112: The choice between the god of evil, the soul of good, and the saintess.

One minute.

Just one minute.

The internet exploded.

#DelhiVanishing.

#ArjunaThePurifier.

Two shocking hashtags shot to the top of social media trending lists in over 190 countries and regions at a speed faster than any viral phenomenon.

Twitter, Weibo, Facebook... servers on every platform were screaming with alerts.

Countless mobile phone videos filmed from different angles were uploaded; though the footage was blurry, the sight of that area instantly turning into light particles and vanishing was clearly seared into the retinas of everyone who clicked play.

"Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit! What the hell did I just see?!"

"A slum... just gone? Tens of thousands of people!"

"Damn it, that's not a god at all! That's a demon! A demon even more ruthless than Uchiha Madara!"

"Don't the Indians always brag about how awesome their gods are? This is your god? Starting off by slaughtering his own people?"

"Purification? This is fucking purification? Cleaning up poor people like they're trash?!"

The internet firewall of the White Elephant Country collapsed instantly. Countless citizens bypassed the firewall, flooded comment sections worldwide with tearful English and Hindi.

"Help! Save us!"

"Devil! This is a devil!"

Despair and terror infected the entire globe in an instant through fiber optic cables.

One hour after the incident.

The White Elephant Country's official authorities had issued no statement.

The Prime Minister's office was bombarded with calls, but no one answered.

New Delhi, a megacity with over twenty million people, saw the largest urban exodus in recorded human history.

Fear is the best catalyst.

When people realized that the government and military were meaningless before such an existence, the only option left was to flee.

A flood of cars completely blocked every main road leading out of the city.

Countless people abandoned their vehicles and fled, dragging their families and carrying simple luggage as they joined the tide of refugees.

The sound of horns, crying, and cursing converged into a symphony of despair.

On the highway, the owner of a brand-new Mercedes was dragged out of the window by the crowd behind him. The expensive car was trampled by countless feet, becoming a stepping stone for the advancing tide of people.

Former social order, laws, and morality were crushed to powder in the face of the most primitive survival instinct.

Millions of citizens were like a startled colony of ants, rushing out of the city regardless of the cost, and traffic was completely paralyzed.

The entire city became a giant, collapsing cage.

Three hours after the incident.

Just as countless people were kneeling on the ground, crying in despair at the blocked roads.

The sky lit up.

A pillar of pure golden light tore through the smoggy, grey sky over New Delhi and descended with precision.

The light landed exactly in the center of that terrifyingly smooth, glazed earth.

Sacred, solemn, and warm.

It was completely different from the cold, judgmental divinity that Arjuna exuded when he descended.

This light carried mercy.

A figure slowly stepped out from the pillar of light.

Silver armor reflected a holy radiance, and shoulder-length blonde hair fluttered in the wind.

She held a massive flag tightly in her hand, bearing the crest of the fleur-de-lis.

The Ruler, Saint Joan of Arc.

She hovered before Arjuna, her clear blue eyes reflecting the land of death below, forged from tens of thousands of lives.

Arjuna looked at Joan of Arc before him without making a move.

Deep within his pure black eyes, the authority of [Clairvoyance (Transcendence)] had already been activated.

What he saw was not a young girl clad in armor.

But a mass of burning flames.

The marketplace square in Rouen, a mountain of firewood.

The girl tied to the stake, flames consuming her body, yet her gaze still turned toward the heavens.

Betrayal, judgment, abandoned by the people, scorched by faith.

On Arjuna's cold face, the part belonging to the "evil face" slowly curled into a curve devoid of any warmth.

He judged the existence before him as an "evil" that needed to be purified.

"You carry sin upon you."

As the words fell.

Arjuna slowly raised his hand, and a black longbow appeared out of thin air.

He drew the bowstring.

There was no arrow on the bow.

But an aura of destruction sufficient to cause ripples in space instantly locked onto Joan of Arc.

Joan of Arc's expression did not change in the slightest.

She thrust the holy flag suddenly before her.

