Chapter 151 – Secrets in the Underground Sanctuary

Chapter 151 – Secrets in the Underground Sanctuary
“Would you like to pray to the Goddess?”

Truth be told, in this instant, Duncan’s instinctive reaction was that there was something wrong with the storm goddess Gemona – it was the sinister other side of the god who was supposed to shelter mankind that caused the hideous shadows to lurk in the depths of the city-state, and the twisted shape that the icon had accidentally revealed itself in was evidence of that.

But in the next moment, another suspicion arose: if Gemona, the Storm Goddess, really had a problem, then why was everything normal in the other churches in the city?

It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen what other deep-sea churches looked like – there was a community church near the antique store, and there was a church next to that marine museum in the first place, and he’d wandered around and stayed nearby even if he hadn’t gone in to check it out seriously, and the aura those churches emitted… …was clearly different from this bizarre church in front of him.

He had come into contact with other clerics as well, including priests and guardsmen at the lowest level, as well as Inquisitors at the apex of the city-state like Vanna, and those who served the Storm Goddess night and day were normal, even more strong-willed and clear-thinking than the vast majority of the population.

He ignored the nun and looked up at the icon.

After the glimpse just now, the strange fissure in the icon’s head had not reappeared, and even in the other visage iterated in the church, the icon was merely blackened by smoke, as if the fissure had been alarmed by something and had taken it upon itself to hide.

Duncan frowned.

The weirdness of this church was clearly a special case, so if it wasn’t the Storm Goddess …… who had gone wrong the scene he had just witnessed could perhaps be explained as some sort of force using this church as a node in an attempt to erode reality.

But what the hell was that?
The form of that fissure looked like it had nothing to do with the Sun God, and it was not at all reminiscent of a sun fragment, if he had to say it …… it was the obscure light surging through the fissure that reminded him of the chaos outside the bottom of the Lost Country ship.

“Would you like to pray to the Goddess?”

The nun’s voice came once more, she was neither impatient nor pushy, it was just as if she had been triggered by some keyword, and she began repeating the question over and over again as soon as Duncan and Shirley stood next to the icon.

Shirley looked a bit overwhelmed, and she instinctively looked at Duncan, who also finally responded at this moment, gazing calmly at the nun, “Are you praying to your goddess?”

This should be an unquestionable question that any normal believer would give a clear and affirmative answer at this point, yet the nun’s response caused Sherry’s eyes to widen.

“I …… don’t know,” the nun shook her head with a calm face, actually as if she didn’t see anything wrong with her response, “I’m just praying, He told me to pray here.”

Duncan immediately frowned, “Who is He?”

“The Great Being.” The nun smiled.

Sherry, however, felt a chill in the nun’s gentle smile.

“I don’t pray to any gods,” Duncan said lightly, not moving, pulling Sherry half a step backward and out of the range of the prayer platform, “including the goddess you speak of.”

“Oh, that’s a shame.” With a soft sigh, the nun bowed her head once more and paid no more attention to Duncan or Sherry.

Duncan stared at the writhing mass of humanoid ash for a few seconds, making sure that the ash really wasn’t paying attention to him anymore, and then turned to walk elsewhere.

The chapel was limited in size, with little in the way of areas to hide away, other than the main hall where the icons were enshrined, there were just a few rooms connected to the main hall and a basement.

Duncan first led Shirley through checking the few surrounding rooms without finding anything worth caring about, and finally, they found the steps to the basement at the end of a corridor on the outside of the main hall.

“Are we really going down there?” Looking at the dark and dreary steps in front of her, Sherry was obviously a bit uneasy, and she subconsciously glanced back in the direction of the main hall, “Will that weird nun suddenly kill us?”

“That ‘nun’ is obviously trapped in the main hall and can’t get too far away from the icon,” Duncan shook his head, “But if she does kill over …… that would have to make a move, after all, that stance …… hardly says it’s still a living human.”

Shirley gulped, she was usually actually quite bold, but bold as she was this was the first time she had ever run into the church of the Church of the Deep to get into trouble, an emotion of nervous awe that had built up over the years made her heart thump.

But she knew better than to say no – she still had a bit of a hard time figuring out which was more dangerous, a nun who’d undergone a mutation from a mortal or a shadow of subspace.

That’s when Duncan suddenly said something else, causing Sherry’s hard-won resolve to jolt again, “By the way, you summon Dog.”

Shirley’s eyes instantly widened, “Ah? Summon Dog out? In the church of the Storm Goddess?!”

