Chapter 466

Chapter Eighty-Nine The Next Stop

After that, Angel didn’t bring up the topic of “the chunk of meat” and “experiments” with me much more.

We talked about other things, and the Pope had me re-freeze the chunk of meat. He said not to worry about it anymore, not to think too much, and to leave everything to him.

After removing the intangible shield of the “Inverse Apocalyptic,” I was about to leave when Isaac brought people up the hill and reported to Angel, “Pope, the little boy woke up.”

The little boy he mentioned was the only one still alive in that house.

“We settled him down a bit, gave him something to eat, and he regained some energy. From what the little boy said, there’s a path on the east side of the forest leading to another village on the south side of Chulin. Further ahead, you can reach the Castle of Silence. This way, we don’t have to go around the mountains, and once we get to the castle, we might be able to replenish our food and hay.”

“Additionally, there were more than just one heretic who came here last night. There were a few mice… the boy couldn’t remember exactly, but at least five of them. They left right after seeing us, and fled towards Chulin. The guy who was frozen by the little one should have been left behind to cover their retreat.”

Angel had already put the chunk of meat back into the cloth bag, which he placed in a corner of the tent, unobtrusive.

He brushed his sleeves and casually asked, “Left a ‘Blood Sacrifice’ behind?”

“Yes, Pope. It’s strange to me why they would be here. If they were tailing us, the range is too wide. We’re still far from Arethyn City. The mice must have come for some ulterior motive. We should—”

“Isaac.” Angel interrupted him, “Take your men and pursue them. If there’s no trace within half an hour, do not venture too deep and return immediately. Have all the knights withdraw from the search, rest as soon as possible, and we will continue our journey early tomorrow morning.”

“Yes.”

With his orders given, Isaac turned to leave. I started to follow, “I’m going too!”

Angel reacted quickly, grabbing the back of my collar.

“You stay here.”

“…Let me go.”

The collar was tugged uncomfortably, and I glared at him unhappily.

“No more reckless actions.”

“…”

“To be honest, I was angry when you left the group without permission and rashly interacted with the heretics… though it was an accident, I was still upset. I was going to scold you, but then I realized it wasn’t necessary. You’re bound to fight them, just not where I can’t see you…”

“That’s not true! I couldn’t find you!”

I pushed away his hand holding my collar, stepping back two paces, my expression furious, “Where did you go?”

This guy always disappears, and now he’s mad at me for not listening to him!

However, the Pope avoided my question, “I’ve assigned a squad of knights to you, the elite team of the Judgment Fist, led by Sir Safiros… Ah, you’ve met him, right? Let him and his men follow you. You can move freely, but don’t leave their sight.”

I narrowed my eyes, “Oh, so you’re having them watch over me?”

Angel frowned slightly, “It’s for protection. In case of special circumstances, they’ll notify me immediately, and also prevent you from straying too far or doing anything foolish. If you lose control… well, they’ll handle the cleanup, so you won’t have to worry.”

“Still, it’s like watching over me.”

“Why do you make my sincere concern sound so unpleasant?”

“Hmph.”

I turned my head away, no longer speaking.

My mind was in turmoil.

By the time I snapped out of it, Isaac was already far gone.

“Sylvia, you need to be more careful. Don’t let those lunatics discover your abilities and identity.” Angel continued to nag in my ear, “Clowns always have tricks up their sleeves, and those under him are mostly deranged. Heretics act recklessly, without restraint, but we have limits. If you rashly engage with them, you could end up in a difficult situation…”

I didn’t respond, quietly looking down the hill at the large pits filled by the knights with earth, in the rain.

Almost everyone in this village was buried there.

Before they starved to death, they were treated like livestock, killed and humiliated.

The Gate of Truth…

The Clown.

…………

The searching knights returned, camping around the village. Soon, Isaac came back, seemingly without any results.

Due to the heavy rain, there was no hot soup tonight, only cold, wet hard biscuits.

Moreover, as the group continued deeper into the south, the rain here never stopped for a day. Sometimes it even became a problem to rest. Even with the priests of the Faith Group working together to disperse the clouds and briefly clear the sky, the ground remained muddy, and the knights could only find relatively less damp spots to wrap themselves in cloaks and sleep for a night.

Needless to say, it was not a good night’s sleep.

But the next day, we had to continue our journey.

Fortunately, whether it was Isaac’s “Judgment Fist” or the “Faith Group” composed of the most outstanding clergy members from the three great king cities of the West Continent and various dioceses, both elite groups had excellent qualities. Throughout this arduous journey, very few fell ill, and morale did not wane… they were even quite spirited.

These two groups were both highly regarded elites within the Church, but they often looked down on each other and did not respect one another, so verbal spats were common.

The Judgment Fist thought the Faith Group “walked too high and acted like fat geese,” while the Faith Group thought the Judgment Fist “were just reckless fools.” They even looked down on Isaac, calling him a brute in private.

As for me, both sides showed unexpected respect.

Especially after the news spread that I had taken out a stage three heretic in one hit, their gazes toward me changed. Members of the Faith Group were polite, bowing and praising me, while the knights mostly lacked the ability to express themselves verbally. Their enthusiasm was all transformed into fiery looks, staring at me.

