Chapter 30 – A trail of destruction

Chapter 30 – A Trail of Disaster
The huge heavy mechanical spider folded and contracted its long limbs to the abdomen, and used the wheel structure on the outside of the limbs to glide on the straight road at high speed, Judge Vanna stood steadily as if cast on the armor of this mechanical creature, the night wind with a slight smell of the sea blew across the street, and the cold air made her mind more and more clear.

The cultists who worshipped the Sun God were the heartbreak of modern civilization – and unfortunately, there was more than one similar heartbreak.

There were always malicious eyes cast down to earth from the depths of subspace, and there were always foolish mortals trying to get their hands on those unseen powers, and between this collusion between ancient gods and mortals, there were twisted things, forbidden children and tainted repercussions left over from antiquity lurking in the depths of the city-states, ready to pry at the fabric of order in the society every now and then.

Of all these threats, the followers of the Sun God are the ones that cause the protectors of the city-state of Prand the most alarm and headaches.

Not only are they cultists, but they are also the product of a lost part of the Old World’s history, and the most dangerous thing about these dark sun-worshipping cults, as opposed to most of the blind and stupid ordinary cults, is that they have some kind of “belief” – albeit fanatical and twisted! The most dangerous thing about these dark sun-worshipping cults is that they have a “belief” – albeit a fanatical and twisted one – and despite the fact that the members of the lower levels of the cult are a mixed bag, there is a “core belief” that has remained unchanged for thousands of years in the upper levels of the abominable sect.

This belief revolves around the “Order Era” under the old sun, and not only has its own system, but also has a corresponding “True Solar Calendar” that is not recognized by modern civilization, and they firmly believe that they are the descendants of a long-lost ancient civilization, and that that glorious ancient civilization must be the future of the world. They believe that they are the descendants of a long-lost ancient civilization, and that that glorious ancient civilization will be revived.

As an Inquisitor of the Church of the Deep, Vanna had little interest in the heretics’ sophistry, but she knew that it was the existence of such sophistry that gave the followers of the God of the Sun a unity and obstinacy far superior to that of other heretics, and allowed them to survive after one blow after another, and to thrive in the shadows of the many city-states day and night.

Still, their resurgence in Prand came as a bit of a surprise to Vanna.

Ever since the unprecedented crackdown four years ago, the Sun God believers within the city-state of Prand had been greatly wounded, and according to several investigation reports, those heretics should have already transferred their main members to the nearby city-states of Lunsar, Moco, and even farther away Cold Harbor, and basically all that remained within Prand were just a few minions who had been compelled to be intransigent and stubborn but who weren’t qualified to be transferred along with the Bishop’s group.

These minions hid in the sewers, relying entirely on their knowledge of the underground world and the little twisted blessing that the Black Sun gave them to evade the guardsmen, and after four years, their numbers were getting smaller and smaller, and all they could do was just to survive.

But today, four years later, they suddenly gathered again, and even dared to risk exposure by holding a sacrifice ceremony in the assembly ground Who gave them the courage ……?

Or …… what great things are going to happen in this city state? Is there some sort of sufficient reason for that group of cultists to draw the sight of the Black Sun to Prand even at the risk of having the last bit of fire snuffed out?

As the vibrations and noise of the steam core’s constant operation came from within the mechanical spider, and the faint scent of lavender overflowed from the steam relief pipe and drifted back down the night breeze, Vanna temporarily put away the rambling thoughts in her mind and glanced up at the sky.

“The Tron of the World hung high in the night sky, casting a pale light that illuminated the houses, chimneys, and towers of the city of Prand, and now the team was passing through the edge of the industrial district, where huge steam and hydrothermal pipelines spanning the factory buildings ran through the sky above the streets like veins of a colossus.

Vanna vaguely recalled the old days, the night she remembered most vividly and horribly – the midnight that smelled of blood, when her uncle had carried her on his back to escape from the flames, when the streets had been filled with walking corpses caught in a collective hallucination and rising and shrinking shadows of flesh and blood as they fled down the factory’s pipelines, and the smell of blood and the smell of chemical grease oozing from the pipelines had been a source of great concern. The smell of blood and chemical grease oozing from the pipes is sickening ……

A sudden vibration came from the mechanical spiders beneath her feet, and Vanna snapped out of her memories.

