Yes, Madam Prime Minister

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After a while, the deputy director of the relief department finally realized that things couldn't continue like this.

In an instant, the deputy director of the relief department was covered in magic-resistant armor, a longsword appeared in his hand, and he stood on a floating shield.

He completely replicated Ronan's three magical abilities: sword, shield, and armor.

In the blink of an eye, the battle situation changed. Previously, red rays of light were crisscrossing in the air, impacting a gray wooden stake that looked like it wouldn't move at all. Now, it was two orbs of light, one red and one gray, with long tails of light, constantly colliding in the air.

Dinia couldn't help but be surprised. She and Ronan were in a combined state and had gone through many joint exercises and battles to be able to use all of this so freely, but the other party was using such magic and such a fighting style for the first time, yet there was not the slightest hesitation or discomfort.

“It must be magic,” Ronan said.

Even the most adaptable person needs time, while the other person has already gone through an adaptation period and can master everything skillfully in no time.

If this kind of instantaneous mastery is also a kind of divine skill, not counting the one that detects human mana, and including the previous light sword rain, sand control, light spear that never hits and always hits, and flight technique, that's already six. There's one more left, and the trump card will be revealed.

Just then, the deputy director of the Relief Department stabbed the combined Roddy with his sword. In an instant, Roddy's armor shattered and half of his body exploded.

This is the Grand Master's magic; the same attack damage increases exponentially.

The first attack could be blocked, but the next attack exceeded the defense limit.

Before the combined Roddy could react, he was struck by a powerful backhand punch, and his entire body plummeted straight down from the sky like a cannonball. The moment he hit the ground, it exploded like a sandstorm, creating a huge crater in the sand. For a moment, flying sand scattered several meters high.

Before the dust kicked up by the impact could even settle, short light spears, like a machine gun, rained down like pinpoint storms, covering the entire area. Thud thud thud thud thud, all the white light spears pierced the combined Roddy's body.

The deputy director of the relief department flew towards the ground, and just as he was about to be pierced through the heart by another sword, in the blink of an eye, the combined Roddy had already teleported through the creep.

“He’s really desperate,” Ronan said.

The Grand Master's move is an attack bonus, which consumes a lot of mana and keeps increasing. The Grand Master himself has the ability to regenerate mana very quickly, so he doesn't care that much. But it's different for others, even though the mana of the person in front of him is much greater than that of a typical seventh-tier player.

Just then, a figure approached the battle.

"Hello, I'm back again." The unserious Grand Master waved, and with his super-fast mana regeneration, he was fine again.

Chapter 583 Living an Ordinary Life, The Meaning of Living, A New Short Journey

Dante Girard, seventy-five years old, inherited a special divine magic passed down only by the church, and is now the deputy director of the Relief Department.

He was born in the special city of Leyte in the southern part of the Kingdom of Phos, a fellow townsman of Ronan.

My father was a shoemaker. More than sixty years ago, when he was not yet ten years old, an old man named Ronan Artes fell down after wearing the shoes my father made and never woke up again. The frightened shoemaker father took little Dante and ran away to Vena.

The person with the same name as Ronan was actually Ronan's grandfather.

This isn't really Dante's father's fault, because at that time, Ronan's grandfather was already very old. He had fled all the way from the north to the south, during which time he lost both his eldest and second sons, and his own health was failing. When he finally arrived in Wright City, he managed to have two sons. One was Ronan's father, who was born sick and died young, and the other was Ronan's uncle, whom Ronan later killed out of loyalty.

A few years after fleeing to Vena with his father, Dante's father divorced and remarried, marrying a widow with children. As the eldest son, fifteen-year-old Dante was sent to a monastery to become an apprentice.

Looking back, Dante feels that from the age of fifteen to the present, a total of sixty years of his life, he has always been an ordinary person, and everything has been very ordinary.

From the age of fifteen to twenty-five, he spent most of his time in the church, studying and doing odd jobs. After ten years, he mastered magic, became a priest, and was then transferred to the Department of Relief.

If someone hadn't told him, Dante wouldn't have even known that he was sent to the relief department instead of a cathedral in a better-off area because he hadn't given his superiors money.

If someone hadn't told him, Dante wouldn't have known that the Relief Department actually had access to some powerful figures, and that there was a person with a special status within the department.

However, Dante didn't care about any of this. He didn't complain, nor did he think it might be an opportunity. That's just the kind of person he is. He takes everything lightly, or rather, he has no opinion on most things.

In the blink of an eye, another ten years have passed.

For the past ten years, Dante has done nothing but study, read books, and complete his work. He doesn't try to reason with wealthy people who are unwilling to donate, and he feels no joy when poor people express their heartfelt gratitude after receiving relief.

Everything changed when he was thirty-five years old.