"Luminosité Eternelle!"

A massive golden circular light shield expanded instantly with the flag as its center.

Holy energy fluctuations, like pebbles thrown into a lake, rippled out in golden circles.

The next second.

Arjuna's aura of destruction and Joan of Arc's holy energy collided violently high in the sky.

There was no sound.

But with the two as the center, the atmosphere for several kilometers around was instantly sucked away, forming a vacuum zone of intense turbulence.

The fleeing crowds below felt an unspeakable, terrifying pressure descend from the heavens; countless people were pressed to their knees, unable to breathe.

"In the name of the Ruler."

Joan of Arc's voice, amplified by the holy flag, spread clearly throughout New Delhi.

"Berserker, your actions have seriously violated the rules."

"I shall perform a forced suppression upon you."

Arjuna's "evil face" responded to this declaration with a cold sneer.

The power on his bowstring continued to intensify.

That aura of destruction had already condensed into a visible black singularity.

Just at the moment he was about to release his grip.

His body suddenly began to tremble violently.

"Ugh..."

A suppressed groan full of pain squeezed out of his throat.

The expression on his face flickered frantically between absolute coldness and extreme compassion, like a television screen with a bad signal.

Finally.

The "good face" belonging to the hero Arjuna gained the upper hand.

He slowly lowered the longbow in his hand.

The black weapon turned into points of light and dissipated in the air.

He looked down at his own hands.

It was these very hands that, just a few hours ago, had personally wiped out tens of thousands of living beings.

Endless pain and self-reproach flowed from his black eyes.

"Was it... me?"

Arjuna murmured in a raspy voice.

That voice was filled with disbelief and self-loathing.

He suddenly looked up at Joan of Arc across from him.

Then, under the gaze of the entire world, this existence who had just been like a world-destroying demon god slowly bent his knees in the air.

He took a kneeling posture.

"Ruler."

"I am burdened with sin."

"I am the root of evil."

Arjuna's voice trembled, filled with despair.

"Please... kill me."

This scene caused everyone worldwide watching the livestream through various channels to fall into a complete daze.

One moment he was a demon king about to purify everything.

The next moment, he was kneeling and begging for death.

What was this?

Schizophrenia?

Joan of Arc looked at the "Berserker" kneeling in repentance before her and fell into a long silence.

Her class skill [True Name Discernment] allowed her to clearly see the two souls tearing at each other deep within Arjuna's saint graph.

One was the God of Judgment who had swallowed the gods and did not hesitate to become "evil" in pursuit of absolute "good."

The other was the hero who had been lost during the Kurukshetra War and finally completed his mission under Krishna's guidance, yet could never forgive himself.

He was both the destroyer.

And the victim.

Killing a soul in sincere repentance went against Joan of Arc's faith.

But allowing a world-destroying demon king who could be controlled by his "evil face" at any moment to roam free went against her duty as an Ruler.

Time passed, minute by minute.

The fleeing crowds below also came to a temporary halt because of this bizarre confrontation.

Everyone looked up at those two people in the sky.

Several minutes later.

Joan of Arc withdrew her Noble Phantasm light shield.

She looked at Arjuna, who was still kneeling in the air, and declared in an unquestionable tone.

"Your sin shall be judged by the final outcome of the Holy Grail War."

"Until then, you shall be under my personal supervision."

"Your freedom shall be stripped away."

Having said that, Joan of Arc reached out her hand.

Countless golden chains emerged from the void behind her, like sentient serpents, and quickly coiled around Arjuna's body.

Arjuna did not resist.

He closed his eyes, allowing those chains representing "rules" and "restraint" to firmly bind his limbs and body.

Finally, a golden collar snapped around his neck.

Joan of Arc withdrew her hand.

The other end of the chains was held in her hand.

She turned, no longer looking at the city below.

In the next moment, the two of them turned into a sky full of golden light particles and vanished from the sky above New Delhi.

In the sky, only the golden pillar of light that had not yet fully dissipated remained, along with that massive, smooth, glazed land.