Erwin ignored the now silent Cardinal, shaking his finger slightly as he looked toward Fisher, who was engraving magic on the screen behind him,
"Heh heh, but I no longer care... I’ll deal with you first so you won’t buzz around my ears like a fly. As for Fisher Benavides, the lucky one who was granted the Divine Weapon by the Demon Species, after I ascend the Frost Snow Phoenix Tree and enter the Myth with the remains left by the Sky God, I’ll kill him to take back those two Completion Manuals."
His gaze shifted slowly, looking toward the database machines glowing faintly to his side, and spoke word by word,
"And here, you have clues to the Key of the Wutong Tree that leads to the Frost Snow Phoenix Tree, right?"
"Bzzz bzzz bzzz bzzz!"
The hundreds of Cardinals in front of him suddenly burst into a blinding light, and Erwin’s body exploded violently, transforming into a gigantic and panic-inducing blood-red cross, spreading a stench as vile as that of a rotting corpse in all directions.
The sound of mechanical corruption and explosions filled the air in an instant, amidst countless sparks of electricity and the smell of burning, the blood re-condensed and gathered, forming a figure as eerie as the Mother Goddess Statue; only now, the Mother Goddess did not possess a compassionate and kind gaze, and her visage was twisted and ghastly, chilling to the bone like a monster crawling out from the Abyss.
The moment the abnormal Mother Goddess Statue appeared, the surrounding Cardinals began to move as if rusted, and what followed was even more bizarre; eyes and teeth-like mechanical parts grew out of their inorganic interiors. Soon after, these contaminated Cardinals became Erwin’s minions and crazily lunged towards the remaining Cardinals of the Cardinal.
"You no longer have any fighting Cardinals. After I deal with your Cardinals, I’ll burn your database. Of course, you can also roll back to the side of the Cardinal of Destiny now, and stare blankly at her motionless Earth-bound Spirit for a lifetime!"
"...Notification sent, automatic instruction completed, database disconnected..."
With the monotonous reports passing by, the remaining Cardinals and the database lit up again with a brightness akin to the Sun. Erwin, however, was not afraid at all, and the eerie Mother Goddess Statue abruptly raised a hand toward the database below,
"You are just a creation, not the true holder of the Cardinal Completions Manual. Killing an existence like you truly gives me no sense of accomplishment..."
The unemotional voice of the Cardinal resounded once more, made slightly unclear due to the high temperature at the database’s core,
"The Cardinal of Destiny said that your existence will be erased, disappearing without a trace. You and your goals, you and your past, will vanish, leaving no memory of you behind."
The wailing Mother Goddess Statue quieted down for a moment, but the myriad muddy blood began to grow restless as if it were molten rock too hot to contain, and only after a long while did a voice as eerily calm as Erwin’s emerge from it,
"So, we are even then?"
After this remark, the entire cavern exploded again with an intense radiance too hot to look at directly, and in an instant, the light from the Cardinals combined with a violent explosion completely engulfed the sinister Mother Goddess Statue, erasing it from sight.