If the Saint wanted to register for an investigation on that enforcer’s soul, he would have to spend a lot of divine power for it. Again, he didn’t feel like doing that when the situation was so uncertain.
Meanwhile, the sign card on Knight Cabel’s waist started to tremble. After looking at the Saint for a while, he realized that it must’ve been something urgent.
The Saint waved his hand, “Just connect it, Cabel.”
Knight Cabel bowed and replied, “Thank you so much!”
However, his face started to look very sour when he connected his power of Will to the card.
The Saint frowned, “What is this?”
Knight Cabel kept kneeling, “Another enforcer, Master Enlightened. He’s also a head knight commander. After killing 31 preachers, he was found dead after committing suicide.”
The Saint stood up from his seat, “What?”
The whole Nation of God would be in danger if the number kept rising like this. And there was no way that this accident just happened three times in such a short time span. the Saint had to use his divine powers now, “Allow me to do this my Lord!”
He guided his power of the Will to connect with the guardian wings. The demon from beyond was still asleep. The guardian wings were taking care of things inside the Nation of God. So far, all the worship systems were taken care of by the guardian wing. the Saint was only responsible for giving specific instructions if anything special came up. As special as his position was, he was only partially responsible for using most of the guardian wings’ resources.
After inserting Burnside’s name to the Guardian Wing, traces of the golden divine power were expended. For using the divine power, that name was searched for in the ocean of other spirits that lived inside the wing. On a daily basis, these souls would only pray and provide divine power to their homes, while the Guardian Wing would also provide some energy to keep them in place.
Again, there was a limit to divine power. As it would take a while to keep this going, the soul power would flow across time, and the prayer would not be processed in the same way as the spirits before. Sacred knights’ souls would receive divine blessings, but if these were regular ones, they would be completely absorbed as nutrients to maintain the Guardian Wing. In most cases, the soul would be kept in storage for ten years.
After spending a huge amount of divine power, the Saint realized that Burnside’s soul was not here. He looked even more distraught. Every citizen of the Nation of God was supposed to return after death. Burnside would have to be a heretic not to be found.
Unknown to Burnside himself, his faith did not return to the spirit he worshiped after he died. Abel was the one receiving it after stealing followers from the Nation of God. Of course, even so, Burnside’s soul would never end up inside Abel’s crystal angelic statue. Unless he wasn’t a divine worker himself, Izual could also bring its soul back to the statue. This was the problem. He was working for the temple until his death, and when he died, Abel canceled all of his identities. He was gone from this.
The Saint screamed, “Conduct an investigation, Cabel! There’s a pagan god among us!”
Before the demon from beyond woke up, at that. the Saint couldn’t think that this could ever happen in the Nation of God. He felt like he had no way of facing his own spirits. It would be a catastrophe to let anyone know that there existed another god among them.
Knight Cabel understood the seriousness of the situation, “Yes, Master Enlightened! I’ll commence the investigation immediately!”
Among the Nation of God, the sacred knights within the law enforcement department began cleaning in the eighteen districts. Everything suspicious was checked. They did manage to find a lot of problems. Some of them were related to corruption. Others were about violation of rules. Some of the ones spreading the gospel weren’t even preachers. Still, nothing was found regarding this pagan god.
It wasn’t like the head commanders themselves had no idea. They were searching for the regular worshippers, while the ones with problems were the ones who were newly promoted. Who would doubt the new preachers, though? So, as the days passed, more worshippers lost their sanity and killed more and more preachers. The Nation of God was in complete disarray, while the ones spreading the gospel had to resort to self-protection.
The temple had sent its word out already. All locations were to have defensive circles. Yes, the perspective they took was that there was a security issue. Abel noticed that, too. However, not only all the locations would have defensive circles on at all times. None of them expected that anyone would be so daring as to appear within the Nation of God to steal their followers.
Divine power was always all over the Nation of God. If any foreign god were found, the Guardian Wing would be the first to locate it and repel its own attacks. The trick that Abel managed to sneak in so successfully was kind of unique. Izual and the demon from beyond belonged to the same race. Also, since the crystal angelic statue possessed the same type of presence as the demon from beyond, the Guardian Wings couldn’t realize what was actually wrong.
