Chapter 61: There Is Only One Truth

Wayne was in deep trouble! He didn’t know who the Death Knight was, but every title Julia rattled off was longer than the last. The knight was clearly someone important. People like him were often petty with a possessive streak. Wayne’d stolen his equipment and horse...

He was a nobody and couldn’t guess what the Death Knight would think, but putting himself in the Death Knight’s shoes, if someone rode his beloved mare and galloped away with his sword, then shamelessly claimed to be training the mare for him when confronted...

Oh, he was so dead!

Moreover, the Death Knight served the Goddess of Death. Wayne only entered the world of magic because of Death’s followers. The mark they left on him was the reason the three magical girls showed up at his door in the middle of the night. He’d finally shaken off the curse and managed to turn to the light side and join a legitimate church, but now he was getting entangled with Death again?

What was this, a death wish or outright suicide?

Wayne wanted to dismount, but Julia adamantly refused. She wasn’t an easy horse. Now that he had drawn the sword and mounted her, he would be her master.

“I’m just worried that the Death Knight will come looking and misunderstand...”

“Don’t worry. He’s brainless.”

“However brainless, he still has a brain...”

“No, he’s literally brainless. He even lost his head.”

Wayne fell silent. Lost his sword, lost his horse, and even lost his head. The Death Knight couldn’t be in a more pathetic state. He imagined the Death Knight fumbling around with a white cane under moonlight, a headless skeleton calling for his mount as cold wind blew through his lonely heart. It was as tragic as it was comical.

No wonder the Death Knight hadn’t found Julia after so long. He even lost his head. It would take a miracle for him to find his horse.

Wayne pursed his lips. Honestly, he didn’t want to give up the power he had acquired. The Death Knight’s disguise, especially, would be perfect for doing bad things at night—he meant for combating crimes anonymously. The benefits far outweighed the risks.

The temptation was too great. He couldn’t let go, so he decided to take things one step at a time. For now, he’d keep riding the horse!

“Julia, you mentioned the underground catacombs. Can you elaborate?”

He had heard a lot about the urban legends. The most well-known underground burial site was in Palis, Franc, converted from an abandoned quarry. It was said to house the remains of millions of people, piling up into mountains. One strike of a pickaxe, and bones would come tumbling out.

Londan also had similar tales that were popularized in recent years. The earliest story was about a subway line at night. The witness claimed that the train was running normally until it suddenly entered a tunnel filled with mountains of corpses.

The Londan underground had always been a hotbed of a great variety of urban legends, such as a late-night train that led straight to hell, transporting the dead on a one-way journey.

So creepy!

Wayne didn’t know much more about the stories. Riding the undead horse with the spirit dog in tow, he circled the cemetery again and again.

Three skeletons moved together, as if they were patrolling their territory.

***

“Why would the Death Knight’s warhorse appear in Londan when the underground catacombs were located in Palis? His warhorse wasn’t supposed to appear here...”

“There is only one truth—the Death Knight is in Londan!”

Bang!

Silvia slammed the table, coldly scanning the three priests seated around the conference table. “First, the Darkness Knight returned, and now the Death Knight extended his claws to Londan. Your incompetence is shameful. Will someone give me a reasonable explanation now?”

The three priests—two men and one woman who appeared to be in their thirties and forties—remained silent.

The Church of Nature had been in the Kingdom of Windsor for a long time. Due to the nation being right across the sea from the Church’s main base, they had always paid special attention to the Windsor Branch. The branch headquarters were established in Londan, with one High Reverend overseeing the district with four assisting priests.

For over a hundred years, nothing had gone amiss, until the Darkness Knight appeared in Londan!

The Darkness Knight, a servant of the Goddess of Darkness who walked among mortals, was incredibly powerful and had many times destroyed the Church of Nature’s base. In response, the Church of Nature organized several hunts, even recruiting priests from the Church of Sun and the Church of Moon, but they still lost despite their greater numbers and suffered humiliation.

