Chapter 602

Chapter 602: A Master Angler’s Awareness

Knock, knock, knock.

The sudden knocking at the door cut off the sinister man’s brief confusion when he saw that wad of cotton. He quickly drew back his gaze and turned toward the sound.

After sensing the aura at the door for a moment, he walked over and undid the padlock.

A man in a dark hooded robe stood at the door. Half his face hid in the shadows of the hood. He seemed displeased at how slowly the door had opened and asked: “Why did you take so long to open the door?”

“I am not your servant, Dumont,” the sinister man in the room said, frowning, clearly in a bad mood. “Do not take the Saint’s momentary favor too seriously.”

“Think what you like, Richard. I am only reminding you,” the Annihilator called Dumont said calmly. “Do not let fear linger in your heart for too long. You have been off ever since you pulled out of the Nameless One’s dream two days ago. Your extra caution, fear, slowness, and suspicion have already drawn the Saint’s attention. He has not shown displeasure yet, but if you stay this way, it will harm our cause…”

Before Dumont finished, the Annihilator named Richard stepped forward in a sudden move. His sinister face was almost pressed against the other man’s hood as he snapped: “You could always go in and try it yourself, instead of staying safe here in the Mortal Realm and making snide remarks!”

“I will go,” Dumont said with the same calm expression. He did not mind Richard’s hostility at all. He only took half a step back and said: “Tonight, as one of the next batch of Chosen, I will enter the Nameless One’s dream with you.”

Richard finally drew back his hostile look. He stared at Dumont in surprise and asked: “The Saint has already decided to send another group? The plan moved up?”

“What else did you expect?” Dumont spread his hands and shook his head. “What you reported has been taken very seriously. Now the Saint knows that a dangerous power hostile to us has appeared inside the Nameless One’s dream, that another faction has begun to move. Our ‘allies’ also sent word. They seem to have already fought this enemy.

“So put away your complaints and your paranoia. I know you ran into trouble in the last operation, but you are among your own. The Holy Lord’s divine blessing is upon us.”

“…The Holy Lord’s divine blessing is upon us,” Richard finally let out a quiet breath. The anger faded from his face. “I was a bit worked up just now.”

“That is understandable. After all, you were hurt in the operation before last, and in your last operation you ran into danger again. These wounds are a heavy burden on the mind,” Dumont said. He glanced over Richard’s shoulder.

Faint dust floated in the air. A translucent black chain hung in midair, and at the end of the chain, a Death-Omen Bird perched weakly on a nearby cabinet, clearly in poor shape.

“So you are sure you do not need a few more days of rest?” Dumont asked. “In your current state, even if you skip one operation, no one will complain.”

“No need,” Richard said at once, shaking his head. His eyes grew wary again. “My devotion to the Holy Lord is my greatest strength. I will have myself ready before tonight.”

“…Since you are that determined, I will pass it on to the Saint,” Dumont said with a nod. “Also, since you are not going to miss tonight’s operation, get ready. Before nightfall, go to the assembly hall. The Saint will announce some things.”

Richard met Dumont’s eyes for a moment, then nodded: “All right.”

Dumont said nothing more. He stepped back again and silently watched the door close. Only then did a faint smile appear on his always calm, indifferent face. He turned and walked deeper into the corridor of the ship.

Another hooded Annihilator, short and stocky, stepped out of the shadows at the corner of the corridor and walked alongside Dumont.

After they had gone a short distance, the cultist named Dumont finally broke the silence and said: “Richard is not in good shape. His demons are weakening, and his mind is losing its balance. Soon, the symbiotic pact will drag him into death. Fate is closing in on this fellow.”

“That is the fate he chose. The Abyssal Deep will remember his sacrifice,” the other cultist said quietly. “We will all return to that place of origin in the end. It is only a question of sooner or later… But I am really curious. Why is his mental imbalance so serious? The others who entered the Nameless One’s dream also ran into all kinds of failures. Some were even badly wounded by corruption and pulled out of the dream on the verge of death, yet their mental state is not nearly this bad…”

Dumont stopped and glanced back at the distant closed door.

After a moment, he looked away and shook his head: “Not all serious wounds are the same.”

He turned again and kept walking, speaking at an easy pace: “If you are badly hurt fighting corruption in the dream and come back from the edge of death, all you need afterward is rest and honor. But if you are beaten half to death in the dream by an underage maiden using a dog, then wake up screaming and fall out of bed—in the assembly hall, no less, with the Saint reading your memory on the spot—then you are going to need more than rest.”

