The Mobile Squad Rebels

“Thud, thud, thud!—”

On the other side of the battlefield, Jessica and the Adjutant clashed several times in the span of a single breath.

“Clang!—”

Finally, with a crisp hum, the scimitar in the Adjutant's hand snapped. Seizing the momentum, Jessica swung her lightning-flickering spear and severed the Adjutant's right arm, which was still gripping the broken blade.

The Listener of the Law Pathway was an unquantifiable class. It could be understood that every Listener possessed different extraordinary abilities, all because their core ability was called ‘Wish.’

Starting from Rank Four, a Listener would directly receive an opportunity to make a wish, and the spoken wish would be realized as much as possible within a certain limited scope.

For example, if a Listener wished to obtain the 【One-Man Army】 ability, they would truly receive that ability.

Some might wonder if they could simply wish to directly advance to Rank Eight, or wish for three more wishes. Such absurd wishes were, of course, impossible to fulfill. The moment such a wish was made, the Listener's spirituality would be completely drained, causing them to lose the opportunity instantly, or even die from spiritual exhaustion.

Thus, how one formulated a wish was a highly delicate matter. This also led to a massive variance in a Listener's strength; the powerful ones were incredibly formidable, while the weak ones were truly exceptionally weak.

As for Jessica, her wish was ‘to obtain the weapon she currently held.’ This wish had nearly cost her life, as the method of its fulfillment was not to teleport the weapon to her, but rather to teleport Jessica to where the weapon was located.

To be honest, Jessica didn't even know where she had been teleported to at the time. It was a pitch-black place where this very spear was plunged into a boulder, and one could hear heavy breathing rising and falling from the surrounding darkness.

Fortunately, Jessica had been carrying a teleportation-type extraordinary item at the time. She pulled out the spear and immediately fled. In short, after going through such twists and turns, the weapon Jessica obtained was naturally extraordinarily powerful.

After severing his right arm, Jessica held the spear with one hand, pressing its tip against the Adjutant's neck. “You have already lost,” she said. “Surrender now, and I can still secure a more dignified death for you.”

However, faced with this hopeless situation, the Adjutant suddenly burst into laughter. “Hahaha! Ever since I set foot here, I never planned to make it out alive,” he said. “And what you just said is exactly what I want to say to you—you have already lost!”

“Boom! Boom! Boom!—”

Deafening explosions resounded in everyone's ears without warning, and the ground began to shake violently as if a massive earthquake had struck. Nolan, Jessica, and even Freya, who had her eyes closed, looked up. Now, anyone who raised their head could see three pillars of raging fire soaring into the sky, forming three miniature mushroom clouds!

They were located in the direct south, southeast, and southwest directions of the city.

The core reason General Jerome had distributed Devil Pathway potions everywhere was to distract the Special Service. While these official extraordinaries were kept busy, he had his own Soldiers go to various parts of the city to draw the array nodes, thereby minimizing the risk of being discovered.

In essence, the array core in the school's back mountain was actually a detonator, while the array nodes scattered in every corner of the city were individual ‘bombs.’

Jerome's original plan was certainly to detonate them only after all the bombs had been set. However, in this critical moment, he made the decision to slightly modify the array core and forcibly detonate all the bombs that had already been installed.

In the blink of an eye, nearly a third of the city began to burn. Seeing this, Archbishop Pantheon couldn't help but curse, “You two absolute madmen!”

Jessica also wore a dazed expression, her neck craned as she stared at the distant flames. Right at that moment, the Adjutant's spirituality suddenly began to gather. Taking advantage of Jessica's brief distraction, he stepped forward, allowing her spear to pierce straight through his throat. At the same time, he swiftly raised his other hand, which was gripping a firearm, and decisively pulled the trigger.

However, the Adjutant's target was not Jessica, but a certain spot on the battlefield.

At this moment, Euphemia was on her way to Freya's side. To move from the rear of the battlefield to the center, she had to climb over several earthen walls. She had just climbed to the top of one wall and stood high up, staring at the raging fires in the distance and the billowing black smoke rising into the sky, swallowing hard.

