13 Mink Street

“What do you mean?” Saman glared at Nio.

“I simply don’t want you ruining the funeral you so carefully prepared, so I came specially to remind you.”

“You think I’d believe you?”

“What do you think?”

“I would. Of course I would.” Saman took half a step back, and the aura around him fully receded. He once more became the ordinary little old cemetery groundskeeper. “I believe you.”

Saman then sat back down in his chair and pointed at Alfred. “Come, let’s keep playing. Remember to play this piece at my funeral.”

“I will record your performance and play it at your funeral.”

“Bah, no. I may be dead at that time, but I still want to save face!”

Nio walked out of the hut. Karon gave one nod to Alfred, and the man bowed slightly in return before Karon followed Nio outside.

Saman asked Alfred, “Do you know why I believed him so easily?”

“I do not.”

“Because I could feel that he really does seem to have itchy hands and wants to find someone to fight.”

“I don’t think he would necessarily be able to beat you.”

“You see? Even you say that he wouldn’t necessarily beat me.”

“Of course,” Alfred immediately echoed.

“But logically speaking, how could an ordinary captain of a Whip of Order squad possibly beat me?”

“Uh...”

“But all of you, including me, think that something here may have changed. That’s the biggest problem.”

“Your reasoning is very sound.”

“I am also thinking of Ms. Lake. I don’t want her doing my funeral makeup while cursing that this old thing was still so mischievous right before dying, making her work harder.”

“Then shall we continue playing? Not to record it, but just for the sake of the art of music itself?”

Saman waved a hand. “Let’s rest first.”

“All right, let’s rest first.”

“Say a few more of those slang phrases for me. I want to write them all down so I can lie in the coffin later and slowly savor and think about them.”

“All right.” Alfred took out a yellow notebook. In it, he had copied contents from that black notebook from back at home. Even the corrected portions had been reproduced exactly.

Seeing Alfred grow so solemn, Saman could not help but laugh. “I really can’t understand your enthusiasm. What’s the point of preaching to someone about to die? Do you expect me to climb out of the coffin and become a believer?”

“If your devotion moves the gods, they may grant you that honor.”

“But my whole life has already been given to Pamireth. I don’t want to change anymore.”

“That’s all right. We still have the next life.”

“What did you say?”

“Next, I will explain to you what is meant by the scent of the earth.”

***

When Karon emerged from the hut, he found the captain was already seated in the driver’s seat of the borrowed car. Karon opened the front passenger door and sat down. That seat was usually almost never occupied.

Nio turned to look at Karon and said, “You can go home now.”

“Then why were you still waiting here, Captain?”

“Because you took the car key with you. It’s a church car, and you’re actually worried about it being stolen? You even took the key with you?”

Karon took out the key and handed it to the captain, but did not get out.

“You really aren’t getting out?”

“I’m very curious where you are planning to go now, Captain.”

“I plan to go drink at a bar. I remember you don’t like drinking.”

“It isn’t good to drive after drinking.”

The captain gave no clear response, but started the car and drove out of the cemetery.

After they got onto the highway, Karon asked, “Captain, is Saman very powerful?”

“You accepted his gift and yet you’re still asking me whether he’s powerful?”

“I only accepted his old refrigerator.”

“I’ll give you one more chance to consider your words.” The captain took his right hand off the steering wheel and waggled his fingertips up and down.

“I only accepted one of his spatial holy relics.”

“An upgradable spatial holy relic.”

“Oh, right. Yes.”

“Looks like you have a person near you who knows what they’re looking at.” Nio smiled. “Whether something can be upgraded or not determines a tenfold increase in value, if you sell it on the black market.”

There’s no person at home who recognizes such things, but there is certainly a cat and a dog who do.

“He felt his days were numbered, so he gave those things to me in exchange for my cooking dinner for him every night for a while.”

“Mm, mastering one extra skill really can offer enormous advantages at a critical moment.”

“Yes, Captain. After all, no matter how many skills you master, they won’t crush your body.”

“Heh, but they do make it easy to become distracted.”

“Yes. That’s true.”

Karon felt there was an implied meaning in the captain’s words. They might literally refer to cooking, or to Karon’s Arts, though more likely, they referred to his identity. Karon simply had too many attributes attached to him at this point for him to be able to immediately match the remark to any specific one of them.

At that moment, a flock of crows appeared in the sky ahead. Nio stopped the car and looked in the direction the crows were flying. He then turned the steering wheel around and drove after them.

After driving for a while, Karon felt that his captain had probably confirmed the crows’ destination, because he stopped matching the birds’ pace, accelerating and overtaking them.

