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So far out into the hills, the sounds of the ongoing massacre could be barely heard. The screams of the wounded, begging of the condemned, and all the innocent victims of the brutality of war...

Those who died died. Those who survived could no longer claim to be innocent, not after seeing what the hell looks like from up close and personal.

Not when the survival came at the cost of either watching all their family and friends die or outright abandoning them to their deaths in a bid for one to survive themselves.

The restoration movement, with all of its lofty ideas and grand plans for the future, has now devolved into a mere caricature of itself, a thisted rendition of what was, even though it was its main goal to take what is and turn it into what could it be.

The ongoing battle was a culmination of the great religious war of the continent, one that was bound to erupt sooner or later regardless of the restoration movement.

Right now, though?

The very movement aimed to eliminate the cause of those wars has now become a justification for both sides.

Surprisingly, for the old conservatives, delving into spirituality was a human-given right. A right that rather than being revoked for the past millennium, was simply forgotten.

On the other hand, the forces often donning the clothes of progression and personal liberty stood in opposition to the spiritual restoration movement, fighting tooth and nail to preserve the status quo from before in which they could play the victim all they wanted.

The kings and emperors played the games of the chest, where entire divisions would serve as pawns while provinces for heavier figures.

Generals and officers of various sides all played checkers, trying to do their best with whatever limited men and resources they were provided, struggling to overcome the desperation and determination of their enemies who, just like them, knew the price of falling behind or outright losing.

With the world first set on fire by the first few sparks of the religious conflict, the restoration movement, even though originally peaceful, soon became just another tool to fan the flames of the ongoing conflict.

A conflict on a scale people have long since forgotten their ancestors used to see.

This was no longer just a border skirmish between the retinues of two different nobles. It wasn\'t even a bout between two kingdoms, aimed to decide the ownership of a disputed teritory.

This was an all-out war in a world that turned into a battle-royale, where every state, every city, every family... where all of those elements of society were forced to fend for themselves in the face of the constant danger of attack, bandits or something as mundane and boring as a full-on famine.

This conflict has now raged for several years, growing less or more intense as various events sparked it up, only for the tireless work of the few honorable ones to bear fruit in the form of a local de-escalation.

The results of such a prolonged war could be seen in the current battle itself, or, in how, ultimately... unremarkable it was.

On one side, a retribution army of the conservative alliance mustered up a whooping... thirty thousand men. According to the rumors, they aimed to muster ten thousand more but fell short of their goal due to the time constraints.

The other party, the progressive alliance of those wishing to preserve the status quo by... shattering every force that they deemed to put it at risk has gathered a total of nearly seventy thousand soldiers.

Despite the great, more than double numerical advantage, however, the two sides were pretty much evenly matched.

On the conservatives side, they had not only the quality of equipment they provided their troops with but also their very force itself, consisting mostly of war-trained veterans who learned their craft right in the fires of fierce battles they have all survived.

On the other hand, the progressive party failed to properly arm and muster their men, forcing them to rely mostly on whatever tools they could get their hands on.

All in all, if there was one thing that this battle proved, regardless of who was going to triumph in it, was just how far the continent decayed.

From the times when every state could easily muster armies numbering in tens of thousands, to times when the much stronger, conservative faction could raise merely thirty-thousand men, while the progressives, and only by introducing conscription for the third time in their lands, could bring forth the more than double the numbers of their opponents.

All of it, mattered not to Orsty as he stood in front of the small cabin hidden in the depths of the hills that neither of the armies could ever dream of taking over.

This was a place of great spiritual congregation, one of the few points in space where the precursor of the movement wrestled the gate between the dimensions open, allowing the return of spiritual energy back into the world.

\'This place used to be a sanctuary to the movement,\' Orsty thought, listening in to the sounds of the distant battle, with only a mild curiosity over the potential results of the battle.

This fighting, regardless of who would proclaim themselves to be the victor at the fighting end, had nothing to do with him, or the people within the shack.

The battle had nothing to do with them... save for how it only made the precursor\'s mood and thus sickness all the worse.