Then, when she looked back at the battlefield, she happened to see the Adjutant raising his gun to aim, and instantly realized that his target was none other than Freya!

Even a saint could lose their temper, let alone a soldier who had spent years fighting on the front lines. To the Adjutant, the culprits behind their current predicament were undoubtedly Freya and Euphemia. If not for these two, how could General Jerome's plan have been exposed? If not for them, how could they have ended up at war with the Special Service and the church?

Although the plan was now being forced forward, even General Jerome himself didn't know if this half-baked ritual was up to standard or if it would be considered a success. Naturally, the Adjutant harbored intense hatred toward Freya and Euphemia for obstructing his general's promotion. He had long been seething with rage!

Even though the Adjutant was already a Rank Four, his spirituality was still quite limited, allowing him to use his extraordinary abilities two or three times at most. He had actually used this ability once when he first encountered Freya and Euphemia—an ability called ‘Full-Force Strike.’

Its effect was to concentrate all of one's physical strength into a single attack, unleashing the most powerful strike possible. Furthermore, there was no restriction on the medium of the attack; it could be a scimitar, an arrow, a bullet, or even applied to an artillery shell when loading a cannon.

It was a very powerful extraordinary ability, but Jessica was even stronger. The Adjutant knew deep down that even if he used all three of his ‘Full-Force Strikes,’ he probably wouldn't be able to defeat her. Thus, he had deliberately held back, completely refraining from using his abilities during his fight with Jessica, just waiting for this very moment.

To use his ultimate trump card for revenge!

“Bang!—”

A crimson bullet erupted from the barrel. Because the Adjutant was already in a near-death state, his ‘Blood Rage’ ability activated, nearly doubling his physical attributes and naturally magnifying the power of this ‘Full-Force Strike’ tremendously.

This strike came far too suddenly—so suddenly that almost no one could react. Only Euphemia happened to spot it. The moment she saw the Adjutant raising his gun to aim, she pressed her left hand against her earring and pointed her right hand toward Freya's position. A soft white barrier materialized, standing firmly right in front of Freya.

“Boom!—”

A violent explosion erupted in the middle of the battlefield. But that was not the end. The very second after pulling the trigger, the Adjutant immediately used his ‘Stance Recovery’ ability to reset his state, and unleashed another ‘Full-Force Strike.’ His second target was none other than Euphemia.

“Damn it!” Jessica reacted quickly, swiftly swinging her weapon to decapitate the Adjutant. Yet, the second shot had already been fired. A second violent explosion detonated at the top of the earthen wall, followed by... the silhouette of Euphemia being blown through the air.

Her earring had already withstood one of the Adjutant's full-force strikes yesterday, and it had just blocked a second one today. Its defensive capabilities had reached their absolute limit, making it completely impossible to withstand a third.

In fact, the barrier had already shattered while blocking the second shot. Even Freya was sent stumbling by the shockwave, suffering several cuts on her body. However, ignoring her injuries, she immediately turned and ran toward Euphemia.

Freya scrambled over an earthen wall. There, lying on the ground, she could clearly see a fist-sized entry wound piercing through Euphemia's chest. It was an absolute, fatal wound. Without even a chance to leave any final words, the girl had already stopped breathing.

Freya's steps grew slower and slower until she finally came to a halt beside Euphemia. She lowered her head, standing completely still, lost in a long silence.

The Adjutant's near-death strike was incredibly powerful. Freya had been focusing on maintaining her healing ability, and her attention had been completely diverted by the explosion. It was no exaggeration to say that if Euphemia hadn't blocked that strike for her, Freya might very well have been killed instantly.

Yet the price of that rescue now lay before her eyes. Freya didn't know how to describe her current feelings. She could only murmur, “If you had known that blocking this strike for me would cost you your life, would you still have chosen to do it...”

