Chapter 150

Chapter 150: The Secret in the underground sanctum.

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

To be honest, in that instant, Duncan’s first instinct was that there was something wrong with Storm Goddess Gamona—that this deity, who was supposed to shelter humans, had a cruel hidden side. Because of that, terrible shadows lurked deep in the city-state, and the twisted look that had flashed across the statue was the proof.

But the next second, another doubt rose in his mind: if Storm Goddess Gamona really had a problem, then why were all the other cathedrals in the city perfectly normal?

He had seen other cathedrals of the Church of the Deep Sea before. There was a community cathedral near the antique shop, and back then there had been another beside the Ocean City Museum. Even though he had not gone in to investigate them carefully, he had lingered nearby, and the aura those cathedrals gave off was clearly different from that of the strange cathedral before him.

He had also dealt with other clergy, from the lowest priests and guardians to people like Vanna, an Inquisitor standing at the very top of the city-state. All those who served Storm Goddess Gamona day and night were normal. They were even more strong-willed and clear-headed than most people.

He ignored the nun and lifted his head to look at the statue.

After that brief, startling glimpse, the strange crack in the statue’s head did not appear again. Even in the overlaid image of the cathedral, the statue only looked blackened by smoke, as if the crack had sensed something and taken the initiative to hide.

Duncan frowned.

The weirdness of this cathedral was clearly an exception. So if the problem was not with Storm Goddess Gamona… then what he had just seen might be some other power using this cathedral as a Node, trying to corrupt the Mortal Realm.

But what exactly was that thing?

The shape of that crack did not seem related to the Sun God at all, and it did not make him think of any fragments of the Sun. If anything… the murky light and shadow surging within the crack reminded him of the chaos outside the hull of the Vanished.

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

The nun’s voice came again. She sounded neither impatient nor urging. It was as if some key word had been triggered, so that as long as Duncan and Shirley stood near the statue, she kept repeating the same question over and over.

Shirley looked a little at a loss. She instinctively turned to Duncan. Duncan finally responded. He calmly fixed his gaze on the nun and asked: “Are you offering this prayer to your Goddess?”

It should have been a question with an obvious answer. Any normal believer would have given a clear yes at this moment. But the nun’s reaction made Shirley’s eyes widen.

“I… don’t know,” the nun said, shaking her head with a calm face, as if she did not feel there was anything wrong with her answer. “I am only praying. She told me to pray here.”

“Who is She?” Duncan frowned at once.

“The Great Presence.” The nun smiled.

Yet in the nun’s gentle smile, Shirley felt a chill rise in her heart.

“I do not pray to any deity,” Duncan said quietly. He unobtrusively pulled Shirley back half a step, out of the area of the prayer platform. “Including the Goddess you speak of.”

“Oh, what a pity.” The nun let out a soft sigh, bowed her head again, and no longer paid any attention to Duncan and Shirley.

Duncan stared at the writhing cluster of ashen humanoids for a few seconds. After he confirmed that the ash really was no longer paying him any mind, he turned away and walked toward another part of the cathedral.

This small cathedral was limited in size, with almost no place to hide anything. Apart from the main hall that housed the statue, there were only a few rooms connected to the hall and a single basement.

Duncan first led Shirley to check the nearby rooms. They found nothing worth noting. In the end, they found the stairs leading down to the basement at the end of a corridor on the outer side of the main hall.

“Are we really going down there?” Looking at the pitch-black stairs before her, Shirley was clearly uneasy. She could not help glancing back toward the main hall. “That weird nun won’t suddenly come after us, will she?”

“That ‘nun’ is obviously trapped in the main hall and cannot stray far from the statue,” Duncan shook his head and said. “But if she really does come to attack… then we will have to fight. In that state… it’s hard to say she is still a living human.”

Shirley swallowed. Normally, she was quite bold. But no matter how bold, this was her first time sneaking into a cathedral of the Church of the Deep Sea to stir up trouble. Years of ingrained tension and awe made her heart pound wildly.

But she knew she had better not refuse. Compared to a nun who had mutated from a mortal and a shadow from Subspace, she had a rough idea of which was more dangerous.

Just then, Duncan spoke again, making Shirley, who had finally steeled herself, jump all over again: “Right, summon Dog.”

