Chapter 149

Chapter 149.

On the outside, the community cathedral looked as if it had been abandoned for countless years, yet inside it was bright and spotless. At the same time, in Duncan’s eyes the lit cathedral clearly carried another layer: a ruined scene, like another “fact” superimposed over it.

It gave Duncan a certain feeling. This little cathedral felt like an “error space” laid over the Mortal Realm, or a forgotten place trapped in a crack between time and space. Two completely different histories had once crossed here, yet the cathedral had remained at that crossing point, and time inside it had never moved forward again.

It had neither been destroyed nor survived that fire.

Then… what did the sister who stayed here alone know?

“It has been a long time since anyone came to visit this cathedral,” the nun in a black priest’s gown repeated softly. She smiled as she lifted her head, yet her gaze seemed to pass right through Shirley and Duncan standing before her. “Where are you from? Strange faces… you’re not residents of this place, are you?”

Before them was a bright and cozy scene, yet under the nun’s smiling, almost divine gaze, Shirley shrank her neck without knowing why. A chill crawled up her spine. She whispered nervously to Duncan: “I… why do I feel this place is so weird… Outside it looks so ruined, but inside…”

Duncan did not answer. He just patted Shirley’s shoulder. From the girl’s reaction, he had already guessed that she could only see one “face” of this cathedral, most likely the side that had not been destroyed. But he did not yet know how to explain his guess to her—if they let Dog out now, then with the “eyes” of that Abyssal Hound, he probably could see the cathedral’s real state.

But before he figured out what exactly this nun was, it was better not to let Shirley summon Dog out on impulse.

“We were passing by,” Duncan said calmly to the nun, his face unchanged, as if he were just a citizen here to visit the cathedral. “Have you been here all this time?”

“Me? I have always lived in this cathedral,” the nun replied with a small nod. “I have always been here in prayer, praying to the Great Presence.”

“But the people in the neighborhood said the nun from this cathedral has not come back for a long time,” Duncan went on, watching her reaction. “They said this cathedral has been neglected for a long period, that it looks almost abandoned.”

The nun listened quietly to Duncan, showing no strong reaction at all, as if her heart had settled into an eternal calm.

She only gave a faint smile. “Oh? Is that so? But I have always been here… Perhaps they forgot the days of prayer and thought the cathedral was closed instead.”

Duncan neither agreed nor denied it, but he had already confirmed that not only this cathedral had a problem. The entire Sixth District outside the cathedral had a problem.

This abandoned cathedral lay deep within the neighborhood. From the outside alone, it was clear it had been neglected for more than ten years. For ordinary people in this world, a cathedral was not only a place for spiritual comfort—it was also a facility that helped keep an area safe, guarding against evil forces after nightfall. It was where many commoners went for help when they suffered mental troubles or were tormented by nightmares. Yet such an important facility had been abandoned for eleven whole years, and the residents of the Sixth District felt nothing was wrong with that. They only mentioned lightly that “the nun hasn’t been around recently”?

Imagine a neighborhood that had its water and power cut off for eleven years straight, and the locals felt nothing was strange about it. If outsiders asked, they only said lightly, “The water and power people haven’t been on duty lately.” How bizarre would that be!

As for the nun in this cathedral… Duncan still was not sure what that mass of ashen humanoid shapes, which kept revealing its true form in his sight, really was. But from their brief conversation, he could feel that she… did not seem hostile.

Not only that, but her mind seemed to be in a strange state. He could not say she lacked reason entirely, but she certainly was not truly clear-headed.

Duncan probed with a few indirect questions, and the nun in the cathedral answered them all calmly. Yet that very calmness in her answers… was a sign of her unsound mind.

Under normal circumstances, if a stranger suddenly walked into a cathedral and started bombarding the duty nun with a string of unrelated questions, the nun should at least feel something was odd.

She still had reason—but not much of it left.

“Do you wish to offer a prayer? Or do you need help with calming your mind and driving away evil influences?”

The nun asked with a gentle smile and a soft voice.

