Reincarnated in a novel: I am the villain!-Chapter 326: Nature of Light

[Timeline: One Month Earlier – The Surface World]

[Location: The Grand Cathedral, Deepest Subterranean Levels]

The Heavyweight had arrived, and the very laws of physics in the Deep Vault began to weep.

It was absolute, unyielding Authority. The Pope of the Kingdom of Light seemed to glide, his immaculate white and gold papal vestments untouched by the dust of the shattered Holy Golems or the groans of the crippled Crusade Paladins.

To Alaric, Lukas, and Elena, the ambient Holy Mana in the room suddenly turned into wet concrete.

"Heretics," the Pope’s voice echoed. He didn’t shout. He spoke with the quiet, terrifying absolute certainty of a man who believed he spoke for the heavens.

"Thieves in the night. Scavenging rats born from the shadow of the Anti-Christ."

Lukas gritted his teeth, raising his Magitech Gauntlets.

*Click. Hiss.*

He tried to ignite his plasma, but the dense, crystallized Holy Mana in the air physically snuffed the spark. The blue runes on his forearms flickered and died.

"My gauntlets..." Lukas wheezed, falling to one knee as the 7th-Order aura crushed the oxygen from his lungs. "The ambient mana... it’s too thick. I can’t draw in air for combustion."

"Get behind me," Alaric commanded, his voice a low, strained rumble.

Alaric planted his feet, his massive boots cracking the pristine floor. He didn’t use magic. He used the brutal rhythm he had perfected over the years.

*THUMP-THUMP. THUMP-THUMP.*

The Titan’s Capacitor fused to his sternum roared to life, shifting into overdrive. Alaric converted the crushing Holy pressure pressing down on his body into raw kinetic output, projecting a dense, shimmering bubble of physical force around his team. He was acting as a living, breathing shield against a 7th-Order entity.

The Pope stopped ten paces away. His eyes, glowing with blinding white light, locked onto Alaric.

"Alaric Ironheart," the Pope said, his tone dripping with profound disappointment. "The last descendant of the First Hero. Your bloodline was meant to lead this Holy Crusade. Instead, you throw your lot in with the terrorist who shattered the Goddess’s Visage."

"The Goddess abandoned us," Alaric grunted, sweat pouring down his face as he held the kinetic shield. "Zero saved us."

"Zero fractured humanity just as the Void approached," the Pope retorted coldly. "He is a disease. And you are his symptoms. The Light cleanses all disease."

The Pope didn’t draw a weapon. He simply raised his index finger.

The ambient Holy Mana in the vault didn’t just gather; it compressed into a singular, blinding point at the tip of his finger. It was the same fundamental principle Lukas used for his plasma, but scaled to the terrifying, conceptual level of a 7th-Order powerhouse.

[Divine Art: Judgment of the Sun]

"Close your eyes!" Alaric roared, bracing The Anvi* in front of him, preparing to tank a beam of pure, localized sun.

"No."

A calm, icy voice cut through the heavy air.

Elena stepped out from behind Alaric’s massive frame. Her white, tactical leather uniform was spotless. She walked with the straight-backed, fluid grace of a High Elf royalty.

"Elena, get back!" Lukas shouted. "You can’t out-cast a 7th-Order!"

Elena didn’t look at them. She stared directly at the blinding, lethal light gathering on the Pope’s finger.

*’Light is rigid,’* the memory of a silver-masked man echoed in her mind.

*’You are obsessed with Light because it is your family’s legacy. But it only travels in straight lines. If you want to hit a target that is hiding... you bend the world to suit the light.’*

"Human magic is crude," Elena whispered, tapping the silver rim of her Photon Lens .

A small rune on the monocle flared to life.

[Artifact Activation: Focus Mode]

The Pope unleashed the beam.

It was a pillar of pure, vaporizing white light, moving at the speed of thought. It carried enough thermal and magical density to instantly melt Alaric’s heavy mythril sword and incinerate the three of them into subatomic dust.

Elena didn’t summon a light shield to block it. She didn’t try to overpower the Pope’s magic.

She raised her left hand, weaving her secondary affinity with terrifying, surgical precision.

[Wind Art: Vacuum Cylinder]

She rapidly spun the air directly in the path of the incoming beam, creating a massive, localized vacuum tunnel.

Nature abhors a vacuum. And so does physics.

As the Pope’s 7th-Order *Judgment of the Sun* entered the vacuum, it hit a wall of zero atmospheric resistance surrounded by violently spinning, high-pressure air. The absolute straight line of the Light was forced to obey the laws of refraction.

The blinding white beam hit Elena’s wind tunnel and abruptly bent.

*FWOOSH!*

The lethal beam of holy energy arced at a sharp ninety-degree angle, completely bypassing Class F. It slammed into the massive Adamantite wall of the vault, instantly melting a hole twenty feet deep into the impenetrable metal, sending a shower of molten slag raining down on the floor.

The Deep Vault went dead silent.

The Pope lowered his hand, his glowing eyes widening in genuine, unadulterated shock. His absolute, 7th-Order execution strike had just been deflected by a mere 5th-Order Elf.

"Impossible," the Pope breathed. "You bent the Divine Light without using shadows? What heresy is this?"

"It is not heresy. It is physics," Elena said coldly. "And you left yourself wide open."

While the Pope was stunned by the refraction of his own attack, Elena raised her right hand. She didn’t use the ambient mana of the room; she used the violently concentrated, scattered photons from the Pope’s own deflected beam, pulling them into the focal point of her monocle.

She wasn’t forcing the light. She was threading the needle.

[Light Magic: Photon Lance - Absolute Point]

A needle-thin, condensed laser of golden light shot from her palm. It wasn’t large or flashy. It was a single, hyper-concentrated thread of energy designed to ignore armor.

*CRACK!*

The beam struck the Pope’s passive, 7th-Order Divine Barrier.

The barrier didn’t shatter, but the sheer, concentrated density of the *Photon Lance* pierced a millimeter-thin hole straight through the holy shield, grazing the Pope’s cheek.

A single drop of blood fell from the leader of the Holy Church, sizzling as it hit the floor.

The Pope reached up, his fingers touching the shallow burn on his face. When he looked at his fingers and saw red, the shock vanished.

It was replaced by a terrifying, absolute wrath.

"You..." the Pope’s voice dropped, vibrating the very foundations of the Cathedral. "You dare shed the blood of the Light’s chosen?"

The air in the vault stopped moving entirely. The golden runes on the walls shattered.

"He’s angry," Alaric noted, his grip tightening on *The Anvil* as the Titan’s Capacitor began to whine under the surging pressure.

"Very," Elena agreed, taking a step back as her monocle cracked from the exertion.

The Pope slowly rose into the air, a halo of pure, blinding, and suffocating divinity expanding outward from his body. He was no longer going to use simple spells. He was going to erase them.

"Domain Expansion," the Pope declared, his voice echoing with the wrath of a god.

Alaric looked at the heavy double doors behind the Pope, the final barrier separating him from the *Sword of Heroes*.

"Lukas! Elena!" Alaric roared, the kinetic energy in his chest reaching a critical mass. "When I move, you run for the door!"