13 Mink Street

“Did you discover anything?” Nio asked Karon. “Or is there something you want to tell me?”

Karon looked again at the signature on the stone tablet. Yes, Rhanedar. There’s no mistake.

Karon then turned to observe at the statue in the middle of the fountain. The man had a somewhat lean figure, and his facial lines were clearly defined, giving off an air of loneliness and contemplation.

He glanced at the statue’s head. Oh. Not bald.

“Hm?” Nio urged him again.

Karon hesitated. He did not know what he should say. Was he supposed to tell him, “Captain, everything our squad ran into today was done by the dog at my house?”

Still, he understood that what had been triggered here, along with everything his squad encountered today, had nothing to do with the current Kevin. At most, this indicated that the dog’s identity from long ago had left behind a toy, and someone had recently picked that toy back up and was playing with it again.

“I don’t know much about him.”

“Yes, I believe you,” Nio replied. Then he added, “But there is a place you may find interesting, or rather, useful, if what you told me before is true.”

“What is that, Captain?”

“You once told me that your body was altered by Rhanedar.”

“So?”

“So there’s a place I can’t enter, but you might be able to.”

“Where?”

“The top floor of the castle.”

Karon followed Nio into the castle. They did not enter through the main entrance, but instead chose to climb in through a window. Upon entering, Karon realized that half of the room lay in light and half in darkness, as though time itself had been sliced apart.

“This was deliberately arranged like this. You should understand this sort of thing better than I do,” Nio said.

“It’s meant to strengthen psychological suggestions. What we encountered outside of the castle and what we would have encountered inside are probably on completely different levels. The people operating this place seem to have concentrated most of their effort here.”

“Yes. Luckily, I didn’t bring all of you inside. Otherwise, by the time this was all over, I’d be afraid my squad might have come out with a few fools added to our numbers. And I wouldn’t be able to abandon them or kick them out, so I’d have to arrange for them to die during some later mission while heroically saving everyone else. That would be too much trouble.”

“Captain, I don’t think those are things you should say to a subordinate.”

“It won’t hurt you to hear them. Don’t worry that, once your other squad members understand your purpose, they’ll believe you to be cold-blooded or condemn you for what you did. They might privately call you heartless over drinks, but in their hearts they’ll still approve of what you did.

“Though I suppose, if the reward is generous enough, quite a few illnesses could probably be cured on the spot.”

Karon did not respond. He simply followed Nio onward in silence. The two men climbed the stairs from the first floor until they finally arrived on the fifth.

During the climb, Karon had the odd sense of wandering through an amusement park at night. Even without being activated, many of the designs in place created a deep discomfort in one’s heart, and if they were activated, the sense of temporal distortion and segmented time would be enough to overturn a person’s entire prior understanding of time.

Once they reached the fifth floor, Nio glanced at his watch and said, “We still have plenty of time, but if we miss this chance, it’ll be difficult to get back in again later. I expect we’ll be added to a list of unsuitable test subjects. Oh, right, I nearly forgot. The reason you managed to get in here, is it because you were isolated, or because the whole squad was isolated?”

“The whole squad was isolated.”

“Then the time until our whole squad gets out should be quickly approaching, though we still have enough time.” Nio casually recalculated the timing, and then asked, “How did you pull it off?”

“The operators created a fake version of you.”

“Mhmm. And then?”

“In front of the whole squad, I put a bullet through the fake you’s head.”

“Huh?”

“The fake you.”

“You really could bring yourself to do it, huh?”

“Because I knew it was fake.”

“All right, you did well. Since that bunch used this method to treat us as their test subjects, then no matter how generous the reward is for this, we should still curse them viciously in our hearts. Of course, if we can make their test go wrong and become impossible to sustain, that’s an excellent way of expressing ourselves too.”

Nio stopped in front of the door. “We’re here. This is the door.”

He pointed at the red door in front of them. It sat at complete odds with the style of the surrounding layout, which only served to make it even more conspicuous.