\'Okay, that\'s enough of fresh air for me,\' Orsty thought as he realized that deep in his thoughts, just by listening to the distant noise of the battle, he came to imagine not one but both sides as those stupid, lesser animals who would spare no effort to take from others, even if they could get whatever it was that they desired just by putting half the risk and efforts they did in battle but towards their actual goal instead.

"Any more, and I would start considering myself some sort of a messiah or whatnot," Orsty muttered to himself before sighing and then turning back and returning to the warm insides of the hidden shack.

"Close the doors!" Irene lectured Orsty the very moment he dared to return to the shack... or, to be more precise, open its only doors, allowing the cold draft from the outside to snuff out most of the warmth that the small fireplace managed to create inside.

"Yes, yes, right away," muttering under his noose, Orsty turned and shut the doors close before kicking some rags in place to block the few holes at the bottom of the doors from giving way for the warmth to escape.

"Not like that... Not like that... Not like that..."

The precursor\'s voice...

It was raspy, torn, and clearly overused.

And yet, even though it felt as if he spat blood with every word he dared to say, he just kept on going.

"Not like that... Not like that... Not like that..."

Out of all five disciples of the man gathered in the shack, not a single one of them had a shred of doubt about what was happening.

Their master, the precursor of the movement, the catalyst of the age...

He was dying.

Even his presence in this spiritual hot spot was a result of their insistence on having their master attempt another breakthrough so that his body could be reinforced even further, giving it a fighting chance against the terrible illness it was burdened with.

An action of nothing less but desperation, that resulted in nothing more but their master, the man who started the spiritual restoration, turning into a mumbling idiot even as more and more spiritual energy converged all around him.

"It won\'t be long before..." Triss, kneeling down right by the edge of her master\'s bed, muttered.

Born in a village condemned for housing a heretic, she went from being just a cursed child to a prominent witch in her cursed village, then a fugitive on the run from the religious fanatic, a nun at the convent, and finally a spiritual convert and the greatest healer the world had seen since the mystery of the ancient times.

Yet, when faced with her master\'s current state, even Triss, the greatest healer alive, could do nothing but just ease the man\'s pain.

As if sensing the coming of his demise, the precursor, the man of the hour, the acolyte of the new...

He stopped mumbling only to open his eyes.

Eyes filled with so much shine, not a single soul in the shack could have any doubts left.

"Poor children..." he whispered, struggling to overcome the soreness of his throat caused by all the mumbling he had done before. "I thought I could change it, change how our movement will turn out in the future. That\'s why I was so hard on all of you, hoping that by giving you enough tough love..."

Cough!

Suddenly choking on his own spit and blood, the group\'s master had no other choice but to cease speaking as he focused on regaining his breath.

"Master!" Trish jumped up, ready to support her master as he attempted to raise up a bit, just so he could, at the very least, sit up as he spoke to his beloved disciples.

"I\'ve been tough on you, hoping I could forever remove the cancer of dumb conservatism from you. Hoping I could," the man started to cough blood again, this time even harder than before, "hoping I could remove the cancer of naive progressiveness. The two extremes that void all the qualities those mindsets otherwise represent. But from what I saw..."

At this point, it wasn\'t just the man taking a moment to rest after exerting himself to speak for a while despite not being in a state to do so. It was also a moment he had to take to weather off the storm of regret his visions of the future brought in his last hours.

"From what I saw, in just a few generations, all of what I did, all of what I preached..." the man shook his head, only to then fall back into the set of his pillows. "All of it will get corrupted. And it won\'t be until the next coming of the catalyst..."

Already down on his back, the man started to cough blood once again, clearly approaching his limit. Then, against all the pain, all the refusal his body continued to serve him, he continued to speak.

"It won\'t be until the next, third coming of the catalyst, that the corrupt parody of what we\'ve wanted to create will be finally shattered, opening up the way for true, conservative progress to happen."

"Cough!" the master\'s body jerked up in best as if his lungs suddenly decided to fold themselves in half.

"And that\'s why, I leave to you the continuation of my mission. Keep it true. Keep it safe. Keep it hidden..."

The man\'s eyes grew even brighter as the excitement for the future flashed in them for one last time.

"Keep it true. For if you fail to do so, the third coming of the catalyst, the world won\'t bear."

//End of Arc 2: Escraftalation//