"How great a sin? Of course, it's unforgivable."
Xia Wei casually sat on the rooftop of a residential building in the Imperial Capital, watching the distant battle.
"To avoid becoming the monarch of a fallen nation, for the sake of the Empire's rule, even destroying the Imperial Capital and sacrificing countless lives is acceptable."
This was the Little Emperor's thought at the moment, truly utterly absurd.
If, before this, the Little Emperor was merely a pitiful person.
Then, by activating the Imperial Arms and disregarding the lives of the Imperial Capital's populace, he had already become an extremely evil person.
Screams, wails, shouts, and mad ravings echoed in Xia Wei's ears, yet at this moment, he found these sounds exceptionally pleasant.
These sounds were entirely the screams of the Imperial Capital's guilty, while ordinary and good people wouldn't even be harmed a single hair, even if directly hit by a beam from the Supreme Imperial Arms.
"Mama," a little girl fearfully huddled in her mother's arms, while her mother, also terrified, closed her eyes and tightly embraced the little girl.
At this moment, she didn't know that a faint glow emanated from her body, protecting her from harm.
In contrast, next to her, a man with a brutish face was holding a man whose leg had been broken by a flying rock, and the latter was screaming hysterically while clutching his leg.
"Ahhhhhhh! My leg, ahhhhhhh!"
"Light, it's glowing! What's going on?" A girl opened her eyes and noticed the glow on her body,
and that she was unharmed despite being in the midst of ruins, while everything around her, except for a few others glowing like her, had turned into scorched earth.
"Ah! I remember now! This is a miracle!" a middle-aged man shouted fanatically.
"I came here from the Religious State for business!"
"God has descended! God will protect the lives of good people!"
"God will bestow Divine Blessing upon those who dare to fight for all that is good, making them heroes with mighty power!"
In the Imperial Capital, news that the Eastern Province had independently established a Religious State had long circulated among the populace, though it hadn't been openly acknowledged.
"So that's it! That's wonderful! Divine protection!" The woman holding her daughter opened her eyes, tears welling up, as she had been so terrified.
"Yes, that's it! God must be watching over this place! Don't mind those injured people! They are all villains!"
"The elders of the Religious State have already conveyed God's divine decree! If evil people don't die, they will harm good people! Don't bother with them!"
"God has descended! That thing emerged from the Imperial Palace! It must be the tyrannical Emperor and his ministers who displeased God, causing Him to send down divine punishment!"
"Wonderful! God has finally begun to punish those damned fellows!"
At this moment, the Imperial Capital presented two sharply divided atmospheres, utterly contradictory yet utterly logical.
Injured, screaming people were everywhere, yet at the same time, people with serene expressions or excited shouts were also everywhere.
"Gray chair corner——"
Esdeath giggled insanely, pressing her hands to the ground. An icy blue freezing aura instantly spread beyond the Imperial Palace, as she began to seriously use her power.
She hadn't been serious before because she feared affecting the Imperial Capital's residents and the maids and guards who hadn't yet managed to escape.
It wasn't that she cared about their lives or deaths, but rather that she wouldn't defy her master's will.
From her perspective, the entire ground of the Imperial Capital was covered in a faint golden glow, as if draped in a glowing blanket.
This was a scene formed by millions of the Imperial Capital's populace gathered together.
It was clear that her master was protecting the Imperial Capital's populace, so now she could seriously use her abilities.
Rumble, rumble, rumble! The entire Imperial Palace grounds were covered in blue ice, which continuously grew upwards like bamboo shoots, pushing the entire Supreme Imperial Arms higher.
It was as if a gigantic mountain peak had appeared in the center of the Imperial Capital.
"Damn it! Huff, huff——" The Little Emperor's eyes were red, and he panted heavily. He only felt incredibly tired, completely drained of strength.
The icy temperature had already reached the interior of the Supreme Imperial Arms, causing him to regain some of his sanity.
"So cold, so cold————" The Little Emperor shivered from the cold.
"What is that?"
He saw the glowing ground of the Imperial Capital. Under the Supreme Imperial Arms' five senses amplification, he saw clearly: they were individual glowing people.
"Glowing? People are glowing? What's going on?"
"And——those places were clearly destroyed by me, so why are they still unharmed? What exactly is happening?"
Before the Little Emperor could ponder further, an even greater chill appeared from above his head.
The Little Emperor hastily raised his head.
An icy blue freezing aura was spreading above his head, and then those freezing auras formed an ice meteorite even larger than the Imperial Palace.
The 142-meter-tall Supreme Imperial Arms seemed utterly insignificant beneath this ice meteorite,
"Impossible!" The Little Emperor's sanity vanished again. He wanted to continue firing destructive beams to shatter this gigantic ice meteorite, which was already over a thousand meters in size, but he found that he didn't even have the strength to lift his arm.
"Ahhhhhhh—"
"The Empire cannot fall by My hand!"
"This Empire of Mine, passed down for a thousand years through generations, is God's order!"
Esdeath's insane giggling, filled with excitement and killing intent, reached the Little Emperor's ears.
"Heheheh—God's order? A mere tool created by humans, yet it presumes to speak of God's order!"
Esdeath wasn't angered by the Little Emperor offending God; instead, she found it utterly amusing and ridiculous.
"Heavenly Falling Giant Lightning!"
A gigantic ice ball, a full fourteen hundred meters in diameter, fell vertically.
Everything that stood in its way was overwhelmingly destroyed by such power.
The Supreme Imperial Arms was directly pressed down, its outer shell emitting cracking sounds as it shattered. From its head downwards, the metal began to be crushed by the irresistible gravity.
Crack, crunch, crumble———·
"Ahhhhhhh——.""
The Imperial Arms was damaged, and the reaction of energy leakage caused the Little Emperor to scream in agony, as streams of electrical energy enveloped him.
Rumble, rumble, rumble! The ice ball and the ice mountain together squeezed the Supreme Imperial Arms in the center.
Countless ice shards spread towards the Imperial Capital, and sunlight shining on these ice shards, scattering like fireworks, revealed brilliant iridescent light.
The protected Imperial Capital populace stared blankly at this scene, as if from a myth.
Cold air, like that of a heavy snowfall winter, spread throughout the entire Imperial Capital. The cold caused the populace to slightly regain their senses.
"Ahhhhhhh!" Honest screamed, grabbing his hair in disarray.
"How could this be, how could this be! The Supreme Imperial Arms! That was the Supreme Imperial Arms!"
"How could Esdeath be stronger than the Supreme Imperial Arms!"
"No! I must escape, escape quickly!"
Honest scrambled and crawled towards a secret passage outside the Imperial Palace.
His unscrupulous reliance had been the Little Emperor's Supreme Imperial Arms.
Now that the Supreme Imperial Arms was gone, he had to leave the Empire, otherwise he would surely be sent to the gallows. A gaze fell upon Honest.
Xia Wei found it amusing. As long as he was in this world, there was no way he could escape.
Although the Imperial Capital was destroyed, most of the evildoers had not vanished yet.
In an untouched corner of the Imperial Capital, a girl who looked eight-tenths similar to Akame stared blankly at the ice mountain that had replaced the Imperial Palace.
"The Imperial Palace is gone? Is the Empire finished too?"