Chapter 54

Chapter 54: underground sanctum

In the end, Duncan still did not understand what exactly the “Spawn” were.

Mr. Goathead was vague on this point. It even seemed that he himself did not know the true nature of those ancient things that wandered along the edges of the civilized world. As for Duncan, he could only form a rough idea from the limited clues he had—

The Spawn were products of ancient ages and held hatred toward the modern world. They had strange and dangerous powers yet hid quietly in the dark. Except for the Sun Spawn, the other Spawn almost never appeared in the civilized world. Instead, they lurked on the fringes and threatened the safety of every Explorer.

Among all this information, there was one more detail that was especially concerning:

The Sun Spawn seemed able to disguise themselves as humans—only the supernatural of the Church could tell these disguised Sun Spawn apart from ordinary people.

Duncan thought of the recent changes in the city-state of Pland, and of those believers of the Sun who had kept a low profile for years and then suddenly became loud and active again.

Were the cultists’ high-profile activities… carried out under orders from the Spawn? What were those ancient and bizarre beings plotting in the city-state of Pland?

Duncan stood at the edge of the Vanished’s deck and for a long time let his gaze rest on the rolling, restless sea below.

There were Spawn in the Deep Sea as well, ancient beings different from the Sun Spawn. “They” threatened the safety of every long-distance fleet sailing between the city-states.

Duncan felt both wary and curious about these things that lived in the Deep Sea.

He believed that even though he had never dealt with them before, as long as the Vanished kept roaming the sea, sooner or later he would run into those strange beings. It would do no harm to make more preparations before that day came.

Whether it was gathering information, learning to better control his own power, or uncovering more of the Vanished’s potential, all of it was planning for the future.

Of course, he was not exactly afraid of the hidden dangers in the Deep Sea. After all, he had drifted across the ocean with this ship for so long that he could roughly guess how many strange things lurked there. The Spawns were only one of countless eerie threats. As the saying went, when you had too many lice you stopped itching, and when you owed too many debts you stopped worrying. As the captain of the Vanished, there were already plenty of things out here he had to be wary of.

He pondered on the deck for a long time and realized that what he most needed to worry about right now was whether the “supply route” he had finally found would be affected. Those Spawn of the Deep Sea would not interfere with his fishing, would they?

The pigeon AI did have the ability to transport supplies, but he still did not know how much she could carry or how reliable she really was. Besides, the city-state of Pland was an orderly place. The provisions brought onto the ship there had to be bought with money. So it was hard to say when that supply line would truly become useful.

On top of that, the rich haul from the last fishing trip was still fresh in his mind. Duncan knew very well that improving life aboard the Vanished ultimately depended on nature’s gifts.

But now those “Spawn” had become a hidden danger—they might end up interfering with those gifts from nature.

Duncan felt a little troubled. He just hoped the weird things in the sea would not interfere with his fishing.

…

Bright gas lamps shone, driving away the shadows in the underground facilities of the Cathedral. Deep Sea runes carved along the long corridor gave off a reassuring power. The lines in those runes, symbolizing waves and shorelines, linked together as if weaving an invisible giant net that wrapped the underground structure of the entire building in a sacred, quiet atmosphere.

Vanna walked through the underground sanctum of the Cathedral. This holy and quiet place slowly calmed her slightly restless mood.

The storm Goddess ruled over the mightiest powers upon the Boundless Sea. Yet she did not only have the violent side that symbolized “storm”. This ancient deity also commanded the power of stillness and sealing.

Just as the sea itself had two faces—calm and storm existing side by side—the Goddess’s divine authority was the same. The underground of the great Cathedral symbolized the “mirror world of the Storm”.

Many deities in this world were like this, with two sides or at least with two-sided traits. The Death God also held dominion over vitality, and the God of Wisdom also possessed divine authority over the loss of reason, foolishness, and madness. Ordinary people might not know much about this, but as a high-ranking cleric, Vanna was very well-versed in such matters.

