Eye of Order

Vicolai raised his head and stared blankly at the "Pavaro" crouching before him, entirely frozen. "Who... who... who are you, really?" "Strange. Haven't you already seen for yourself?" Vicolai's eyes widened to their limits. In that instant, everything finally fell into place. Back then, the only reason he had dared to claim all the credit for the Qihe case with such supreme confidence was that, according to all intelligence and clues available at the time, Pavaro was supposed to be dead. Yet Pavaro had suddenly "returned to life," forcing Vicolai to visit him in person to placate him and strike a deal for his silence. Immediately after that, a God's Servant named Karen appeared at the Pavaro Inquisitorial Office, swiftly became an external member of a Whip of Order squad, and climbed step by step to where he stood today. Moreover, he had never moved out, treating Pavaro Funeral Parlor almost as his own home and living alongside Pavaro's family. That should have been the most glaring anomaly of all, but now that he saw through it, it made total sense. Because that home no longer had a master. "Heh... hehehe... ha..." Vicolai began to laugh. He lifted a trembling hand, pointed at Karen's face, and stared straight into his eyes. "So... the one I met, the one who made that deal with me, wasn't Pavaro at all. It was you... Karen Silva?" "Yes, that's right. "Back then, I had only just assumed Mr. Pavaro's identity. Everything was still in its initial exploratory phase when I ran into you. "However, the moment I learned you stole Mr. Pavaro's credit, I was already furious. And then you had the nerve to come to the funeral parlor and threaten me to my face, acting as though you were bestowing charity. You were blatantly robbing an honor another man had bought with his very life, yet you strutted around like someone tossing a few spare coins to a beggar in the street. "Do you have any idea? At that very moment, I swore in my heart that I would take your life, and that I would make you pay for your desecration of Mr. Pavaro." "Just because of that?" Vicolai's face was a mask of disbelief. "I don't understand! You got your benefits, and you got Pavaro's identity! Why come after me?!" "A person like you could never understand what it feels like to truly respect someone." "Just because of that, you dared to move against a bishop's family?! Are you out of your mind?!" "Do you remember that day? You stood before me and arrogantly declared that your grandfather was a regional bishop. Do you know how I felt back then? "I wanted to laugh. Truly. "In fact, after you left, I couldn't hold it back anymore. I laughed out loud for a very long time, feeling as though I had just heard the greatest joke in the world. "Because you actually dared compare grandfathers with me. "Well, looking back now, I misunderstood you. I shouldn't have laughed at you; I was being shallow. "I thought you were comparing grandfathers with me, but it turns out you were comparing fathers. "None of that matters now, though. Don't worry about being lonely. I will do everything I can to give your family a happy reunion—whichever side that may be. You are merely going ahead first." Vicolai screamed, "Who on earth are you?! Tell me, which church planted you as a spy in ours?!" "I doubt any spy would ever bother targeting you or your family. "Your family's existence is the greatest blessing any spy could hope for. They would love nothing more than for the Church of Order to be filled with nothing but Natons from top to bottom. If I were a spy, I would pamper your family with utmost devotion." "Don't kill me!" Vicolai pleaded, staring desperately at Karen. "Let me go! Name your terms! I can agree to anything on behalf of my grandfather... no, on behalf of my father!" "I enjoy doing business. I believe in each taking what they need. I like going over ledgers to balance my income and expenses, and I want to climb up to a vantage point high enough to see far into the distance. "That is how I used to operate, and I saw nothing wrong with it. Yes. In principle, there shouldn't be anything wrong with it. "However, some things cannot be bartered away. They cannot even be weighed by mere profit and loss—especially when I already possess the power, yet still find myself hesitating over risks and benefits. Such as your life." Karen drew a white glove from his pocket and slowly pulled it over his left hand. An icy aura bore down on Vicolai. Vicolai shrieked, "My family has connections with an important figure in the Temple! The only reason my father became a bishop was through that figure's influence! "Don't kill me! If you kill me, one day you'll suddenly drop dead! I swear it! "An important figure of that caliber has countless ways to end a life—even someone like you! You won't be able to escape it!" With his gloved left hand, Karen gently took hold of Vicolai's neck, feeling the faint tremors running through the man's body. In truth, from the moment Vicolai saw him walk in carrying the bowl of noodles, he had known exactly what was coming. All his frantic posturing had merely been an attempt to cycle through different angles in pursuit of a sliver of survival. This foolish creature, spurred by the visceral dread of death, had actually grown slightly sharper than before. Of course, that was likely only because his baseline had been so abysmal that it left vast room for apparent improvement. "Then let this important figure come. Let him come kill me. I beg him to come." "You..." "To be honest, even now, I haven't decided what manner of death suits you best. The trial drained far too much of my energy, leaving this particular moment rather bland and anticlimactic. "How about this? I won't bother overthinking it. Let's keep it simple. What do you think?" "No! I don't want to die! I don't want to die! I don't want to