Chapter 152: Joan of Arc

"Heroic Spirit Mask: Saint Joan of Arc."

Following the warrior Guan Yu and the Wine Sword Immortal Li Bai, the third mask was actually a foreign heroic spirit!

Yan Luo knew this name.

She was one of the most famous women in history. Legend has it that in her youth, Joan encountered the Archangel Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine. Later, she became the French hero who liberated Orléans from the Hundred Years' War, and a Catholic saint.

Skills: Holy Banner, Charge, Light's Verdict.

The Spanish civilization had suffered heavy losses during the ten-day harassment; players had all fled, soldiers had all died, and above all, failing to establish cities meant reinforcements were impossible. Now, one could say this civilization was in a state of absolute decay. However, a few boss-level entities still remained within it.

Queen Isabella, Pizarro, Cortés, and the ten captains of the Invincible Armada.

Once they left, as long as the Spanish civilization founded a city, it could rapidly recover its vitality. To completely destroy this civilization, the only way was to kill Isabella.

This Queen also possessed a trump card:

Angel Summoning.

Yan Luo could deduce that the current Spanish bosses were probably filled with utmost hatred and intended to fight him to the death.

Therefore, he used the Heroic Spirit Mask.

This was tantamount to testing the waters—even if the heroic spirit were killed, it would have no major impact on his main body.

A beam of holy light shot straight into the night sky. Within the radiance, as vast amounts of Yan Luo's life force and spiritual energy were drained, a shadow gradually broke free from his body. When the holy light finally dissipated, a blonde young girl appeared by his side.

The girl looked to be only eighteen or nineteen years old, with delicate facial features. Her entire being radiated an atmosphere of holiness and steadfastness, and she wielded a battle flag fluttering fiercely in the wind!

The banner's background was white, embroidered with the Cross of Lorraine and an emblem representing light.

No armor or sword, only simple clothing and this single banner.

Yet, in Yan Luo's view, the metallic flagpole could completely serve as a heavy iron spear!

A faint white radiance seemed to coat the girl's skin.

Saint Joan of Arc!

Placing the majority of his consciousness into the heroic spirit, Yan Luo's main body hid inside a cave, still guarded by Madi. Then, Joan, shouldering a large banner, began running toward the Spanish camp. The remainder were all bosses, so ambush was useless.

This time, he would launch a direct, frontal assault!

Upon approaching, she was discovered by the boss on perimeter guard duty.

Cortés.

"You've come? Chinaman, today is your doomsday!"

He clutched a gold coin in his hand. This was a magic item: the Aztec Gold Coin, imbued with the curse of a destroyed empire. Triggered by mysterious power and under the illumination of the moonlight in the sky, the Spanish general instantly transformed into a skeleton.

A skeleton wielding an obsidian stiletto, with a bright red cloak fluttering behind him!

"Hmm?"

Cortés discovered that the intruder was not the Chinese player, but a blonde girl?

Yan Luo-Joan initiated a charge, shouldering the holy banner with the tip of the flagpole aimed directly ahead. Although she was alone, the aura erupting from her at this moment carried the staggering impact of a thousand troops and horses. A clear expression of terror appeared on Cortés's fleshless face.

That was holy light!

Using the Aztec Gold Coin to transform into an undead creature was Cortés's trump card.

Now, he had transformed into a boss akin to a skeletal sprite or skeleton king. Simultaneously, the Feathered Serpent cloak, stimulated by the skeleton's dark power, also manifested its strength, and the phantom of a giant serpent loomed vaguely behind the cloak.

However, undead creatures were innately suppressed by light, let alone light imbued with the "Holy" attribute!

Merely gazing at the holy light caused thick smoke to billow from Cortés's eye sockets. If not for the fact that skeletons lacked vocal cords, he would have nearly cried out in pain.

At that moment, Yan Luo-Joan had already charged forward and impaled him on the flagpole with a single thrust.

"Gagaga, ga..."

The skeleton's upper and lower jaws snapped open and shut rapidly, producing a clattering sound while its body convulsed violently. The power of light and holiness within this "banner of holiness" erupted inside him, dealing tons of damage.

It was as if a person had been plunged into a pool of sulfuric acid.

Billowing clouds of smoke rose. When Queen Isabella and the other Spanish generals rushed out from their tents, what met their eyes was the sight of the skeleton evaporating into ashes.

"Cortés!"

Isabella let out a startled cry, and the next second, an expression of sheer disbelief surfaced in her eyes.

"Joan?"

The name displayed above the head of Yan Luo's heroic spirit within the game interface was simply "Joan."

Queen Isabella clutched her chest with her hand, as if suffering a massive blow.

"It's the Queen."

Having slain Cortés, Yan Luo launched another charge. Last time, his main body's towering, spear-like surprise attack had been blocked by a transparent thin membrane; this time, the holy banner in his hand was clearly a magical item—wondering if it could pierce the barrier?

"Thud!"

The sound of a metallic flagpole piercing flesh and hide.

"Your Majesty!"

Pizarro and the ten captains of the Invincible Armada stood with their mouths agape, petrified. At this moment, it was akin to the scene in One Piece where Akainu's fist blasted straight through Ace, witnessed by Marco and the captains. Everyone's expressions froze, and the passage of time itself seemed to have halted.

