Chapter 437

Chapter 437: Devastation Everywhere.

That field of dazzling starlight was speaking to her and walking toward her. It had been sitting on the sofa a moment ago, yet when it took a step in this direction, Agatha felt as if she were gazing at a giant beyond words. For a brief instant she even lost the ability to judge size and proportion. Her confused senses could no longer grasp how big this house was, and the giant formed by that starlight almost made her soul feel like it was suffocating.

But it was only a fleeting illusion. In the next moment, Agatha snapped out of her shock. She realized that her mind had not been affected by any presence in this room at all. It was as if she had already blended into this place naturally.

“I…” She steadied herself and gazed at the giant of starlight in front of her. She knew she was continuously gazing at the true form of an unspeakable being. Under normal circumstances, that would be no different from suicide. But once she confirmed that she really was not affected anymore, her courage grew. “I didn’t expect you would actually still be here. I only came to try my luck…”

“Where do you think I’d go? Walk off with a swagger while everything here is a mess? Like the heroes in the picture books who leave as soon as they finish their quest?” Duncan laughed as he turned his body a little, gesturing for Agatha to come in. Then he paused, glanced at Alice from the corner of his eye, and added, “I mean the picture books with normal stories.”

Agatha blanked for a moment. She felt she could not quite keep up with this great being’s train of thought. But she quickly comforted herself with the idea that it was normal for mortals not to understand how Elder Gods thought, and stepped further into the room.

Duncan suddenly stopped and glanced at Agatha’s hand.

“…Could you put Shirley down first?” he said in a slightly odd tone. “And you too, Shirley, why do you look like you’re enjoying this?”

“Ah, sorry!” Agatha finally snapped back to herself and hurried to set the skinny girl she was holding down on the floor. But the instant she did, her expression suddenly changed.

Things had been chaotic at the door just now, and she had not focused on Shirley. Only now did she suddenly notice the anomaly on the girl, limbs warped by a symbiotic pact with Abyssal demons, chains extending out from within her body and hidden away, and the Abyssal Hound crouching in the shadows, sneaking glances at the outside world.

“Abyssal Deep…” Agatha spoke without thinking, every muscle in her body tensing at once.

But before she could do anything, Duncan’s voice came from the side. “Relax. It’s just a harmless hound. I sometimes need a hound to help me find things.”

“A harmless… hound?” Agatha said, her expression strange, as her gaze swept the room again on instinct.

Those figures came into view again, one that looked like a chosen of the gods, another that seemed to carry a divine blessing from Subspace, one that apparently housed the power of the Sun, and even a shell of a soul she could not see through at all…

Her gaze fell once more on the girl called Shirley.

The Abyssal Hound, realizing it had been noticed, was crouching in the shadows with its neck hunched, looking utterly pitiful.

Agatha fell silent.

An Elder God and His followers were gathered here. Indeed, any Abyssal demon in this place could be called harmless to humans and animals.

“Don’t worry, Shirley is not an Annihilator,” Duncan said when he saw her fall silent, explaining patiently. “She met Dog for other reasons, and both of them now act under my orders. They won’t harm the city.”

As he spoke, he pointed to a chair not far away. “Sit. You must have a lot to say.”

Agatha walked over slowly, and Duncan watched how she moved. She found the chair’s position with precision, but when she sat down there was still a hint of hesitation and groping.

“It seems you still need some time to get used to your current state,” Duncan said. “Is that going to be a problem?”

This mysterious being still sounded unfailingly warm and gentle. Agatha shifted a little, feeling uneasy. “…I really am not used to the way I perceive the world now, but there is no need to worry about this body. In fact, the changes that happened to me have quite a few benefits. I can see many things I could not observe before. I just… need to adapt.”

“I’m sorry,” Duncan said, his tone quite serious. “I didn’t expect it to cause this kind of change. In fact, you didn’t have to use such an extreme method as a self-sacrificial rite.”

“But it was the most efficient way,” Agatha shook her head lightly. “Nothing is more suitable than a Gatekeeper as the bearer of your great power.”

Duncan did not press the point. After that, his attention shifted to her current outfit.

“You look very different from the last time we met,” he remarked. “It seems… you look more like a priest now than before.”

