Gabriel's act worked as well. Initially, he was going to send a mental transmission to Avilia to ask her to play a scene with him to get him out of this battle, but he didn't expect things to work even better!
Before he could ask Avilia what he wanted to do, Litvia from the Temple of Time took the lead. "You are hurt and too weak now. You'll only slow us down and become a burden. Get away."
Even though she was initially suspicious, now she had more or less fallen for Gabriel's story. No Holy Lord of Light had ever worked with the Holy Lord of Darkness after all. Even if they worked together, it would've been too stupid to destroy the spatial channel for the small act. She didn't have much room to doubt.
Gabriel was pleasantly surprised. In his heart, he was even thanking Litvia for falling for his ruse. Now that the first part of the plan was completed, the rest was much easier. It all depended on the bait...
"I can still fight!" Gabriel scoffed.
When Litvia told Gabriel to back out, Avilia felt as if Gabriel wasn't opposed to it. In fact, it felt as if he wanted it. Even though his words said otherwise, she felt as if deep inside, he really wasn't opposing backing out.
Since he was playing, she decided to help him as well. In any case, she didn't believe that Gabriel and the dark figure were enemies. If that was the case, that dark figure wouldn't have come out alive. She knew the true strength of Gabriel after all.
"She's partially right," Avilia agreed. "It's not that you'll be a burden, but you're injured now. You've already done a lot to stop whatever that person planned. You should rest now."
"Don't worry! I already have a score to settle with that guy! You can rest!" The Holy Lord of Flames was already furious since his home was destroyed. And now the culprit was the dark figure before him, according to him. He wanted to kill that person himself!
"Yeah. All of us should be enough. You can rest first. We'll deal with the rest." The Holy Lord of Earth chimed in.
Through this act, not only did Gabriel manage to distract everyone else for the time being, he also became a hero from a villain.
If the Holy Lord of Flames found out that the person he was asking to help was the one he wanted to kill, it was unclear just what kind of expression he was going to have. In his story, Gabriel was one of the heroes while he was also the biggest villain.
"I-" Gabriel tried speaking, but in the middle, he coughed blood again, showing some traces of having internal injuries.
He looked at the blood in his hands, sighing. "Looks like I really can't participate. The internal injuries I got in the previous battle with him are getting worse."
He flew down, while also exclaiming. "Everything depends on you now! You can't let him escape! When I'm done treating my internal injuries, I'll join the battle with you!"
Gabriel landed in the distance. His body was still covered in a white shroud so no one could see his smirk.
In fact, even Alion in the distance was surprised at how well Gabriel could act. This guy really was different from Karyk to some extent, despite being similar.
Karyk was a straightforward person his entire life. He never took help from any tricks. He spoke what came in his heart, never filtering anything. Then again, he had absolute strength so he didn't need to fool anyone either. He could just beat everyone who opposed him.
'If he had this trait in the past, I wonder if things could've been different...' Alion wondered, still hidden by the cloak he had received from Gabriel. It was also Gabriel that shrouded him in that dark aura of death to help his disguise.
He shook his head lightly, remembering to stay in the act.
"You people have destroyed my plan! And now you want to kill me?" he asked. "You really overestimate yourself."
The Holy Lords wanted to capture Alion to get more answered. The Temple of Time envoys also wanted to capture him, so they could take him to their base and interrogate him thoroughly to find out if the forbidden army was actually hurt, and how much he knew about Karyk!
Despite having similar goals, both sides worked separately, attacking Alion.
Gabriel stood in the group, watching the battle in the sky. He wasn't worried about Alion at all. Alion was a Demigod! If he hadn't asked Alion to play along, he could've easily defeated all the Holy Lords and the envoys.
Unfortunately, their end goal wasn't these envoys and these Holy Lords. What they wanted to avoid was the people behind them! At least for a month until the Forbidden Army was actually free from their thousand year shackles to roam the earth again!
If Alion actually defeated these people, the higher ups from the Temple of Time were going to come next. Even the Gods might descend to check the situation since the forbidden army was a bigger threat to them than anything else. If that wasn't the case, they wouldn't have requested Karyk to seal it!
What was even worse was that if Alion actually fought all of them on an equal footing, then it was definitely going to raise some suspicions in their mind, as to how Gabriel didn't die in the hands of such a powerful person and also managed to destroy the army and spatial channel from right under his nose.
Gabriel had already played his part to perfection. He already closed the spatial channel to the Palace while also leaving some spatial cracks in the garden to give the impression of the spatial channel collapsing because of the explosion.
Now all he had to do was just watch out from behind, and fan the flames for the next month, to make sure they didn't invite the stronger beings from the Temple of Time and the others.
The battle in the sky was intensifying. However, just as Gabriel wanted, Alion wasn't fighting back properly. He was only using a fraction of his strength to give the impression that he was fighting with all he got!
The battle was taking high in the sky, yet the tremors of all the attacks could be felt in the city. The citizens were already hiding in whatever safe space they could find to avoid accidentally being killed by the energy waves of the attacks.
So far, everything was going according to plan. All Alion had to do now was to escape while pretending to be injured.
Unfortunately, just as Gabriel was starting to relax, he felt some spatial chaos behind him. The energy he felt coming through the spatial chaos didn't seem like something he felt before.
Frowning, he turned around. His face darkened.
