The tension in the hall was palpable, taut enough to slice.
Caius sat upon the elevated high seat, coldly observing the candidates below.
The priests in dark-gray heavy armor beside him held their breath in absolute stillness, as though the very air in the hall had frozen solid.
In under a minute, one villain stepped forward to submit his irreverent creation against the Goddess of Fate to High Priest Caius.
"High Priest Caius, I have finished."
The submitter presented the stone statue of the Goddess of Fate, shattered to pieces by hammer blows, a confident smile on his face.
Yet.
Caius merely cast a cold glance over it.
And shook his head.
"Mere destruction. The degree of insult is far too low."
The villain's face changed drastically. He tried to speak up in his own defense.
But Caius simply made a gesture. The priest in dark-gray heavy armor beside him stepped forward immediately, gripped his arm firmly, and dragged him toward the passage leading deep into the hall.
Terror and disbelief painted the villain's face as he shouted, "I am loyal to the Resurrection Church! I haven't betrayed anyone!"
No one answered. His cries echoed through the hollow hall until they faded away.
Witnessing this, the other candidates felt a chill run down their spines.
"Such perfunctory work fails to prove your loyalty. And without sufficient loyalty, there is serious suspicion of ties to the Church of the Goddess of Fate. We shall detain you for observation."
Having spoken, Caius rested his chin in his hand once more, lapsing into silence.
Several villains immediately began nervously modifying their works, terrified of being deemed inadequate as well.
By now, some below had seen through the scheme.
Regardless of whether a candidate was truly suspected of being from the Church of the Goddess of Fate, Caius had no intention of letting anyone who had passed the written exam slip away to the Domination branch.
Claiming every single person present for himself—that was his true objective.
Just as everyone thought no one else would dare step up immediately,
Barely ten seconds had passed.
A tall woman clad in silver skirt armor rose to her feet and strode directly before Caius on the high dais.
She placed a sharply chiseled, six-sided cube of stone upon the table.
"..."
This gave Caius pause for a moment.
He had not expected Side, the most suspicious among them, to be so straightforward.
She had simply reduced the statue of the Goddess of Fate back to raw stone.
A stone cube—whether shaped through unique magic or sheer physical skill, one could hardly tell.
"Decisive and swift. You pass."
After a brief consideration, Caius set the stone cube on the left side of the table.
Instead of discarding it as he had with the previous candidate's work, accepting it was the proof of passing.
Caius's suspicion that she might be an undercover agent of the Church of the Goddess of Fate only deepened.
Yet if she truly was a mole, he was all the more interested in inducting her, playing along, and showing her what it meant to have no wings to escape and to plunge into utter despair.
Many below glanced up covertly to observe.
In truth, to their eyes, this work by the woman in silver skirt armor teetered right on the borderline between passing and failing.
Yet perhaps it was her firm, resolute demeanor that prompted Caius to grant her a pass.
Side then returned to her original seat. Her expression was as cold and aloof as ever as she crossed her arms and closed her eyes to rest, waiting for the announcement of the final evaluation roughly twenty minutes later.
Minutes ticked by.
Gradually, more villains finished their works and stepped forward to submit them.
Redor "Fire Tongue," who held quite a reputation among the crowd, sauntered forward. His red hair drifted like dancing flames as he set his completed stone statue before Caius. He had incinerated it with fire until it was charred pitch-black—a ravaged, hideous corpse of charcoal that had almost lost all human semblance.
Caius studied it for a moment, nodded, placed the piece on the table, and gestured that he could step down.
Redor, an imitator of the Bishop of Destruction, grinned with confidence as he turned back, evidently satisfied that his creation met the requirements perfectly.
However, the next few submitters were not so fortunate.
Caius deemed their works substandard, tossing them straight into the scrap pile, and the submitters themselves were dragged off by the heavy-armored priests. Each instance stoked further panic among the candidates below.
Almost every candidate seized by the priests in dark-gray heavy armor screamed incessantly: "I am loyal to the Resurrection Church! Why?!"
Yet Caius seemed completely indifferent, impassively eyeing the next applicant.
Not until Graf "Minced Meat" lumbered up with a grave expression did things change. His massive frame seemed to dwarf the entire dais.
He placed down a dismembered statue of the Goddess of Fate, carved exactly as he would butcher a human being. Caius could even spot faint traces of blood on it.
