Lanqi Begins Wildly Messing with Their Heads

Lichtenstein Castle, ground-floor sanctuary. A profound hush hung over the soaring, ten-odd-meter-high sanctuary. Stained glass in the retro vaulted ceiling cast kaleidoscopic, mysterious patterns of light below. Dressed in a white robe and a silver circlet, solemn and sacred, the priest stood alone before the altar, his eyes closed in grave reverence. Afternoon light filtering through the clouds fell upon the people gathered in the sanctuary, gilding everything with a warm golden sheen. Around the priest reigned a solemn quiet, disturbed only by a gentle breeze that quietly carried the faint chime of the sanctuary bells. By now, the sanctuary had been swept clean. The remains of the castle's former master, High Priest Caligula, had been laid to rest outside the walls, with the priest offering funeral prayers over him. The priest slowly raised his hands. "Merciful Goddess, cleanse this departed soul of sorrow, pain, and confusion. Grant him peace, unbind his shackles, and guide him into the serene, radiant heavenly realm, that he may enjoy bliss in the next life." His voice was deep and resonant, echoing between the stone walls of the chapel like a wave of soothing warmth. The words brimmed with reverence and mourning for the dead, yet carried equal comfort and blessing for the living. When the priest's prayer concluded, all secular noise and turmoil had faded away. After a long pause— "Is this the power of divine arts?" The merchant scion from the Canberra Kingdom could not help looking up, remarking in wonder as he saw faint feathers of light drifting above High Priest Caligula's burial mound outside the window. Applying such a prayer to release the spirits of those who died wrongful deaths prevented powerful souls from turning into vengeful wraiths, while also stopping evil necromancers from enslaving the spirit or prying into its memories. Because their investigation had progressed so rapidly, and because the Detective had not only altered the Shadow World's mechanics but also vanished from the map, the challengers unexpectedly found themselves without an explicit objective for the afternoon. The pressure had shifted squarely onto the traitors. Originally, the traitors had a full five days to hunt down the Witch and the Werewolf; now that window was drastically compressed to just two. At the priest's suggestion, everyone had first buried High Priest Caligula's remains. Although this was not the real world, the Shadow World was a projection of history, proving that there truly had been such a high priest who sacrificed himself for human freedom in the past—a man deserving of a proper burial. At the same time, this prevented any traitor endowed with information-gathering necromancy from extracting vital intelligence from Caligula's corpse about what had happened before the Shadow World began. And so, inside the sanctuary hall, everyone once again gathered in scattered clusters, much as they had in the early morning. Yet all had lapsed into silence. Nobody knew what else they could do except wait for the traitors' turn. However, the atmosphere was no longer as stifling as it had been that morning. Several hours remained until nightfall. When dusk came, the two traitors' blood master would awaken, and the traitors would gain access to Blood Clan authorities, posing a tremendous threat to all challengers. "What do you all think the odds are that both traitors are Resurrection Church cultists?" Lanqi, standing in a corner, spoke up out of nowhere. He instantly drew everyone's attention. From the intent look in his eyes, it seemed he had wanted to hear everyone else's thoughts for some time. "Extremely high. You can practically assume anyone with the motive to trigger a real-world catastrophe is a Resurrection Church cultist, and a particularly vicious one at that," the merchant scion answered first with utter certainty. "According to statistics from the Southern Continent Shadow World Association, in all challenger-versus-challenger Shadow Worlds, 98.2% of the challengers who desire to trigger a real-world catastrophe are Resurrection Church cultists." His words surprised the others in the sanctuary slightly. The heir to a major merchant guild actually knew a thing or two. "I see." Lanqi nodded slowly, glancing sideways at Hyperion and briefly locking eyes with her. They even knew that the Resurrection Church was deliberately targeting them. Barring any surprise, when they queued into matchmaking, numerous Resurrection Church cultists must have entered the Shadow World simultaneously. Combined with the dual omen of Hyperion's initial "Actress" identity, that statistical 98.2% probability cited by the merchant scion could practically be rounded up to 99.9%. "Mr. Priest, do you believe the Goddess of Fate truly exists?" Lanqi turned toward the three clerics from the Northern Continent, tossing out another question. This