Naturally, Euphemia could no longer answer her. At that moment, Atticus and several members of the Church of the Earth arrived at the scene. Looking at the sight before them, Atticus also fell silent for a moment before saying to Freya, “Your Holiness, please accept my condolences.”

“It is fine. You do not need to comfort me,” Freya said, taking a deep breath. “If something happens that I do not wish to happen, then I will simply make it so that it never happened.”

The words sounded somewhat convoluted and strange, and Atticus could not grasp her meaning for a moment. However, Freya had no intention of explaining. She turned around and said, “Let us go. That General is currently at the back mountain of Cobdo National Academy. We must deal with him as well for this incident to finally be over.”

Watching the members of the church walk past her one by one, Jessica opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but ultimately let out a sigh. “Forget it, forget it.”

Thus, the members of both the church and the Special Service advanced together, quickly arriving at Cobdo National Academy just two blocks away.

As the core of the array, this place surprisingly showed no signs of any explosion. When everyone arrived near the flat ground of the back mountain, Jerome was standing there with his hands behind his back, looking as though he had been waiting for a long time.

Hearing the rustling footsteps, he slowly turned around and said, “You all arrived slightly faster than I anticipated.”

As he spoke, he glanced at Freya and the rest of the Earth believers. “The Special Service and the church operating together? This is indeed... somewhat unexpected.”

Jessica furrowed her brows, pointing the tip of her spear toward Jerome. “Is that not because of your atrocious deeds that outrage both gods and men? Your Adjutant is already dead. What about you? Do you still intend to put up a desperate, cornered struggle?”

Jerome shook his head and said, “No, no. I can feel that the ritual has already been completed. Even if it did not incinerate the entire city all at once, just this one-third is fully sufficient to satisfy the requirements for my promotion.”

As he spoke, Jerome took out a potion bottle from his coat pocket. “This is the Rank Six War Pathway potion,” he said. “As long as I drink this, I will be able to advance to Rank Six.”

Currently, General Jerome was at Rank Five. If the Special Service and the church swarmed him together, they would certainly be able to defeat him. But if this guy successfully advanced, the outcome would be hard to predict.

However, while tropes of mid-battle advancement, sudden power-ups, and turning the tables might often appear in various works from Freya's previous life, that trick simply did not work in this world.

Every different potion would bring about different ‘symptoms’ after consumption. For instance, when Freya drank the War Pathway potion, her entire body felt burning hot, whereas drinking the Earth Pathway potion caused her to fall fast asleep on the spot.

This was the process of the body adapting to the new power. Therefore, if Jerome dared to drink the potion right now, it would practically be equivalent to self-inflicting a crowd-control effect. While he was immobilized by the potion's side effects, wouldn't it be simple enough for everyone to just rush forward and tear him to pieces?

Jerome clearly knew this as well, so he had no intention of drinking the potion immediately. Instead, he looked at Jessica and said, “Captain Jessica, I have already burned the city, and the ritual is complete. If you kill me here, then the deaths of one-third of this city's population will have been in vain, completely meaningless. But if we stop here and now, the Kingdom of Tarapaca will gain a Rank Six General... or perhaps even a Marshal.”

“Perhaps what you said before was correct—even if I advance to Rank Six, I might not necessarily be able to convince that foolish king. But I will still try. Even if I fail, I will find other ways. In the end, even if I am the only one left, I will stand firm on the front line. No matter what, I cannot accept the land of the Kingdom of Tarapaca being annexed by others!”

“Ha? You bastard, trying to beg for mercy when death is staring you in the face, are you!” Atticus glared at Jerome and spat viciously. He had seen the expression on Her Holiness's face when Euphemia died, so he naturally harbored intense hatred toward this man who had caused Her Holiness such grief!

But just as Atticus took a step forward, intending to strike, Jessica suddenly turned around. Raising her right hand, she held her spear horizontally, blocking Atticus's path.

“He is right,” she said. “Killing him now serves no purpose. It would be better to let the kingdom gain another Rank Six extraordinary. This is a good thing for the Kingdom of Tarapaca.”

......