In the most recent attempt, the Church of Nature deployed all their elite forces from across Windsor, gathering everyone in Londan for a revenge battle. However, the hundred and some mages failed to defeat the Darkness Knight. The High Reverend was beaten nearly to death and almost killed in action.

The incompetent High Reverend was called back to the headquarters for recovery. Darkness had corrupted his consciousness, and he was more dead than alive. There was no telling if he would recover from that.

The Windsor branch was under the firm grasp of the four priests. Silvia, a newcomer, couldn’t command them properly. None of her orders were able to get out of her office, and she was reduced to mere eye candy.

The turning point came with the Geocentrism Sect in Enrod—specifically, with the legendary mage Marshall, who titled himself the Lord of the Void. Marshall was a legendary mage of the Windsor branch of the Church of Nature, with distinguished feats under his belt and an outstanding reputation. Due to his outstanding achievements and contributions to the Kingdom of Windsor, as well as his unmatched influence, he was ennobled by the royal family.

Suffice it to say that Marshall was integral to the establishment of the Londan office in Windsor, and thus, the district had gathered many of Marshall’s disciples.

Sidney, a distinguished student of his, was one of the four priests in control of the Windsor branch, enjoying a similarly great fame. If not for his master’s sudden loss of sanity and betrayal of his faith—a stain too great to whitewash—he would’ve naturally become the High Reverend.

According to the higher-ups, while Sidney’s master had gone mad and publicly abandoned the goddess, causing an uproar, Sidney remained a devout follower of Nature. The church recognized his devotion and allowed him to stay in office.

He was no child. He recognized the words as lip service, and not becoming the High Reverend didn’t stop him from exercising the power of one. Joining forces with his three colleagues, he held onto his power and only showed the newly assigned High Reverend Silvia deference on the surface. He was satisfied with her complete helplessness.

However, his master caused him trouble again, merely two days after her arrival.

The Geocentrism Sect attempted to sacrifice Enrod, and Sidney was suspected of being connected to the cult. He was thus suspended from duty and could only have a staring contest with his owl to kill time. Whether there were actual connections between him and the cult and whether he had covered for the Geocentrism Sect were still under investigation. The matter was too great for the details to be revealed.

𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

However, his embezzlement and mistress had been found out with irrefutable evidence.

In a power struggle, truth often didn’t matter. What mattered was that Sidney had fallen. Silvia seized the opportunity to reclaim some of her authority, and she received congratulatory messages and commendations from headquarters for foiling the cult’s schemes and saving the townspeople, thus preserving the church’s reputation.

That day, she took advantage of the situation and further reclaimed her power from the three priests.

Silvia was a capable woman with many tricks up her sleeve. She decisively reshuffled the power dynamic by promoting the marginalized, underappreciated individuals in each department, pressuring the three priests and leaving them with almost no breathing room; they had to band together to put up any resistance.

Failure was inevitable. The writing was on the wall the day Sidney fell from grace. The three priests would either submit or be thoroughly investigated for moral corruption.

Today, Silvia summoned them to explain their incompetence.

The Darkness Knight was undeniably powerful, and it was a fact that they failed to defeat him. The three priests cast blame on the previous High Reverend, pointing at the High Reverend’s wrong strategy rather than their incompetence.

However, they couldn’t shift the blame in the case of the Death Knight. If they couldn’t even handle monitoring properly, what could they do? Just eating what they were fed?

The Church of Nature wasn’t going to feed a mouth that couldn’t do their job. They could always be replaced by people who could do both.

“I’ll give you ten days to find the Death Knight’s horse and Shadow Nightmare...” Silvia looked at the three priests in turn, dropping three thick file folders on the table with a heavy thud. “If you haven’t brought back the horse and the sword by then, I’ll contact headquarters and handle everything by the book.”

The three priests felt like they had plunged into ice-cold water. This wench had already found evidence to incriminate them in such a short time.

What was wrong with embezzling some money? They had risked their lives for the church all these years; what was wrong with wanting compensation to improve their lives?