More than half the Church of Flame's forces had entered the Arecia Empire after sealing it from all sides, leaving only half the forces back at the Main Branch of the Church.
Even the Lord of Flames had personally gone to the Arecia Empire. In each of the City of Arecia, a Head Priest of Flames was placed, to exert a greater level of control over the Empire.
At the same time, the Lord of Flames led the core group to the Royal Capital where the crystal was shattered.
When the crystal broke, everyone who was in the Empire was marked and those marks could be sensed by the Lord of Flames. Everyone except one...
Gabriel couldn't be sensed by the Lord of Flames. Even though Avilia asked Gabriel to take Lambard's help to remove the Mark of Fate Stone and escape, he didn't bother.
If he wanted, it was easy for him to escape after all since he had a way to isolate the mark of Fate Stone thanks to his Grimoire of Necromancy which had an expertise in the area of souls!
Before leaving the Empire, he made sure to erase the Mark of Fate Stone. He knew that Lerian was going to enter the Empire soon.
He wanted to keep Lerian in the dark, making him believe that everyone who was marked by the stone at the time was inside the Empire when he entered and sealed the City! That gave him a greater safety range while also ensuring that he couldn't be sensed when he reached the Church of Flames!
He already had a plan in his head... A plan to take care of some troubles while he had an opportunity, even if it meant offending a few Churches. In fact, he had already offended them without even doing anything. This time, he wanted to make sure that he used that to his advantage.
****
Gabriel entered the territory of the Lord of Flames. The main branch of the Church of Flames was situated in the Leviria Empire, which was inherently different from many nearby Empires. It was one of the farthest Empires from the Lumen Empire where the Church of Flames was established.
The Leviria Empire was also very chaotic at its core. It was said to be an Empire where strength reigned supreme. If one had strength, they could achieve anything!
In fact, if one wanted to be an Empire, it was also an achievable task. One didn't need a high profile background or anyone's support to achieve it.
There were only three rules to become an Emperor. One was that the person had to be a Mage of Flames! The second rule was that the person had to be a citizen of the Leviria Empire. And the last rule was that the person had to challenge and defeat the current Emperor at that time.
Despite it being such an easy task to achieve, people preferred to avoid it. If they were strong, they would've much rather preferred to join the Church instead. Even an ordinary priest of the Church of Flames had more prestige in the Empire!
Even the Emperor had to treat the Church members with great respect. However, that respect was only extended to the Church of Flames which lorded over this Domain.
Traveling in the Empire was easy, especially passing through the outer cities, but as soon as Gabriel started getting closer to the inner part of the Empire, things became slightly hard.
In the inner cities, everyone was checked properly before being allowed inside. Moreover, for some reason, there was suppression around the cities which prevented flight spells.
Gabriel didn't know how the Empire achieved something like this. He found himself really interested in this... A way to stop flight spells in the area? He had a feeling that it was possible thanks to the large scale formations that covered the cities.
"But how can they keep it running? If it's a usual formation, it needs an energy source. To run this formation in multiple cities, can the Empire really afford so many Spirit Stones? That should be it..."
Gabriel snuck inside one of the cities, avoiding the checking of Elemental Marks at the entrance. In every major city, a person was allowed entry only after their left hand was checked.
Usually, he could've shown his left hand when he hadn't merged with the element of darkness, but not anymore. Now, he could only use other methods to sneak inside the city.
"If it's a formation, it definitely needs an energy source in the form of Spirit Crystals. If it doesn't, they would've covered outer cities with it too. But it's also possible they don't care about outer cities since they aren't that important? Could it really be that Leviria found an alternate energy source for formations that they can afford?"
Gabriel was really curious as to how these people achieved it. If anything, he wanted to have something like this in Arecia as well.
"If I can have this, no one can attack me from the air. This should especially be effective in large scale wars since our side doesn't have anyone who can fight aerial battles effectively, other than me."
"Even if Avilia wages a war on me, her flying beasts would directly be out of the battle and on ground, I can establish my army of Undead... This should take care of the biggest weakness of Arecia..."
Gabriel was really eager to get something like this formation for himself, already thinking about the future. However, he didn't forget his main goal.
After passing through the City on foot and getting out of formation range, he started flying again, continuing his journey toward the Royal Capital of Leviria where the main Church of Flames was established.
After seven hours of journey without any break, he finally reached the Royal Capital which had an even higher tier of security. The flight restriction was even stronger in the city. On top of that, he could feel as if around half of his spiritual strength was immediately suppressed as soon as he entered the City.
"Another formation to restrict Spiritual Strength? If I'm not wrong, this should only affect Mages who don't have the element of Flame. These guys... They really took some extreme measures." Gabriel could only sigh in response after sneaking inside the Royal City.
"It doesn't matter though. The Church of Flames is very vulnerable now. Most of its forces have left the City for Arecia. Even at fifty percent, it should be possible... Moreover, I still have something..."
"If this formation doesn't restrict the strength of ones associated with Flames, this shouldn't affect the Infernal Emperor. Church of Flames... Today is going to be very long for you guys…"