In the passenger seat, Karon kept glancing out the window. He watched as the captain drove north through the city, entering the outskirts, and then continuing further north beside a railway line before veering away from the tracks and heading down and to the northeast.

If they continued in that direction, Karon felt they would soon reach the sea.

The luxury car truly was well built. They were no longer driving on the road at all, and there were stones everywhere, yet no matter how violently the car jostled about, it showed no sign of falling apart. The engine still maintained a strong output.

Then again, if an ordinary car manufacturer cut corners on quality, at worst, they would receive a fine. On the other hand, if a luxury vehicle made for the church dared to allow any quality problems, the responsible party could be directly sent to meet the gods.

After driving a while longer, a road reappeared ahead of them. It was a strange road, as it was a dead-end. At the end that the car pulled onto, the road connected to no other.

As soon as the car was pulled onto the road, the ride immediately became much more comfortable.

Ahead of them was a checkpoint booth, and on both sides of it were many priests in robes.

“Sit with more authority,” Nio said.

Karon leaned back into his seat, deliberately avoiding too straight of a posture. He placed both of his hands in front of him, and slightly narrowed his eyes. All that could be seen through his mask was his eyes.

Nio then began quickly pressing on the horn. With his mask still on, he stuck his head out the window and repeatedly waved, signaling for the people at the checkpoint to move aside.

Seeing his behavior, the priests assumed some important person’s personal vehicle was arriving. Not only did none of them try to stop the car for inspection, they instead withdrew and raised the barrier.

Just like that, the car passed through the checkpoint.

“Captain, where exactly are we going to drink?”

“We’re not heading for a drink just yet. We’ll do that later. First, I’m taking you to look at the bar snacks.”

“Mm? All right.”

They continued ahead for some distance, and eventually discovered that the road led to a cliff.

Karon instinctively reached up and grabbed the overhead safety handle. He had a feeling about what Nio was about to do.

Black light spread from the man’s hands, and the steering wheel began to shine. Immediately after that, light flowed over the entire body of the car. Presumably, some ritual array within the car had been activated.

Nio then slammed the accelerator all the way down, and the car sped toward the cliff.

Buzz! There was no sensation of the car leaping off into the air. Instead, after rushing off the cliff, Karon sensed a rapid distortion of light and shadow outside, and discovered that the car was once again driving along a road.

The sea lay to their right, and a long road stretched out ahead. To the left were several more roads, along which both vehicles and horse-drawn carriages moved. Astonishingly, the carriages weren’t moving any slower than the cars. The horses pulling them had red light glowing in their eyes. Clearly, they were not ordinary horses.

In short, the whole place gave off a busy yet murderous atmosphere, much like a military base.

Nio turned the car to the right, leaving the road and driving some distance across the beach before finally stopping in front of a stretch of very tall reefs.

“Get out.”

Karon followed Nio out of the car and saw him begin climbing the reef. Karon followed.

At last they reached the very top. When Karon poked his head up and looked ahead, he saw an enormous opening in the coastline. It was as tall as the Santor Tower, the landmark building in Veyn’s city center.

At that moment, a rumbling tremor was coming out from within the dark opening. Even from this far away, Karon could feel the vibration.

Soon, a military formation emerged from the opening. They marched forward in perfect step. Every infantryman wore black armor, carried an enormous black shield, and had a blade at his waist.

Sunlight fell on them, reflecting off with a chilling gleam. Behind them came another formation, this one armed with bows and crossbows. Each soldier held a black longbow and carried three quivers of arrows on his back. Their armor was also black, but clearly much lighter.

After them came vehicles resembling catapults, and following close behind that one was a formation of wagons. They looked a bit like chariots, but were not, because each one was stacked with black coffins.

Karon was staring so intently that when he turned his head, he was surprised to find the captain holding a crystal telescope.

Seeming to sense Karon’s gaze, the man snapped the telescope in half and handed one portion to Karon.

“Thank you, Captain.”

“It’s nothing. Crystal is cheap. The lenses are the expensive part. Just feed some spirituality into it.”

Karon put the telescope to one eye and injected a bit of spiritual power. The moment he did so, he felt as though he were standing there in person. This not only allowed him to see far away, but also seemed capable of gathering light and shadow so that the area he wanted to observe was drawn into his sight to the greatest possible degree.

Shields, blades, armor, longbows, arrows... Karon mentally matched their equipment one by one against the prices in the credits store and could not help feeling that this was an army piled together with a vast mountain of credits.

Of course, considering that all of it had been forged in the internal workshops of the Church of Order, the actual manufacturing cost was certainly far, far lower than the market price outside.

