stood the dome was now completely smashed open, with a huge hollow at the top of the ecclesiastical church, as if it had been bombarded by some missile, but being within the range of Phoebe's skills had left the church still shrouded in darkness, with not a single ray of light coming through.

Liu Ji, who was burning, leapt from the hollow of the dome, the bone hammer he was carrying hitting the ground hard, creating a deep depression in the ground, so loud that Tang Erda and Mu Sicheng, who were standing firmly on the ground, were shaken.

Mu Sicheng felt this huge attack and oppression for the first time, and his scalp tingled as he looked across at the burning monstrosity - it wasn't his imagination, was it? This guy's attack damage was so high, it felt like his blood bar was going to go down halfway when he took an attack.

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

Tang Erda's back muscles were completely tense as he pulled out his gun and stared deadly at Phoebe, the witch 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 didn't prepare a main attacker and let Liu Ji be your main attacker, but that you cooperated and this is your full main attacker form, is that right?"

Phoebe's wings vibrated with pleasure and she smiled briskly with her hands behind her back, "No, oh no."

"Rather, as long as I'm around, anyone in our guild can be the main attacker, so no matter how crap someone is, they can put up a nice attack with my assistance."

Liu Ji who is burning life points: ......

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

"Now I'm sure you know what the key to our confrontation is." Phoebe walked nonchalantly towards Tang Erda, her smile looking friendly, but Tang Erda and Mu Sicheng stepped back, "We are both tasked with the main attack, and are both key attackers on the team."

"-that means that whichever side gets a head start and is able to grab the key to the stairway to heaven by settling the opponent first and being able to rendezvous back with the larger forces of the papal palace and overwhelm them with numerical superiority."

"Which means-" Phoebe's wings vibrated and disappeared into place, and the next second she appeared almost out of nowhere in front of Mu Sicheng, gripping him by the neck and saying in a cold tone "Whichever side loses first, loses."

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

Mu Sicheng's pupils tightened.