die—!" "Scream. Keep screaming. Atmosphere is important, after all. Before having birthday cake, one must always blow out the candles." A black circle formed at Karen's feet. An instant later, three Chains of Order surged forth, binding Vicolai's body in a flash and hauling him into the air. "No! Stop! Don't!" Vicolai shrieked in terror. Though he had no idea what was about to happen, he knew beyond doubt that it would plunge him into agony beyond endurance. "Not bad. After laboring for so long, I finally have an environment where I can take my time. "Yet sometimes, having things too comfortable isn't necessarily a good thing. Originally, I thought of using a more extreme method—kidnapping you and carrying out my own judgment before your family could track you down. "I thought that would add a sense of urgency. It would have made me slightly more excited, and your emotions would have been far more volatile. "Ah... "After all, this is a banquet prepared from your death and your agony. For you, the ingredients must be precious beyond measure. "Failing to cook them into a true delicacy is a form of disrespect to the ingredients. "Allow me to apologize in advance. If I ever encounter someone like you again in the future, I will consider the recipe far more thoroughly." In the palm of Karen's gloved left hand, a wisp of black Fire of Order rose into the air. He held it suspended over Vicolai's chest, where the black flames began to slowly sear... or perhaps soak straight into his torso. This was torture inflicted upon the soul. Vicolai instantly lost his voice; under the soul's excruciating torment, his consciousness and senses twisted into agony. Yet Vicolai was far too weak—so weak that even this minimal force was enough to kill him in short order, which failed to meet Karen's standard. He had chosen not to indulge in excessive flourishes, but the process still demanded proper respect. The atmosphere might lack novelty, but the duration had to reflect proper decorum. Thus, Karen began channeling his own soul power into Vicolai through the Chains of Order binding him. It was like boiling a kettle of water: fearing it might boil dry, Karen continually replenished it with fresh water. Though it was Karen's soul power being consumed, the agony was entirely Vicolai's to savor. Vicolai's physical body had already reached the point of numbness. From the outside, Karen could no longer receive the feedback he required. For a chef, being unable to observe the diner's expression was an intolerable flaw. So Karen closed his eyes. Following the Fire of Order as it thoroughly overwhelmed Vicolai's mental defenses, and guided by his own influx of soul power, he easily stepped into Vicolai's consciousness space. It was a mottled, filthy realm devoid of any sense of design, which meant Vicolai's soul was riddled with impurities—the inevitable aftermath of haphazard absorption and forced infusions. Here, Karen saw Vicolai engulfed in black flames. He was wailing, thrashing, and screaming curses, like a monkey tossed onto a red-hot iron griddle. Karen stood to the side, quietly taking it in. Time trickled past. Ordinarily, this would have continued until Karen felt satisfied, coming to a natural conclusion. Yet at that moment, an unexpected anomaly occurred. If Vicolai could be compared to a ragged, dirty dishcloth, being scorched by flames caused all manner of bizarre stenches to waft from him. What he had absorbed over the years was so chaotic and undisciplined that his consciousness space was now permeated by a peculiar olfactory atmosphere. To Karen, it was like a man trying to quit smoking who suddenly found himself standing before a cigarette display case, with a small cabinet of lighters right beside it. Had Karen never entered, it wouldn't have mattered. But having stepped inside, he was caught in the fumes. Even though it was faint—far from an attack, hardly even a hazard... Human sensations were peculiar that way. A tiny tease, a flick of a finger, or a simple glance could cause emotions to flare up in an instant. Karen sensed the craving surging in his heart, the gnawing hunger expanding like a whirlpool in deep water. Naturally, Karen would never consider "eating" Vicolai. First of all, Vicolai was too small a morsel to even take the edge off his appetite; second, Karen found him filthy. He had not fallen so low as to eat indiscriminately. Furthermore, Karen had no desire to grant Vicolai a quick release by aborting the execution on such an account. And so Karen remained standing within the consciousness space, holding back the hunger inside him. Yet today, that sensation was unusually intense—unreasonably fierce. Perhaps because too much time had elapsed since his last feed, the volcano he had held in check had begun to erupt. Karen's eyes gradually darkened with black—not a profound, abyssal dark, but a shade brimming with repressed frenzy. *Hiss...* The hunger battered against Karen's mental defenses wave after surging wave. For now, the barrier held firm, but the water level was rising too fast; it was no longer a matter of whether the wall was sturdy, but that the flood was beginning to spill over. Only now did Karen begin to reflect: what had triggered this? Vicolai's consciousness space could only have served as a catalyst. Given the sheer intensity of the reaction, something must have laid the groundwork beforehand. Yet the trial itself, though tense, had not inflicted any substantive harm on him. Could it have happened before the trial began? A possibility suddenly occurred to him: he had been injured the previous night. It was a self-inflicted wound, and after returning to the office, Blanche had treated him with great care. Past experience told him that whenever he was wounded, he was prone to feeling hollow, his body crying out for nourishment to mend itself. Yet that had been a minor injury. It had looked severe, but he had measured his strike carefully... No. That wasn't it. He had overlooked one detail. Before Blanche treated his injuries, someone else had treated him first; Blanche's follow-up care had merely been to remove the scarring. It was Bernie! Back then, Karen and Neo had been sitting by the roadside—Karen covered in wounds, Neo clutching his own intestines—when Bernie and Regional Chief Harry appeared, and Bernie personally administered the first round of healing to them both. Afterward, from the conversation between Bernie and Neo, Karen learned that Bernie had been trained as an orthodox priest. At the time, he had found it curious that someone with a priest's background could rise to such prominence within the Whip of Order. *Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!