13 Mink Street

Nio took the ring off from his hand and held it out toward Karon. “Do you want to put this mask on to experience it for yourself?”

Karon shook his head. “I’m more curious about why you did it, Captain.”

Nio put the ring back on his finger. A glimmer of light flashed by, and Nio became Nio once more.

“As for why...” Nio said. “One morning, while washing up after getting out of bed, I looked at my face and suddenly felt tired of it. So I thought I’d try wearing a different one for a while, but after I peeled this face off, I regretted it, so I could only turn it into a mask to be able to put it back on.”

Karon knew perfectly well that this was absolute bullshit, and the reason for that was simple: the captain had already placed one chip on the table, and it was now Karon’s turn to place a chip of equal value. They had agreed in advance to proceed step by step, on equal terms, so that neither side would lose out.

Nio pulled a chair over and sat down, then nodded at Karon.

Karon could not find a second chair in the collection room. Evidently, Lemar did not like sharing his private collection with others. Left with no better option, Karon leaned against the wall beside him. “I am not afraid of corruption. Under normal circumstances, I don’t need to worry about any sort of corruption.”

“Karon, do you understand the consequences of saying that? From now on, whenever the squad faces threats of corruption during missions, you may well be the first one sent in.”

“No problem,” Karon answered very directly. That source of corruption he had encountered beneath the sausage factory had been so concentrated, and yet it had only made him feel uncomfortable for a short while, and even then, only because it was his first time dealing with such things. There had been no lasting evidence whatsoever. That was enough to prove that he had no need to fear the overwhelming majority of corruption threats in this world.

“Go on,” Nio said, raising his hand slightly. Evidently, in his view, that secret was still not enough.

Karon continued, “That’s because this body of mine was personally modified by a heretical god.”

Nio froze. Neither man was an ordinary person who might carelessly throw around exaggerated words like “god,” “devil,” or “demon.” When the term heretical god came out of their mouths, it meant only one thing: a true divine existence that had been judged a heretical god.

After a long while, Nio asked, “Rhanedar?”

“Yes.”

“When you said that name in front of Talina, did you already know I was watching from nearby, and deliberately say it for me to hear? Or did you already foresee that we would end up laying things bare like this, and decide to prepare groundwork in advance?”

“In truth, I wasn’t thinking that much at the time.” Karon looked at Nio. “Captain, do you know of Rhanedar?”

Nio shook his head. “I don’t. I rarely read those mythological texts carefully. I assume that the heretical god didn’t leave a legacy behind, did he?”

“No.” Karon knew his dog had left behind no believers. No, to be more accurate, he had never founded a church at all.

That meant that unless Rhanedar had shone brilliantly during the previous epoch the same way that the God of Order had, he was destined to be forgotten in the long river of history, perhaps only mentioned in passing in the mythological records of some other church.

Of course, that did not mean that nameless gods were weak. Some heretical gods might be truly powerful, stronger than ordinary deities, stronger than true gods with church legacies, perhaps even stronger than High Gods with orthodox church legacies.

What mattered most was who had suppressed the heretical god.

Karon’s dog did little more than bark, and clearly did not like speaking about his former life. Karon had only glimpsed a few fragments of memories while helping to loosen the seal. He only knew that Rhanedar had once been an admirer of the goddess Mios, and if nothing unexpected had happened, he had likely had some role to play in the schism within the Sea God Church.

“What is your relationship with Rhanedar?”

“It’s hard to describe. He feels like a pet dog I keep.”

“A pet dog?”

“Yes. Most of the time, you can sense his quietness, his peace, his obedience, and his good behavior. It almost feels as though he would take the initiative to come up to you, stick out his tongue, smile, and let you pet his head.

“But at the same time, you can’t truly treat him like a pet dog, because you can never be sure what lies hidden behind that smile. The happier it looks, the more hatred it may be concealing inside.”

“That is a very curious metaphor.”

“Yes.”

“Are you a descended heretical god?”

That question had once been misunderstood by many people. Mr. Hoffen, Pu’er, Alfred, and Ms. Molly had all once believed Karon to be a heretical god. Only Tiz had always known that Karon was not.

After hesitating for a moment, Karon felt that his chip this round should already be enough, but he did not mind raising the stake a little further. “I am not him. Though I do not know what exactly your situation is, Captain, I am very clear about one thing: I am not a heretical god, nor can I be bewitched by one. I am myself, purely myself.”

“And your body?”

“Only my body was modified by a heretical god, which is why I can ignore the effects of most contamination, because perhaps I myself am the greatest source of corruption.”

“How was that done?”

“I was mischievous as a child and fell from upstairs. That was how it happened.”

Nio tilted his neck back slightly and chuckled. “Looks like it’s my turn again.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Where should I begin? Forget it. You ask, I’ll answer.”

“Who is the ‘it’ inside you, Captain?”

“Before I answer that, I want to know what answer you had guessed before.”

“At first, I always thought you were a powerful Light vermin infiltrating the Church of Order.”

“And then?”

“Then I began to suspect that your derangement was actually confusion regarding your own true identity, because someone who wears a mask for too long can easily be influenced by the identity represented by that mask.”

