**Chapter 652: Harvest**
In a café on the edge of the Church District in Northern Tivyán, Doro sat in a quiet private room, listening to Nephnis’s explanation while sketching in her notebook. Before long, a sketch of a two-headed demon wolf with a grim expression appeared on the pages.
“There’s another rumor… It’s said that there’s a strange disease spreading in Tivyán, which turns those infected into terrifying beasts. The officials haven’t officially acknowledged the existence of this disease. Previously, St. Hymn Cathedral was secretly housing patients with this condition for research, and the terrifying howls that day were caused by a containment failure…
“Currently, this rumor is the latest one to emerge. Fewer people know about it compared to the earlier ones, and the most widespread is still the first one I mentioned, about the sealing. After all, most people believe in the Radiant Church, and stories about saints sealing away evil are classic. But the last rumor is spreading quite rapidly as well, especially among some rebellious youths. Many people at my school are already talking about it, and my roommate has even started conspiracy theories about the Church conducting secret experiments.”
Seated in her spot, Nephnis shared her observations and the information she had gathered over the past few days from various parts of Tivyán, while Doro, after listening to all the various rumors, gave a slight glance at her sketch and couldn’t help but sigh.
“What a range of theories! I didn’t expect so many ideas to pop up in such a short time. The public’s imagination truly knows no bounds…”
Doro remarked, while on the other side, Nephnis took a sip of coffee, placed the cup back on the table, and spoke softly.
“Yeah… These rumors are getting more and more exaggerated, claiming everything from ancient monsters to secret pathogens. In reality, it’s just a red-tier wolf attack. It caused a slight stir and then blew over. It’s all just fuss.”
Nephnis casually remarked, and upon hearing this, Doro couldn’t help but twitch her mouth slightly, thinking to herself that there are probably only four or five of those red-tier beings officially in the entire Prit Kingdom. One of them almost got crushed by a werewolf before, and now it was just referred to as a minor stir.
“Nephnis-senpai… Do you think red-tier extraordinary beings aren’t anything special?” With a slight smile, Doro asked. After hearing Doro’s words, Nephnis quickly shook her head.
“No, no, no, it’s not like that. We have encountered red-tier beings before. They are indeed very powerful and are on a different level compared to white chalk, but I think… if we want to strive on the path of the extraordinary, we can’t see red-tier beings as something lofty and unattainable. Otherwise, we would lose our motivation to strive and wouldn’t be enthusiastic about studying.
“Hmm… It’s like when I used to prepare for exams in high school for Crown University. The teachers would always tell us not to think too simply about getting into Crown University, but also not to think it’s too hard. Otherwise, we’d just add pressure to ourselves.” After contemplating for a moment, Nephnis said. Hearing her words, Doro couldn’t help but pause slightly and then continued.
“So… you think ascending to red-tier is like entering university?”
“That’s not entirely accurate. Ascending to red-tier is definitely harder than entering university. Though the two are quite different, for me, they both represent goals that require effort, so I’m just sharing my insights.
“Miss Doro, someone as talented as you, being able to enter Crown University at such a young age and also becoming red-tier at such an early stage, you’re my role model. Though I may not have as much talent as you, I believe that as long as I’m willing to invest more time, I can achieve what you have accomplished.”
Waving her hands, Nephnis spoke calmly. Hearing her words, Doro found herself momentarily speechless, unsure of what to say. After a pause, she finally said一句.
“A good attitude… can really be a good thing.”
“Of course! When you have a good attitude, then you can do other things well… Uh, it seems I’ve finished my drink. Miss Doro, please wait a moment while I go order something else.”
After saying this, Nephnis stood up from her chair, opened the door, and left the private room. Doro, after watching Nephnis leave for a bit, turned her gaze to the street outside, looking toward the end of the street where the heavily guarded gate to the Church District stood, beginning to ponder.
‘It’s been a while since Duval’s d*ath. Vania is still acting as the acting archbishop. Aside from those few times when the Tribunal’s investigation team caused her some trouble, nothing else has happened. The Sacred Summit should have acknowledged Vania’s performance, and for now, this matter seems to be settled.
‘Fortunately, it seems that Mr. Vorn’s testimony has had some effect.’
Doro thought to herself. After the surprise attack incident involving the Wolf bl**d Association, she had spent this time managing a series of aftermath matters. The main task was to erase any traces of her involvement in the incident.
One of the two main follow-up tasks was to cover for Vania’s use of the sunlight spear by having the red-tier Bureau Chief from the An Yin Bureau testify through a staged play. The second task was to arrange a prisoner for the Church’s interrogation.
