87: Divine magic is ineffective? Because we are warriors of materialism!
The heart-wrenching wail of that Divine Servant noble, like an air raid siren, echoed throughout the devastated residential district.
He scrambled on all fours toward the teleportation light gate of the inner city, letting out a desperate, distorted shriek with a voice on the verge of collapse:
"Devils! They are devils from the abyss!!"
"Quick... go and fetch the Chief Inquisitor! Only the supreme divine magic can punish these blasphemous demons!!"
His voice became the final note of this farce.
The players who were dividing the spoils all stopped their actions and looked with keen interest toward that light gate.
"Chief Inquisitor? Sounds like a big BOSS!"
"Divine magic? Magic attacks? Brothers, get the shields with the highest magic resistance ready!"
"Finally, something decent? Those birdmen earlier didn't even know how to cast skills, the fight was so unsatisfying."
Under the players' expectant gazes, a figure slowly emerged from the shimmering teleportation gate.
The newcomer wore no armor, but rather a dignified and elegant crimson high priest's robe, embroidered with intricate patterns of the sun and wings in golden thread. In his hand, he held a golden staff taller than a man, its tip embedded with a fist-sized, pure crystal emitting a soft white light.
His face was aged, but his eyes were as sharp as an eagle's, his long white beard meticulously trimmed. He was the highest religious leader of the Outer Ring of the Celestial Realm, the Chief Inquisitor, Uriel.
Uriel looked at the scene before him, a home that seemed to have been swept by a tornado. His hand trembled slightly. Pristine buildings were covered in filthy footprints, gardens were trampled into a mess, the sacred mead fountain had been violently dismantled, leaving only a bare pedestal. The air still carried an indescribable, complex scent mixed with sweat, machine oil, and... a certain Goblin's distinctive body odor.
His chest heaved violently, those sharp eyes turning blood-red from extreme fury.
"Filth... blasphemy..."
He spoke in a voice that suppressed a volcanic eruption, each word deliberate.
He slowly flew into the air, raising the golden staff high.
"You worms from the abyss have defiled the Domain of the gods and trampled upon their blessings. Your Souls, from inside out, reek of greed and brutality!"
"Today, I, Uriel, representing the supreme deity, shall deliver the final judgment upon you here!"
As his words fell, the energy between heaven and earth began to frantically gather toward the staff in his hand. The sky instantly darkened with dense clouds, golden lightning churned within them, emitting deep rumbles. On the ground, countless golden runic magic circles materialized out of thin air, forming a massive divine magic array covering the entire residential district.
Distant, solemn hymns echoed between heaven and earth, and a terrifying pressure capable of freezing Souls descended upon every player.
"Holy shit! These special effects! This BGM! Even more exaggerated than when that king gundam showed up in Black Iron City!"
"Stop laughing! Look at the sky! What's that?!"
They saw the crystal atop Uriel's staff erupt with a radiance as dazzling as the sun. Destructive bolts of golden lightning descended from the sky, but instead of attacking directly, they intertwined and fused mid-air, forming a hundred-meter-long giant sword of judgment, composed of pure lightning!
Sacred runes flowed along the blade, and the energy fluctuations it emitted distorted the very space around it.
Li Qiang looked up, feeling the pressure that almost crushed him. Instead of fear, an excited, savage grin spread across his face.
"Now this is more like it! This is what a BOSS should look like!"
Expressionless, Uriel poured all his Divine Power into the massive lightning sword suspended in the sky and swung it down with all his might!
"Turn to ashes under divine punishment!"
"β[Divine Punishment: World-Cleansing Lightning Sword]!"
The colossal sword descended with unstoppable force.
The apocalyptic scene made all the players instinctively close their eyes, preparing for the white light of death.
"BOOMββ!!!!!!"
After an ear-shattering roar, the entire world was engulfed in a pure golden light.
The light persisted for a full ten seconds before slowly fading.
The expected team wipe did not occur.
