A chill like the northern winds suddenly climbed up Michaela's spine.
She raised her head and stared blankly at Gwen, who sat on the fine horse with a cold expression.
"She… is also a divine envoy?"
Michaela circled around Gwen several times with a gaze full of curiosity and confusion.
Even though her eyes were covered, she moved just like a normal person with full vision.
From one spot to another, she carefully examined Gwen.
The silver armor shimmered under the sunlight. Her whole figure was serious and calm, sitting on the horse and letting Michaela look her over as she pleased.
After observing for a long time, facing this extremely indifferent female knight, Michaela only felt deep confusion.
"Too… strange.", She muttered softly.
The noble knight in front of her was simply too cold.
So cold that she didn't seem like a normal person at all.
It was as if all her emotions had been stripped away.
She felt like a lifeless statue, nothing capable of stirring even the slightest reaction from her.
What puzzled Michaela the most was that she couldn't sense any divine power from Gwen at all.
As a divine envoy, she should possess divine power.
The kind of divine power would determine which god she represented as a messenger in the mortal world.
But now, since she couldn't sense any divine power from Gwen, she couldn't even tell which god Gwen belonged to.
Michaela turned to Viktor and asked,, "Has she lost her emotions?"
Viktor replied calmly, "As you can see."
Michaela fell silent.
For divine envoys walking the mortal world, the most important thing was alignment with their god.
Personality, power, understanding of the world…
Everything needed to be highly consistent.
Take Michaela as an example. Although she wasn't one hundred percent like the Goddess of Fertility, she still shared nearly eighty percent similarity.
But Gwen had no trace of divine power, yet Viktor told her that this was someone like her, also a divine envoy.
Michaela thought silently for a moment.
What kind of god would make someone become so cold, completely devoid of emotion?
Very quickly, an answer appeared in her mind.
Michaela clapped her hands and asked with sudden realization, "The Goddess of Justice?"
Viktor nodded.
After hearing her guess confirmed, Michaela suddenly felt like something was stuck in her throat.
She didn't know what to say for a moment.
Why did Michaela react like this?
Because the church of the Goddess of Justice and the churches of other gods were practically sworn enemies.
When the gods left the mortal world, abandoning humanity that had disappointed them, only the Goddess of Justice remained.
She still chose to believe in humanity, which caused people's attitude toward her to far surpass that toward other gods.
At one point, people worshipped the Goddess of Justice far more than any other deity.
There was no denying that this act caused followers of other gods to feel immense disappointment in their own deities.
All the gods had left, yet she stayed.
At that time, most believers sought gods for protection.
Since the gods had abandoned the world, believers of other deities began turning to the Goddess of Justice, abandoning their previous faith.
After all, if their gods had already left, what was the point of continuing to believe in them?
Only divine envoys like Michaela, who possessed divine power and were highly aligned with their goddess, could still lead some followers to remain faithful.
But because of this, Michaela didn't like the Goddess of Justice very much.
When fans act, idols pay the price.
So she directly asked Viktor, "Then… what is her relationship with you?"
"My fiancee."
Understood. Not someone to mess with.
Hearing this, Michaela immediately changed her attitude.
The tension in her brows eased, and her whole demeanor became more serious and enthusiastic, "A god without emotion, I can only think of the Goddess of Justice."
Because any emotion would affect the goddess's judgment, and fairness was the foundation of executing justice.
So the Goddess of Justice cut off all her emotions, becoming an absolute machine of judgment.
Fair, selfless, and merciless.
And when this situation continued for a period of time, something even more terrifying happened.
As the number of followers of the Goddess of Justice grew, they began to develop an extreme and twisted belief, that the absolute justice upheld by the Goddess of Justice was the only truth in the world.
When they discovered someone slandering the goddess, or someone acting against justice, they would not hesitate to use violence to defend their beliefs.
Over time, to avoid becoming targets, more and more people were forced to join their church.
As the saying goes, when the forest grows large, all kinds of birds appear.
Among them, the followers gradually became extremely fanatical, using all kinds of extreme "justice" to judge others.
This situation spread like a plague, rapidly passing among believers once it began.
In the end, it even affected entire churches and the rule of nations, sparking waves of war.
The Goddess of Justice had originally stayed in the world to prevent war.
But when war broke out again, even she became completely disappointed in humanity and left the world.