Caius was silent for a moment. "This piece... is very good."
Next, several villains Caius had favored during his review of the written exams turned in impressive answers. Walter "Poison Sting" had sculpted the statue of the Goddess of Fate into a human figure that had died in agony from taboo vivisection and biological modification; Gia "Blood Throat" had infused the statue with melody magic, turning her into an evil deity writhing and wailing in the depths of hell.
Following them, Thors "Eyeball Collector" stepped forward at a measured pace and presented his altered statue to Caius.
The stone eyes had been gouged out, and numerous small cavities had been bored into its body, stuffed with biological eyes from strange beasts of unknown origin. Through whatever spell he had cast, when Caius looked at the statue, all the eyeballs swiveled in unison to lock gazes with him.
Even Caius felt a twinge of revulsion. He accepted it as a passing piece and placed it on the table.
As candidate after candidate submitted their work, those still unfinished grew increasingly frantic in the shadow of these "works of art."
Above the doors, the great clock ticked incessantly, its churning gears marking the passage of their remaining time.
"Ten minutes remaining,"
Caius's voice rang out, cold and devoid of emotion.
"Anyone who fails to finish on time will be treated directly as a cultist of the Goddess of Fate."
His words blew across the hall like an icy draft, driving the temperature down further.
This penalty and threat served as an immense deterrent to those who had yet to submit, driving them to bury their heads and work faster.
Some candidates glanced back at the clock, anxiety and dread leaking into their eyes, while others remained composed, appearing utterly confident that their work would earn Caius's approval.
Those who had already passed and were awaiting the final evaluation remained in their seats, expressionless.
They merely waited for time to run out and the final assessment to arrive.
Fewer and fewer candidates continued to work. The crisp sounds of tools striking stone statues were gradually drowned out by the grinding gears of the clock.
Caius sat on his high seat, leaning slightly to the side with his chin propped on his hand.
Though he did not fix his gaze on any particular applicant, among the remaining candidates, the only one who still held his interest was the youth named Luoqi.
He felt that anyone capable of producing such a written exam could hardly be suspected of being clergy from the Church of the Goddess of Fate.
Yet this second round of testing was necessary. Every individual's true nature had to be vetted.
No matter how brilliant his written score was, if his allegiance and loyalty were not rock-solid, he would have to be destroyed—he could not be allowed to serve anyone else.
At last.
As Caius waited,
Lanqi finished his work. With eyes holding a hint of satisfaction and a trace of fatigue, he rose and walked toward Caius.
He placed the creation before Caius.
It was a remodeled stone statue of the Goddess of Fate.
Caius lifted his head slightly, looked at Lanqi, and then turned his eyes to the sculpture.
Immediately, his gaze seemed frozen to the statue of the Goddess of Fate. He remained silent for quite a while.
Meanwhile, the unusually prolonged silence born of Caius's delay in passing judgment drew the glances of other candidates toward Lanqi's work.
The young man who had submitted it looked entirely nonchalant.
Instead, it was his creation that left Caius thoroughly bewildered.
The statue of the Goddess of Fate, as carved by him, had slightly altered its posture. It was remade into a new pose and rendered with astonishing intricacy.
As if crafted by a peerless master artisan, the goddess's form was lifelike and full of warmth, as though she might spring to life in the very next breath.
And when the other candidates caught sight of Lanqi's work, none could help marveling at its artistry.
If they were merely amateurs, this fellow was undoubtedly the professional among professionals. None had ever seen a sculptor of such caliber. A few even showed glimmers of greed in their eyes, straining to suppress the urge to snatch the statue away—no matter how one looked at it, it was an invaluable masterpiece!
However, they soon noticed the peculiarity of the altered statue.
Their expressions quickly mirrored Caius's.
The goddess, usually so serene and steeped in divinity, now bore an arrogant smirk at the corners of her lips. Her pose had been changed to raise a hand with index and middle fingers extended—a palm-inward V sign.
It carried a distinct air of contempt for every villain present.
By all rights, sculpting the Goddess of Fate so radiant and enchantingly beautiful ought to have resulted in an immediate failure.
Yet Caius discovered a bizarre duality in this fellow—
He genuinely couldn't tell whether Luoqi was praising the goddess or slandering her.
Chapter 264