"Moles!"

The casket settled into place; the funeral was over. Standing at the very front with his back to everyone, Karen raised a hand and waved it. The Order priests responsible for the burial rites all bowed and took their leave. This was an open cemetery, situated in a curious oasis surrounded by glaciers. Tombstones stretched as far as the eye could see, but most belonged to awakened priests or were cenotaphs. Because the graves possessed no value as spiritual materials, this place was quite secure. At the same time, no one would ever suspect that the second-in-command of the Whip of Order staying behind alone had any ulterior designs on the graveyard. Once everyone had departed, Karen's gaze lifted. The ground before him bulged, and the casket that had just been buried broke through the earth. Creak... The casket lid floated upward, and Diknuo sat up inside. Back at the First Knight Order, Karen had left an Order rule inside his body, which automatically began running after he was awakened by the station's priests. Thus, his earlier demise had merely been a state of suspended animation. After climbing out of the casket, Diknuo bowed to Karen first: "My great Lord..." "You may call me 'Young Master.' Those like you all call me that now." "Yes, Young Master." Diknuo pursed his lips. "All of this truly feels like a dream. I was terrified—terrified that I was still lying in that casket back at the First Knight Order, and that everything that happened these past few days was nothing more than my imagination." "I still prefer your arrogant demeanor." At those words, Diknuo lowered his head in shame, looking nothing like the war maniac who had simulated firing artillery at the God of Order in his own mind. "Let's go." "Yes, my Lord... Young Master." Before leaving, Diknuo turned to look once more at Bamifu's tombstone. Although he hadn't managed to sleep with ten priests of the Church of Mills at the end of his life, he had attained an even greater happiness and fulfillment. "My friend, your life's work has been acknowledged, and you may rest now. As for me, I will continue to dedicate myself to Order. I envy you, and I know you envy me too, but no matter what... we share the supreme glory." Diknuo followed Karen into the carriage. He saw an adorable little white-haired girl chewing on the cap of her pen, frowning as she worked through problem sets. Little Kanna noticed him and asked curiously, "Can you do these?" "What kind of problems?" "Applied word problems. They involve math, formations, spellcasting..." Diknuo glanced at the questions and said, "I have twenty-two different methods to solve it. Which one do you want to hear?" Little Kanna looked at Diknuo, then turned to Karen and said, "He's deliberately using me to show off!" Diknuo didn't mind being seen through; he simply smiled. "Then how about you help me do my homework?" Little Kanna leaned closer. "You do my problems, and I'll put in a good word for you. There are quite a few people like you, you know—especially that bald guy. He has really big ambitions now." "Uh..." "Kanna." "I know, I know, I was just kidding." Little Kanna sat back, swinging her legs as she went back to her homework. As the carriage drove out of the cemetery, the Order priests stationed at the entrance only bowed from afar, making no attempt to search it. By now, Karen's carriage had grown closer and closer in style to the Whip-Wielder's carriage of the past. Karen spoke up: "The High Priest has declared war on the Church of Life. Do you know what reason was given?" "That, I wouldn't know." "The reason: 'The Church of Life has defiled the order of life ethics.'" Diknuo: "..." Priests of the Church of Life were often brimming with vigor and excessively keen on such carnal matters; internally, ethical perversions were practically an open tradition. The scandals of the Wien royal family could practically be called wholesome and pure compared to the Church of Life's ecclesiastical families. Still, no matter how one looked at it, declaring war under such a pretext was a bit too... dismissive of the Church of Life, carrying an air of outright mockery and disdain. Karen chuckled. "That is the style of our current High Priest." Norton always managed to display the domineering might of Order at the most opportune moment. "Young Master, I heard he is the successor of Lord Tyrannus." "It seems you weren't very busy in the war room if you had the spare time to listen to these rumors and stories." "Will this High Priest come to pay his respects to you as well?" "The situation here is a bit unique. Once we return, Alfred will speak with you in detail. He will tell you everything you need to know." "Yes, Young Master. Understood." Diknuo glanced at the wall clock inside the carriage and said, "By now, it should have already begun." "There's an icebox under your seat." Diknuo bent down, opened the icebox, and asked, "What would you like to drink?" "The same as you." "Very well, Young Master." Diknuo poured two glasses of ice water and handed one to Karen. "Come. A toast to our knights of Order—may everything go smoothly." Karen raised his glass with one hand in a toast. Diknuo held his glass with both hands and lightly clinked it against the bottom of Karen's glass, producing a crisp ring: *Clink.* ... *Boom!