Fanna lifted her head and looked at the woman in a black dress who was examining the mental state of some cultists. The woman noticed Fanna's gaze and slightly nodded in acknowledgment. She appeared to be in her early twenties but had a calmness that seemed much older. Her long black hair was tied up at the back, and the light blue crystal earrings she wore reflected the glow of a nearby gas lamp.
“...Heidi is here too... Did the town hall send her?” Fanna asked the young guard beside her.
“No, Ms. Heidi happened to be nearby when the incident occurred. She heard the news and came right over—Is there a problem?”
“No, nothing serious. Although Heidi is an employee of the town hall, she has a long-standing cooperation with the church. She can just fill out a report when she gets back,” Fanna shook her head and quickly refocused on the matter at hand. She was inspecting the body of a cult priest who had died in a frenzy, casually asking, “What did the cultists who can still communicate say? What exactly happened?”
“Their words were quite jumbled. Two of them mentioned that the normal sacrificial ceremony had already ended, but then someone nearby caught a fleeing sacrifice. So, the messenger decided to offer this sacrifice to the Sun God…” The guard recalled, “Those two cultists were standing away from the altar and didn’t see what happened on it. They only said that the sacrifice was stabbed through the heart but didn’t die and instead shouted the name of the Sun God, directly naming the messenger as the sacrifice… and as a result, the messenger was sacrificed.”
“...A person chosen as a sacrifice shouted the name of an evil god and ended up sacrificing the one conducting the ceremony?” Fanna felt this was absurd, almost like a tale from a fantasy story. But since it came from a well-trained and loyal church guard, she had to take it seriously, which made her expression strange. “How could something so ridiculous happen—If that’s the case, wouldn’t many victims at cult ceremonies just need to speak up to turn the tables on those heretical priests?”
“Who says it isn’t possible? Even the most incompetent priest has absolute control during the ceremony. How could a weak ordinary person just say something and cause the ceremony to spiral out of control—Moreover, we checked this priest, and he indeed showed signs of being eroded by projections from the ‘deep layers’ of the world. He was a true ‘baptized one,’ and according to the cultists at the scene, he was holding a ritual dagger blessed for the ceremony…”
As the young guard spoke, he shook his head and moved to another body nearby.
“But… you should take a look at this. This is the ‘sacrifice’ that ‘turned the tables’ on the priest.”
Fanna glanced at the guard before her eyes fell on the lifeless body. In the next moment, her gaze sharpened.
It was a frail young man, so thin that he looked more like a boy, and the most notable thing about him was the large, empty hole in his chest.
“...He has already been sacrificed…”
“Yes, this is a sacrifice that has already been offered. Based on the scene and the cultists’ testimonies, this ‘sacrifice’ probably lost his heart before being pushed onto the altar,” the guard said seriously, “So… the real situation was that a walking corpse walked up to the altar in front of everyone and killed the priest conducting the ceremony as a sacrifice.”
“...A necromancer's trick?” Fanna muttered to herself, “No, the power of the Black Sun is very effective against necromancers. Their controlled zombies wouldn’t just stroll up to the Black Sun’s totem… Was it a resurrected being under abnormal control?”
“Did you check for any lights around here?” She suddenly looked up at the guard beside her. “Is there a completely dark underground space within a five-hundred-meter radius?”
“We checked, and there are no dark caves—Even the cultists know the dangers of dark caves. They left torches and oil lamps in the caves where they discarded bodies; they were very cautious about that.”
Fanna didn’t respond immediately. Instead, she bent down to examine the young man’s body closely, trying to find any traces of heretical power left behind. She reached out to lift his stiff eyelid, searching for any clues.
Suddenly, she thought she saw a flicker of light in the corner of her eye—It seemed the young man’s corpse slightly opened its eyes, and a ghostly green flame danced in the hollow sockets. A spark flew from the tip of her outstretched right index finger and quickly dissipated in the wind.
Fanna’s expression changed in an instant. She swiftly drew a dagger from her waist and without hesitation, sliced off her right index finger. Then, she flipped the dagger and plunged it into the corpse’s forehead. The rune-etched dagger erupted in flames, completely engulfing the body.
She completed all of this in less than a second. As the flames consumed the corpse, she stood up and took two steps back. Then, she pulled out a vial of blessed oil from her waist, bit off the cork, and poured the oil onto her bleeding right hand—the moment the holy oil touched her flesh, it produced thick clouds of white smoke.
A sharp pain surged through her, but Fanna’s expression didn’t change. She saw the guard beside her quickly draw his steel sword and slice off the head of the burning “sacrifice.” He then threw a potion mixed with seaweed extract and silver powder into the flames.
With continuous explosions and flames shooting up high, almost touching the ceiling, the twisted corpse turned to ash in the blink of an eye.
And the fierce flames did not spread to the other bodies nearby.
The surrounding guards quickly reacted. Half of them drew their rune steel swords and surrounded Fanna, while the other half pulled out large-caliber revolvers to form a perimeter. The two priests at the scene also drew their revolvers hidden under their robes, blessing the gun barrels with incense while chanting the name of the storm goddess, Gomona, continuously aiming at the frenzied cultists who were becoming agitated by the changing environment.
“Your Honor, the Judge!” The young guard with the steel sword approached Fanna, “Are you okay? Just now…”
“There is some kind of power left in that ‘sacrifice,’ and it bypassed all the protections given to me by the goddess, even slipping past my psychic warnings.” Fanna waved her hand, her gaze fixed on her right hand—the goddess’s blessing had taken effect; the severed index finger was slowly regenerating, but even as the pain began to fade, she felt no sense of relief.
“Something is off. There is not only the ‘Black Sun’ here; another powerful force may have visited this sacrificial ceremony… and that force hasn’t completely left; it still has its aims,” the judge quickly assessed, “Move all witnesses and evidence to the church for strict guarding. After that, all inspections and interrogations will be conducted inside the church. This site needs to be thoroughly purified… Is there anyone else around?”
A guard nearby immediately replied, “Yes, we rescued a group of ‘scheduled sacrifices’ from another cave nearby. They are currently temporarily housed in the adjacent passage.”
“Take them too, to the church—Even though they are victims, they must undergo strict checks before being allowed to go home,” Fanna said quickly, then suddenly seemed to remember something, “What about Ms. Heidi? Is she alright?”
“I’m here,” a calm female voice sounded nearby. The woman in the black dress, employed by the town hall as a “mental physician,” walked over slowly and nodded at Fanna, “Don’t worry, I didn’t react at all just now—So what exactly happened?”
“...Like many classic stories tell, the cultists provoked something even more sinister than themselves,” Fanna glanced at the “mental physician,” “I strongly suggest you take extra precautions when examining these cultists and hypnotizing them later… There are powers here that shouldn’t be, and they have left remnants.”
(End of Chapter)