### Chapter 45: Viki’s Movements (Part One)
[Back around late April last year, shortly after your so-called funeral ceremony wrapped up, a series of power struggles within the Church finally settled down. Cardinal St. George was found guilty by the church tribunal, charged with embezzlement, rebellion, war crimes, and even child molestation… You name it, that old coot committed it all.]
[During that time, the various dioceses across the Western Continent were in complete chaos. It wasn’t uncommon to find clergy chasing after other clergy in the streets… Rumor had it that on the very day they captured Cardinal St. George, an unprecedented civil war erupted in the Holy City, with the Pope himself getting in on the action, engaging in a titanic brawl with St. George himself in the square at Temple Church…]
[Of course, all of that is just hearsay; I wasn’t there to witness it firsthand, nor do I have any reliable sources. It wasn’t until early June, a month after Cardinal St. George was apprehended, that the internal strife within the Church began to calm down…]
[I heard that the old geezer was thrown into the Underground Prison of the Holy City. After that, he completely dropped off the map, and the Church, along with his inner circle and the tangled web of the Williams Family at the Currency Exchange, eradicated all related factions. It seemed like the struggle had come to an end, and everybody assumed there would soon be a grand public execution in the Holy City… But lo and behold, just as everyone was waiting for the fire to burn, something completely unexpected happened right before the Festival of Fruits…]
[You remember that Rabeli Valley north of the Royal City, right? The place where Abyss Mud first made its appearance? The Abyss had snuck into the city and was dispatched by you… After the disaster passed, the Church managed to seal the spread of Abyss Mud in the valley with a Divine Miracle, and we figured there would be no more trouble. However, just before the Festival of Fruits, just as the strife in the Church was settling down, an incredibly severe landslide suddenly erupted in the valley, causing a significant collapse…]
[Funny enough, right in the midst of that dusty chaos, when no one ever expected it, several individuals suddenly ran out… Nobody could fathom how anyone could be residing in that valley; I and most others were absolutely certain of that.]
[Sure, it was a beautiful place, but the terrain was perilous, covered in rocky land that was hardly suitable for farming, and filled with ferocious beasts and slithery critters. Even the apprentices from the Royal City’s apothecaries dared not wander in casually. After the Abyss appeared, the Church swept through the area and cleared out all nearby inhabitants; we were involved in that too, and the closest village was over ten kilometers from the valley… There was simply no one living in there.]
[Yet after the mountains collapsed, out came people…]
[These folks were as ordinary as can be; they didn’t even exude any sense of order. Upon further investigation, it turned out they looked like they had been trapped in the valley for quite some time, emerging dressed like prisoners, dazed and unable to answer questions coherently… But oddly enough, they had come from the vicinity of the Abyss Mud spread.]
[I say this, and you can already guess where they escaped from, right? What they were doing so close to the Abyss Mud? Yeah, I eventually got a hint, but back then, I was utterly clueless…]
[Those people were swiftly taken under Church control, alongside anyone who had interacted with them. A fair number of people were involved, and their whereabouts remained uncertain, including a few Royal City guards who rushed over at the time. The Church claimed this was a necessary measure to handle the Abyss Mud leak. I was wrapped up in other tasks and didn’t pay much attention, but for some reason, Her Majesty the Queen seemed particularly concerned about this matter…]
[She summoned me back to the Royal City and ordered me to secretly investigate all suspicious aspects of the valley collapse. The most suspicious of all, obviously, were those people and the Church’s handling of the situation. I inquired with the Royal City guards who were taken away, and guess what? Since their return, they couldn’t remember a thing about most of what happened in the valley…]
[That’s downright chilling. I don’t know how the Church pulled that off; those who came into contact with those who escaped the valley and were taken away—when they returned, it was as if some force had wiped parts of their memory clean. They couldn’t even recall having been there, let alone who came out from the valley or what they had said to them… Nothing at all…]
[It was like suddenly hitting a blank space in their lives… In the days surrounding that incident, they had no idea where they’d been, who they met, or what had transpired… A complete blank…]
[It was all too weird…]
[I was utterly baffled; the more I investigated, the more hair-raising it became. I couldn’t find any solid leads but felt like I was sinking deeper into a quagmire… Eventually, I found all connections severed, and the suspicions grew. I couldn’t chase it further, so I reported everything to Her Majesty.]
[I thought I would face punishment for my ineptitude, but surprisingly, she didn’t reprimand me at all. I vividly remember her reaction; it was peculiar. I can still picture her eyes in that moment—confused… shocked… then angry… and finally, a chilling silence enveloped her, as if all her feelings suddenly erupted only to extinguish in the next instant, buried deeper than before…]
[In that moment, it seemed she confirmed something…]
[After that, the matter faded into obscurity. The Queen told me to cease my investigations, but not long after, she dispatched me to deliver two letters to Lagomus City, a mountain town far from the Royal City.]
[She didn’t specify to whom I should deliver the letters, just provided an address to a secluded tavern in Lagomus City. When I arrived, I discovered that the tavern had already closed for business before the Church’s major purge two years prior… They only served patrons with a recommendation letter, and one of the letters Her Majesty gave me was exactly that…]
[The tavern owner appeared to be just an ordinary person, but the moment I walked in, she recognized me as someone sent from the Royal City… Clearly, Her Majesty had been in touch with them before. I eventually handed over the letter to her, even though I had no clue of its significance, nor did I realize the intended recipient was none other than the long-missing Cardinal St. George…]
[It wasn’t until I returned to the Royal City to report back to Her Majesty that she shared some of the deeper secrets behind the Church.]
[By then, it was August. That night, after drinking some wine, the Queen unexpectedly expressed a desire to return to the residence on Longdoll Street… The residence had been completely rebuilt earlier in the year, but she hadn’t visited since she saw that report last year… Suddenly wanting to go back, she insisted that both Sharman and I accompany her. We thought it odd but didn’t dare to ask more questions…]
[Upon arriving at the residence, she quietly poured herself a drink, consuming a copious amount. We stood there for what felt like an eternity, sensing her foul mood, and we didn’t even dare to breathe. Eventually, after polishing off two bottles of red wine, her drunkenness finally showing on her face, she spoke to us.]
[Her first words were… “I did something that I don’t know if it was right or wrong, but from my perspective, it had to be done.”]