On the day of the attack in the Church District’s underground forbidden library, Doro used the Night Demon’s whispered body at the last moment to lure the demon wolf Duval outside to confront Harold. His two subordinates, Braun and Vorn, took the opportunity to escape from the underground library, almost without a second thought to evade the red-tier conflict.
Braun and Vorn’s actions, naturally, wouldn’t escape Vania’s keen perception capabilities derived from St. Hymn Cathedral. Through the information channels, Doro could observe the Church District and surrounding areas from Vania’s viewpoint in a 360-degree angle. She didn’t even need to mobilize a zombie puppet to see Braun and Vorn’s precise movements.
Among the two werewolves, Doro had already completed a psychological profile of Vorn, and with a small command, like a brief look exchanged with a Crow Doll, she could activate the instruction she had pre-set in Vorn’s psyche, causing him to surrender completely and become Doro’s active puppet. In this way, he ambushed and killed his unsuspecting companion, Braun. Following a bloody battle outside the archive building, Braun was utterly exhausted spiritually, and with Doro’s assistance, it was quite easy for Vorn to carry out the sneak attack and k*ll him.
Afterward, Doro manipulated Braun’s beast form corpse, together with the controlled Vorn, to continue fleeing after the situation in the Church District was resolved. At that moment, as the highest person in charge of the Prit Diocese, Vania, began to allocate pursuit tasks for the armed forces of the Church surrounding the church district under the guise of utilizing the congregation’s oversight capabilities, guiding them to specific locations to perform the pursuit while requesting the capture of those whose spiritual energy was almost depleted.
Following that, the Church’s armed forces, which had originally been driven out of the Church District, quickly took action, reaching the location of the mission to find Braun and Vorn, who were still “escaping.” Since both of them were under Doro’s control, it was entirely feasible to determine which of the cornered werewolves would fight to the d*ath and which one would be captured due to exhaustion.
After Vorn was captured, Doro only needed Vania to have a chance to meet Vorn once, allowing her to use spiritual threads to launch abilities even based on Vania as the focal point to again modify Vorn’s personality, altering his memories to shape him into a loyal persona. They would wait for questioning from the Sacred Summit, and the investigation team from the Sacred Summit would obtain the “truth” that Doro wanted them to know through Vorn’s solid memories, which would certainly be heartfelt.
With Vania, the acting archbishop who held the highest authority in St. Hymn Cathedral and the highest power in the Prit Diocese, Doro found clearing up the battlefield and managing aftermath matters to be quite easy and convenient, ensuring that any traces could be handled discreetly without raising suspicion. Given that the overall commander of the Church was on her side and that the entire Church District and its surroundings were under her surveillance, what could possibly go wrong?
Although Doro hadn’t predicted several unexpected factors during the attack on St. Hymn Cathedral, she was fortunate to have been a red-tier herself, possessing sufficient power to deal with various emergency situations. Despite managing to handle all scenarios at last, Doro had still expended a considerable amount of spiritual energy.
In this operation, Doro’s most significant spiritual expenditure was the creation of the Night Demon’s whispered body. The entire Night Demon entity born of the stories maintained red-tier speed and agility and wouldn’t have been cheap. Fortunately, the summoning of whispered bodies could be ritualized to reduce consumption.
Although Doro could not find a high-grade “shadow” temple throughout Tivyán, she fortunately had not returned the Illusion Scales Fragrance Lantern to the Little Fox, allowing her to spend time randomly drawing a rough ritual ground that was below the shrine level on the floor, complemented by a divine blessing object level core, which significantly decreased the consumption of the whispered body. In total, she spent 5 points of “shadow” and 2 points of “cup” to summon the Night Demon whispered body. Without the ritual assistance, the expenditure would have been much higher.
Aside from summoning the Night Demon whispered body, the more notable consumption from Doro’s other expenditures was transforming a bunch of beastmen into active puppets. With the support of her mastery in spirituality, manipulating active puppets consumed relatively little energy; most of the depletion occurred when condensing materializing spiritual threads, summing to a total consumption of 2 points of “cup.” Her several personality alterations to Vorn consumed 1 point of “shadow,” which wasn’t too significant.
Overall, Doro’s total consumption during this operation amounted to 6 “shadow” and 4 “cup.” Evaluating her current spiritual state, it looked like this:
4 cup, 4 stone, 8 shadow, 8 lamp, 11 silence, 8 enlightenment.
Though Doro’s spiritual expenses throughout the operation weren’t high, the limitation of originally having very little spiritual energy meant that her current status still looked grim, with many metrics being in single digits.
However, it was fortunate that during this operation, Doro not only helped Vania secure her position within the Church but also gained some extra rewards.