“And now?”

“Now... actually, back when I was doing the psychological consultation with you in the café, I already realized that all my previous guesses were wrong. I was wrong from the very start. And now that you’ve just removed your mask, I feel that I no longer need to guess. I just want the answer from you.”

“I am Nio.” Nio looked at Karon and smiled. “Just like the way you described yourself earlier, I am purely myself. At least, I am for now. I just can’t guarantee whether that will still be true in the future.”

“So the one inside you, Captain, is the real outsider?”

“Yes. Do you know the Gran Sea?”

“I believe it’s north of Veyn, not too far away.”

“Ten years ago- no, eleven years ago, when I was still a member of a Whip squad, I followed the team to the Gran Sea on a mission. We were pursuing a target by ship, and then a sea eye appeared in that area.” Nio made several clockwise circles with his finger in front of Karon, allowing him to understand that Nio was referring to something similar to a whirlpool at sea.

“The ship we were on was pulled into that sea eye. I struggled desperately to break free. Although I managed to get away from the ship and force some distance between myself and it, my spirituality was ultimately exhausted, and I lost the ability to continue resisting the suction. I passed out.

“When I woke up, I found myself inside an undersea cave. The cave was not very large. There was an arcing difference in elevation inside it, so seawater did not flood the place where I was, but getting out was also extremely difficult. At the time, I was not only injured, I was also utterly exhausted. My combat supplies and everything I should have been carrying with me, medicine and food for replenishing my strength, had all been lost in the sea.

“I noticed that I was surrounded by something like seaweed, though it was black. At that time, I was no longer able to care about anything else, so I began eating that seaweed. It did fill my stomach, but very soon, I realized I had made a mistake. What I had swallowed was not only seaweed, but probably some insect eggs as well. They began to grow inside me. I could clearly feel my body wasting away day by day. They were feeding on the strength inside of me to nourish themselves. I had been parasitized.

“Looking back now, it was still because I was inexperienced at that time. The seaweed I ate was entirely returned to those insects, and that was added to my already injured and weakened body.

“But my instincts to survive were very strong at the time. No, my instincts to survive have always been strong. Perhaps that is why, no matter what happens now, I still keep trying to live on by force of habit. I began searching that already small platform, hoping to find something to eat that was not that black seaweed. I was truly starving then. In all my life, I had never been so hungry.

“And then, in a gap between two reef stones, I found a corpse.”

“A corpse?” Karon was very surprised. He had originally assumed that, following the usual pattern, the captain would have obtained some notebook or treasure. He had not expected it to be a corpse.

“Yes, a corpse. The corpse of a middle-aged man. He was wearing an ordinary priest’s robe, the kind without any church emblem on it. I dragged him out of that crevice, and what surprised me was that I could tell from the details that he should have died in that place many years ago, and yet his body showed no sign of decay. Everything looked the same as when he had been alive. It was as though he might open his eyes and start speaking to me at any moment.

“And then, I smelled the fragrance coming from him.”

“A fragrance?”

“Yes, a fragrance. It was not that I was so hungry that I simply imagined that he smelled good, nor am I making excuses for what I did next or laying groundwork for it now. At the time, I even made a point to deliberately confirm it; A fragrance was indeed coming from his body. It was a real scent that truly existed.

“And then... I ate him.

“Does that disgust you?”

Karon shook his head. “Not only am I not disgusted, it actually feels somewhat natural.”

“I was eating, while the insects inside of me were also eating. I even chewed and ate his bones. They were very soft, every last one of them. Biting into them felt like eating cartilage.

“That is how I survived for several days, until those insects seemed to have grown to a certain extent and then left my body of their own accord. I still remember how it felt, having them crawl out of me like they were moving house. At that moment, I actually felt grateful toward them.

“Thank the heavens, they were not completely parasitic insects. They had only treated my body as a temporary incubator. That corpse had immense nutritional value. It not only provided what those insects needed to grow, it also bought me time to recover my strength and heal my injuries.

“And I could clearly feel that, because I had eaten him, the spirituality inside me had grown much denser. By the time I felt that my wounds had mostly healed, it was also because not even bone fragments remained. I had no choice but to take a gamble and dive out of that cave. Relying on my enhanced spirituality, and taking an enormous risk, I finally managed to reach the surface of the sea.

“My luck was good, and as I floated on the surface, I encountered a fishing boat. They rescued me and brought me back to Veyn. After I came ashore, I learned that everyone from my squad, the captain and the rest of the members, had all died. I was the only one who came back alive.”

“So when did the changes begin to appear?” Karon asked. He believed that after the captain had eaten that corpse, there must have been some lingering consequence, which was the thing the captain had always been facing; the ‘it’ he referred to.

“For the first month after I came ashore, I didn’t go back to working for the church, and the church did not come to disturb me either. I quietly stayed at home. The deaths of my captain and teammates did not make me passive. At the time, I was simply thinking that I would rest for a while before going back to church work and applying to join another Whip of Order squad.

“However, during that month, I began to have frequent dreams at night. I dreamed of the man I had eaten. He appeared in my dreams. He kept talking to me, constantly preaching the doctrine of Light to me.