Her departure finally made those extreme followers calm down somewhat, and the church of the Goddess of Justice was no longer as vast as before.
During the period after the goddess left, nations finally expanded their territories, forming the current balance of power.
However, even now, fanatical believers still existed. Michaela knew this very well.
Those so-called "followers of the goddess," cultists, in order to bring the goddess back, even turned themselves into pure collections of consciousness.
Tens of thousands of believers abandoned their bodies, gathering their consciousness together.
They became that twisted, writhing mass of black flesh, just to achieve eternal life and endure until the goddess returned.
Just like the Goddess of Justice, they abandoned all emotions in pursuit of absolute justice.
Even after turning into foul, wriggling masses of black flesh filled with terrifying tentacles, they never gave up.
In short, Michaela knew how disgusting those fanatical believers were.
She had thought that a divine envoy of the Goddess of Justice would at least be some kind of twisted monster, but now seeing Gwen, "So she's actually a normal woman."
But now, Michaela was confused.
At first, she thought Viktor could invoke the Goddess of Fertility because he was favored by her.
For that, she had even been willing to offer her own body.
But now even the Goddess of Justice had taken an interest in Viktor?
Just how many goddesses had he attracted?
But she couldn't ask that question, so Michaela instead asked the most serious one, "Her personality matches the goddess, but what about her divine power?"
This was the key issue.
Which divine envoy would follow a god just for their terrible personality?
They became envoys for the divine power.
No power?
Then what's the point of believing in you?
Viktor paused slightly before speaking, "She used to have it. Later, it disappeared."
The manifestation of the Goddess of Justice's power was the Heart of Justice.
But to use it, one had to abandon emotions like the goddess and judge with absolute fairness.
However, ever since Gwen told her first lie for Viktor, her Heart of Justice had stopped working.
Hearing this, Michaela fell into deep thought.
"No divine power, yet she still transformed into this state?"
"To be honest, that confuses me."
Even without divine power, she was still forcibly shaped by the god, inheriting that extreme, unsettling personality.
Michaela asked again, "Those fanatical followers of the Goddess of Justice haven't come for her?"
As she said this, she muttered to herself.
If Gwen really had a connection to the Goddess of Justice, even being her envoy, how could those fanatics who only wanted the goddess to return possibly ignore her?
Maybe even Gwen's current state was something those believers had orchestrated.
However, considering that the Carensia Empire did not allow any religious beliefs, those followers might not have had a way to find Gwen.
Viktor replied calmly, "On the train when we left the empire for the kingdom, a hundred thousand followers came for us."
He raised his head, his gaze locking firmly onto Gwen.
"In the end, Gwen killed them all."
This unexpected answer made Michaela feel genuine respect.
Who would have thought that Gwen, as a divine envoy of the Goddess of Justice, would kill her own believers?
No mercy, even to her own people?
The Gwen before her truly embodied the Goddess of Justice's extreme sense of justice.
Perhaps Gwen had not willingly become a divine envoy of the Goddess of Justice.
Instead, she might have been forced into it somehow, gaining part of the divine power while inheriting that cold and harsh personality.
And Viktor's goal was to help his fiancee break free from this restraint and return to normal.
Having guessed Viktor's purpose, Michaela clasped her hands together and bowed slightly with respect.
"If this is your request, Mr. Viktor, then I will do my best."
As her voice fell, divine power began to radiate from her body.
Golden light spread across the grass beneath her feet, forming a brilliant sea of light.
Golden maple leaves formed from that energy swirled through the sky, their dazzling glow covering the entire grassland in a faint, dreamlike veil.
It was as if a distant, endless melody of fertility had begun to rise across the vast plains.
At that moment, Michaela removed the veil over her eyes and slowly lifted her eyelids.
Within her pupils flowed a mysterious, star-like brilliance, layers of heavy, intertwined energy reflecting each other, deep and radiant.
Light descended from the sky, shining down on the three of them.
Michaela raised her head, wearing a gentle smile as she looked toward the heavens.
The flowing starlight and sunlight merged, casting a brilliant golden glow over her.
"The power of fertility shall rise from the flourishing world, and radiant gold shall turn into a gentle voice."
"May the divine hear my call and grant blessings to those who suffer misfortune."
Along with her distant, echoing chant, something profound began to stir.