Chapter 146: Hidden Motives

“What in the world are you people!?”

Deli stared at the three cultists bound tightly before her, her face ashen. She clenched her fists and bit her lip, her petite body trembling despite herself.

With Patilina and the Armored Mage Knights present, the battle had ended quickly. More than two hundred ogres had been wiped out without a single survivor. Jann, on the other hand, had captured three cultists, so at least they had gained something from the affair.

That only gave Deli an even greater headache. On the Klein Continent, hardly any noble house was entirely free of entanglements with those shadowy powers. If the cultists had not appeared, this would have been nothing more than a band of ogres raiding the countryside. But with cultists involved, the matter became something else entirely. Whether it was a feud between nobles or these lunatics attempting to perform some forbidden ritual, either possibility was a troublesome mess.

And whose territory was this, after all? Pawood’s. When something went wrong, who would be the one to suffer in the end if not her?

In response to Deli’s questioning, the three cultists displayed remarkable defiance. They merely regarded her with mocking smiles and refused to say a word. This only made Deli angrier, but there was little she could do. Though she was a mage, her specialty was alchemy, and she was not proficient in enchantment or divination magic. She had no means of forcing the cultists to speak. Besides, as an elegant and refined young lady, torture was far beyond anything Deli was accustomed to.

“Please leave this to me, milady.”

Seeing Deli’s face turn blue with anger, Dobie immediately stepped forward and volunteered.

To be honest, he already felt somewhat unable to hold his head up around Jann’s group. Nearly all of the ogres had been slain by those young female knights, while he and his private soldiers had done little more than follow behind and take credit for being present. His old face could hardly bear the humiliation.

He had also secretly observed the girls and noticed that their faces beneath their hoods remained flushed, while they were still breathing slightly hard after the battle. This convinced Dobie that they were not undead but genuine human beings—which, contrary to expectations, only made him feel even more depressed.

Now, in order to show that he was not merely a useless old man living off a little girl’s protection, Dobie was prepared to give it everything he had.

“Very well. I leave them to you, Mr. Dobie.”

Deli questioned the cultists several more times. When it became clear that they would neither yield to threats nor persuasion, she had no choice but to leave the matter in Dobie’s hands.

After receiving her permission, Dobie respectfully nodded to the several ladies watching from nearby, then strode toward the three cultists. He reached down and gripped the hilt of his sword, fixed the prisoners with a deathly stare, and gave a cold snort.

In an instant, a frigid sword aura burst forth and enveloped the three cultists. Under the pressure of Dobie’s sword aura, their faces quickly turned pale. Their teeth chattered, and their bodies began to tremble.

They were not particularly strong to begin with and had no chance of resisting the sword aura of a high-ranking swordsman. Dobie had once used the same technique against Jann, though unfortunately it had failed. But these three cultists were clearly no legendary warriors. Under the crushing pressure, they could barely breathe.

Dobie did not speak at once. Instead, he stared coldly at the prisoners, like a starving wolf standing before its prey and preparing to feed. After a moment, he suddenly drew the longsword from his waist and drove it through the palm of one of the heretics, pinning his hand firmly to the ground.

“Ahhh!”

Licia and the two maids cried out at the sight. They had never witnessed a true battlefield before. During the battle, they had merely sat inside the carriage, turning pale with terror at the screams and roars outside. But those had been only sounds. Now they were watching Dobie pin a man to the ground with a single thrust, and they could not help screaming.

The unfortunate prisoner let out a howl of agony. Before long, however, he clenched his teeth, lowered his head, and whispered:

“We… we are the… servants of the Moon of Venoms…”

“The Moon of Venoms?”

Deli stared blankly. As a well-educated noble young lady, she had naturally never heard of the names of such cults. Yet the man before her did not seem to be lying.

Just as Deli was about to ask another question, a cold snort interrupted her.

“You certainly put on a convincing act. The Moon of Venoms? Aren’t you afraid the Knights of the Apocalypse will come to judge you? Since when did the followers of Geshu learn to spout such nonsense?”

“Mr. Jann?”

At this, not only Deli but also Dobie, Licia, and the others turned toward Jann in astonishment.

He was smiling mockingly, looking at the cultists before him as though they were clowns. The cultist who had answered the question widened his eyes in disbelief when he heard Jann’s words.

“You…”

“Ogres are the descendants of the three-headed savage beast Krozer. Whenever the third full moon rises, they gather atop the highest peaks and swear allegiance to Geshu, the God of Fury. Anyone capable of commanding ogres can only be a follower of Geshu. They revere violence, plunder, and battle. Yet you actually use the Moon of Venoms as a cover story. You’ve got quite a bit of nerve…”

Jann spoke with such certainty that everyone, Deli included, was left speechless. But the most astonished of all were the three captured cultists. Their faces had gone white. With a single sentence, Jann had seized upon their fatal weakness and exposed their true identities completely.

Watching the three idiots collapse in terror, Jann gave a cold snort. Others might not know, but he had studied history extensively within the Palace of Ten Thousand Demons. He knew the truth of everything that had taken place in this world.

In the beginning, this continent had known no distinction between gods and demons. All the gods had lived upon the continent itself. Each possessed its own people, territory, and dominion. In that respect, they were little different from the kings of the various nations that now ruled the world. Their divine subjects—the peoples who followed them—lived within the territories governed by their respective gods.

That had been the most prosperous age in the history of the continent. The countless miracles of that era were almost impossible to believe.

Yet at the summit of prosperity, conflict emerged.

In some ways, the nations of the present were far better than those of the dawn of creation. The only thing binding modern nations together was the struggle for mutual interests. In the beginning, however, the gods held different beliefs, and their people naturally followed those beliefs as well.