sudden leap from one topic to another left the other challengers completely bewildered once again. "Although none can say how many eras ago the gods vanished into the very laws of the world, and no living person has ever laid eyes upon a deity... they still exist in another manner, merely unable to intervene in the mortal world through ordinary material means. This is precisely why we clergy can wield divine arts; our very existence is proof of theirs," the priest explained with gentle patience. As a rule, no matter who approached them with questions about the gods, they would always answer with patience. That was both their duty and their sacred calling. "I see." Lanqi nodded. Back in the South Vantina frontier territory, he had already studied priestly divine arts and magic cards; the Northern Continent priest's views largely aligned with what he already knew. After all, judging purely by Lanqi's attributes, becoming a priest would originally have been the optimal path. Divine arts were a variation of magic, reliant upon tapping and channeling the divine power left behind by the gods that constituted the world. Even without using one's own mana as an ignition source, divine arts could manifest miraculous spell effects. Thus, the potency of most genuine divine arts depended on one's Spirit attribute and the depth of one's faith. Yet Lanqi was a materialist who did not believe in gods. Even if he had entered the clergy, his level of faith would never be high. The priestly path was simply not for him. So he had decisively chosen that other most healing of professions: white mage. "While worshipping any of the numerous benevolent deities allows one to normally employ our clerical divine arts or magic cards, different deities impart different secondary effects. All of this matches the ancient legendary murals pieced together from the thirty-two Original Slates; perhaps in a divine age so distant we cannot fathom it, gods truly walked the mortal realm," the enthusiastic executioner added. "Across the temples of both the Southern and Northern Continents today, the reason the Goddess of Fate has the largest following of priests and believers isn't that her secondary effects are the strongest, but simply because the greatest number of people are genuinely willing to revere such a compassionate deity." "She has the most myths and legends, and sayings like 'The Goddess of Fate loves all living beings equally' and 'She is the only deity who can still intervene in the mortal world' are still widely circulated." "There is even an enduring legend that the divine nature of the Goddess of Fate is such that the moment you pray to her, she gains the authority to subtly alter your fate. And the more devout and enduring your prayers, the more of your inner voice reaches her." The three clerics of the Church of the Goddess of Fate took turns explaining to Lanqi. In this world, swearing an oath to a deity was a solemn affair; people believed the gods would listen. Vows made to any god could never be uttered lightly; whether those gods still existed or possessed the power to intervene, words could forge karmic bonds. There had been several incidents in the past where high-ranking members of the Resurrection Church sought redemption from the Goddess of Fate and defected—or perhaps no one could tell whether they had been priests of the Goddess of Fate from the beginning, having merely infiltrated the cult. Each time, these mortals blessed by fate dealt unimaginable, catastrophic blows to the Resurrection Church, making it hard to say whether the Goddess of Fate had truly guided their destinies. This was precisely why the Church of the Goddess of Fate and the Resurrection Church were mortal enemies. "I understand. Thank you, all three of you." After listening, Lanqi merely offered polite thanks without expressing the slightest intention of converting to the three enthusiastic clerics. Instead, he turned his gaze back to everyone gathered in the sanctuary. No one knew what kind of scheme he was cooking up now. Then, right under their watching eyes— "Everyone, please repeat after me: 'Praise be to the Goddess of Fate! If I am an evil cultist, if I am a malicious traitor, please steer my fate toward the destruction of the Resurrection Church!'" Lanqi raised his right hand, clenched his fist, and proclaimed in a clear, resonant voice. "...?" The challengers stared at Lanqi in utter bewilderment. Soon, someone caught on to what Lanqi was doing. While such an oath might not necessarily come to pass—fate, after all, was an ethereal and elusive thing— The Resurrection Church had an unwritten rule: Anyone who demonstrably became entangled with the Goddess of Fate could virtually never rise into the cult's upper echelons. What the Resurrection Church feared and shunned above all was the invisible intervention of the Goddess of Fate. Lanqi was essentially trying to sever these cultists' career prospects!