Infinity: Kill your way through the movie world.

“Impossible…” Raphael’s voice began to crack, like a poorly received broadcast, “What… kind of power is this…”

“The power of Purgatory.” Castio lowered his hand, and the energy blade dissipated. “The power that God himself sealed away, because it was too dangerous, too uncontrollable, too… real, so real that it could disregard all rules, all defenses, and all the ‘sacred’ things you depend on for survival.”

Raphael's wings of light began to disintegrate.

Feathers fell off one by one, burning into golden ash in the air. Cracks began to spread from his wounds, spreading all over his body like shattered porcelain.

“You… will become… an even greater disaster…” he said with his last breath.

“Perhaps.” Castio turned away, his back to the fading Raphael, “but at least, I will control the disaster.”

Raphael was completely reduced to dust and dissipated into the air of the temple.

There was dead silence.

None of the three hundred angels dared to move or speak. They stared at Castio, their former colleague, now a stranger and a terrifying figure.

Castio walked to the podium, stepped onto the stairs, and stood where Raphael had just stood. He looked around the hall, his gaze sweeping over every face.

"The civil war in Heaven is over." His voice wasn't loud, but every word clearly reached the ears of every angel. "From this day forward, there will be no factions, no disputes, only one voice."

He paused.

"My voice."

"I am neither an angel nor a demon. I have absorbed purgatory, contained millions of souls, and touched upon a truth that even God fears. Therefore, you may call me—"

He spread his arms, and although no wings of light grew from his back, the light of the entire temple bent and knelt before him.

"A new God."

Humans, two days later.

A church in a small town in Kansas, on Sunday morning, after the service has just ended.

The believers left one by one, leaving only the pastor tidying up the Bibles in front of the altar. He was a man in his fifties with slicked-back hair, a crisply pressed suit, and three gold rings on his fingers.

The back door of the church was open.

Castio appeared here unexpectedly. He walked in, his trench coat damp with rainwater, and his footsteps echoed in the empty church as he walked through the aisle between the benches.

The pastor looked up, offering a professional smile: "I'm sorry, the service is over. If you need confession, you can make an appointment."

“How much donation did you receive last week?” Castio interrupted him.

The pastor's smile froze for a moment: "This is the church's private finances; I'm afraid we can't."

“Thirty-four thousand dollars,” Castio stated. “Twenty thousand of that came from the elderly couple in town whose son had just died of cancer, and you called the money ‘tolls to heaven.’ Eight thousand came from the single mother who thought her donation would cure her daughter’s asthma. The rest came from other believers, each of whom you exploited with different lies.”

The pastor's expression changed: "Who are you? A policeman? A reporter? I warn you, without evidence..."

“I don’t need evidence.” Castio raised his hand, pointing his index finger at the priest. “I only see the facts: you are deceiving people in the name of God, profiting from their suffering, and using their faith to inflate your own bank account.”

A glint of dark gold light appeared at his fingertips.

The pastor finally realized this was no ordinary person. He hurriedly stepped back, accidentally bumping his back against the altar, causing his Bible to fall to the ground: "You...you are a devil! God will punish you."

“God won’t,” Castio said, “but I will.”

A beam of light, as thin as a hair, shot out and pierced the priest's forehead.

There were no wounds, no bloodstains. The priest simply froze, his eyes wide and pupils dilated, until a few seconds later he fell straight down, his breathing stopped, his heart stopped beating, and all his vital signs returned to zero at the same time.

Castio turned and left.

As he walked out of the church, it was still raining. He looked up at the gray sky and continued on to the next location.

Such 'trials' have taken place seventeen times in the past two days. Fake priests, corrupt senators, animal abusers, drug-dealing gang leaders… Castio selects his targets, finds evidence, or what he considers evidence, and then executes the punishment.

The method is the same: a strand of energy, instant death, leaving no trace.

He felt he was doing the right thing.

Cleanse the world of its filth, uphold true justice, and do what God should have done but did not.

But some changes are happening quietly.

He didn't know when it started, but he always felt headaches.

This wasn't a continuous pain, but a sudden, sharp sting, like a needle churning deep inside the brain.

After each bout of pain, dark lines would appear under the skin, as if something deeper was wriggling. The lines would disappear on their own after a few minutes, but the next time they appeared, the area would be larger and the color would be darker.

His judgment is also becoming increasingly biased.

Yesterday in New York, he passed by a park and saw two children fighting. It was just a normal children's squabble, one of them snatching the other's toy.

In that instant, a thought flashed through his mind: violent tendencies must be nipped in the bud. He raised his hand, almost firing an energy filament to kill the two children, but at the last moment he forcibly suppressed the impulse.

There are also sleep problems.

As an angel, he shouldn't need to sleep, but now he occasionally faints, suddenly loses consciousness, and then wakes up a few seconds or minutes later.

Upon waking, there is a brief blank in memory, which is then filled by a stronger urge to do something immediately.

Such as now.

Castio was already standing outside an abandoned factory.

Inside, two gangs were trading drugs while plotting to kill each other. He could hear their thoughts: greed, cruelty, and a thirst for violence, like the stench of rotting flesh.

He only intended to intimidate.

The man went in, then demonstrated his power, then instilled fear in them, then dispersed, and told them never to touch these things again.

But as he pushed open the rusty iron gate and entered the warehouse, a sudden headache struck.

This time the pain was more intense than ever before.

His vision blurred instantly, and countless sounds filled his ears—an ancient wail from the depths of purgatory, the roars of the souls he had absorbed, the fragments of Leviathan, as his consciousness weakened.

He saw the gang member turn around, pull out a gun, and point it at him.

He heard them shout, "Who?!"

He felt energy surging through his body, like a flood bursting its banks, uncontrollable.

Then, when he woke up, he was already outside the factory.

Looking back.

The factory was still there, but eerily quiet. There were no gunshots, no shouts, nothing at all. Castio walked back and pushed open the door.

The warehouse was empty.

They didn't just escape; they all vanished.

Guns, drugs, banknotes, and more than a dozen complete sets of clothing were scattered on the ground. The clothes were still in human shape, as if someone had evaporated into thin air, leaving only the outer shell.

Fine, dark golden dust particles floated in the air—residual energy from purgatory. (End of Chapter)