William was a Transcendent. That meant, when it came to extracting answers, he had far more options than ordinary men.

  The Path he walked was the one that primarily studied Tower. At present, he had only opened the First Sephiroth. He was a Scholar—known in ancient times as an Acolyte of Wisdom!

  A Scholar did not grant a formidable physique or any overwhelming transcendent power. It simply made William’s mind more agile, and allowed him to focus more deeply while learning.

  And that strengthened capacity for learning had allowed him, under Javon’s guidance, to pick up a good number of practical curses and rituals.

  After forcing Mrs. Hugues into a secluded alley, William used a few minor tricks to push her into a muddled, half-conscious state.

  “Tell me… is Isabet still alive?” William asked, clinging to the last shred of hope.

  “Dead…” Mrs. Hugues replied, her eyes empty.

  William forced down the urge to squeeze the trigger, drew a long breath, and continued. “What did she die from?”

  “She was offered as a sacrifice to—”

  Halfway through, Mrs. Hugues’s expression twisted in sudden agony. “I… I can’t… I can’t speak that honored name…”

  “This reaction?” William’s pupils tightened. “There’s another ritual and contract binding her?”

  “An honored name… does this involve an evil god? That Holy Spirit Church really is rotten. Tell me—what’s wrong with the church on Mary Street?”

  “I… I can’t say…”

  Her face contorted even further. Then, as if jolted awake from her stupor, she clawed at her own throat, strangling herself until her eyes rolled white.

  “No—!”

  William lunged to stop her, only to find the old woman’s strength had become unnaturally great.

  In the end, Mrs. Hugues collapsed onto the ground. A devout smile spread across her face as black blood spilled from her lips.

  “I have drunk the blood…”

  She never finished. Her head tilted to one side, and her breathing ceased.

  William stared at the corpse, his expression gradually turning blank.

  He crouched down and searched her body. All he found were a few copper pennies.

  Her clothes were threadbare, the look of a woman in real poverty. The only thing that didn’t fit was the pendant around her neck: a blood-colored human figure bound upon a black thorn tree.

  “Hm?”

  The moment he saw it, William’s intuition stirred. He lifted the pendant into his palm and examined it closely.

  The black and the red seemed to form a union—contradictory, yet coherent. Beneath the symmetrical spread of that thorny ironwood, as if it could pierce the heavens, the figure looked even more vividly crimson.

  It wore a simple robe. Its arms were spread wide, as though it meant to embrace the world—yet its face was nothing but a blur.

  A chill crawled over William’s skin. It felt as if something in the darkness had swept its gaze across him, and even his Essence trembled.

  “This… this… this involves an evil god!”

  He snapped his head toward the church. “That church… has a serious problem!”

  At that moment, his emotions screamed for him to charge inside, tear out the hidden secret, and avenge Isabet.

  But his cold reason warned him just as sharply: he was a rookie. He had no place in this—and no strength to avenge anyone.

  William covered his face with both hands and began to sob in a low voice.

  “Isabet… I’m sorry… I… I’m a coward… a craven… But I’ll report this anonymously to the Bureau of Occult Affairs… You won’t die without the truth being known.”

  Tap. Tap.

  Footsteps sounded at the mouth of the alley.

  “Who’s there?”

  William reflexively raised his pistol—and saw a young man in a cleric’s robe approaching at an unhurried pace.

  The newcomer was handsome. But black veins were crawling across his face, writhing as though alive…

  Bang! Bang!

  William fired on instinct. Yet the moment the bullets passed through him, the young cleric abruptly turned into a black shadow.

  “Damn it—an illusion!”

  William’s heart lurched. At once, a tremendous force slammed into him from the side, hurling him against the wall. His organs felt as though they’d shifted with the impact, and his pistol flew from his grasp.

  “Heh… so it’s just a rookie. I thought you were one of the Bureau’s hyenas.”

  Priest Im stepped out of the darkness, eyes cold. “Tell me… why are you investigating this?”

  “I…”

  William wanted to spit a curse, but he had no strength left.

  Just as he shut his eyes and waited for death, firelight detonated in the dark.

  Boom!

  A far louder gunshot ripped open the night’s silence. Priest Im’s body flew backward like a torn sack.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “See that? Rookie… that’s how you aim.”