* Massive flaming meteors crashed down in an unending barrage, transforming what had once been a lush primeval forest into an infernal sea of flames. Countless Life priests fled in panic. Some flew through the sky, some rode upon demonic beasts, and even more stumbled forward numbly, supporting one another in bewilderment and despair. This was the Newnas Subcontinent, the birthplace and core sacred land of the Church of Life. At the same time, the Garden of Life was situated at the very center of this subcontinent. Yet now, the flames of war had been ignited right here. Terrifying, oppressive iron hooves thundered past nearby. In the sky, formations of falcon knights and dragons didn't bother breaking rank to hunt down targets on either flank. The retreating Life priests could even stop in their tracks and stand there, watching the terrifying march of the Order knight orders. You might even feel safe, because they couldn't even be bothered to pay you any attention. Even swinging a blade in passing was deemed a burdensome waste of time. Because they had a far more important military objective: after swiftly crushing the defensive positions, the knight orders' formations had begun rapidly driving deep toward the location of the Garden of Life. *Thud...* An injured Life priest simply plopped down onto the ground. He had no intention of running anymore. Naturally, he lacked the courage to step up and obstruct the enemy ahead; he only wanted to sit right where he was, thinking of nothing at all. More and more Life priests made the same choice. Even those who could have ridden their demonic beasts back at higher speeds ordered their mounts to halt. Despair permeated everyone's hearts. They had abandoned any hope of defending the sacred Garden of Life. It wasn't that their faith lacked devotion, but that under the crushing weight of their pale, powerless insignificance, all will to fight had been shattered. It was as though they were tender toddlers swinging wooden swords in a duel against fully armored, well-trained adult knights; courage was perhaps the only thing of any use, yet courage was simultaneously the most useless thing of all. An elderly man clad in high-ranking Life robes pursed his dry, chapped lips, continuously poking the ground with his staff as he murmured: "How could this happen... How could this happen..." ... "How could it go so smoothly?" Inside the carriage, upon hearing Diknuo's initial battlefield projection, Karen voiced his skepticism. "Do you know how many knight orders we deployed in total this time? Nine. A full nine!" Karen's eyes narrowed. Out of twelve Order knight orders, excluding the First Knight Order which could not be moved, and excluding the two confronting the allied forces in the desert, only nine remained. That meant the Church of Order had staked every single knight order available to it right now. What kind of gambler's gamble was this? No, even among gamblers, few possessed the audacity to push all their prime chips into the pot at once. Even Neo only went all-in with bloodshot eyes after a string of small losses. Now, every missionary parish and sacred land of the Church of Order was stripped of mobile protection from the knight orders, leaving them completely exposed to the entire religious circle. If any other religion declared war on Order at this moment and dispatched an army to attack, then the various regions under the Church of Order could only barely protect themselves using their defensive systems, devoid of any capacity to counterattack. Diknuo explained, "We bypassed all of the Church of Life's outer sacred lands and set the target of our first offensive straight on the Newnas Subcontinent. We call it: leapfrog tactics. "Yes, the defenses of the Newnas Subcontinent are heavily fortified and have been built up over ages. But while such defense appears foolproof on the surface, it actually harbors a massive vulnerability. To defend everywhere is to defend nowhere. "As long as an assault is launched from multiple directions with overwhelming force, this defensive system can only collapse in an instant. "Then, our church's knight orders will thrust deep into the continent at breakneck speed." Karen asked, "Was this your idea?" "No, it was the unanimous consensus of all three of us. Because we discovered that what has regressed isn't merely soldier strength, equipment, or war machines... In this era, even strategic thinking has severely degraded. "With defensive planning this moronic, just how foolish must those people in the Church of Life be to arrange it like that? "Still, I imagine that if given enough time to study and familiarize myself with the other religions, I believe the fools certainly wouldn't be limited to this one." Karen said, "I think if I showed you the grinding, line-filling stalemate we fought in the desert, you'd probably cough up blood from anger." It had clearly been a religious war, yet it was fought very much like trench warfare between two secular empires. "I've read the battle reports of that campaign. There was a reason for that. The true intent of the desert campaign was to temper the troops, not primarily to occupy, expel, or annihilate. On the contrary, ground sometimes had to be deliberately yielded to bait the enemy into committing forces for attrition. "Fighting brilliantly in such a rigid, hamstrung battle is truly the