When he finished, both Annihilators fell silent at the same time. They walked on slowly for a while. At last the short, stocky cultist muttered under his breath: “That is really terrifying…”

“…Yes, terrifying indeed.”

Inside the cabin, Richard sat on the bed with a dark expression, listening as the sound from the corridor faded. His face grew more twisted with every passing second.

His symbiotic pact demon, the Death-Omen Bird, lay weakly on the low cabinet beside him. Thin mist rose from the bird-shaped demon, floating in the air like a real substance and spreading in all directions, boosting its master’s senses.

But after a while, he forced down the urge to keep extending his senses. With an effort of reason, he drew back the Death-Omen Bird’s power.

He had to restore himself and his contracted demon as fast as possible. He had to prove himself in the next operation. The cycling End was drawing near. This world’s dusk would soon arrive. Whether the followers of the Abyssal Deep could win a place in the unknown age after the era of the Deep Sea would depend on what they did in that “dream.”

Proving himself in that “dream” would be the best shortcut toward eternal glory.

He let out a long breath, but his hand brushed against something soft on the bed.

It was that wad of cotton again.

Richard picked it up, puzzled, and looked around the not-so-spacious cabin, as if he were searching for where this strange cotton had come from.

Did it escape from the bedding?

He searched the room, but could not find any source of more cotton. In the end he went to the window and scratched his hair in confusion.

Why did he care so much about a wad of cotton?

The Annihilator hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. Forget it. It was only a wad of cotton. It was not worth thinking about.

He pulled open his shirt and felt along his skin until he found a zipper. He tugged it open and stuffed the cotton into the writhing flesh beneath.

A soft laugh suddenly came from the corner of the room, like a five- or six-year-old girl hiding in the wardrobe, watching her clumsy lord and giggling at him.

The Death-Omen Bird on the cabinet seemed to sense something. It lifted its head and looked in puzzlement toward the sound, then lowered its head again.

…

“Rabby found one of those cultists’ strongholds?”

In the captain’s cabin of the Radiant Star, Lucretia sat at her dressing table. ghostly green flame danced along the edge of the mirror. Candles burned quietly before the glass, and her father’s voice came from within it.

“Yes,” Lucretia nodded toward the mirror. “The stronghold is on a ship. And from the looks of it, they are not just ‘hiding’ on that ship. They have full control of a large vessel, and there are many Annihilators gathered on board. It must be an important base.”

“…That rabbit has done great work,” Duncan said in the mirror, his expression grave, his tone full of feeling. “Those cultists come and go like ghosts. They never act openly in the city-states, and they are very hard to catch. I did not expect that we would find one of their gathering points this time… Hiding on a ship really was beyond our expectations.”

“The ship is large, and it looks like it was built for dark and bloody rituals,” Lucretia said. “Rabby smelled a thick scent of blood on board, the lingering smell of many sacrificial rites. A ship like that cannot dock at a city-state like an ordinary vessel. The aura left by dark rituals cannot fool the church, so there must be a supply port behind it…”

As Lucretia laid out her thoughts, Duncan in the mirror fell into deep thought. After a while, he suddenly asked: “Is Rabby still hidden on the ship? Will it be discovered?”

“It is very good at hiding. Unless it goes out of its way to face some of the higher-ranking cultists head-on, like that ‘Saint,’ it will not be exposed under normal conditions,” Lucretia said. “It comes from the Shadows of the Spirit Realm and can hide in people’s emotions and senses. On that ship, the entire place is full of negative aura. That environment itself is its best cover.”

“Good,” Duncan nodded. “Let Rabby keep hiding. Do not let it contact that ‘Saint.’ Have it gather as much information as possible.”

His original plan had been to have Rabby build a mirror ritual as soon as it found the cultists’ hideout so that he could “descend” to the scene in person. Then, before those cultists all died, he would rush to teleport his followers over, then beat those cultists up. Before their symbiotic pact demons could kill themselves, he would keep knocking them out and see how many he could capture in the end.

The whole plan was simple and efficient, and Vanna had strongly approved it.

But now it seemed that the “big fish” Rabby had found was even bigger than anyone had expected. Naturally, he could not solve the problem in such a simple and rough way.

As a master angler, he had to let the line out a little farther.