She also knew that because many deities were two-sided, this had given rise to certain very controversial, almost heretical ideas. Some scholars even believed that the entire world was two-sided. In some other dimension, they said, there might exist a “Wasted Expanse” that was a complete mirror world of the seas and lands. There, a boundless, dried-up earth stretched out in all directions, with only rare rivers and oases dotted across the drought. That Wasted Expanse might even hold an intelligent civilization strangely similar to the world of the Mortal Realm, a civilization that mirrored all things in the Mortal Realm…

Such outrageous guesses, built entirely on imagination, were of course not accepted. Even Valentine, the bishop of the city-state of Pland, who was famous for his open mind, merely snorted when he heard such talk—

In the old man’s own words, the Subspace at the bottom of this world was already enough to give people a headache. Certain folk theologians really did not need to keep hanging more things underneath the Subspace, did they?

Vanna suddenly shook her head, pulling her wandering thoughts back under control.

In the quiet depths beneath the great Cathedral, a person’s thoughts easily drifted out of control. The “mirror world of the Storm” gave people an overly peaceful mental hint. The comfort granted by the Goddess’s Sanctuary World could greatly weaken a mortal’s mental defenses. This effect was invisible yet powerful, and even an inquisitor like Vanna, who had undergone harsh training, could not fully resist it.

Yet on the other hand, this special environment also had its own special uses.

For example, it could make certain crazed, fanatical cultists open their mouths.

Vanna stopped at the end of the underground sanctum’s corridor. Several doors there led to different “interrogation rooms”, and a statue of the storm Goddess stood quietly in the vestibule between those doors.

This statue was different from the Goddess statue aboveground in the Cathedral. The one above had both arms spread open, as if receiving the worship of all people, surrounded by endless majesty. The one underground, however, had her hands clasped over her chest, quiet and gentle, like a maiden leaning in to perform a Listening Rite.

Yet no matter which statue it was, a veil of light gauze always covered the face. That symbolized the unknowable nature of the deity.

This statue with clasped hands for the Listening rite was the storm Goddess’s other aspect: the Calm Sea Maiden.

She suppressed the waters beneath the surface of the sea and protected the peace of the Undercity.

Vanna bowed before the statue of the Calm Sea Maiden, then turned and pushed open the door of a nearby interrogation room.

The creak of the hinges broke the silence of the underground facility. When the door swung open, a spacious yet dimly lit room appeared before Vanna.

A large table stood in the center of the room. Heidi, dressed in a long black dress, was just rising from beside the table. On the other side of the table was a chair fitted with restraint chains. A heretic of the Sun sat quietly in that chair.

The heretic’s eyes were dull. He slumped sideways against the armrest, as if both his reason and strength had been drained from his body, leaving only a muddled shell behind.

The heavy scent of incense still hung in the room. Heidi’s medical case sat open on the table. Inside were a large empty syringe, writhing thorny vines, and a golden spike that looked as if it still carried traces of blood.

“Oh, Inquisitor Vanna, you came at just the right time,” Heidi said when she heard the door open. She turned her head in greeting. “I just finished a ‘treatment’.”

Vanna’s gaze swept over Heidi’s medical case, and her expression was as calm as ever. “Honestly, I still find it hard to connect all of that with the word ‘treatment’…”

“These are all standard tools for a psychiatrist… All right, I admit I probably use them more often than an ordinary doctor,” Heidi said with a shrug. “But I’m a ‘hypnotist’ hired by City Hall who often works for the Church. The ‘patients’ I deal with are nothing like normal patients. Especially cultists like this—no swaying crystal or low-frequency pendulum works as well as a triple dose of ‘Midnight Draught’ in one shot.”

“…I rather suspect the reason you always give cultists a triple dose is just that your big syringe can only hold that much,” Vanna muttered, teasing her old acquaintance. Then she shook her head. “But that doesn’t matter. As long as you can pry their mouths open… Tell me, what did you get?”

“I did, and I got quite a lot. The situation is strange,” Heidi answered at once. “I’ve already performed deep hypnosis on several cultists and used some special methods. Now I’m basically certain… these cultists who took part in the sacrificial ritual most likely did not go mad only after the ritual ran out of control…”

“They didn’t go mad after the ritual ran wild?” Vanna immediately frowned. Even after speaking with Bishop Valentine, she had already understood that this matter would be more complicated than expected, but Heidi’s words still went beyond her expectations. “What do you mean?”

“I searched through their memories and found that their thinking—or rather, their way of understanding things—had already gone wrong before that final, failed sacrificial ritual even began. To be more exact, it seems those cultists were affected by some kind of… cognitive filter even before the ritual started. Because of that, in their memories… Hm? Inquisitor Vanna, you don’t seem all that surprised?”