“My inner self was not influenced by him, but my body gradually began to undergo changes that I could not control. The aura of Light actually began to flow within me. Absurd, isn’t it? Even though my inner faith remained firm, my body became filled with the power of Light. I knew that I had been corrupted.”

Karon licked his lips. The captain had been corrupted by Light. Light and corruption did not seem like concepts that belonged together, and yet that was precisely what had happened to the captain. As a believer in the God of Order, he retained firmness of his inner faith, and yet his body had been changed by the power of Light.

That was corruption. Light had transformed the captain’s body. Just as Pu’er had once said, the distinction between priests and demonkin was not actually that clear.

Nio stared at Karon. “At first, I thought you were like me, that you use the power of Light as a medium for conversion before casting Arts of Order. But later, I realized that you are different. Inside you, there remains pure power of Order.”

“Yes.”

“Once I realized that, I was very nervous at first, because I felt that this was blasphemy against my faith, and yet there was nothing I could do. I could only learn to hide myself by using Light to transform Arts of Order. I was not infiltrating the Church of Order, because I was originally a person of the Church of Order.

“Later, I applied to join another Whip of Order squad, and I continued serving the church. After that, I was promoted and allowed to form my own Whip of Order squad. It was during that period that I discovered something. I had originally thought that once Light had corrupted me, that was the end of it, but in truth, that was only the beginning.

“I could sense him awakening inside me. He not only appeared in my dreams, he also spoke in my heart frequently during the day while I was awake. After corrupting my body, he began focusing on corrupting my soul.

“The faith I had once believed to be so firm began to grow fragile. He began trying to influence me, control me, change me...

“He even told me his plan. He wanted me to become him, and then continue infiltrating the Church of Order. At the time, I had no one else to help me. I could only rely on myself. And then I thought of a method.”

“The method was the mask?”

“Yes.” Nio nodded and touched the ring. “That was the purpose of making this mask. I gave up all resistance to him directly, and even took the initiative to follow his guidance, allowing him to dominate the me of that time.”

Nio looked at the portraits on the wall. “I succeeded. During that period of nearly a year, he became me, and I became him. During that stretch, our identities and roles were reversed. He was the one doing the work; the lurking, the operating, the forming of my own Whip of Order squad. He was the one who pioneered the precedent of recruiting criminals into the Whip squad. I merely followed his practice afterward and used it as my standard for recruiting members.

“And then, while he worked, lived, and slept, I began bewitching him in turn, preaching the doctrine of Order to him.”

“...” Karon.

“Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?”

“No.” Karon shook his head. “Captain, you’re incredible.”

That was not the kind of method an ordinary person could think of. It was like saying: I cannot defeat my inner demon, so I will let the inner demon become me, while I become the inner demon, and then I will be the one to bewitch him.

Karon pointed to the ring in the captain’s hand and asked, “So this mask was the strongest psychological suggestion you gave yourself?”

“Yes, that was exactly its function. When I first put my own face on as a mask, he became me, and I became him. When I first took that mask off of my own initiative, it meant that I had once again become myself.

“In the end, after a year, I succeeded. I took back my soul, my consciousness, my body, and my faith, except... that damned power of Light could no longer be changed. And on top of that, he left me with a very high level of attainment in Light, along with many Light Arts.”

“And what about him?”

“He died.”

“He died?”

“That is the only way I can put it. The part of him that had been released was assimilated by me, or you could say, killed by me. But I know that an extremely large part of him has still not been triggered.

“You said earlier that I was walking into the depths of fire while still conscious, didn’t you? After Elisa died, I began trying to read through him.”

“So that’s how it is.”

“In fact, before my first meeting with Elisa, I had been carrying out a mission with a moderate degree of danger. At the time, I had only just killed him and taken back my soul and body, which left me mentally exhausted, and my thoughts and awareness were still extremely chaotic. During the mission, I was even fighting the target while muttering to myself. And then, I was gravely wounded.

“Elisa saved me. In order to keep me alive, she shared her Bloodfiend bloodline with me.

“So now you know why, even though I possess Bloodfiend blood, I no longer need Dormancy Serum. Compared to that one, what are the murmurs of those ancestors? Hahaha. I even feel that, ever since that one was assimilated by me, my soul has become a little too quiet and dull. Having that Bloodfiend ancestor speak from time to time is actually not so bad. It helps pass the time. It is just a pity that the Bloodfiend ancestor prefers saying nonsense rather than actively stepping in. Otherwise, I would gladly give up my position again and play another game like this.” Nio took a deep breath, looked at Karon, and said, “Alright. Your turn now. I hope your second chip won’t disappoint me.”

“My family’s name is Immers.”

“Immers?” Nio frowned slightly. Clearly, he was unfamiliar with the surname, because Nio himself was not from a church family. Besides, an Inquisitor family could never compare to the fame of an Expositor family, like Richard’s.

“Captain, you know about the explosion at the Temple of Order, right?”

“Of course I know about it. That incident triggered a whole chain of consequences. It even directly advanced, or rather accelerated, Order’s current war against Reincarnation.”

“Yes.” Karon nodded. “My grandfather blew it up.”“...” Nio.