He had an affair with a woman; it was his first time. The relationship lasted a month, then ended when the woman got married. He felt no particular guilt, nor did he dwell on it. He had never been a celibate ascetic; for decades, he had often read such books and masturbated. He didn't dislike it, but he wasn't addicted to it either.

In the same year, he became one of the three disciples of that special deputy commander.

He himself didn't know why, because whether it was magical skill, work performance, or even moral character, he couldn't be considered outstanding. Perhaps some people don't value these things, but people always have preferences, and he really didn't understand what this person valued in him, because he himself couldn't find any special characteristics in him.

His teacher, who was also from the previous generation, asked him a question while he looked at him with a puzzled expression.

Why are you alive?

At the time, he had no answer.

Years later, he inherited that power and became the deputy director of the Relief Department, but he still couldn't find the answer.

Still not.

He simply took other people's answers as his own.

So when he heard Ronan say that he was a weakling, a good-for-nothing, had no friends, was all alone, and had no one to listen to him or support him, he felt uncomfortable.

But it was just discomfort, because he was once again certain that he had not found the answer and did not know why he was alive.

He wasn't angry or upset. If he were, he would have changed decades ago and wouldn't be like this today.

I was confused just once.

However, his confusion never stopped him from working. At this moment, Ronan and Dinia, who had merged, and the Grand Master all came to his side.

The tactical conditions have been met.

Dante cast the last spell he inherited; in fact, the spell that detected other people's mana was just a byproduct of his current spell.

His magic is a lock-on attack; when it locks on, it can read the opponent's magic power and magical information.

From the beginning, he hoped to achieve a situation where Dinia, the Grand Master, was close to him, while his target, the Pope, was far away.

The combined strength of Roddy exceeded his expectations, the Grand Master's combat ability was also beyond his estimation, and he himself was even less skilled in combat than he had guessed.

But it doesn't matter. He has achieved the situation he wanted. The next step is to deal with the Pope. The reinforcements the Pope summoned cannot stop him.

"So fast."

"Oops."

Ronan and the Grand Commander were both shocked to realize that they couldn't stop the sudden burst of speed in time, and they couldn't catch up at all.

In an instant, Dinia disintegrated.

The next instant, two kilometers away, Dinia grew out of the Pope's body, half of his body instantly expanding into a red hemisphere that covered the Pope and blocked the full-force attack of Dante, the deputy director of the Relief Department.

She had already planted a parasitic seed in the Pope, and relying on her own magic, she instantly grew out of the parasitic seed and arrived in front of the Pope before him.

The commander put his arm around Ronan's shoulder and rushed back.

Dinia's crimson eyes locked onto the church's strongest fighter. "You won't have another chance."

There's not only Dinia herself here, but also Giovanni, a seventh-tier being, the Doll Witch, a sixth-tier being, and the Guardian of the Church, "Salt" Luke. Suppressing him might not be enough, but stopping him from killing the Pope will be no problem once Ronan and the Grand Master arrive.

“That’s fine too,” Dante said. “Let’s end it here. I’ll pass on the divine magic to the next person as soon as possible.” There was little of the dejection of a loser on his face; instead, there was a sense of relief.

“If you pass it on to the next person, you won’t live much longer,” the Pope said.

When that divine technique is passed on to the next person, the person who receives it can only obtain a portion of it. In the best-case scenario, they can directly become a fifth-tier cultivator, and the rest depends on their own efforts.

Dante himself received the inheritance in his forties. Before receiving the inheritance, he was at the third tier. After receiving the inheritance, his third-tier magic was washed away, and he gained four types of magic, becoming a fourth-tier magic user. He continued to improve for the next few decades, finally reaching the seventh tier when he was nearly seventy years old.

The person who transmits the magic will lose all their magic, leaving only some magical power, and become similar to a novice magician.

Therefore, people usually only pass on their skills to the next generation when they feel that they are aging rapidly and their lifespan is coming to an end.

At Dante's current age, if he doesn't pass on the mantra, he can easily live to be over a hundred years old; if he does, he definitely won't live past eighty.

“The answer may never have been in the church. I should go too,” Dante said.

No one understood what he meant or why he said it; only he himself understood.

In reality, it was just a person who had lived a meaningless and confused life wanting to find something that had never existed before he died.

Chapter 584 Beginning, Ending, The Holy Son's Left Arm

Ronan had neither guessed the beginning nor the end of his trip to the Vatican.

He had assumed that the pope would simply make empty demands for the Kingdom of Phos to stop its attempts to seize control of the western continent and undermine the foundations of the Old Church.

Demanding huge benefits from people with empty words seems absurd, but it's normal in the church because everyone in the church gets a share, no matter how small.

