Chapter 30

Chapter 30: Traces of Ruin

The huge, heavy mechanical spider folded its long, jointed legs up against its belly and used the wheel structures on the outside of those legs to race along the flat road. Inquisitor Vanna stood steady on the metal shell of the machine as if she had been cast onto it. The night wind, carrying a faint smell of the sea, swept through the streets. The cold air made her mind even clearer.

The cultists who worshipped the god the Sun were a deadly hidden threat to modern civilization. Unfortunately, this kind of hidden threat was not the only one.

Malicious gazes were always watching from the depths of Subspace, fixed on the Mortal Realm. Foolish mortals were always trying to reach for those ominous powers. Between the dealings of Elder Gods and mortals, twisted entities left behind from ancient times, forbidden spawn, and lingering echoes of corruption hid deep inside the city-states. They were always stirring, always ready to move, trying to pry apart the order that held society together.

Among all these threats, the Suntists were the ones that made the Guardians of the city-state of Pland the most wary and the most troubled.

They were not only cultists, but also products of a lost part of the Old World’s history. Compared with most foolish and blind ordinary cults, the most dangerous thing about these heretics who worshipped the Black Sun was that they actually had a kind of “faith”. It was fanatical and twisted, and their lower ranks were a messy mix of all sorts of people, but in the upper levels of this hateful cult, there really was a “core belief” that had not changed for hundreds of years.

This belief centered on the “Age of Order” under the ancient light of the Sun. It formed its own complete system, and they even had a matching “true Solar calendar” that modern civilization refused to recognize. They firmly believed they were the descendants of an ancient civilization that had long been lost, and that this glorious ancient civilization would one day rise again.

As an inquisitor of the Deep Sea Church, Vanna had little interest in the cultists’ twisted theories, but she knew that it was these very ideas that gave the Suntists a unity and stubbornness far beyond that of other heretics. Because of this, they could survive strike after strike and keep growing in the shadows of many city-states.

Even so, the way they had suddenly sprung back to life in Pland still surprised Vanna.

After the huge crackdown four years ago, the believers of the Sun inside Pland had been badly weakened. According to several investigation reports, those heretics had already moved most of their key members to nearby city-states like Lunsa, Morka, and even farther Cold Harbor. The ones left in Pland were only some stubborn fools who had been bewitched, and who were not important enough to follow the bishops when they moved.

These lackeys hid in the sewers. They survived only by using their knowledge of the underground and the bit of twisted divine blessing the Black Sun had given them to dodge the Guardians’ hunts. Four years passed. Their numbers kept shrinking, and all they could do now was struggle on and cling to life.

Yet today, four years later, they had suddenly gathered again. They even dared, at the risk of exposing themselves, to hold a sacrificial ritual in a public assembly hall. Who had given them such courage?

Or rather… was something big about to happen in this city-state? Was there some reason strong enough that those cultists would risk having their last tiny spark stamped out, just to draw the gaze of the Black Sun onto Pland?

From inside the mechanical spider came the vibration and noise of its steam core running at full speed. A faint scent of incense drifted out from its pressure vents and was carried over by the night wind. Vanna forced herself to stop these wild thoughts and looked up at the sky.

World’s Wound hung high in the night sky. Its pale light poured down, shining on the uneven roofs, chimneys, and towers of Pland. The strike team was passing along the edge of the industrial district. Huge steam and hot-fluid pipes stretched between the factories, crossing overhead like the blood vessels of giants threading through the sky above the streets.

Vanna vaguely remembered the past, the night that was burned deepest into her memory and was also the most terrifying. That midnight, thick with the smell of blood, her uncle had carried her on his back as he fled from a sea of fire. The streets were full of walking corpses trapped in a mass hallucination and shadows of swollen, shrinking flesh. They had escaped along the factory pipes, while the stink of blood and the chemical oil seeping from the pipes made her want to retch.

A sudden jolt ran through the mechanical spider under her feet. Vanna snapped out of her memories.