The collision of such cultures was the most terrifying thing imaginable. Could one picture a servant of the god of light praising darkness, or a child of darkness yearning for the light?

At first, there were only minor clashes along the borders, and the gods were able to manage their own affairs. But they could not ensure that every one of their followers would do the same. Before long, people who followed different gods began fighting over matters of faith, even slaughtering one another.

The gods had no solution to such conflict. Then the clashes grew more violent, eventually escalating into war after war.

This was the Primordial War of Creation.

Ironically, modern histories generally claimed that the War of Creation had been started by the gods. In truth, the gods who ruled the divine nations had merely been dragged into the conflict by their own people. Their greatest flaw was that they were conceptual deities, bound to obey the nature of their respective domains. Unlike the humans of the present age, they could not conduct flexible diplomacy or reach compromises.

Under such circumstances, the fighting quickly escalated. At first, only a few weak gods became involved. Later, the conflict developed into a total war. Alliances formed and collapsed, and after a succession of battles, the divine factions of light and darkness became completely opposed. From that division arose a war that could no longer be undone.

That was the War of Creation.

The war ultimately ended in victory for the gods of light. But under the full force of the gods’ attacks, the entire continent had been pushed to the brink of collapse. If the conflict continued, the world itself would be overturned, and no one would be able to play the game anymore—everyone would become refuse scattered throughout the Astral Realm.

In the end, both sides reached an agreement and signed the Treaty of the Gods. The gods then departed the Prime Material Plane, taking with them their surviving kin and divine kingdoms.

The gods of light established the celestial kingdom of Sinapus in the heavens. The defeated gods of darkness, meanwhile, chose the dark abyss and built the Palace of Ten Thousand Demons, Saprus.

After the War of Creation, the gods, their people, and their divine kingdoms abandoned the lands where they had once lived, leaving them to the survivors. That was the origin of the name Klein Continent: the place the gods had departed.

With the gods gone, the age of mortals began.

But the gods of darkness—who had by then renamed themselves demons—were unwilling to accept defeat. Nearly a thousand years later, they once again gathered armies of darkness and death and challenged the celestial kingdom. They opened a planar passage and sent their soldiers to the surface, attempting to reclaim the land.

The celestial kingdom naturally refused to surrender. Before long, an allied army led by the Nine Saints was formed, and fierce battles broke out against the demon realm.

This was the First War Between Heaven and Earth. It was after this war that the pyramid-like order led by the Nine Saints and Six Demons was established on the Klein Continent, unifying the previously chaotic system of divine worship.

Another thousand years passed.

Then, for some “well-known” reason—a peculiar notation used by demons when they wish to keep something secret, meaning that anyone qualified to know already knows, while anyone unqualified has no connection to the matter at all—a disturbance erupted between the celestial kingdom and the Palace of Ten Thousand Demons.

For reasons unknown, all the gods and demon kings were forcibly brought down to the Prime Material Plane in the form of saints. During the upheaval, the Klein Continent once again suffered an unprecedented catastrophe. Mortals were struck a devastating blow, while gods fell one after another. The entire upper order was overturned, and new powers rose everywhere.

By the time the War of the Saints ended and the gods returned to their celestial kingdoms and demonic domains, nearly one-third of the gods on the continent had been replaced by mortals. Many heroes who had begun as ordinary people had surpassed their limits and ascended to godhood.

Geshu, the God of Fury, was one of them. In life, he had been a barbarian from the Sunset Highlands. Later, he became a god who specifically protected the races living in the wilderness. Ogres and barbarians were among his followers.

The people of the Klein Continent called such beings cultists, but that was not entirely accurate. Throughout the divine wars, many gods had remained neutral, and the same was true after the War of the Saints reshuffled the order of the world.

These neutral gods had gone neither to the demon realm nor to the divine kingdoms. Instead, they had built their own domains within the Astral Plane. They had little connection with the demon kings of the lower realms. They were called cultists only because their conduct did not conform to human beliefs.

Take ogres, for example. Their name alone made their nature clear: they survived by eating humans. To them, eating a human was no different from a human eating chicken, sheep, cattle, or fish.

Could one call an ogre evil simply because it ate humans?

And upon what foundation was evil defined in the first place?

Jann naturally had no intention of speaking of such secrets. He merely explained to Deli, Licia, and the others what sort of being Geshu was. Their gazes toward him became even more reverent.

The stories Jann had told them before had already proven that the young man was extraordinarily well-read. But those had been merely entertaining tales and legends. What made his knowledge truly remarkable was that it had now proven useful in reality.

The cultists, meanwhile, were completely dumbfounded. The world called them cultists because of their behavior, not because of their doctrines. Yet this young man was not only deeply familiar with their beliefs, he could even casually recount several of Geshu’s “great achievements” throughout history.

Had he truly been human, they might have suspected that he was some high-ranking member of their own faith.

“All right. Enough idle talk. I doubt we have any time left to waste.”

After giving everyone a brief lesson on Geshu—his name, nature, origins, and place in history—Jann clapped his hands and returned to the matter at hand. He narrowed his eyes and looked at the cultists with an inscrutable smile.

“Why did you attack us? And don’t try feeding me nonsense. I know your kind quite well.”

“We… we…”

Only then did the three cultists finally abandon all thought of resistance. They lowered their heads helplessly and stared at the ground before speaking in low voices.

“In truth, we were acting under orders. We came here to find sacrifices for a ritual—sacrifices possessing noble and pure souls…”

“Sacrifices?”

Jann was taken aback. He turned his head and swiftly glanced at Deli, who stood nearby with a bewildered expression. A sharp glint flashed through his eyes.

Well, this had just become interesting…

To be continued.