One, two, three… More and more people were coming to the gate.
“Why are there so many people? Why are they so stealthy?” Fernando created spying eyes and dispersed them in order to monitor the whole house. Although the spell had a range limitation, everything in Tuck’s house was still under watch because it was old and small.
In a corner, a crystal ball suddenly glittered and displayed what was in the hall. Even Advanced Stealth could not cover such an effect.
In the hall, the men and women in plain clothes walked lightly like ghosts, as if they feared that they might wake up the owner of the house.
There were about a dozen of them. They dispersed around a creepy-looking man at the center.
The man had scarlet thin hair, a protruding forehead, broken eyebrow, half-missing nose, rolling lips, and eyes that only had whites left. He was so unnaturally hideous that he looked like a doll that a naughty kid stitched on their own, or a monster that would only appear in the illogical dreams.
He looked at the ceiling with his blinded eyes, and his ears, which seemed to have been bitten by dogs, slightly shivered. After the dozen strangers stopped at their respective positions, he suddenly opened his mouth and said, “God saves the people.”
His voice was not as ugly as he looked. It was distant and intimidating, as if it came from the infinite heights.
“God, please save us.” The men and women held their arms and slowly leaned forward in a weird posture.
Continuing the previous tone, the man said gravely, “Everybody suffers and pays for their sins after they are born. Everybody endures hunger, trauma, jealousy, and betrayal without one day of happiness. They can barely catch their breath under the infinite pressure. Also, nobody can escape death in the end. They can only walk toward their doom in fear.
“However, God tells us that death is eternal, peaceful, and devoid of miseries and pains. Faced with death, we must thank God for His grace so that we do not need to sink in this filthy and disgusting world anymore…”
As he went on, the hall was covered in a tranquilizing and alluring atmosphere. The dozen men and women listened attentively and seemed to have understood the truth of death.
“Is a heretic church that believes in the God of Death preaching here?” Fernando basically realized what was going on in the hall through the spying eye.
Since this city had been infiltrated by the heretic churches, such a condition should be perfectly normal.
The moment the idea popped up, he suddenly sensed that something was not right. “But why are they holding a ritual in Tuck’s house? Did they know that Tuck’s house was empty?”
With puzzles rising up, Fernando identified the people carefully and did not find Tuck who attempted to study faith. Furan had created an image of Tuck with her memories so that it would be easier for him to find.
“That’s odd. Are they related to Tuck’s ‘disappearance’?” Fernando observed those “believers” even more carefully.
“As long as we earn the grace of God, we will enjoy painless immortality in death…” The priest suddenly raised his voice and his right hand.
After he raised his right hand, the dozen men and women rose from the ground and danced a weird dance that Fernando had never seen before. Their postures were so weird that they did not seem to worry about joint damages or pain at all.
“It’s not like a regular religious ritual…” Fernando knew a thing or two about that. “Are the believers of the God of Death so special?”
As the dance grew weirder and weirder, the atmosphere in the hall became chaotic. They all took off their clothes and crawled before the priest.
The priest put down his right hand, but there was now a sharp dagger that emitted cold brilliance in it.
Fernando thought that the priest would reap the lives of the believers to please the God of Death, but the priest rolled his right hand and stabbed the dagger into his own chest. Blood immediately spurted out.
“Huh?” Fernando was completely stunned. He knew a lot of sacrificial rituals, but none of them required the suicide of the host first!
Blood dripped on the filthy floor. A man on the ground, as if summoned by God, suddenly extended his tongue and licked the blood.
Then, with obscure noises from his throat, he lunged at the collapsing priest like a wolf and bit the priest’s neck brutally, tearing off a cluster of flesh and swallowing it in a hurry.
The rest of the followers also went crazy. They jumped at the priest, gnawed at his flesh, and chewed it in the most reverential way.
Fernando felt uncontrollably nauseated as he watched the blood, skin, and broken flesh on the believers’ mouths. He had studied necromancy before, but he had never seen such a disgusting scene before.
A lot of blood was wasted when they crazily competed for food. It was gathered below the corpse into a pool.
The blood in the pool was suddenly vaporized, creating a hazy mist of blood everywhere.
In the mist of blood, a face was crawling out crazily.
The redness was fixed to the face tightly as if it were a veil. Only the rising parts, such as eyeballs, nose, and mouth, could be seen, which made the face unbelievably creepy.
The man shouted hoarsely, “Help me!”
Startled by the voice, Fernando shivered hard, and the drowsiness that came into being at some point left his body.
It was not until this moment that he realized that the priest was still reciting the prayer and the believers were still dancing in the crystal ball.
“What happened to me just now?” Fernando asked himself subconsciously. He soon realized that he was affected by illusions and entered a dream without him realizing it!
He looked around warily and thought to himself, It’s at least a senior-rank sorcerer, if not an archmage, who put me into a dream through the previous scene. What exactly does he want?
Then, he thought in shock, Was the archmage who created the dream the one who cried for help? He created the dream just to send a distress call?
Fernando did not rush out to investigate the dozen heretic believers. The caller asked for help in such a way was obviously to avoid certain surveillance. If he were to take action recklessly, something might happen to him.
“Is the man in trouble caged? No, if he is caged, his leaking strength couldn’t have affected me at all unless he is above legendary, in which case whoever cages him is too much for me to deal with. If he is not caged but hiding somewhere in the city, it must be at least a level-nine expert who has put an archmage into such difficulties. The guy may be around…
“Such a method is obviously sorcery. Then, why doesn’t he just ask for help from the Office of Sorcerers, which can reach out to Aalto? Maybe the Office of Sorcerers is secretly monitored by the expert, or maybe the people in the Office of Sorcerers have betrayed or been replaced…
“So, will the expert in the dark allow people to leave Kufuray City and get help for the sorcerer?”
Fernando shook his head firmly. It couldn’t happen. Maybe he would be captured and killed as long as he attempted to leave the city.
At this moment, the dancing and praying believers slowed down. The ritual tonight seemed to have come to an end.
Fernando looked at the scene; his eyes unfocused. One thought suddenly flashed in his mind. “Is ‘the guy in need’ doing this on purpose so that I’ll be too intimidated to leave Kufuray and can only disappear like Tuck?”
He was very smart and therefore came up with a lot of possibilities. Hesitating, he did not know which one he should believe.
However, since he remembered Tuck, he brought out the notebook and read the following records.
“The ritual here is too weird. It is very different from what I know…
“The more I study the church that secretly develops in this place, the more scared I am. What are they exactly?
“No. Why have I never seen anyone leave the city? Why do the people who bring water and food return at the gate and never enter the city?
“I need to get out of here!”
After the scribble was hopeless blankness.
“Does everybody know that it is impossible to leave the city?” Fernando was even more perplexed.
Inside the crystal ball, the believers stopped praying and were ready to leave under the priest’s instruction.
Having a eureka, Fernando blinked to the hall and shouted, “Who are you? Why are you trespassing on Tuck’s house?”
Since he was here for Tuck, he had to behave like he was searching for Tuck. That was the best way for him to buy himself more time without raising attention and doubts!
The priest who was as hideous as a monster replied solemnly and honestly, “We have been invited by Tuck.”
“Tuck invited you to come here?” Fernando was slightly stunned, not expecting such an answer.
……
With the credentials that their teachers gave them, Furan and Antec flew toward Kufuray City quickly.
“Right, whose turn is it to watch over the place right now?” Antec did not pay much attention to it before.
Furan thought for a moment and said, “His Excellency the Original Fire.”