* A fracturing sound echoed within his soul, as though a pane of glass had shattered. The jagged shards began slicing through his spirit—not deep enough to be grievous, but had the cuts been worse, it might have been easier to bear. This shallow laceration was like an itch scraped across the heart, setting off a cascade of tremors from the depths of his soul. Something was wrong! Karen gritted his teeth. Bernie's healing had an issue! Yet Karen understood that this did not necessarily mean Bernie had intended to harm him. The man's treatment method might simply have possessed certain specific properties—perhaps it was meant to be more potent, but applied to Karen's unique constitution, it had produced an adverse reaction. Blanche herself had marveled while administering follow-up care, remarking that the priest who first treated their captain was exceptionally brilliant, far surpassing her own teacher. Furthermore, Bernie had no motive to act against him. Even if he wished to probe, he would have probed Neo first. Besides, using such a clumsy method would have been an open declaration of suspicion, and Bernie was far from stupid. Was it simply that the medicine had been too good, and Karen's peculiar constitution had happened to suffer an allergic reaction? He would need to discuss this with Neo later. A comparison with Neo's condition should provide answers, given that Neo's body was also abnormal. Yet right now... accompanied by the sound of shattering glass, Karen felt his consciousness beginning to drift. He knew that the scene beneath the mouth of the well on Sacrificial Island, when he faced the woman in red with God's bone, was about to play out again. Most of his emotional faculties would be stripped away, leaving only a singular, absolute self. Karen raised a hand, gathered another cluster of the Fire of Order, and pressed it against his own soul. Experience had taught him that this terrifying craving could only be suppressed by a sensation of even greater intensity. *Heh.* *I came here to execute someone, yet here I am, subjecting myself to torment as well. How unsightly.* However, once the Fire of Order entered his soul, it failed to produce the desired effect. Instead of a searing burn, it served as another round of stimulation. Around Karen, Chains of Order erupted from the ground, instantly blanketing the consciousness space that originally belonged to Vicolai. *Can it only be suppressed with the Fire of Light?* Just as the thought crossed his mind and he prepared to summon the Fire of Light, an even deeper shudder convulsed within his soul. In a flash, his consciousness scattered for a brief instant. At that exact moment, Karen's "body" within Vicolai's consciousness space began to melt, dissolving upward. ... In his unimaginable agony, Vicolai's only thought was simple: death. Swift death, early death. He had completely abandoned any desire to survive; he only wanted this to end. Yet as the searing continued, he could feel wave upon wave of soul power being continuously funneled into him. In the past, he would have reveled in such an influx, for it would have brought immense pleasure. Now, he loathed it with every fiber of his being, for each pulse delivered nothing but sustained torture and deeper despair. Gradually, however, he sensed the agony in his soul beginning to subside, even though the Fire of Order burning upon him had not dimmed in the slightest. Before relief could take root, a dreadful aura bore down upon his soul. He lifted his head, and there within his consciousness space, he beheld a colossal eye. The eye was entirely devoid of emotion, gazing down upon him in cold silence. In an instant, an unspeakable dread steeped Vicolai's soul. He did not know what this entity was, nor why things had turned out this way. *Submit. Submit. Submit...* Beneath that gaze, any hint of defiance felt like a transgression so heinous he could never forgive himself. Vicolai threw himself prostrate. He began to pray, to repent, to confess everything he had ever done, begging for even the faintest sliver of mercy. Then, the eye in the heavens closed. Vicolai's soul shattered. The process of having one's soul pulverized into countless particles was arguably the most terrifying torment in existence, far outstripping the agony of having one's flesh hacked into ten thousand pieces. Then, the eye in the heavens opened once more. Vicolai's shattered soul reassembled. "Aaaarrrrggghhh—!" Vicolai clutched his head, completely insane. He had broken, broken utterly. He wanted to flee, but this was his own soul's consciousness space; there was nowhere to run. And this was merely the beginning. The eye closed, and he shattered. The eye opened, and he reassembled. Above, the eye merely opened and closed in an ordinary rhythm. Below, the soul shattered and reconstituted again and again. Each cycle was an ending, yet also a beginning—and each was excruciatingly vivid, offering no escape. Was this a newly invented form of torture? No. It was merely a game.