“I can’t push it open. It feels like a wall. You try.”

Karon nodded and reached out to touch the door, only to find no resistance at all. In fact, he felt nothing, because his hand passed straight through the door.

Seeing this, Nio nodded and said, “All right. Now I completely believe that your body really was altered by a heretical god.”

“Captain, you didn’t believe me before?”

“I’ve always believed you, but fully believing is just a higher grade of it.”

Karon extended his other hand as well. At that moment, ripples spread across the surface of the door, making it look like a vertical sheet of water.

“Captain, do you want to come in with me?” Karon withdrew one hand and offered it to the captain.

“If something goes wrong while I’m passing through, will I get stuck in here and die?”

“This place is only mental consciousness.”

“But the sensation of death is real. If, in here, I decide that I’m dead, what kind of chain reaction do you think our bodies in reality will undergo? Psychic attribute Arts are best at doing exactly this.”

Hearing that, Karon suddenly realized that if his aim had been just a little better earlier, and he had successfully blown Marlow’s head off, then Marlow would have...

Poor Marlow. All he really did wrong was be fooled by the fake captain.

“Then stay outside. I’ll go in and have a look.” Karon was genuinely curious what kind of toy his dog had once left behind. If he missed this opportunity, it would be difficult to wait for another one, and that was even if the former owner of this thing was currently living in Karon’s house as a dog.

“No. I’m willing to try.” Nio grabbed Karon’s hand. At once, his body seemed to also gain the qualification to enter the door, and the two of them quickly sank into it.

Buzz! Beyond the door lay a field of stars. It was exquisitely beautiful.

But these were not true stars, but an algorithm. It was the core itself, the framework that supported the whole consciousness space. Walking through it, one could feel their own smallness. It was a crushing weight at the intellectual level.

“I think this space should be something Rhanedar left behind,” Nio observed. “A galaxy of intellect.”

Karon nodded, but then frustration surfaced. If his dog had left anything else behind, Karon might at least have been able to pocket it. By rights, that would even count as returning it to its rightful owner. But what the dog had left behind was this... and there was no way Karon could carry it off.

No wonder Rhanedar had left so few traces behind in the world. Forget ordinary people, even among the clergy, almost no one knew that the heretical god had ever existed.

If the dog had left a few more things behind in the past, some sort of Heretical God’s Blade, Heretical God’s Sword, Heretical God’s Axe, Heretical God’s Shield, even with prefixes like “Broken” or “Shattered,” his notoriety would definitely have been different.

Karon and Nio continued on , walking deeper inside. Just when the two of them began to think that everything beyond the door consisted of this stellar radiance, another door appeared before them. This one was not red, but blue.

“Try again. See whether you can enter this one.”

“All right.” Karon extended both hands again, but this time the door stopped them.

Seeing that, Nio let out a disappointed sigh. “Looks like this won’t work. This is as far as we go.”

With that, he turned around and pointed back the way they had come. “The things in this room should be what Rhanedar left behind. I’d even go so far as to guess that they can’t enter the red door either. Because they’re afraid that forcing their way in would damage this star-field inside, so they can only use the intellect here to operate this consciousness world.

“What a pity. We can’t get through the innermost door either. No one has probably ever gone inside to see what’s there.”

What the captain meant was that what Rhanedar had left behind might be, in an abstract sense, a brain. Some relevant department of the Church of Order dared not dissect it for fear of damaging the internal structure, and could only mount it here as a working component.

“This is the most important place, but at the same time the least important place.” Nio sighed. “Come on, let’s head back.”

Creak... At that moment, Nio heard the sound of a door opening behind him. He turned around and saw Karon holding the handle and pulling the door open.

“Captain, this door can’t be passed through. But it can be opened.”

“Oh, is that so?” Nio walked back over, and the two of them entered the innermost room together.

More accurately, it was a house, because they stepped out of a broken wardrobe, and in this stone-built dwelling, the most valuable thing was probably that broken wardrobe itself.