The flat road came to an end. Ahead lay an abandoned area on the edge of the city. The road surface there was full of holes and dips, uneven and rough. The two mechanical spiders left their gliding mode. They stretched their long legs out again and began to race forward at high speed over the bumpy ground.

Before long, the team reached an abandoned sewer entrance.

Another eight-person squad was already waiting there. They had sealed off the area around the entrance to keep any unrelated people from getting close.

Vanna greeted the subordinates here, then followed the officer in charge straight down into the depths of the sewer.

They passed through deep corridors and filthy narrow paths. In the end, Vanna reached the secret assembly hall. Here, she saw more guardian warriors, as well as Church priests who were carrying out a purification ritual.

A temporary sacrificial altar stood in the center of the hall. The wooden platform looked as if it had been burned by fire. On top of it she could still see the desecrated totem built by the Suntists. The totem had already been burned, but its basic structure was still complete.

Around the platform were dozens of cultists, their hands tied, squatting on the ground. Most of them were shaking with fear. A few moved their lips, muttering their blasphemous prayers in silence.

But with the ritual site destroyed and the storm goddess already watching this place, these heretics’ prayers were useless.

Not far from the sacrificial altar lay the bodies of the victims found in nearby caverns. These sad, murdered people had been placed on linen sheets covered in runes. Morticians who had rushed here were checking the condition of each corpse.

Several Church priests walked around the sacrificial altar. The bronze chains in their hands swayed softly. The censers at the ends of the chains gave off pure white smoke. Wherever the smoke touched the ground near the altar, it was instantly dyed with an ominous black shadow, and then more white smoke washed over it and carried that corruption away. The breath of the Black Sun left here would be cleared bit by bit in this process.

“Inquisitor, please come this way. This is where we found something strange,” a young guardian said, pointing at a few bodies beside the sacrificial altar. “Please be careful. The ground here is not very clean.”

Vanna walked straight toward the bodies. When she saw the state of one of them, she frowned without thinking.

It was a cultist wearing a Golden Sun mask. There was no doubt he was the priest directly in charge of the sacrificial ritual at this defiled altar.

There was a terrible hole in the middle of his chest.

“…What is going on here?” Vanna frowned. “Did this fanatic heretic get too worked up at the end of the ritual and end up sacrificing himself too? I have never heard of the cultists of the Black Sun having such a rule.”

“That is exactly what is so strange. He did not sacrifice himself,” the guardian who had brought Vanna over said at once, shaking his head. His expression looked a little odd. “According to the cultists we captured at the scene… their ‘envoy’ was sacrificed by a sacrificial victim.”

“Sacrificed by a sacrificial victim?” Vanna raised her eyebrows. “What kind of nonsense is that?”

“It really does sound like nonsense.” The guardian spread his hands helplessly. “In fact, when we got here, most of the cultists were already half-mad.”

“Already half-mad?”

“Yes. Their sacrificial ritual clearly went very wrong. Many of them fell into madness. Some had even started hacking each other to pieces. They all seemed to see each other as… ‘monsters’ possessed by some terrible thing. It was because they rushed out of the hall in their madness that they alarmed the constables on patrol nearby and exposed the whole affair. By the time we arrived, there were only a few who could still stay clear-headed and answer questions. And those last few who could still speak clearly all insisted that a sacrificial victim sacrificed the envoy.”

“Madness? Cutting each other down? And they thought others were monsters possessed by something?” Vanna’s expression grew serious at once. “Have you checked them? Was it caused by corruption from the Black Sun?”

“We could not find any marks of outside corruption. It looks more like a kind of spontaneous madness. The thing that drove them mad seems rooted inside their own minds,” the guardian said. He lifted his hand and pointed at a young woman in a black dress who was moving among the cultists. “Heidi is already here. If we can confirm that these cultists have not been corrupted by the Black Sun, we will have to try using hypnosis.”