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” Duncan said, shaking his head. He let his gaze sweep casually around them, then asked as if offhand, “By the way, what about this cathedral’s guardians?”

Every cathedral was supposed to have guardians stationed in it. Even the smallest community cathedral in the Slum Quarter kept a guard force enough to handle ordinary threats. This cathedral should have been no exception.

“The guardians… the guardians are resting in the cathedral. They only appear after nightfall,” the nun said, her smile unchanged. “Do you need something from the guardians?”

Duncan did not answer. His eyes slowly moved over the benches beside the nun.

In his vision, the phantom of a great fire that had burned everything, of collapsed heaps of ash and rubble, lay over the brightly lit cathedral like overlapping frames of film. In that other superimposed layer, there were more than a few… charred bodies.

“Are the guardians resting over there?” Duncan raised his hand and pointed into the distance. In Shirley’s eyes, there were only two empty rows of benches in that direction.

The nun paused for a moment, then followed Duncan’s pointing finger with her gaze. After a brief silence, she said softly, “Shh… they are sleeping.”

Duncan made a small sound of acknowledgment and then asked casually, “May we look around?”

“Of course. The cathedral is open to visitors,” the nun said with a light nod. “Please feel free to walk around. I will continue my prayers—if you need help, you may call me at any time.”

After saying this, the strange nun really did turn and walk back toward the Goddess’s statue, leaving Duncan and Shirley completely to themselves.

It was only after the nun left that Shirley, who had been tense for so long, finally let out a deep breath. At this point she did not even have the energy to be afraid of Duncan, because the eerie atmosphere filling every corner of the cathedral had already made Dog, still in his hidden state, restless. That strange tension was flowing straight into her mind through the mental link, making her instinctively edge closer to Duncan. “W-what is going on in this place… Why does that nun feel so creepy? She looks normal, but somehow everything about her feels wrong…”

“There seem to be two cathedrals here,” Duncan said softly, giving a simple, blunt explanation. “One has already burned down, and the other is still intact. They are superimposed on this place in time and space. As for the nun in the cathedral… she is neither dead nor alive.”

Shirley froze. It took her a full half minute before she managed to speak again in confusion and shock: “What do you mean?”

Duncan gave her a look. “You really should read more books later—if that doesn’t work, I can teach you.”

Then, without waiting for Shirley’s reply, he walked straight toward the back of the cathedral.

The nun had said the cathedral was open to visitors, so of course he was going to “take a look around” as he pleased.

Shirley stood dazed for a moment, then hurried to follow him. They walked past the neatly arranged benches and passed by the statue and prayer altar at their far end.

The serene nun was already kneeling before the statue of the Storm Goddess, both hands lightly pressed to her chest as she devoutly offered benediction. It was as if she had completely forgotten the visitors, as if she had been kneeling here for the past eleven years, maintaining an unbroken prayer.

Duncan blinked, and the nun turned again into a writhing mass of ashen humanoids piled beside a charred, broken prayer altar. Tiny sparks of fire fell from the dome above like drifting leaves.

Suddenly sensing something, he lifted his head to look up at the statue of the Storm Goddess.

The statue in its long dress stood quietly on the high platform, but a jagged crack ran straight across its head!

In that brief instant, Duncan saw the core of the truth hidden in the double-layered cathedral. He clearly saw a dim fissure opening where the Goddess’s stone head should have been. Inside that crack, faint, chaotic light and shadow stirred, like a terrible eye lying sideways. In the depths of its pupil were scenes that absolutely did not belong to the Mortal Realm. The “holy” aura that should have surrounded the Goddess’s statue had vanished without a trace. On this eerie, frightening stone figure, only cold and emptiness coiled.

In the next instant, that horrific sight vanished as if it had never been. Gamona’s statue still stood quietly on the high platform, gazing down on everything with solemn majesty, radiating a presence that brought both comfort and awe.

The nun kneeling before the Goddess’s statue suddenly opened her eyes. She tilted her head slightly and looked calmly at Duncan.

“Do you wish to offer a prayer to the Goddess?”