I felt uncomfortable all over and had to smile.

The little boy we saved was left with the team, reportedly responsible for helping with the transportation of provisions in the rear, but I never saw him.

At dusk that day, the head of our team, where Isaac and I were, first passed through Qiuchun and arrived at the next village, but it had already been flooded, and the houses were collapsing even more severely. There wasn’t even a trace of grain, let alone a single person.

So we took a brief rest and led the team forward again.

Due to many places being submerged, some original roads were also destroyed, making the journey extremely difficult. Many times, we had to wade through water, barely having a moment’s respite.

Throughout this journey, the Pope remained mysteriously absent, often disappearing without a trace. But occasionally, when the team stopped, he would suddenly appear, chat casually with me for a while, and then leave soon after.

And I would ponder his words, ponder his speculations at the time, gradually, some things became clearer in my mind.

After witnessing the evil experiments of the heretics, I could roughly imagine how insane those people were—perhaps they were even more insane than I imagined.

The Gate of Truth, in order to obtain “power beyond the gods,” was willing to violate human ethics, conducting terrible live experiments, forcing “patients” to ingest nauseating drugs, watching people die right before their eyes. And those like me and Eliush, who could adapt to the initial stages of the experiment, would be forcibly taken to another location to undergo further experiments that I still haven’t recalled to this day.

And then, due to some unknown reason, they believed the experiments had failed and turned to research another direction, which was implanting disgusting tumors within the human body… Even though we don’t yet know what exactly that is, as Angel speculated, it will eventually consume enough flesh and blood to break free from its host, becoming something like the Teresa monster.

After Teresa’s death, the terrifying monster appeared, feeding on human flesh and forming a powerful, scorching body. Victoria and I barely managed to kill it, but according to Angel’s speculation, that thing wasn’t actually a “complete form.”

Even with so many orphans dead and the pool of blood drained dry, such a quantity was not enough for the monster—the tumor inside Teresa—to be satisfied. It was clearly still dormant within the nun, providing her with the searing power of karma until Teresa’s sudden death, when the monster truly emerged.

Unlike this situation, Teresa had managed the Cataroma orphanage for several years, and the children, the constantly disappearing ones, had already provided the tumor with enough blood to transform into a monster.

The three-stage heretic I killed was much weaker compared to Teresa at that time—perhaps he had only recently been implanted with the tumor and hadn’t yet absorbed enough blood to transform into a terrifying monster; it was just a tumor…

In Angel’s words, this thing was an “egg.”

It hadn’t fully matured.

And once it truly matured, it would burst out of the heretic’s body, becoming a dangerous existence with properties similar to the Abyss, extremely hostile to humans.

Following this line of thought, everything seemed to fall into place.

“The truth” was becoming increasingly clear.

According to Angel, the Gate of Truth was willing to go to any lengths to gain power, their sole purpose being… to contest with the Church, to achieve absolute sovereignty above faith.

And the Holy Church, standing as a great mountain in their way, was hated and despised by the heretics. For centuries, their goal has been singular: to bring down this great mountain, to stand atop it, calling on people to turn to the Gate of Truth.

To achieve this, they chose not the path of relieving suffering and benefiting the world to earn the trust of the people, nor did they develop missionary work to instill ideas in those who benefited. Instead, they took the most extreme route—desire, violence, and destruction.

They stirred up the lower classes’ desire for power, harming the populace to obtain power beyond the gods, and attempted to destroy the human social order that the Church had spent centuries building and maintaining.

By doing so, they intended to return humanity to the most primitive stage of survival of the fittest.

When that happened, the world would resemble the true European Middle Ages, after the complete collapse of the Roman Empire, when Western Europe’s culture, economy, and industry almost entirely stagnated. Without restraint and rule, various countries fought each other, wars never ceased, and the expansion of the lords led to widespread suffering, lasting for centuries.

The Gate of Truth may not have realized this.

Or perhaps even if they did, their council members wouldn’t care…

Given their reckless, consequence-be-damned approach, I lean towards the former.

The clearer these things became, the more intense my hatred for the Gate of Truth grew.

…………

The sky rumbled with thunder, and the rain poured down heavily.

The southern territory of Silgaya was already plunged into a true state of turmoil, with floods causing disasters, blocking traffic, and the entire land shrouded in a vast cloud, as if the whole world had become blurred.

Natural disasters, human misfortunes.

The further south the marching team went, the more profoundly I realized this.

This fertile land, renowned for its agriculture, was experiencing its largest disaster in centuries. The farmlands that people depended on were completely destroyed, rice and vegetables buried under sewage, the sky covered by huge clouds, hardly any birds in sight. Tens of thousands of civilians were displaced, fleeing northward, countless dying of hunger or drowning on the road, bodies rotting in puddles, drenched by heavy rain, unburied.

What I saw along the way was heart-wrenching.

The managers of this world’s lands seemed to lack knowledge and means of disaster relief, or perhaps they were truly powerless. Along the way, I didn’t see a single soldier of the Republic, only dead or half-dead civilians.

And the rain continued to pour relentlessly.

After days of arduous travel, the Silent Fortress, known as the granary of the southern region of Silgaya, was now within sight.