As Nio began carefully examining their surroundings, Karon asked, “Captain, can you tell what era this is from?”

“Any traces of an era have very little to do with the poor.”

Karon nodded. “I think this should be the place that remains deepest in Rhanedar’s memory. Most likely, it’s his earliest home.”

“Yes, I think so too. Then these three tightly shut windows...”

“We can open them and peek.”

Nio smiled. “Peeking into the innermost memories of a heretical god feels a bit inappropriate, doesn’t it?”

Despite saying that, Nio still walked over to the first window on the left.

“I think the great heretical god wouldn’t care about something this minor.” Karon also moved closer to the window.

Once this incident was over, Karon felt that he needed to really interrogate the dog properly once he got home. He could not keep ignoring the heretical god’s past just because he could not speak. If Karon had known about all of this earlier, then at the very beginning, he would not have needed to remain tense for so long, and he would not have almost shot Marlow in the head.

Karon seemed to recall that when everyone had been placed in that sealed room, it had not been only Richard making frantic hand signs at him. Farther away, Marlow had also been pointing at the wound on his shoulder and protesting something desperately in Karon’s direction, though perhaps Karon had simply misseen it. Yes, I probably mis-saw that.

In any case, the task of interrogating the family dog should be left to the family cat.

Nio extended a hand and pushed open the first window. Once the first window opened, what lay outside of it was a stretch of deep blue sea. A beautiful young girl in a white dress was walking along the beach gathering shellfish, while behind her, a ragged boy followed at a distance with great caution.

Sunlight, beach, waves, beauty, and the boy, it was a trite scene, but also one people never tired of looking at. Many could place themselves in the role of the girl. Many could also place themselves in the role of the boy. At that age of youthful confusion and awakening, sometimes a single shaft of sunlight falling just right, touching a strand of hair or the faint curve of lips, could stir someone’s heart in an instant.

Everyone had been that age at some point. Everyone had come through that age. If one closed their eyes and thought carefully, they could probably find a similar scene in their memories, except that the girl in question might never have known there had once been a gaze in the world that rested quietly on her.

At this moment, both Nio and Karon were leaning their elbows on the windowsill, looking very much like two brothers standing at a second-floor window by the roadside, peering down and commenting on pretty women passing below.

“So that boy is the heretical god?”

“Should be.”

“What a surprise. Even a heretical god once had a side like this, honest, awkward, shy. Someone like that actually grew into a heretical god later on. Tsk, tsk.”

By the way, was that girl an ordinary person?”

“If I’m not mistaken, that girl should be... Mios.”

“The goddess Mios?”

“Yes.”

“So the goddess Mios once shared that sort of bean-paste-vat bond with the heretical god too.”

The people of Veyn loved fermented bean paste, and nearly every household kept a paste vat. If two children fell into one together, it meant their families were extremely close, close enough to share one. It was the Veynic version of childhood sweethearts.

“I don’t think the goddess Mios and the heretical god ever fell into one together.”

“Oh?” Hearing that, Nio studied the scene again and discovered that the boy only followed the older girl from far behind, step by step, treading in the footprints she left behind. The older girl in front had turned back and seen him once or twice, but each time had merely smiled politely. From the look of it, the two of them did not seem to know each other at all.

“Hiss...” Nio drew in a breath and continued, “Why do I feel a little sorry for this heretical god?”

“So do I,” Karon echoed.

Nio turned his face and looked at Karon. “Have you ever lacked women in your life?”

“What?”

“What I mean is, when you say something like that, doesn’t your conscience sting at all?”

“...” Karon.

Through the window, the girl kept walking, and the boy kept following behind her. The two continued from dawn into noon, from noon into dusk, and from dusk into the stars. Perhaps this memory was simply too beautiful, so beautiful that the owner of the memory had wished it would never end, that they would keep walking on like this forever.

“Let’s look at the second window,” Nio suggested.

“All right, Captain.”

