"Watch out!" Just as Ben was fully focused on dealing with Andesa's attack, Qian suddenly shouted from behind. He felt a jolt in his heart, instinctively turned his head, and saw a black light rushing towards him.

Ben had almost no time to react, but his extensive combat experience made him instinctively dive forward. A stabbing pain hit his back, indicating he had been struck.

"Damn it!" The pain forced Ben to grit his teeth and curse. In that instant, he had already estimated the attacker—it could only be Priest Anman from that direction; it was completely unexpected that he wasn't dead. After all, he had taken a direct hit from the Earth Sword and also an arrow, and that was a Petrification Arrow.

"Damn, is that guy a cockroach that won't die?"

From Ben's experience, a priest in only cloth armor couldn't survive an attack of such magnitude, even if they were undead.

He quickly turned his head and saw Anman climbing out from the rubble in the distance, stones and debris falling from him. However, the priest who betrayed the Flame Temple had the same surprised look on his face, probably not expecting Ben to evade his attack like that. "Huh?" he said softly, looking at Ben with a peculiar expression. "I've seen the most elite soldiers of the temple, but none had reactions as sharp as yours. It seems you're not just a minor Erune noble."

Anman was far from Ben, but his voice easily carried over. Ben knew it was a kind of messaging spell.

Ben cursed silently. If he were just a minor noble, would he be here? He checked his wounds—the green light patterns projected on his retina continuously updated the data, quantifying the damage—Ben took a quick look; it was less than ten percent of his Life Force.

However, due to feeding the Golden Tree with blood earlier—or what should be called some magic power-devouring thorns—he lost too much blood, and his overall life force status had turned into an unhealthy yellow.

In fact, Ben could feel the weakness slowly climbing through his limbs, a heavy feeling seeming to drag him toward the ground.

"I need to end this quickly—" he shook his head, trying to stay alert.

The situation was not good. Although a large area of twisted thorns had spread across the ground, Gray Sword Saint Mephisto in mid-air was not gaining the upper hand against Andesa; only the Lord Withering was eager to leave the area, and Mephisto was handling the fight calmly, merely maintaining a stalemate.

"But the congestion of magic power will deepen rapidly, Andesa should know this, and maintaining the situation is disadvantageous to her, so she will surely look for an opportunity to break the deadlock." Ben analyzed quietly as he watched Anman not far away.

He knew that the Shepherd Tree Man was not some saint, even with the slightest chance, they would fight desperately to the end.

The battle overhead was bound to quickly reach a conclusion, but he had no time to spare because Anman was right in front of him, and it seemed premeditated—otherwise, he wouldn't have pretended to be dead when he was hit by the Petrification Arrow. Ben believed that not just him, but even Andesa thought this 'companion' was already dead.

"And this guy is now 'resurrected'; is it because he saw Andesa's situation deteriorating? Or is there another reason?" Ben frowned, contemplating if it was the latter, then Anman was likely confident about something.

Just like a manipulator stepping from the shadows onto the stage, unless forced, he must have absolute confidence, even if it's merely self-belief.

Where did that confidence come from?

These thoughts flashed in an instant, and then he heard the crunching sound of footsteps. Veronica had already stepped over the rubble to his side—the plaza had become fragmented due to the prior attacks.

The lady also frowned because she knew Anman better than Ben—in truth, she didn't like this priest, too deep and scheming—but a man as sinister as him wouldn't stand in the open lightly.

The air seemed to be thick with the scent of conspiracy. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Anman looked at the two with a smile, seemingly seeing through their thoughts, "You must be curious why I'm here, but it is indeed surprising, Valhalla actually exists, regardless, I must thank you for such a great help." As he spoke, he took a book from his bosom, black smoke swirling over it, clearly not a good thing, or rather it looked more like some kind of evil object.