“I am temporarily acting as archbishop,” Agatha nodded slightly. “Archbishop Ivan is gone. Now that the fighting in the city is over, what we need more than a fully armed Gatekeeper is someone to lead the Church in comforting the souls of the dead and the minds of the living.”

“Archbishop Ivan…” Duncan’s tone grew more solemn. After a brief silence, he sighed softly. “I never met him, but at that time I sensed the protection that descended over the city-state. It was short, but his efforts did weaken the link between the mirror world and the Mortal Realm for a while. Without him, many more people would have died.”

“May he know peace in Bartok’s realm,” Agatha said softly. “He… held on for many years. Now he can finally rest for a long time.”

“He will,” Duncan said casually. “Though I don’t really understand what Bartok’s domain is like, as one of the True Gods He should treat those noble souls fairly.” He then changed the subject. “Now, tell me how things are in the city.”

Agatha nodded lightly.

She knew that as the Gatekeeper of the Church of Death, and as one of the few people left who could still keep order in the city, she should not casually reveal Frostholm’s current plight to others. She especially should not deepen her dealings with a being whose true nature was unknown and who was suspected to be an Elder God. But after she saw that colossal figure standing in the waters off the city, and after she carried out that self-sacrificial rite, she understood. Whether for Frostholm or for herself, they had already formed a bond with this mysterious being that would be hard to sever.

Now that this being clearly still had an interest in watching over this battered city-state, she had no way to avoid the matter.

If the choice she made today turned out to be a sin, then she would let the Church and her god judge her.

“Frostholm’s current situation… is very bad,” she began in a low voice. “As you know, we just lost Archbishop Ivan. The Church’s priests and Guardians also took heavy losses while defending the city-state. Now fear and tension hang over the city, along with all the negative effects brought by so many deaths and injuries. If these things are not handled in time, secondary disasters are very likely. Horrors will grow out of people’s hearts. With the Church short on manpower, ‘fear’ itself will snowball throughout the city-state.

“In fact, sunset a few hours from now is very likely to be the start of the real test. During the earlier mirror world incursion, Frostholm went a very long time without the light of the Sun. That greatly weakened the city-state’s protection against extraordinary powers. On the first night that follows, no one knows what will happen.

“On the other hand, City Hall is in even worse shape than the Church. Besides the casualties suffered by the city-state’s Guard Corps and Constable units, the most serious problem is…”

Agatha clearly hesitated when she got this far. But after a few seconds of struggle she still laid out the situation. After all, the governor’s disappearance was not something that could be hidden from anyone.

“The most serious problem is that the governor is missing.”

Duncan raised his eyebrows. “Missing?”

“He disappeared in the Boiling Gold mine. And I…” Agatha stumbled over her words, as if she were still trying to arrange them. After a few seconds she went on, her expression complicated. “Another me once led a team to investigate the tunnel where the governor vanished. According to the exploration party that later returned to the Great Cathedral, ‘I’ and Governor Winston both entered an anomalous area sealed off by stone walls, and neither of us came back…”

Her voice was low and hesitant. It was obvious that when she spoke of that other self, her mood was far less calm than she pretended.

Duncan could almost picture how tangled, confused, and conflicted she had been when she returned to the Great Cathedral and asked the other priests about what that other her had been doing in the past few days.

He gazed at Agatha calmly. “You can put it more directly. The governor of Frostholm is already dead. That is your judgment, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” Agatha finally stopped hesitating and spoke plainly. “There is no evidence, but I really ‘know’ that he is dead. He died in some strange, dark space. We probably won’t even be able to recover the body.”

“You ‘know’,” Duncan repeated, putting weight on the word. Then he shifted his posture in the chair. “It seems you’ll be going back to the Boiling Gold mine again.”

“That was… where ‘she’ vanished for the last time,” Agatha nodded gently. “When she disappeared, I sensed something I can’t put into words. It was as if I could feel her thoughts. I think… she had many things she wanted to tell me, but she ran out of time…”

Agatha stopped, then went on. “And… the members of the exploration team who returned from the mine told me about something else. It was something that the other me had told them while she was leading them in the mine. That is what unsettles me even more…”