Although the armies of every nation had already entered the age of firearms, and Karon had seen the Veyn Empire’s ironclads at the port of York City on more than one occasion, the army currently marching out through the opening in the seaside was enough to drive any national military to despair. These soldiers still carried what would be considered pre-firearm weapons, yet what they held defied any distinction between firearms and all else.

That mid-grade Order shield carried by the shield infantry had a ritual array inscribed within it. Even if a cannon was fired directly at it, the shell would simply be bounced away without doing any real damage to the shield. As for the longbows and arrows in the archers’ hands, they could shoot far greater distances than bullets could reach, while also precisely striking their targets.

Those catapults were even more terrifying. They could hurl plagues, calamities, bloodlust, and savagery. A single strike against an enemy formation, if it were an ordinary army, would quickly drive a portion of them into madness, turning them to slaughter their own comrades. Not onl that, those afflictions could spread like contagion.

Karon also noticed the insignia on these soldiers’ armor, and even recognized it. This was the Third Knight Regiment.

This was an active-duty Knight Regiment. Reserve garrisons were made up of retirees from different regiments, and when given assignments, they used the same armor they had worn during their service time, which was why a single reserve camp could include people with the insignias of multiple Knight Regiments. On the other hand, an active-duty Knight Regiment would never show such a mix.

“Why are there coffins?” Karon asked before he could stop himself.

According to the materials he had read, only the First Knight Regiment was composed of the dead revived to serve again, and it was indisputably acknowledged as the strongest Knight Regiment.

“Every Knight Regiment has a portion of its quota reserved for carrying out missions with extremely high fatality rates, such as scouting, breaking enemy lines, covering retreats, and other things like that.”

“A suicide squad?”

“Heh. An already-doomed squad.”

“Yes, you’re right, Captain.”

“See that flagpole on the wagon? That is one of the Church’s holy relics. Those corpses have all been treated already, and the spiritual power in their bodies has been sorted out. When the commander gives the order to Awaken them, the flagpole will burn, helping the caster to ignore a part of the price of the Awakening.”

“Oh, so that’s how it is.”

“But the cost of Awakening remains very steep. The higher their level and the stronger they were in life, the greater the cost of Awakening them. It’s said that among the First Knight Regiment, there are even preserved remains of Temple Elders.”

“Just imagining that is terrifying.”

“Heh. Even our own people find it frightening, so there is no need to mention how other churches feel. The strength of the Church of Order lies in its fist. The dead can become fighting strength, and those who are still alive now can, should they die in battle, quickly become fighting strength again.

“Even enemy corpses can be turned into fighting strength with certain special methods. Who would willingly face an opponent like that, and who would dare to?”

“If it had never grown powerful, then fine. But once it has already reached this point, it really is too terrifying.”

“Do you know what our Church rose by relying on?” Nio asked.

“It rose by... Light.” In the epoch when Order rose, the Church of Order had almost served as a blade in the hand of the Church of Light. Whenever Light had wished to punish someone, the Church of Order had always been the first to respond and had immediately waged wars of conquest, not simply shouting slogans, but truly going to war.

In the previous epoch, the God of Order had slaughtered and suppressed many deities, and among them were quite a few heretical gods, certified as such by the Church of Light. In short, that had been the period when Light and Order were closest.

But once the Church of Light had fallen, it had no longer been able to control the blade that had grown ever sharper. In fact, it might even have been harmed by that blade.

Many records had been altered or erased, but traces of alteration were themselves evidence. If Order had done nothing when Light had perished, then why had there been later attempts to intentionally erase the relationship between Order and Light?

There had to be more to it than merely Light’s decline and destruction making it unworthy to stand beside Order, because Order could have directly inherited Light’s legal and spiritual authority and ruled the ecclesiastical world with even greater legitimacy. Yet the Church of Order had not chosen to do so.

Nio smiled. “Order needs the guidance of Light, but once Order grows strong, every existence that dares stand above Order becomes something that must be broken.”

“This is the first time I’ve seen a Knight Regiment on such a scale,” Karon said with feeling.

“The knights haven’t even come out yet.”

Wooooooo... A deep, stifled cry sounded out as cavalry charged from both sides of the opening.

These knights held long spears and wore battle sabers at their waists. They looked mighty and imposing. The mounts they rode were also armored, but the composition of those mounts varied. Many did not even resemble horses at all, but looked more like deliberately bred demonic beasts. More than half of the mounts had eyes that glowed in strange, unnatural colors. They were dead mounts, or mounts that had been altered.

These were not beasts Awakened through resurrection, but transformed using their skeletons as a base.

There were many drakes among them, the raw material for the roast meat the captain liked best. It was said that drakes carried the bloodline of ancient dragons.