  A figure holding a double-barreled shotgun emerged slowly from the darkness, a mad grin carved across his face.

  “You’re… Karl the Mad?” William rasped.

  “Hey, hey… don’t you die on me. I took a commission to bring you back alive.”

  Karl strode up, checked William’s condition, forced a bottle of potion down his throat, and immediately hauled him away.

  That gunfire would have drawn attention. If they didn’t move now, they wouldn’t make it out.

  Inside the Hunter Bar, after closing.

  Karl left cheerfully once he’d been paid.

  Javon turned to William, whose chest was wrapped in white bandages. Several ribs were probably broken; he looked like a mummy.

  “So… what’s the result?”

  “That church involves an evil god. Every believer has been placed under contractual rituals—they can’t reveal the specifics. This is all I found.”

  William produced the black-and-red pendant.

  “But after that cleric got killed, the Bureau of Occult Affairs will definitely intervene. That church will be purged.”

  “An interesting little toy.”

  A fascinated smile appeared on Javon’s face as he toyed with the pendant in his hand.

  He did not divine recklessly—after all, it involved an evil god.

  The image didn’t resemble any of the Twelve Velthyr, nor any hidden existence he recognized. But it could have been a mask, or an avatar.

  “Stay here and rest.”

  After leaving the instruction, Javon departed the bar and returned to No. 27 Phoenix Street.

  In the bedroom, once everything was arranged, he recited the honored name and summoned the Spirit of Null Observance, possessing Oclair as he headed for the church on Mary Street.

  “Even with a shooting and a death, the police will be alerted… but between discovering something wrong, filing a report to the Bureau, and the Bureau arriving, there’s still a gap.”

  When Javon reached Mary Street, the area around the church had indeed been sealed off. Officers were patrolling.

  But they couldn’t see a Malevolent Spirit. Javon walked into the church and wandered about at leisure.

  “A stench of corruption…”

  Following his intuition, Javon passed through wall after wall, and suddenly entered a hidden chamber.

  At the chamber’s center were traces of a bonfire. Bound to a dark, mottled iron pillar was a charred corpse, shriveled black.

  An evil altar.

  And that black, emaciated corpse gave Javon an unsettling sense of familiarity.

  “Isabet…”

  “This habit of burning people alive as sacrifices… it feels vaguely familiar…”

  He swept his gaze across the room. This chamber was clearly used often—heretics gathering, praying, offering sacrifices—until even the surroundings were steeped in corruption.

  At the chamber’s front, facing the altar, stood a grotesque statue.

  On a black thorn tree hung a blood-colored human figure. Its face was blurred, arms spread wide, as though it wished to embrace everything.

  “Why does the Holy Spirit Church always end up in trouble?”

  “But the feeling this statue gives me is clearer now… and it doesn’t seem that strong. Not a Velthyr, not even a hidden existence… it doesn’t even have the strength to trigger my Danger Premonition.”

  Javon walked to Isabet’s corpse. To be safe, he still used Isabet as the divination focus.

  “Her final experience!”

  “Her final experience!”

  …

  This time, with a Malevolent Spirit as his vessel, Javon was effectively divining as a Fourth Sephiroth Transcendent—able to obtain far richer information.

  Light and shadow overlapped, and it was as if he had been carried back into the chamber’s past.

  Through the haze, he saw believers gathering, led by a young cleric, praying to the black-and-red statue.

  “We have all drunk His blood. We are all sisters and brothers.”

  “The Lord will grant us the key, and push open the gate of Essence.”

  “The Lord will bless you!”

  With a casual wave of his hand, the young cleric had two believers bind Isabet to the iron pillar.

  “To become the god’s offering, to open the way for us—such fortune is yours.”

  Isabet’s expression was panicked like a startled fawn. Her lips moved again and again, but no sound came out.

  In the end, within black flames, the heretics cried out in loud praise:

  “Master of thorns and blood.”

  “Servitor of corruption and crimson.”

  “Great God of Suffering!”

  “You are the guide of desire and Essence—accept our sacrifice, and open the gate of Essence for us!”

  …

  The chamber returned to stillness.

  “This ritual… and this pattern of prayer?”

