Chapter 510: Beneath Dine Bowed All Life, Above All Souls She Sat

After listening to Ashe's explanation, Annan revealed a regretful expression. "So, the price of making a wish is the Gospel itself. Destroy the Gospel, and you receive an additional wish as a bonus... Just a little more... What a pity."

Spreading her hands, she went on, "In the end, I still failed at the very last step. All my plans came to nothing."

Ashe noticed the loneliness hidden beneath her expression and suddenly remembered something. "Annan, you..."

"It's fine. When you gamble everything on one throw, you must accept the result," Annan smiled and clapped her hands. "Since Dine can maintain her own consciousness, there's no need for us to leave anymore, right? Great!

"From what I heard, other countries aren't nearly as developed as the Gospel. What if we end up in some primitive forest still living under tribal systems? I can't accept such a huge decline in living standards."

"Lys," Ashe looked toward Dia, sitting on the throne, and asked seriously. "Do you have a way to remove the Gospel's curse on the Dolan family?"

Nona immediately reacted. "The Gospel's curse on the Dolan family?"

Quinna also turned her gaze toward them. "What's going on?"

Dia looked at Annan, her expression shifting sharply as she felt the violent surges within her soul. "I get it now. The Gospel harbors a deep hatred for the Dolan bloodline. Give it a few years, and that hostility will spill over into the Gospel system itself. It's not going to stop, not until it erases every last trace of the Dolans."

The Senheiser sisters were hearing about this for the first time. Nona was completely stunned. The thought of the Gospel resenting someone was simply beyond imagination, terrifying to the point where her mind nearly froze. Could anyone imagine being hated by the sun, rejected by water, or shunned by the very air they breathe?

Quinna suddenly walked over and knelt before Dia. With a respectful tone, she asked, "How many points would it require to cleanse the Gospel's hatred toward the Dolan family?"

"Quinna!" Annan grabbed the elf leader's shoulder, attempting to pull her up. "Is there any point pretending like this in front of me?"

Quinna did not budge. There was no way a mere Two-Winged sorcerer could physically force a Three-Winged sorcerer to move. She calmly replied, "Now that the Wovan Festival has ended, our contract dictates that you are no longer Annan Dolan, but Annan Senheiser. You will return to live with the Senheiser family in the future. The Six-Emblem will never abandon a member of their family."

Annan sneered. "Family, family, family! Again with the family! If that's how you feel, why not just dissolve our contract right now? I'll go back to being Annan Dolan, and you won't have to waste your precious resources saving an outsider."

Nona could not help speaking up. "Annan, Quinna, can you two please..."

Watching them on the verge of arguing, Dia hesitated for a moment. Yet as she caught the unwillingness, pity, and determination flickering in Ashe's eyes, she spoke, "I can suppress the Gospel's hatred toward the Dolan family. But on one condition."

Taken aback, Annan quickly asked, "What condition?"

She had already resigned herself to waiting for death. Escaping the kingdom remained an option, but not a single Dolan leader before her had ever fled, and she certainly would not be the first to break that precedent. If she truly wanted to abandon everything and flee the Gospel just to survive, she would never have guarded the Virtual Channel's entrance in the first place to capture Ashe and the rest. She could have simply crossed through and started anew in another realm.

Her reluctance to leave stemmed partly from pragmatic fear that in a foreign kingdom, local powers would treat her as an invading outsider and hunt her down. She might end up in a situation just as dire as the one Ashe and his companions faced upon their arrival, perhaps even dying far sooner than if she had stayed behind.

Beyond that, however, lay the true reason Annan was willing to be buried alongside the Gospel. It came down to an overwhelming sense of pride in it. To an outsider, it might seem contradictory that someone so fiercely proud of the Gospel would exhaust every option to seize the Divine Lord's wish and destroy it.

Yet the truth was remarkably simple. The hatred Annan held for the Gospel now was merely the mirror image of the pride she had felt when she first knew it. Breaking the Dolan family's curse was her original motivation; destroying the current system to build a clean slate was her lifelong ideal. In truth, almost every Dolan leader before her had harbored that same dream. It was the deep love for the Gospel that drove their choice to blaspheme against it.

Therefore, once the plan to assassinate the princess completely collapsed, Annan's ideals shattered, leaving her with nothing left to hope for. Even if Dia were to protect them and arrange for them to escape to another kingdom to avoid persecution, Annan would never have agreed to leave the Gospel had it not been for Ashe and Pankey.

With Dine able to maintain her consciousness, Ashe and Pankey had no reason to leave either. Naturally, Annan refused to flee alone to a foreign realm just to struggle in exile. She preferred accepting whatever time she had left.

So when Dia announced she could suppress the Gospel's hatred and break the Dolan curse, a spark of hope ignited within Annan's heart. Her excitement wasn't merely because she might survive. In Dia, she saw the possibility that her lifelong ideal could still come true.

"I want you to dissolve your contract with Ashe." Dia glanced at Iger and Harvey, then added, "As well as your contracts with Aunt Perskin and Uncle Harvey."

Annan agreed without hesitation. "No problem."

Using her Wovan Festival reward, the Tongue of Liberation, she could verbally dissolve a contract as long as the other party consented. Once the contracts were undone, she stepped toward Dia and asked seriously, "Can you really suppress the Gospel's hostility?"