Shirley’s eyes went wide at once. “Huh?! Summon Dog? Inside the Storm Goddess’s cathedral?!”

“This place is probably no longer the Storm Goddess’s cathedral,” Duncan shook his head and said. “It’s hard to say what exactly holds the upper hand here now. Go ahead and summon Dog. Look, even I am standing in this ‘cathedral’. Could a Abyssal demon be more out of place than me?”

Shirley thought about it and felt that this actually made some sense. Of course, even if it had not made sense, she would not have dared to disagree. So she honestly raised her arm and summoned Dog into the Mortal Realm.

Black flames and swirling smoke rose up. In the blink of an eye, the huge Abyssal Hound appeared in front of Duncan.

As soon as the summoning ended, Dog, very well-practiced in his job, dropped down at Duncan’s feet. His skeletal tail wagged like a five-speed electric fan. “I salute you, great Dun—”

“Enough, you don’t have to do this every time,” Duncan cut him off with a wave before he could finish. Having one noisy Goathead already gave him enough of a headache. He really did not want another dog with the same style hanging around him. “You should already sense that something is wrong with this cathedral. Now see it with your own eyes. I may need your ‘eye for detail’ later.”

Dog nimbly scrambled up from the floor and turned his head to look around the corridor and the stairs leading down to the basement at its end. A faint light flickered in his hollow scarlet eye sockets.

“This place really is cursed…” the Abyssal Hound’s voice was hoarse and low. “Just looking at it makes my eyes swim…”

He paused, as if making a deeper judgment, then turned slightly to Duncan and said: “It’s a little like that abandoned factory from before, but more twisted than that. This distortion has probably already pushed the Mortal Realm to the limit of what it can bear… Yes, it looks like we really have found one of the key points on this layer of the Veil.”

“The distortion has already pushed the Mortal Realm to its limit… no wonder I can observe it directly,” Duncan nodded in understanding. His gaze fell on the stairs ahead. “We have already checked the whole cathedral. What is left now… should be only this basement. In most cathedrals of the Church of the Deep Sea, the area ahead is called the ‘underground sanctum’.”

“I’m starting to get excited,” Dog said, shaking his ugly head so that the chain around his neck clattered. “This is the first time in my life I’ve marched openly into a forbidden area of a cathedral of the Church of the Deep Sea… I’ve never seen what it looks like down there!”

Shirley gave Dog a strange look at once. “Can you not sound like some creep about to sneak into the ladies’ restroom?”

Dog: “…”

Duncan ignored this pair of dog-bred brats. He had already stepped past Dog and gone down the stairs, arriving at the door that led into the underground sanctum.

For such a small community cathedral, this so-called “underground sanctum” was only a spacious basement. The door leading into the underground sanctum was an oak door reinforced with a steel frame and Sacred Sigils, and marked with a divine blessing.

Duncan set his hand on the door and pushed gently. He found that the door was not locked, but when he pushed harder he felt some resistance, as if something on the other side was bracing against it to keep it from opening.

“There is something on the other side of the door.” Duncan stepped back a little and studied the black oak door before him.

For some reason, once he reached the doorway of the underground sanctum, that strange “overlapping” scene faded. All he saw before his eyes now was this single door.

It was as if the two “branches” that had been overlaid within the cathedral had converged here, leaving only a single Mortal Realm.

“Should we just smash the door open?” Shirley came up behind him. She had already lifted the chain in her hand, eagerness written on her face. Dog also made ready—by wrapping his paws around his head and curling himself up into a meteor hammer.

“…That might destroy clues,” Duncan stopped the dog-swinging maiden from using her traditional technique. He laid one hand on the rune-covered door. A tiny flame rose between his fingers and quickly traced along the grooves and lines on the door. “In theory, this door should count as an supernatural item, so…”

In the next second, the cathedral door that had once been given a divine blessing turned into tinder for the fire of spirit form. Ghostly green flame flared up along its surface. The door faithfully carried out its Master’s command.

It burned itself away.

As the door turned to ash and scattered, the thing that had been braced against it appeared before Duncan and the others and fell to the floor with a thud.

It was a nun in a black robe and skirt—covered in wounds, a longsword still clutched in her hand. Even in death, she still glared at something in the darkness.

When Shirley saw the woman’s face clearly, a chill rose from the depths of her heart.

“Is that… the nun we just saw?”