hardest feat of all. It can only rely on a genius commander triggering a chain of tactical victories on localized fronts to force the collapse of the enemy's entire line." Little Kanna looked up, pointing the tip of her pen at Diknuo. "Hey, he's flattering you!" "Ahem, ahem..." Diknuo coughed dryly twice to cover his embarrassment. Having read the desert campaign reports, how could he possibly have missed the illustrious feats of "his Lord"? Still, for a proud man like him, flattery was genuinely not his intention; it was an unalterable instinct. After all, the Lord he had praised his entire life was sitting right in front of him. Karen brought the subject back on track. "However, have you considered what kind of disadvantage both the battlefield and our church would fall into if the war does not proceed as smoothly as envisioned?" The church's disadvantage was that, aside from the First Knight Order, there were no mobile trump-card legions left in reserve; the battlefield disadvantage was that while this leapfrog maneuver appeared easy and swift, as long as the Church of Life held firm in their core region, what awaited the Order knight orders was severed supply lines, and the awkward predicament of being encircled and harassed by outer Life sacred lands. While Karen didn't believe the Church of Life had the power to swallow nine Order knight orders whole, and withdrawing those nine knight orders shouldn't pose too much of a problem, it would inevitably incur considerable casualties, all while failing to achieve the strategic objective. The Church of Order's greatest deterrent power stemmed from the impression of its sheer invincibility. Thus, it could not afford to lose; a single defeat would drastically diminish that deterrence. "Young Master, when formulating the battle plan, we received a wealth of intelligence. Inside the Church of Life, we have plenty of informants. The preliminary military deployments provided by these moles were exceptionally detailed, and once hostilities commence, they will also provide coordinated support." Hearing this, Karen thought of Daliwenluo's stepmother, whom he had met at Sea of Heart Manor. She was clearly an informant cultivated by the Whip of Order, with contact established as far back as Bucken's era. Furthermore, with numerous subordinate departments in the Church of Order, it was impossible that only the Whip of Order possessed collaborators. At that moment, a thought struck Karen, and he asked, "Did you read the report on Order's 'First Day War' against Samsara from not long ago?" "I have." Diknuo seemed to understand what Karen was getting at, adding, "That, too, must have been backed by ample intelligence from moles within." Karen fell silent. At his current rank, he had sufficient clearance to access many classified secrets. Yet even he had remained completely oblivious to the existence of this inevitably massive "mole network." That was exceedingly strange. Actions like the Bern family's "caging and replacing the bird" scheme against the Church of Pamires appeared secretive, but clues could actually be unearthed because such a monumental plan required immense resources to be funneled in. For instance, Bern's father becoming the Pontiff and Bern's son becoming the successor required resources from the Church of Order to be stacked quietly behind the scenes. Just as warfare required logistical preparations—while armies on the front line could be concealed, rearward preparations of war materiel could never be completely masked. First Samsara, then Life—just which department in the church could build such a colossal framework of moles without any significant investment of resources? Karen had a hunch that even Foden was unaware of this mysterious framework—or perhaps he knew of it, but could not control it. Moreover, during the desert campaign, Order's intelligence network could hardly be called brilliant; at best, it had fought to a draw with the enemy's intelligence apparatus... Yet the question was: the Church of Order was just a single religion, whereas the opposing coalition comprised so many orthodox religions. How had Order managed to break even in the intelligence war? Infiltrating one another with plants was standard practice among religions. When all the infiltrators from the coalition were combined, the sheer volume should have been staggering. Yet as a frontline commander, Karen had never felt that kind of overwhelming, all-encompassing intelligence pressure. Thinking back, his past criticism and dissatisfaction toward Order's intelligence apparatus had merely been him looking through his own narrow perspective, overlooking the broader reality. Seeing this, Diknuo assumed Karen was still worried about the front lines and offered comfort: "Young Master, as long as reports confirm that the main force of our knight orders has broken through the outer defenses and entered the interior of the Newnas Subcontinent, this operational plan will basically be more than half successful." Karen nodded somewhat perfunctorily, then closed his eyes and began to contemplate. The carriage passed through the barrier of the Discipline Department. After stepping down, Karen led Diknuo into his office. Pushing open the office door, he saw a man sitting in his chair with his feet propped up on the desk, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and