  Javon’s eyes sharpened. “It resembles… an old missionary style.”

  There were many ways to accumulate Essence. Methods like meditation were the slowest.

  Directly seizing the Essence of Transcendents on the same Path was the fastest—and the most polluted.

  Beyond that, there was another method:

  Found a cult.

  Let awakened believers worship the cult leader to madness as an idol of personality. Design an exclusive honored name and sacrificial rites, and draw vast amounts of Essence from that fanatic faith.

  In the early stage, it might not match the speed of devouring other Transcendents. But once the cult grew large enough, the pace of Essence accumulation would make others despair.

  Of course, founding a cult and harvesting Essence brought pollution and risk. The greatest hidden danger was this:

  If the divine image the believers worshiped differed from one’s original self, then over time, that divine image would overwrite the original personality. In the best case, it ended in a fractured mind. More often, it simply became another person altogether—replaced by the divine image completely.

  “Generally speaking, when those early esoteric cult leaders weren’t high-level yet, they often served as the main celebrant and hid among the praying crowd, harvesting Essence at close range… but that’s easy to expose.”

  “A truly high-level Transcendent, however, will design a True Name. As long as believers pray within a certain range, Essence can be harvested remotely—without needing to be present.”

  By Javon’s occult knowledge, to respond within a certain range was not reliably possible even after opening the Fifth Sephiroth.

  It was far more likely that only a Sixth Sephiroth Crowned One could possess a hint of something godlike!

  “That cleric got flattened by Karl—too weak. He definitely wasn’t the true cult leader… God of Suffering, huh?”

  Javon approached the blood-red idol on the black thorns and pressed his hand against its blurred face.

  “Let me see… where you are.”

  This was the final confirmation.

  Within the divination, Javon’s intuition scattered outward. Before his eyes appeared a magnificent city of vast scale, as though he were looking down from the sky.

  “Wynchester!”

  Fragments of chaotic, inexplicable information rose in his mind, interfering with the divination.

  “Cult of Desire… Sanguis and Umbral…”

  Then he opened his eyes and saw cracks spreading across the blood-red statue. In the next instant, it exploded into countless fine shards.

  “The interference is intense… so the Sephiroth level is indeed high. I think the target is Sixth Sephiroth… the cult leader of the Cult of Desire?”

  Javon murmured over what he had just divined.

  “The only thing I can confirm is that they’re in Wynchester. That’s almost the same as confirming nothing… The Paths are—Sanguis and Umbral. Of course. Those two Paths love causing trouble.”

  “I don’t know whether this Cult of Desire worships the Lord of Hidden Bones, or what relationship it has with the Lotus-Eater…”

  He gave the chamber one last look, wiped away traces of himself, and wrote Cult of Desire and Crowned One—and other clues—on the wall.

  As he left, Javon flicked his hand.

  Rumble!

  The wall blew open with a gaping hole, exposing everything in the chamber to the outside.

  An officer, startled by the explosion, ran over. The moment he saw the chamber’s contents, he erupted into a hysterical scream…

  “Hah… once ordinary people get involved with the occult, they rarely meet a good end. Even Transcendents live on the edge.”

  Back in the bedroom, Javon opened his eyes, stroking the Greenforest Ring on his hand. Light flickered in his gaze.

  “In truth, the occult system I created is brutally unfriendly to ordinary people. Even after becoming a Transcendent, the chance of reaching the summit is slim. Death and madness are the common refrain.”

  “Even as the hidden majority shareholder, I could still be toppled if a group of directors banded together.”

  “As for William… sigh… I can only hope time smooths over the pain.”

  Javon closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  After a brief investigation, he was already prepared to abandon the pursuit of the God of Suffering and the Cult of Desire.

  The other side was, after all, a being who had opened the Sixth Sephiroth. Before completing the ritual and advancing to the Omniforge, Javon had no intention of confronting such a foe directly.

  “I’ve exposed so many clues. If the Bureau of Occult Affairs is even half-competent, they’ll react.”

  “At the very least, they’ll intensify the wanted notices for the Cult of Desire, won’t they?”

  “Perfect. Let the Bureau test the waters for me… and let me see what kind of strength the National Bureau of Occult Affairs actually has.”