If he doesn't agree, Ronan will use the church's armed forces as a threat, which is a scenario Ronan had anticipated.

He never expected that this relatively unknown Pope would not mention the international situation or the power of the Church at all. Instead, he spent most of the day discussing principles, economics, human nature, and society with Ronan, and actually wanted to implement reforms and even intended to get Ronan's cooperation.

And we won't let him work for nothing.

This is hardly like something a religious person would do, since religious people are used to taking free meals and freebies for granted.

The deal he offered was quite substantial: a crown, of course, not now, but in the future.

Perhaps a crown will be nothing in a few hundred years, but in this era, a crown is of immense value.

This is how it all began.

What followed was a complete breakdown.

Ronan was suddenly stabbed, his hand was severed, and he was surrounded by a group of mages. Dinia was also surrounded in the same way.

All of this was part of the pope's plan, and the purpose was not to deal with these radical opponents, but to catch another big fish.

Ronan and Dinia managed to handle the situation without any prior knowledge, but the Pope himself almost made a mistake.

Then, the big fish, the church's strongest force, arrived.

In the end, Ronan figured that since the deputy director of the Relief Department was no longer able to kill the Pope, he would probably run away. After all, if he wanted to run, no one could stop him, and if he did, the Church wouldn't investigate. The fact that the top combatant failed to assassinate the Pope and then ran away was something that couldn't be made public; it could only be treated as if nothing had happened.

However, Ronan was wrong again.

The deputy director of the Relief Department, Dante, didn't run away. He gave up, requesting to pass on his divine magic to the next person, and then left the Papacy to spend the last period of his life searching for some answer. No one knows what answer he was looking for.

That's how things ended.

Two days later, Ronan and Dinia were invited into the place where the Pope usually resided, a very spacious and empty place.

Ambrina's palace was several times larger than this one, but it had all sorts of facilities and rooms, and many servants. Meetings were held frequently, and people came and went. There were also one or two banquets every month, making it very lively. This place, on the other hand, was extremely desolate, like a sacred, enormous prison.

The Pope is the only prisoner here.

The Pope disappeared for a while, then came back with a rectangular box, accompanied by a thin, old-looking man with slightly uneven eyes.

The Pope pointed to the thin man beside him. "He is Paul, a man who is dedicated to the study of immortality, but his main job is fitting people with prosthetics."

Ronan suddenly remembered something and smiled awkwardly, "Speaking of names, I forgot to ask His Holiness the Pope your name."

“Me? Renato.” The Pope said his name and then opened the wooden box.

When the wooden box was opened, a very old-looking, metallic, intact left arm lay quietly on a layer of velvet.

Dinia suddenly had a strange feeling, "What is this?"

"The Holy Son's left hand," the Pope replied, then confessed, "A woman cannot fake it, but to fake this, one must possess the power of the original species."

After the Holy Son died, the ones who inherited the power of the original seed were all women, but women cannot pretend to be women.

Otherwise, this thing should have been installed on the previous generations of holy maidens long ago; it would never have been given to outsiders.

"So, this is for me?" Ronan asked.

He is the only man in the world who possesses the power of the original species.

"Could it be anyone else?" the Pope retorted, then chuckled and teased, "So what I cut off before was your left hand, but I didn't expect it to grow back, so I had to cut it off again."

"Won't there be any side effects?" Ronan asked.

The Pope certainly wouldn't have any intention of harming him, but who knows what might happen after this thing is installed?

"I don't know, no one has ever faked it," the Pope replied. "Even if they did, it wouldn't matter. You can just cut it off again; your hand will grow back anyway."

This sounds awkward, but it's really the truth.

At this moment, Dinia stepped forward half a step and asked, "Is there anything special to be careful about when cutting off the hand? If not, let me do it."

She was very interested in the idea of ​​chopping off Ronan's hand with a single sword strike.

The Pope looked at the small-statured Paul, who shook his finger. "No need, just cut it off."

“Then I’ll do it.” Dinia replied with a smile, turning to look at Ronan with an unquestionable look.

Ronan didn't answer, but asked again, "The Holy Son is dead, all that's left is his left hand?"

The Pope took out his "left hand" and replied, "When the Son of God was cremated, in addition to his left hand, there was also a spine and a heart, but these two things have been lost. Perhaps they are still in someone in this world, or perhaps they have been completely destroyed."

"The Holy Son died and was cremated, yet he left behind something that can't be burned. Don't you have any thoughts on that?" Ronan asked.

The Pope remained calm. “The things recorded in some books held within the Church exceed the total knowledge of most people who have some understanding of the truth of this world. But some things are just as written in the canon. And is the canon wrong? God exists, and the Son does not belong to this world. That is all correct.”

Dinia reached out and grabbed Ronan's left hand. "We can talk about it later. Do what you need to do first."