The players cautiously opened their eyes, finding themselves still standing in place. Although the surrounding buildings were covered in cracks from the shockwaves, they had not turned to dust.
They looked down at themselves, completely unharmed.
The only change was a bright red number slowly floating above each person's head.
γ-1γ.
There was even a physically weaker Mage player who, feeling a bit dizzy from the massive sound wave, saw a "critical hit" damage of γ-2γ pop up.
The entire battlefield fell into a long, eerie silence lasting three seconds.
Everyone was stunned.
Li Qiang scratched his slightly numbed buzz cut, looked up at Chief Inquisitor Uriel who was also frozen in mid-air, and shouted with an innocent expression:
"Um... is that it?"
"Are you out of mana? Want me to send you a 'rocket' to top you up so you can cast it again?"
"Pfftβ"
Someone was the first to fail to hold back their laughter.
Immediately, explosive laughter surged like a flash flood, sweeping across the entire square.
"Hahahaha! I'm dying! Forced 1 damage? Is this BOSS here to give us a scrub-down?"
"I thought it was a forbidden Spell! Turns out it was just a big light and sound show!"
"This damage is less than what I lose from tripping while walking!"
In mid-air, Uriel's expression shifted from anger to shock, from shock to bewilderment, finally turning into a blank slate of incomprehension.
Impossible!
This is absolutely impossible!
His [Divine Punishment: World-Cleansing Lightning Sword] was an ultimate divine magic capable of instantly vaporizing a demon army. Even if it couldn't instantly kill these Mortals, it should have caused heavy casualties. How could it only deal 1 damage?
Could it be that his old eyes were failing and he cast the wrong Spell?
Refusing to believe it, he aimed his staff at Li Qiang, who was shouting the loudest on the ground, and channeled Divine Power once more.
"[Holy Light Judgment]!"
A bowl-thick golden pillar of light descended from the sky, accurately striking Li Qiang.
Once again, a negligible number floated above Li Qiang's head.
γ-1γ.
"Ouch, again?" Li Qiang pretended to be in pain, jumping exaggeratedly on the spot. "Stop it, stop it! If you hit me again, I'll scream! It hurts so much!"
His over-the-top acting once again ignited the crowd's laughter.
"Brother Qiang, don't be afraid! I'll heal you!" A Priest player, holding back laughter, casually tossed a healing Spell at Li Qiang.
γ+150γ.
Li Qiang's health bar instantly filled, even overflowing a bit.
Uriel's faith began to waver at this moment.
He watched his once-unfailing divine magic dissipate like mud into the sea against these Mortals. Looking at their lively, even leisurely demeanor as they healed each other, his mind plunged into unprecedented chaos.
Just then, Wang Wei, who had been hiding at the edge of the battlefield, frantically collecting data with various instruments, suddenly let out an excited, distorted shriek in the team channel.
"I get it! I get it! Hahahaha! So that's how it is!"
"Brothers! This isn't a BUG! This is a dimensional strike at the rule level!"
Wang Wei was so excited he was incoherent. He forced himself to calm down and explained using an analogy all players could understand:
"Think of the Celestial Realm's Divine Power System as an Apple iOS System! Their divine magic are apps that can only run on iOS!"
"And us! Our player Soul data was generated by Boss Su Mu using the 'Spark' super server! Our underlying architecture is a completely different System! Let's call it the 'Materialist Windows' System!"
"When Uriel attacks us with magic, it's like an Apple app trying to force-run on a Windows System! The result is... System incompatibility! Program crash! It simply can't call the 'HP' interface in our Souls to deal damage! That -1 forced damage is probably just the System's minimum damage feedback because we were hit by high-energy waves!"
"In simple terms!" Wang Wei pushed up his nearly falling glasses and summarized in one sentence, "We... are basically immune to their divine magic!"
This "scientific" explanation instantly enlightened all the players.
"Holy shit! So it's System incompatibility! I get it now!"
"Awesome! Materialist aura! No wonder divine magic doesn't work on us!"