"Why?"

Tears streamed from Queen Isabella's eyes.

Yan Luo was filled with confusion.

Why didn't the Queen deploy her defensive barrier after a mere probing thrust? Why didn't she dodge? But seeing the sorrow and despair in the young girl's eyes, he immediately realized:

There was a scandalous secret here!

In reality, when Joan died at the age of nineteen in 1431, Queen Isabella would not be born for another twenty years; the two had never even met.

What Yan Luo did not know was that this Queen harbored a deep psychological adoration for Joan. It was precisely inspired by Joan's deeds that she seized the governance of Castile and León at the age of twenty-three.

This was a deed recorded in the encyclopedia.

During the development of the game *Rise of the Great Powers of Civilization*, when inputting information into the "Qiankun Pearl," the developers had set up numerous Easter eggs.

For instance, if Jing Ke met the King of Qin, he would rush forward and hoist Qin Shi Huang's leg; for example, Montezuma, the leader of the Aztec civilization, would instantly fly into a blind rage and attack recklessly upon seeing the recently slain Cortés.

If any civilization's leader recruited the three generals Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei and built a peach garden, it would trigger the "Oath of the Peach Garden" scenario.

Spain and France were both handled by Ubisoft, and Ubisoft's designers had added "Yuri" elements to Isabella and Joan.

Moreover, they had set it up so that Joan had a high probability of being hired as a warrior by the Spanish civilization, pairing this couple together to attract players with specific preferences. Who could have imagined that a game-smuggling modulator would actually assemble the Heroic Spirit Mask?

And the game had judged it to be Joan!

Consequently, this Easter egg was triggered. Upon seeing the object of her frantic adoration, Queen Isabella was so shocked and overwhelmed that she never even considered resisting. Her Lord's Domain barrier failed to activate due to her tumultuous emotions, and she was impaled on the flagpole by a single charge from Yan Luo-Joan.

"Why?"

Faced with Isabella's questioning, and looking at the girl's expression a mixture of adoration, resentment, agony, and despair, Yan Luo's mind instantly flashed through numerous speculations—as for the content, it was dramatic enough to film dozens of episodes of a romantic melodrama.

"Why? Do you not understand?"

"This is the destiny of Spain, and you shall all perish!"

Queen Isabella possessed Angel Summoning, and she was surrounded by a group of boss-level thugs. If they fought to the death, Saint Joan of Arc might not necessarily win.

Now, since some bizarre trigger seemed to have been activated, Yan Luo intended to use a few words to make Isabella surrender willingly and cause the Spanish generals to retreat without a fight!

Language was the most powerful weapon in the world—

If you didn't believe it, just look at *Naruto* to understand.

"The factions entering Chaos Continent 1.0 number one or two hundred. Even with its abundant resources, such a narrow map cannot support the development of so many civilizations."

"The appeal of each leader varies."

"For instance, in Wu Zetian's tribe, the first batch of joining players numbered over twenty thousand; whereas yours, the tribe of the Spanish civilization, had a mere seventy or eighty players in the first batch, and now even those players have fled."

"Since you also know that this world is a game world, you should understand that games exist to serve players."

"With the popularity of the Spanish civilization, how could it possibly compare to those highly popular civilizations? Would European players prefer to choose Caesar the Great and Emperor Napoleon, or you? Therefore, the conclusion is self-evident."

"Regardless of whether it is you or a vast majority of civilization leaders, the sole value of your appearance in this world is: to act as supporting characters, accompanying the development of other civilizations, and in the future, to become the nourishment for those civilizations to conquer, plunder, and grow stronger!"

"The vast majority of these hundred-plus tribes will be obliterated in the history of the game. Less than one in ten protagonist civilizations will survive to the end."

"Do you really think a Spanish civilization without players can continue to exist?"

"You are merely a supporting character!"

"Rather than dying a wretched death in future wars with your civilization destroyed, it would be better not to have been established at all from the very beginning... That way, there wouldn't be so much agony either."

If Yan Luo-Joan's chest-piercing thrust earlier had made Isabella feel emotional despair (since she was an intelligent NPC, not a true human, the Heartless Puppet could not absorb it), then now, this proud queen—infused with her historical personality as an ambitious, high-level intelligent NPC—felt despair regarding the very value of her existence.

"So, I am merely a supporting character?"

"Then no matter how powerful I make Spain's development, in the future it will only remain a target for other civilizations to invade? Unable to prevent the destiny of destruction?"

As a leader and one of the game's major bosses, Queen Isabella could not be killed by a mere flagpole thrust; it merely depleted a portion of her health bar.

Normally, Yan Luo's verbal onslaught would at most cause Isabella's mood to darken for a moment before she quickly adjusted.

Yet now, upon discovering that the Joan she most adored had come to kill her, her mind was in turmoil, and this speech caused her emotions to erupt entirely, leaving her disheartened and planting the thought of death—to put it colloquially, she had been thoroughly brainwashed.

"Since the future destiny is destruction, then let me die right here, die by your hands, my most adored Sister Joan..."

Her body lunged forward, allowing the flag-spear to pierce completely through her chest, the metallic flagpole protruding from her back.

Her outstretched arms embraced Yan Luo-Joan's body.