Abel was proud. He had been cultivating one hundred preachers in the Nation of God, and 100 small towns had become his so-called “place for harvest.”
While disarray was happening within the Nation of God, he discovered something. While passing through the passageway that the worshippers would cross, he understood that the Nation of God had no idea about the causes of the killings of the preachers. He took advantage of that quickly. He randomly gave out the preacher guide to his followers in 18 different locations that he had in exchange for even more preachers and even more preacher guides.
The more Abel did this, the stricter the Nation of God got at conducting the investigations. In fact, some of the more extreme actions had caused a downturn to both the quantity and quality of the worshipper’s faith. No one understood this on the central continent. Abel had been causing more damage to the Nation of God than the Wizard Union had been trying to do in the last century.
December 25th was supposed to be the holy birthday in elven tradition. In the morning, Butler Meyer followed through the traditional customs by placing countless flowers around the golden castle. In this season, only the elves could use special methods to keep the flowers blossoming. Naturally, the prices were so high that most people wouldn’t afford it.
Abel noticed as soon as he woke up. What he could see with his eyes and smell with his nose were the prettiest of flowers. When he arrived at the dining room, he could see ten guests waiting there. He nodded his head and greeted them quite casually, and they gave him a more formal greeting. Abel was more than used to this situation. These customers were here to eat at the price of one light stone each. The price was possibly the highest on the central continent, and nowhere else would people pay for food with light stone. Interestingly, because of how fixated Abel was about light stones, the exchange rate had been at a frantic increase on the central continent.
“At your own pleasure,” Abel welcomed these guests as he sat at the main spot. The servants got his share ready in advance while these meals of the others would come at a later time. Abel eating before them would have been considered rude, but his status changed after the Wizard Larking incident.
Among the ten guests, other than the five advanced-level class holders, the other five didn’t feel like what Abel was doing was out of place. It had all to do with Abel’s change of status. Of course, Abel wouldn’t usually have his meals in the dining room. His relationship with Lorraine made it obligatory for him to head over to the Moon Goddess Temple and participate in the special event. Today was a special day, which was why he was here inside the dining room. Still, he had a different breakfast for the guests. It was a water spirit fruit juice synthesized twice, one milk bread, and a bowl of salad. The smell was so extraordinary that the guests were refreshed just smelling them.
The juice was different, that was for sure. As for the bread, it was the special treat of the two chefs from the Elven Royal Palace. The raw material was unique. It was from milk that Abel crafted with his Horadric Cube.
Since Abel’s status increased, the golden castle was quite comfortable. Since the castle was so protected and all his servants were contracted, he felt more at ease with the Horadric Cube. It was not a possible thing to do. He was always tense and nervous with such a major secret to carry around all the time. Now, he was fine drinking all the special fruits and milk, not because he was fine lettings the others know about his cube, but that he could use his title as the central continent’s best potion master to make whatever he wanted.
Even the bowl of salad he had was from the spirit fruits the advanced elves planted for him inside Blood Moor. It wasn’t just the spirit fruits. There was also the spiritual seed from the Elven queen, some spiritual fruit tree he traded, and some ripe fruits that were planted together. He had a much better variety in terms of the kinds of fruit he was consuming.
Among today’s guests, there was an advanced priest called Cartwright. He came here with his mentor, Archpriest Ferguson. Of course, Archpriest Ferguson wasn’t just here because he had too many Lightstones. He was here because he heard the news that some advanced priests received their promotion here. Although it was just one incident, it was still worth the try by bringing his own disciple here. It was the same for the other archpriests, too.
While Abel was slurping his juice and chewing his bread, Archpriest Ferguson stared at his disciple Cartwright. Everyone present was quite strong. They knew who’d been swallowing their spit.
Something was off, Archpriest wanted to scold Cartwright for staring at Abel, but Cartwright was staring at the bread Abel was eating. Soon, a promotion qi started to rise out of Cartwright. Yes, all from smelling the juice and bread. For his defense, these were the superfoods Abel was only giving his three followers.
Archpriest Ferguson was glad for spending the two light stones. The meal was worth it, and they hadn’t even had any. Just when he was about to throw his circle plate underneath Cartwright, he heard more sounds of people swallowing their spit. He turned around, and four others sniffed the air and swallowed. It was almost like they were trying to mimic the experience Cartwright had.