When the cavalry appeared, Karon felt that there was nothing in the world that could stand against them.

“You didn’t expect the Church of Order to have this side too, did you?”

“No, Captain. Before this I’ve only read some records about such things. That can only count as knowing of it, while this is still my first time actually seeing it.”

“Just as our Whip squads are organized on a twelve-man basis, the Twelve Knight Regiments also come from Twelve Knights of Order. According to legend, each one of the original Twelve Knights personally served as commander of one Knight Regiment. The Twelve Knight Regiments, together with their attached garrison forces, do not overlap with us at all. Strictly speaking, even a Bishop can’t make a single one of them move without an order from the Senate.

“In a stricter sense, the establishment and growth of the Whip of Order came about for precisely that reason; The daily work of the church needed violent means to maintain it, but the church’s regiments can’t be casually mobilized, so the church could only keep strengthening and enriching the Whip of Order as its available force.”

“Do the other orthodox churches have regiments like this?”

“Definitely. In this epoch, the gods don’t appear and no divine war has broken out, so the churches’ regiments have naturally shrunk and rotted. A divine war is never only about gods fighting.”

“So, Captain, what exactly are we...” Karon looked at himself, and then at the captain. The captain was a traitor, and by coincidence, Karon himself appeared to be the same.

Two traitors were lying here with a special telescope in hand, observing an army. No matter how one looked at it, this was the sort of thing a spy ought to be doing. Had the captain deliberately brought Karon here to act as a spy?

But then... Karon suddenly remembered that the captain had told him to get out of the car. He had been the one who had insisted on staying.

“Aren’t you curious?” Nio asked.

“Curious?”

“Curious why that spatial prison collapsed. You should have gone with that Divine Progeny into the communication room and seen his entire report, right?”

“Yes, I saw it. I saw him report to Pamireth’s Pontiff that there is a mole in the ritual array maintenance squad.”

“Mm, and yet the spatial prison still collapsed.”

“So I think there was a mole involved in this...”

“Then who do you think the mole might be?”

Suddenly Nio threw an arm around Karon and said in a low voice, “Order—Black mist!”

The next moment, both Karon and Nio were covered in black mist, and that black mist rapidly blended with their surroundings, concealing their figures.

At the same time, a wyvern appeared in the air, carrying a middle-aged man on its back. The wyvern circled down and landed at the very front of the regiment.

Swish! Swish! Swish! The soldiers of the entire regiment saluted the man.

“Greetings, Commander!”

“Greetings, Commander!”

The middle-aged man placed both hands before his chest and said with sincere gravity, “Praise Order!”

After the wyvern landed, Nio withdrew the arm he had draped around Karon.

“Is this army marching against the Church of Pamireth?” Karon asked.

“Of the Twelve Order Knight Regiments, the First Knight Regiment can’t be deployed. Of the remaining eleven, one is always stationed to guard the entrance to the Temple of Order in the mortal world, while another is stationed to guard the Central Church.

“Three regiments are assigned for mobile deployment, while the remaining six are stationed in the six largest regions. What is stationed here in Veyn is the Third Knight Regiment.

“The Seventh Knight Regiment was supposed to be one of the mobile regiments for this period, but even if something has happened to the Seventh Knight Regiment, the Senate still has two more mobile regiments they can dispatch at any moment. There is no need whatsoever to use the Third Knight Regiment stationed here in Veyn.

“You should understand, the Church of Pamireth is only a medium-sized church, and it is known for forging spatial instruments, rather than for their combat abilities. In truth, a single Knight Regiment is enough to destroy the Church of Pamireth twice over.”

At that moment, violent energy fluctuations appeared on the sea before the opening. A gigantic platform slowly rose from beneath the surface.

Buzz! A terrifying vortex spread in all directions, and then on the platform appeared a huge gate of blue light. The regiment commander walked onto the platform and stood before the gate.

Then, a woman stepped out from within the gate.

Karon lifted the telescope to look. She wore a blue long dress, and before her floated two large blue gems spinning slowly and giving off a holy, gentle aura.

“Her?” Karon recognized the woman. She had appeared in the communication room earlier in the day. Though her image at that time had been blurry, Karon had mistaken the two gems before her for an absurdly large chest blurred by the projection, and had marveled at how impossibly well-endowed the Church of Pamireth’s Chief Executor seemed to be.

“You know who she is?” Nio asked.

“She is the Chief Executor of the Church of Pamireth.”

“Oh.”

“Captain, can you read lips? What is she saying?” Karon saw the Chief Executor speaking, but from this distance he could not possibly hear anything.

“She is saying, ‘Honored Commander, the Church of Pamireth has already made all preparations!’”