Dia nodded. "Yes. The Gospel's hatred toward the Dolan family is actually a negative influence affecting the system's operation. Simply commanding the Gospel to function normally will naturally stop it from targeting your bloodline."

Annan's eyes lit up. "Then... can you influence the Gospel system even further? For instance, lessen how much it controls individual lives and give people more freedom of choice? Or break apart the corporate families, like the Belldets, Six-Emblem, Mercury, and Kessriel? Those fools have needed someone to put them in their place for a long time—"

"Annan, you dumb moth!"

"Annan, don't forget that you're still a member of the Senheiser family!"

Quinna and Evelyn both felt a chill run through their spine. They hurried over to interrupt Annan's slander, citing examples and arguments about how the Six-Emblem and Belldets were far too important to collapse.

Only then did Ashe and the others belatedly realize something.

Across the entire Isa Dynasty, and perhaps in the thousand-plus years since the birth of the Gospel system, the very first Empress driven by strong emotional tendencies was born.

Dine was willing to give up what might have been the only wish she would ever receive in her life for the sake of all beings under the Gospel. That did not mean she was a completely impartial and righteous saint, however. On the contrary, she was a girl with her own temper. She had people she disliked, people she favored, and moments where she proved extremely emotional.

If the Gospel's First was once an emotionless blade hanging above the heads of all living beings, Dine was now a nightmare or an opportunity right beside everyone. Disliking someone meant that person might trip over a banana peel while walking. Favoring someone meant that person falling would have some unlucky soul fall beneath them first to break the fall.

Thunder and rain alike were the ruler's grace. Dine's commands were the fate of all living beings. If she made the Gospel system shake out a single speck of dust, the person receiving that dust would find themselves crushed beneath a mountain.

No wonder Quinna and Evelyn were so nervous. If Dine truly listened to Annan's sweet-talking and ruled offhand that the Six-Emblem and Belldet families were to be ruined, not a soul could save them.

Thinking of this, Iger could not help glancing at Ashe beside him. If Dine was the supreme Gospel Empress, Ashe was at least the number-one favorite official, holding immense influence at court. Offending him might be more troublesome than offending Dine. Dine could not leave the imperial palace, whereas Ashe was a walking disaster roaming anywhere he pleased. He had truly achieved the famous saying that beneath Dine bowed all life, while above all souls she sat.

Compared to an apocalypse-level catastrophe, Ashe was the true source of chaos. Anyone offending him should prepare to experience what it meant to stand against the entirety of Gospel.

Ashe clearly had no awareness that his status had skyrocketed, however. He greeted Harvey and asked curiously, "Why do I feel like you've gotten thinner?"

Harvey smiled. "You're right, I lost some weight. Transferred my flesh onto someone else."

Iger's face immediately turned pale. Ashe looked confused, but his attention quickly shifted to the baby carriage in front of him. He crouched down and looked at the blue-haired baby inside.

After hesitating for a moment, he asked, "Is this Pankey? How did he end up like this? Last time, he could at least walk on his own. Now... can he even roll over?"

Annan walked over and crouched beside him. "He overused his miracle. This is actually my first time seeing Pankey in both his elderly and infant states. After the Melting Miracle ended, he reverted to a baby."

"How long will it take him to recover? It took two days last time. I take it this will take at least a week?"

"Seventeen years."

Ashe froze, wondering if he had misheard the unit of time. "Seventeen... years?"

Annan reached out and gently teased baby Pankey. "He completely melted himself."

The baby grabbed her finger with his tiny hand, making soft cooing sounds.

"He can no longer recover," she said quietly. "He'll just have to live through infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood all over again."

"What about his memories?"

"They might come back, but he's bound to lose a lot of them. When he runs into people, places, or things from his past, he'll probably just get a lot of déjà vu."

Ashe stared down at the baby. After a long moment, a sudden smile broke across his face. "Looks like it's your turn to raise him."

"Yeah," Annan carefully lifted Pankey into her arms. "The Dolan family owes Pankey far too much. I was worried that if we went to another kingdom, taking care of him would be difficult. But now that we can stay, at least he will have a stable environment to grow up in."

Little Pankey struggled, trying to escape her embrace.

Ashe chuckled. Reaching out, he took Pankey from her and positioned him horizontally across his forearm.

Little Pankey immediately stopped squirming. His legs dangled beside Ashe's arm while he curiously observed his surroundings.

"Eh?" Annan blinked. "Can you really hold him like that? Won't he fall?"

"This is called a football hold. It is actually quite stable, and it effectively relieves bloating and crying caused by gas."

"Why are you so skilled at this?"

Thinking back to how he used to help take care of his crying nephew whenever he returned home, Ashe smiled warmly. "I have taken care of children before."

Watching him handle baby Pankey, Annan, usually decisive and proactive, suddenly grew shy. She stammered, "Since the Wovan Festival has ended... I mean, I am not very good at taking care of babies either, so Ashe, maybe you..."

Suddenly, Ashe's Book of Gospel opened on its own. A faint green light emerged from its pages.

Everyone was startled, believing the Wovan Festival was not actually over. Looking closely, however, they realized their own Books showed no reaction.

With a loud rustle, countless vines burst out from Ashe's Book of Gospel.