The flat road came to an end, ahead was an abandoned area at the edge of the city, the road surface was pitted and undulating, the two mechanical spiders ended their skidding mode, they spread their long knobby limbs and began to walk quickly on the uneven road surface.

It didn’t take long for the squad to arrive at the entrance of an abandoned sewer.

Another eight-member team was already on standby here, and they blocked off the nearby area to prevent unrelated people from approaching this entrance.

Vanna greeted her subordinates here, and then directly followed the person in charge of the site into the depths of the sewers.

Through the deep tunnels and through the dirty paths, Vanna eventually reached the secret assembly site – here, she saw more Guardian warriors, as well as church priests who were performing purification rituals. A makeshift sacrificial platform was located right in the middle of the assembly ground, the wooden high platform seemed as if it had been burned by flames, and the blasphemous totem built by the Sun God followers could still be seen on the high platform – the totem had been destroyed by the flames, but the basic structure was still intact.

Surrounding the platform were dozens of cultists crouching on the ground with their hands tied, most of them shivering, while a few of them had their lips parted, mumbling their blasphemous prayers silently.

But with the ceremony site trashed and the Storm Goddess already focused on the area, these heretical prayers were useless.

Not far from the altar were the remains of the victims recovered from the nearby caves, the miserable victims laid out on rune-painted linens, each body examined by a hastily-arrived mortician.

Several church priests were walking around the altar, the copper chains in their hands shaking slightly, the incense burners at the end of the chains emitting white smoke, that smoke touching the ground near the altar would immediately be colored with a layer of unsettling black shadows, while more white smoke would take away the contamination – the scent of the black sun left here would be be removed little by little in the process.

“Your Honor the Inquisitor, please come this way, this is what we found to be out of place,” the young guardian said, pointing to a few corpses next to the sacrificial platform, “please be more careful, the ground here is not very clean.”

Vanna walked straight towards those corpses, and upon seeing the condition of one of them, she subconsciously frowned.

It was a cultist with a golden mask – no doubt the cleric directly in charge of the sacrifice ceremony on this profane sacrificial ground.

There was a terrifyingly empty hole in his chest.

“…… What’s going on here?” Vanna frowned, “Did this fanatical heretic get too excited at the end of the ritual and sacrifice himself? I’ve never heard of those Black Sun-worshipping cultists having such rules.”

“That’s exactly what’s weird and bizarre – he didn’t sacrifice himself,” the same guardsman who brought Vanna here immediately shook his head and said with a slightly odd expression on his face, “According to the description of the cultists caught at the scene …… their ‘messenger’ was sacrificed by a sacrifice ……”

“Sacrificed by a sacrifice?” Vanna raised an eyebrow at once, “What kind of crazy talk is that?”

“Very much like madness indeed,” the guardian spread his hands helplessly, “In fact most of the cultists here were indeed half-mad by the time we arrived.”

“Already half-mad?”

“Yes, their sacrifice ceremony had obviously gone very wrong, many of them had contracted madness, and quite a few of them had even begun to hack and slash at each other, and they all seemed to treat each other as if they were …… ‘monsters’ that had been taken over by some kind of horrible thing ‘, and it was precisely because they rushed out of the assembly grounds in their madness that they alerted the sheriffs patrolling nearby, leading to the exposure of the situation ……When we arrived, there were no more than a few people left who could remain lucid enough to answer the questions, and those few who were left who were still able to speak fluently insisted that they were the sacrifices offered to the Messenger.”

“Descending into madness? Slashing at each other? And thinking others are occupied monsters?” Vanna’s expression immediately turned serious, “Has a check been done? Is it the result of being contaminated by the Black Sun?”

“No traces of contamination by an external source could be found, rather it’s more like a spontaneous madness – the factor leading to the madness is rooted in their own mental world,” the guardian said, raising his finger to point at a young, black dress-clad young lady, “Ms. Heidi has arrived, and if it is confirmed that these cultists are not tainted by the Black Sun, we will have to think in terms of hypnotism.”

(End of chapter)