reading an intelligence brief marked 'Top Secret' in the other. Diknuo glared, but before he could flare up in anger, Karen's voice came: "Looks like there's fresh news." Neo tapped the intelligence report and smiled. "Indeed. In just a single day, they broke into the Newnas Subcontinent." Pausing, Neo glanced at Diknuo standing beside Karen and grinned. "Those commanders from the last era sure have a wild way of fighting." Karen said, "I thought it would suit your tastes." "Using leverage only risks point coupons, not human lives. I could never pick up this style." Neo stood up and stretched. "Looking at it now, holding that drawing of lots in advance had its uses after all. It made the Church of Life nervous early on, reinforcing defensive troop deployments at their outer sacred lands. But our tactics this time differed from the strike against Samsara, which ironically left the Church of Life's core area somewhat empty. "Next, it depends on whether the remaining Life priests on the Newnas Subcontinent can defend the Garden of Life. Their Holy See district definitely won't hold out, haha." At that moment, Alfred walked in. "Young Master." Karen pointed at Diknuo and said, "Go with him." "Yes, Young Master." Once Diknuo and Alfred had departed, Karen shut the office door. "There's something I only just realized, and I want to hear your thoughts." Neo pointed at himself in mild surprise. "My thoughts? Haha, I'm honored that an aging captain like me can still be of some use before you." "In the Church of Order's external espionage and intelligence apparatus, there is a realm beyond my reach. It truly exists, yet leaves no traces. I imagine there must be a department responsible for it, but the resources this department can mobilize... are not vast. "Yet the results they produce cannot be overlooked. Both against Samsara and in the present war, they have played an enormous role." "I know what you mean." "You know?" "No, I don't know, but I roughly understand what's going on. You've simply spent too long within the Order system and taken everything inside it for granted. "The only thing you overlooked is the sheer allure that the faith of Order holds for those outside the system." "Go on." "Over a thousand years ago, why did the Church of Order manage to win its contest against the Church of Light? "In truth, the Mad Pope's actions were merely the straw that broke the camel's back. "He merely accelerated the outcome; he did not alter the direction of the process. "In your view, a mole operates on give and take—either a mutual exchange of interests, or simple corruption and bribery. That inevitably entails the movement of vast resources; fundamentally, it's a relationship where each party gets what they want. "But have you ever considered that an even more peculiar, purer relationship exists? One where: I want nothing at all... I just want to serve Order?" Karen sat down in his chair, listening as Neo continued. Neo refilled his coffee and continued, "Let me ask you: if your grandfather weren't Diss, if your last name weren't Inmeles, if you lived in some other land but also entered the religious circle, and after thoroughly understanding everything about it you were given another chance to choose—or simply asked which one you genuinely favored—which church would you feel drawn to?" "Order." It was an answer given without the slightest hesitation. "Then what makes you think no one else could feel the same way?" "I roughly get your point, but it still feels surreal." Karen organized his words. "It sounds a bit too idealistic—I mean, regarding outsiders." "I have the Mad Pope's memories in my head. When I have nothing to do, I browse through them like storybooks. There was one part that once baffled me completely and seemed surreal. But looking at my own reality now, I can't laugh anymore. In fact, I understand it all too well. "Do you know which department in the Church of Light was most prone to spawning Order spies back when Light and Order contested each other? "You didn't need to pour in resources, nor did you need to instigate defection. They would reach out to you on their own initiative, asking for no terms, solely to make a contribution—willingly, asking for nothing in return. "The answer is... the intelligence department. "To defeat your adversary, you must first understand and know them, including their doctrines. "Too many Light priests in the intelligence department studied and studied... until one day, realization suddenly struck them, and they defected to Order of their own accord. "Don't laugh, it's true. The intelligence branches of various churches dedicated to handling the Church of Order often end up being reverse-infiltrated into Swiss cheese. "Why did Budalas, after winning the contest with Light, refrain from launching wars of annexation against other churches and instead promote the Order Regulations? It was because he knew why the Church of Light lost, and what the Church of Order relied on to win. "Even today, the Church of Order is still enjoying the historical dividends left by Budalas. "Of course, Budalas himself was enjoying dividends too—her dividends." Neo walked over to the window, looked up at the sky, and sighed with emotion: "She isn't merely sitting there doing nothing. She is nurturing a whole new era."