Given that Vania was acting as the archbishop, Doro felt it only right to inspect the heavily damaged underground forbidden library during the cleanup efforts, sifting through the ruins for treasures.
Knowing that Vania’s archbishop position was acting and would soon be replaced by a new official archbishop from another faction of the Sacred Summit, Doro had been quite restrained since Vania’s formal appointment, avoiding any unusual traces involving her accessing the forbidden library to read for fear of alerting the incoming archbishop.
But the situation was different now. Duval had personally forced the door to the forbidden library open for Doro and left it in disarray, so now, Doro could excavate items within without worrying about lingering issues, easily attributing any problems to the Wolf bl**d Association, posing no risk—simply perfect.
While handling the aftermath traces of beastmen near the archives, Doro also sent a zombie puppet into the chaotic forbidden library, managing to unearth a number of secret transmissions from the ruins. Due to time constraints, she only retrieved the outer shell of a safe that had been destroyed and scattered across the surface of the ruins. She read through them quickly before returning them, resulting in a total number of secret transmissions read being quite limited, just about ten or so.
Among those secret transmissions, most didn’t hold much nutritional value, being poems praising various other gods or pieces created by mortal writers and artists driven mad from poison. While they could provide spiritual energy, their significance for Doro’s research into secrets was minimal. However, there were four secret transmissions that Doro found to hold slightly more value after reading.
The first transmission, named “Thirst for Faith,” was purportedly written by an ancient nun of the Radiant Church named Eunina. She was a very devout… even to a fanatical extent, follower of the Holy Mother. In this secret transmission, she recorded all her thoughts and practices related to the Holy Mother’s doctrines, spanning across various stages of her life. Doro could tell from Eunina’s unwavering loyalty to her devotion to the Holy Mother, treating her as the utmost belief in her heart.
Eunina lived her life exemplifying the Holy Mother’s teachings, adhering to strict lifestyle habits, being charitable, approachable, and assisting the poor, remaining pure in heart… resembling Vania somewhat, but perhaps even stricter and more extreme. She was a figure completely devoted to the Holy Mother but was more fanatically radical than Vania.
From the secret transmission, Doro could see that Eunina, evidently due to her exceptional abilities, also became an extraordinary being on the path of healing and rose steadily through the ranks. While it wasn’t stated outright, Doro deduced from the tone habits and address patterns in Eunina’s writings that her status within the Church was indeed increasing. During her rise, her heart remained untainted by the internal greed for power within the Church; instead, she regularly opposed the dark sides of the Church, battling the unfaithful. Even when attacked and framed, she didn’t lose heart, and her character seemed to maintain an overall level of nobility.
If one were to look only at the earlier sections, this secret transmission might seem like a loyal, noble believer’s autobiography. However, the latter part of the transmission showed some troubling issues. In the later sections, Eunina’s faith and fervor towards the Holy Mother grew to an overwhelming extent. She gradually became unsatisfied with merely practicing the Holy Mother’s teachings in the worldly realm. She began to crave the ability to hear the Holy Mother’s voice directly and communicate with her, seeking to understand divine will—a thought that was considered a grave sin within the Church. Should any trace of it emerge, it would lead to the most severe punishments.
Under the rules of the Church, Eunina dared not express her thoughts, but the longing to personally hear the Holy Mother’s wishes took root in her heart, growing ever stronger. This obsession gradually transformed her mindset.
“Lord… Merciful Lord… I have served You for many years, wholeheartedly implementing Your will and achieving countless merits; is it too much to ask for a word from You?
“The Holy See has been established for hundreds of years and enjoys the blessings of the Three Saints without any variation… The Holy See is renowned through eternity, naturally deserving of this honor, but what about the billions of believers? There are so many sincere followers of the Lord; do we not deserve to compare to even a fraction of the Holy See’s achievements? Why have You never acknowledged us…
“Lord… All-good Lord… I long to hear Your holy voice, even if it is the greatest sin, from this moment forth, I will go to any lengths to approach You, to behold You, even if I become a sinner doomed to eternal damnation.
“Hearing Your divine will shall be the only remaining goal of my life. Now, I will start by striving to reach the position closest to You, obtaining the name of Saint Amanda…”
—
**Sick Leave Notice**
Uh… As the title suggests, it seems I have contracted an illness. Although I had somewhat mentally prepared for this, when it actually happened, it still feels quite unpleasant.
In short, my current symptoms include dizziness, fever, and body aches; all I want to do is lie in bed. For now, I am unable to code, and I hope that by tomorrow the symptoms might improve so that I can continue writing.
I apologize for the inconvenience caused to everyone. Thank you for your understanding.