“I’m afraid this is no longer the church of the Storm Goddess,” Duncan shook his head, “It’s hard to tell what exactly is occupying the upper hand here right now – don’t worry about summoning Dog, you see, even I’m standing in this ‘church’, could a Phantom Demon be more out of place than me?” Shirley thought about that for a moment and thought it made sense, but of course mostly it didn’t make sense and she didn’t dare disagree, so she had to honestly raise her arm and summon Dog to the real world.

Dark flames and swirling smoke rose up, and the massive spectral hound appeared in front of Duncan in an instant.

The summoning process had just ended when A Dog skillfully did his business and plopped directly under Duncan’s feet, and his skeleton tail began to flap like a five-speed electric fan, “Hail to you, great Deng ……”

“Well, do not have to come every time this set,” Duncan did not wait for the other party to finish the wave of the hand to interrupt, he has a noisy goat head is already annoying enough, really do not want to be around more than a similar style of painting the dog, “you should have felt this church is not right, now see for yourself! –Next, I may need your ‘eyesight’.”

Dog rose sharply from the floor, craning his head to look around at the corridor, and the staircase that led down to the basement at the end of it, shimmering light flickering in his empty scarlet eyes.

“It’s still a really evil place ……,” the Phantom Hound’s voice was hoarse and low, “it’s dizzying to look at ……”

After saying that it paused, seemingly making further judgments, before slightly twisting its head and saying to Duncan, “It’s a bit close to that abandoned factory from before, but it’s even more twisted than there, and I’m afraid that this distortion has already approached the threshold of what the real world can withstand …… That’s right, it looks like we’ve really found the a key ‘spot’ on this curtain.”

“Has the distortion approached the threshold of the real world? …… No wonder I can also directly observe it,” Duncan nodded in understanding, his gaze then fell on the stairs in front of him, “The entire church has been checked, and for now the remaining …… should only be this basement. According to the structure of most deep-sea churches, ahead should be the area known as the ‘underground sanctuary’.”

“I’m starting to get excited,” Dog shook his ugly head, the chains around his neck clattering, “For the first time in my life, I’m breaking into the forbidden area of the Deep Sea Church openly …… I haven’t seen what it looks like down here yet! ”

Shirley instantly looked at Dog with an odd expression, “Can you fucking stop acting like a pervert ready to break into the ladies’ restroom?”

Dog: “……”

Duncan ignored the combination of the two sons of bitches, he had already crossed over to Dog and picked his way down the stairs to the main door that led to the underground sanctuary.

As a small-scale community church, the so-called “underground sanctuary” here is just a spacious basement, and the door leading to the underground sanctuary is an oak door reinforced and blessed with a steel frame and sacred runes.

Duncan put his hand on the door, slightly pushed hard, and found that the door was not locked, but when he continued to push it, he felt some resistance, as if something was against the opposite side, blocking the door from opening.

“There’s something on the opposite side of the door.” Duncan backed away slightly, observing the dark, heavy oak door in front of him.

For some reason, when he arrived at the entrance of the underground sanctuary, the strange “iterative” scene faded away, and all he could see was just the door in front of him.

It seemed that the “two branches” of the iteration in the church had intersected here, and only the only “reality” remained.

“Should we break down the door?” Shirley came up from behind, already holding the chain in her hand with an expression of eagerness on her face, while Dog beside her was also ready to go – in the form of holding his head in his paws and balling himself up into the form of a meteor hammer.

“…… might spoil the clues,” Duncan stopped the whirling-dog girl, who was ready to use her traditional arts and crafts, by placing one hand on the rune-strewn gate, a small flame flaring up from between his fingers and traveling quickly along the patterned grooves of the gate. “Theoretically, this gate should belong to a transcendent item, then ……”

In the next second, the door of the sanctuary that had been blessed was turned into firewood for the fire of the spiritual body, and with the rapid burning of the green fire, the door faithfully carried out the orders of the “master”.

It burned itself out.

And as the doorway went up in smoke, the thing that had stood against it on the other side appeared before Duncan and the others, and fell to the ground with a thud.

It was a nun in a black gown and dress – bruised and battered, still holding a longsword in her hand, still glaring at something in the darkness, even though she was dead.

Sherry saw the other’s face, and a chill rose from her heart.

“It’s …… the nun we just saw?!”

(The end of the month ~ double monthly votes start ~ everyone has a vote to cast ~)

(End of chapter)