The second window was pushed open, and outside it was a field of reefs. A young man stood there, watching a woman board a small boat under the gazes of everyone on the island. She sailed into the boundless sea, and ultimately was swallowed by an immense curtain of water and a whirlpool.

Karon had seen this scene before, when he had released a layer of the seal on the family dog.

Nio said, “The day Goddess Mios ascended.”

Karon nodded.

In order for the prostitutes on the island to no longer be abused, Goddess Mios had voluntarily entered the sea to become the lover of the Sea God. From that day forward, pirates had no longer dared refuse to pay prostitutes, because they would otherwise suffer the punishment of being swallowed by the waves.

To pay prostitutes was, in truth, to acknowledge respect and dignity.

“He’s enraged.” Nio pointed at the young man standing by the window.

“Yes.”

“Then I’m really looking forward to the third window. The Church of the Sea God was once an orthodox church too, but it split apart at the end of the previous epoch. Of the several splinter churches that still inherit the Sea God Church’s legacy, the strongest is only a medium-sized church. Was the collapse of the Sea God Church somehow connected to this heretical god?

“Stop, don’t say anything. I want to open the window and see for myself.”

What Karon had actually wanted to say was that he did not know either, but he could more or less guess that this was indeed the case. Otherwise, there was no way to explain the origin of his Sea God’s Armor. Surely the dog had not gone to cozy up to his old romantic rival and beg for it back then.

Nio opened the third window, and in that instant, a horrifying pressure swept outward.

Karon, who had been walking toward the window, was forced down by the terrifying pressure until he almost bent at the waist. He only barely managed to stop himself from kneeling. Ahead of him, Nio had both hands clamped to the edge of the windowsill, holding his body upright.

The force had appeared too suddenly, leaving both of the men completely unprepared. It was utterly unlike the quiet presentation of the first two windows.

At last Karon adapted to the oppressive force, stepped up to the sill, and looked outside.

Before them lay an endless expanse of blue sea. Karon and Nio now felt as though they were leaning against a porthole and looking out. Yet below, in the depths of the sea, there was a gigantic hollow circle, and within it stood an enormous altar, so large it could rival a small island.

On that altar, a man of colossal size, clad in archaic blue armor, was being bound by molten iron chains that burst up from the depths of the earth. He struggled, and every struggle raised a terrifying storm above, like the rage of the sea itself. Yet all of his struggles were futile.

“Is that... the Sea God?” Karon asked in disbelief. It truly was a body as immense as a mountain. Even without divine power, a being of that size alone would have been enough to dominate the ocean.

Nio raised a finger and pointed upward. Karon leaned out, gripping the windowsill with both hands, and looked up. Directly above was a black throne suspended in the air.

Nio asked, “What do you see?”

“The Throne of Order.”

Nio said, “So back then, the one who helped the heretical god to suppress the Sea God was our God of Order.”

Karon nodded. “But the one who judged Rhanedar to be a heretical god was also our God of Order.”

At that moment, a man’s figure appeared above the altar of the Sea God. The difference in size between the two was like the difference between a pebble and a mountain, yet the moment he appeared, a sinister aura seemed to stain even the surrounding seawater.

In his hand he held up a mass of magma, and from beneath the altar, vast quantities of molten fire began to gush upward, preparing to engulf the Sea God’s vast body. “I once swore that I would make the Sea God Church perish, and bring about the fall of the Sea God. Today, I have done it.”

“Rhanedar! In the name of the sea, I lay my curse upon you!” The furious roar of the Sea God shook the surrounding space.

“I curse you, your divinity shall be torn from you!

“I curse you, your freedom shall be crushed!

“I curse you, your body shall be taken!

“I curse you, your soul shall be banished!

“I curse you, your dignity shall be trampled into the dust!

“Hahaha! I curse you, to serve as a slave for age after age, and live like a dog!”

After hearing the Sea God’s curse, Rhanedar gave a contemptuous laugh and said with disdain, “Heh. Childish.”