Free Web NovelChapter 174: Chapter 174 Midnight Assault_1
Late at night, on the outskirts of Silvertown.
Rebecca stood on a low hill, looking down upon the village below from a high vantage point. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com
She was dressed in the black uniform of a high-ranked Judge, her hood and beak-shaped gas mask tightly covering her entire head, carrying a pistol, dagger, one-handed sword... none of the combat equipment issued to Judges was missing. Around her stood four junior Judges, similarly attired but wearing uniforms of different colors.
A junior Judge, with a long-barreled hunting shotgun on his back, crouched on the ground, watching a house at the entrance to the village. The dark magic he wielded granted him temporary night vision and long-distance sight.
Behind him, his companions were checking their equipment while staying alert to other directions.
Aside from this group of five, there were three other teams around the village, each led by a mid-level Judge. These twenty people were the squad that Rebecca was leading that day, and they were closely monitoring the entrances and exits of the village.
They were there to raid a stronghold of the Harvest Mother Cult.
Not long ago, Aiden had passed on information to the Heresy Inquisition Department regarding the location of a stronghold of the Harvest Mother Cult in the suburbs, reported by the witch gathering. Given the conflict between the witch gathering and the Harvest Mother Cult, the source of the information was generally reliable.
The Harvest Mother Cult was only listed as a "strictly controlled" religious organization in the autonomous state, on account of their religious activities being deemed as corrupting public morals and involving illegal business operations.
Normally, a "heretic cult" of this level, if not involved with black magic, could simply be dealt with by other police departments. However, based on recent intelligence regarding the conflict between the Harvest Mother Cult and the witch gathering, the Heresy Inquisition Department had determined that it was highly probable that the Harvest Mother Cult possessed black magic and had taken over the investigation in full.
What was more important was that two days ago, an unidentified female corpse had been discovered in the village. Before the local police had a chance to investigate the body, it underwent a mysterious spontaneous decomposition. The local police immediately contacted the Heresy Inquisition Department.
The Heresy Inquisition Department preliminarily identified the corpse as a product of Life Alchemy, a practice strictly forbidden by "The Covenant," and suspected that the Harvest Mother Cult harbored within the local area was significantly implicated. Thus, an emergency raid was organized.
Rebecca glanced at her pocket watch. It had been three minutes since the scheduled time for the other team to execute their raid, yet there had been no movement from the location they were monitoring.
Besides their team, there was another squad of twenty, led by another experienced high-ranked Judge, assaulting the Harvest Mother Cult’s stronghold within the village from the front.
Two teams led by two high-ranked Judges—forty specialists trained to deal with heretics in total. Although the number of personnel was significantly less compared to the nearly full-force deployment five years ago when they destroyed the Blood Moon Cult, a well-armed heretic cult that was decisively marked for eradication, the lineup was still quite impressive. Even against Presia, an S-class fugitive, only fifteen people had been deployed at the time.
For this assault, they had also made certain preparations. Investigators of the Heresy Inquisition Department had visited the village, identifying recently purchased or entirely rented bungalows, and had infiltrated the Harvest Mother Cult’s stronghold through the "believers" within the village.
After a preliminary investigation, it was determined that the cult had temporarily dug tunnels under their stronghold to connect to other houses in the village as escape routes.
As a result, the assault team adopted a strategy of splitting into two teams, with the senior Judge Victor leading one team to directly suppress and raid the stronghold while the cult was holding its routine preaching activities. Meanwhile, as the cult’s organizers fled through the tunnels, Rebecca’s squad closely watched the houses and village entrances where the tunnels might emerge, lying in ambush nearby.
Several minutes had already passed without any movement, which could mean that Victor’s squad had successfully suppressed the scene and captured all cult members at the stronghold. Of course, it was also possible that their assault had met with significant resistance.
If it were the former, then there would be nothing left for Rebecca to do, but she felt that it wasn’t that simple.
The witch coven had revealed the cult’s stronghold to the heretic tribunals through Aiden, clearly intending to use them as a cat’s paw. However, from the standpoint of the heretic tribunals, they had no choice but to act against any illegal cult operating near Silvertown, even if they knew it was the witch coven’s strategy.
The witch they had contacted, Qiqimora, was not on the wanted list, nor did the heretic tribunals have any information on her. Yet, by Aiden’s assessment, Qiqimora was no less powerful than Daili and Presia, who were both classified as S-level fugitives.
If the cult’s stronghold here had weak combat capabilities, then Qiqimora, who was active in Silvertown, could easily destroy this stronghold by herself.
It was because of this consideration that Rebecca had requested as many reinforcements as possible, even enlisting another senior Judge to participate. freeωebnovēl.c૦m
Rebecca waited quietly in the night wind for nearly two more minutes, finally seeing a signal flare rise in the distance—the other team positioned in the east seemed to have intercepted cult members fleeing from another bungalow connected by the tunnels.
"Two o’clock direction, location C, encircle! Move fast!" Rebecca commanded.
Her team members immediately sprang into action, and at the same time, other groups converged from different directions towards the signal’s location. Their positions effectively sealed off all the escape routes out of the village from that point, and with Victor’s squad pursuing through the stronghold’s tunnels, the cult members would be netted unless they had the armed force to break through.
As they approached the target bungalow along the village road, gunfire suddenly rang out.
Rebecca immediately went on alert—the presence of gunfire, regardless of whether it was from her team or the cult, indicated that the cult was armed in a way that warranted their vigilance.
Rebecca gripped her gun tighter, as this operation’s guideline was to capture alive if possible, but if there was any resistance from the enemy, to shoot back without hesitation. The enemies faced by the heretic tribunals were often highly dangerous individuals; there was no room for hesitation.
While contemplating this, Rebecca, through the night vision granted by black magic, saw two figures emerge at the end of the alley— a woman in a grey robe, resembling a nun, followed by an older man dressed as a priest.
Rebecca judged that they couldn’t see her at this distance. As she raised her weapon preparing to call out, she saw the nun raise a flintlock pistol without hesitation and point it in her direction.
In her surprise, Rebecca pulled the trigger.
