“How do we open it?”
After searching around the secret door for a long ti, Loren and the others couldn’t find any chanism to open it.
“Cut it open.”
Loren didn’t waste words. He swung once at the secret door. The material making the door was very strong, and Loren had tried before, but under the Requiem’s strike it crumbled like tissue paper, and the door was easily sliced open.
A few more swings carved an opening large enough for everyone to pass through.
But as the door was broken, Loren felt a fluctuation of magic.
“As expected… there’s a chanism on the door. If you force it open you’ll trigger it. The question is, what does it do?”
If it were just hidden arrows it wouldn’t be able to harm Loren and his group, but he feared it wasn’t that simple.
The mont they stepped through, Loren’s intuition sent a warning. He raised the Requiem and effortlessly blocked the incoming arrows, while flas ignited inside the chamber.
“Where did the fire co from?”
Laila cried out. She scanned the surroundings, looking for sothing to extinguish the flas, but the floor here was solid and she couldn’t dig up any soil.
“Don’t panic.”
Loren thrust the Requiem into the ground, then, taking the blade as an origin point, water suddenly gushed forth.
The spellbook the Church of the God of Vows and Wind had given him recorded so water magic, which ca in handy now.
Those fires were ordinary. Water filled the entire secret chamber in an instant and then flowed out just as quickly, dousing the flas and leaving a ss.
Loren casually picked up a book and glanced at it. The book hadn’t burned much, and even though it was wet, it was still readable.
“They’re all quotations from the God of Happiness…”
Loren had considered many possibilities: that the books contained evil rituals, or explicitly invoked the God of Happiness. He hadn’t expected them to be rely quotations.
He checked a few more books; the contents were largely the sa.
“It’s not that simple…”
Loren quickly realized sothing was wrong. The books might look like ordinary quotations to him, but to others they might not. These books could very well carry cognitive contamination. If other people read them, they might imdiately beco followers of the God of Happiness.
But if that were the whole plan, there would be no need to set chanisms to destroy the books; the more people who saw them, the better—unless there was sothing they desperately wanted to hide.
“What is this?”
Anna casually picked up a book, planning to open it, but Loren stopped her before she could.
“These books probably carry contamination. You’d better not read them.”
Loren’s player identity let him ignore contamination and attacks on the mind, but it also prevented him from being certain whether sothing was contaminated.
The best way to confirm would be to have a passerby glance at it, but that felt a bit cruel.
“Search around, see if there’s anything else useful.”
Loren’s search was rough. He simply pushed the bookshelf over and ransacked the scattered ss. The books here were all much the sa.
“Master ntor, a lot of the crows in the tunnels have disappeared!”
While Loren searched, trouble had arisen on Movila’s side.
“Did you see why?”
“No. I didn’t even feel attacked before it happened.”
“That sounds like the thods of the Followers of Confusion…”
The Followers of Confusion weren’t very strong in combat—only a bit stronger than the Bountiful followers—but they had far fewer numbers. The Church of Confusion was the weakest church, and the God of Confusion was the weakest deity. Otherwise Noah wouldn’t have been able to obliterate it; calling it a sha among the Orthodox Gods wasn’t an exaggeration.
Thus Followers of Confusion typically relied on ambushes rather than direct confrontation.
“Prepare for a fight. It’s highly likely there’s a hand of the Followers of Confusion behind this.”
The others stood ready at the entrance. Loren continued searching for useful items. At last, behind the bookshelf, he found an inconspicuous small white stone. The stone was round, mostly gray-white except for so red veins. In the dim chamber it was easy to miss; if Loren hadn’t recognized what it was, he might have overlooked it.
The stone sat among other stones and blended in.
“The Blind Eye… this is a mark of the Church of Confusion…”
The Blind Eye is a symbol like the Sprout of New Life or the Plague Rainbow, and it also serves as a carrier of the God of Confusion’s power. Seeing it proved the connection between the God of Happiness and the Church of Confusion.
“No wonder those Happiness Believers are so fanatical even without receiving any benefit. There’s clearly the Church of Confusion pulling the strings.”
A little contamination alone wouldn’t drive people to such madness. The Blind Eye was needed to borrow power from the God of Confusion.
“Soone’s coming. The crows near here were all killed!”
Movila warned, and Loren pocketed the Blind Eye.
Loren wasn’t worried about the Followers of Confusion. It was impossible that an Angel had co—if it were an Angel, Movila’s souls wouldn’t be disappearing one by one.
Besides, news about the God of Confusion was the most isolated. Information flow was restricted everywhere; even if Loren killed one of its envoys here, the God of Confusion would only learn that one of its envoys had died, not how it had happened.
This information isolation affected everything. The God of Confusion’s followers didn’t even know the God of Bountiful Harvest existed. Because of that informational blackout, the Followers of Confusion had suffered many losses. Today an Outer God descended in the east and wiped out the eastern people, yet the western people might not even know.
Noah had killed a vessel of the Goddess of Love, but the followers received information that the Church of Confusion had chased the Goddess of Love away, and the credit all went to the Church of Confusion’s higher-ups. Noah, who had killed his lover, didn’t even gain fa. It was only when Confusion vanished that he realized what he had done.
At that instant Noah understood he had lost everything and beca the most terrifying person—perhaps even gaining the courage to kill Orthodox Gods, or rather, he had gone mad.
“It’s getting closer…”
Laila, whose senses were the most acute, heard footsteps drawing near. Loren stepped in front of the group to et whoever approached.
A figure in a black robe moved closer. Loren clearly saw the face under the robe—there was nothing there. No eyes, no mouth, no ears.
This was the God of Confusion’s divine envoy: the Eyeless.
They carry cognitive masking effects; normal people can’t perceive their appearance and won’t even realize they’re there, often forgetting them monts later.
But now Loren was seeing their face, if that could be called a face.
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