"Then what are we waiting for? He's magic immune, but we're not physical immune!"
The look in all the players' eyes changed at this moment. They looked at the Chief Inquisitor still doubting his life in mid-air, their eyes filled with malicious pity.
What would be the fate of a Mage facing a nearly "magic-immune" warrior?
"Brothers!"
Li Qiang was the first to react. He picked up a gold-edged door plank he had just "liberated" from the ground and slung it over his shoulder like a shield.
"Since magic doesn't work, it's time we taught him some physics!"
"Let's go! Physically exorcise him!"
"Ooooooh!!!!!"
The players let out excited howls and charged toward the Angel Guards who were also stunned.
The scene of the battle instantly became both comical and brutal.
An Angel Guard habitually raised his hand, chanting [Holy Light Arrow]. A beam of holy light shot out, hitting a player's chest, floating a -1 damage. The player was stunned for a moment, then punched the Angel in the nose, smashing his face.
"What are you looking at?!" the player growled viciously.
Another Angel released [Sacred Fire], engulfing a player in raging golden flames. The player stood in the fire, scratched his head, feeling a bit warm, then walked up and patted the Angel's shoulder: "Hey, thanks, just needed to warm up."
Angel: "???"
Uriel watched helplessly as his guards were brutally beaten by these unreasonable "Mortals" with fists, kicks, and even dismantled building materials. The noble, holy Angels were crying for their parents, utterly defenseless.
Their combat style had long been rigid, overly reliant on the power of divine magic. Once divine magic failed, they were even less effective than a street thug from the Mortal world.
"No... this can't be! The glory of the gods must not be blasphemed!"
Uriel's faith completely collapsed. He let out a desperate roar, raised his staff, and like a warrior, charged toward Li Qiang at the front.
Li Qiang didn't dodge. He raised his gold-edged door plank and met the staff head-on.
"CLANGββ!"
A loud crash.
The golden staff and the gold-edged door plank collided, Sparks flying.
Li Qiang stepped back half a step, while the aged Uriel was numbed by the massive recoil, nearly losing his grip on the staff.
"Old man, still got some strength!" Li Qiang grinned, revealing white teeth.
He swung the door plank fiercely, forcing Uriel back, then took a running jump. Several prepared warrior players nearby understood and exerted force simultaneously, throwing Li Qiang's burly body into the air like a shot put.
"My turn!"
Li Qiang adjusted his posture mid-air, aiming the heavy door plank squarely at Uriel's old face, which was filled with shock and confusion.
"Taste our materialist iron fist!"
"SMACKββ!"
A solid, crisp sound rang out as the gold-edged door plank slammed hard into the Chief Inquisitor's face.
Uriel let out a scream and plummeted from the sky like a shot-down bird.
Meanwhile, in the distant "Spark" core space.
Su Mu sat with his legs crossed in front of the control console, drinking cola while watching the one-sided beating on the screen with keen interest.
A virtual screen beside him displayed Wang Wei's newly proposed "System incompatibility" theory.
"Interesting," Su Mu chuckled softly. "Not entirely correct, but he's on the right track."
He tapped the keyboard, pulling up the real backend data stream.
"The Celestial Realm's 'Divine Power' is essentially a foundational protocol established through faith resonance. Its attack command is [Write 'damage' and 'negative status' data to the specified Soul coordinates]. But the player Soul data is encrypted and encapsulated by 'Spark' and isn't in the Celestial Realm server's database at all."
"So, when the Celestial Realm's System tries to execute the command, what it gets back is a string of [Error 404: Target Not Found]."
Su Mu watched the screen where Uriel was being ground into the dirt by a group of players, his clothes and staff stripped off, and a satisfied smile appeared on his face.
"This isn't a bug; it's a firewall between different civilizations. It seems my 'firewall' is much tougher than theirs."
He finished the last sip of cola and stretched.
"Make a scene, make it even bigger. Best... if you can lure out the administrator of this giant Celestial Realm server."
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