Chapter 706: A Terrifying Fellow

The nest had already spiraled out of control…

Bald Windel only realized what was being referred to after a moment of stunned silence.

“You mean the underground area beneath the eastern part of the Holy Spirit Plains…” He looked up at Gawain and Viscount Andrew. “It seems you’ve already found its entrance?”

“The question of an ‘entrance’ is no longer relevant,” Gawain said bluntly. “The entire Solinfort region has been overtaken by a massive plant spreading up from beneath the earth. It’s probably some kind of out-of-control technology of yours. Your only chance now is to go in, assess the situation—and come back alive.”

Bald closed his eyes briefly. It seemed he had no other choice.

“I understand,” he said, bowing his head. “I accept the mission.”

“Good,” Gawain glanced at Viscount Andrew, then nodded at Bald. “For now, relax a little. At least for this moment, you can shed the identity of a prisoner. I have some questions for you next.”

A servant quickly brought a chair, and Bald sat down in the center of the room. Viscount Andrew left on official business, leaving only Gawain and the former Typhon Wolf General. The atmosphere grew heavy and tense until Gawain broke the silence.

“I’ve always been curious,” he began, “how a once-promising Wolf General ended up as a worshipper of the Cult of All-Things’ End—so much so that your transcendent profession changed from a God-Blessed Knight to a Dark Druid.”

Bald sat up straight. Perhaps having something to do again, or facing the ruler of an enemy nation, his usual despondency seemed to fade. He was a man who harbored many secrets. At first, he was silent, then after a few seconds, he sighed softly.

Some things he never intended to speak of again. But after seeing the news of Gawain’s coronation and the enormous skull turned into a throne, all his former convictions suddenly felt trivial.

“Your Majesty,” he asked, locking eyes with Gawain, “have you ever had faith?”

Gawain smiled faintly. “If you mean a certain belief, yes. But if you mean a specific deity, then no.”

“Then you probably can’t understand what it means for a person’s faith to shatter in an instant,” Bald said with a bitter smile, shaking his head. “Especially when life and death hang in the balance…”

“While I’d love to correct your narrow view of ‘faith’ right now, I’m more interested in your ‘faith’s collapse,’” Gawain said, adjusting his posture and leaning back in his chair, a half-smile playing on his lips as he looked at the fallen Wolf General who had once been a devout worshipper of the God of War. “Let me guess—you confronted some… divine truth? Did you discover your god was dead? Or that He was just a monstrous, man-eating fiend?”

Bald’s eyes suddenly widened, staring intently at Gawain. “How did you—”

“Do you think you’re the only ones who’ve faced so-called truths and bear such missions? The world is vast. Why should all the truths be held by a single dark cult?”

Bald breathed heavily, finally calming down after a long moment. He closed his eyes, a self-mocking smile on his face. “Then I suppose we really are a joke…”

“A joke with some serious destructive power,” Gawain shook his head. “Tell me, how did you end up like this?”

Bald closed his eyes tightly as memories flashed through his mind—

He recalled a bitterly cold winter at Winterwolf Fortress—Longwind Outpost, a frozen wasteland. It was the coldest winter he’d ever endured, with snow falling almost every day for nearly two weeks.

He remembered the knights patrolling the border in the blizzard, the sudden snowstorm obscuring their vision, causing them to stray from their path while seeking shelter…

He recalled a brief skirmish near the Paramel Highlands with the Ansu Knights. The battle in the snow was short-lived. Realizing the situation was unfavorable, he led his men southward, attempting to circle back to Typhon through the hills at the edge of the Dark Mountains…

He remembered the sudden ambush near the Dark Mountains’ edge, close to the Gondor Wastelands. The exhausted knights were attacked by monstrous creatures resembling flesh-and-blood giants. The monsters kept pouring in from the wasteland. Outnumbered, the knights fought desperately. Bald killed one beast after another until his sword shattered and his last comrade fell…

He too collapsed, pierced through the heart with a fatal wound—one that should have been unsurvivable. Yet he opened his eyes again. When he did, he found himself in what looked like a magical laboratory, hooked up to countless tubes, half his body submerged in a strange solution. Around him, robed figures paced back and forth. Someone loudly declared the experiment a success…

“…From that day on, I became one of them,” Bald said, eyes now open as he spoke, then, in front of Gawain, he pulled open his shirt to reveal the price of his resurrection.

Gawain frowned. Bald’s chest was covered by a steel plate. The skin around its edges was scarred and grotesque, with several stitches running along the arteries—an unsettling sight.

“When I changed clothes in prison, the guards were startled by this. I told them it was the result of a magical experiment gone wrong. But they hadn’t seen the worst yet…”

Bald smiled and tapped the steel plate a few times with a special technique. With a mechanical click, the plate swung open, revealing an even more astonishing sight inside: a layer of transparent, flexible material enveloped his chest cavity like a sac filled with a translucent fluid. Floating within was a heart, a grotesque fusion of flesh and metal parts, beating rhythmically. Nearby were a series of auxiliary tubes and glowing magical runes that illuminated his entire chest.

This apparatus had been running for many years and seemed destined to continue.

“They implanted an artificial heart in you?” Gawain frowned. He wasn’t surprised by the Cult of All-Things’ End’s biotech—after all, they were capable of creating artificial gods. Mastery over artificial organs and transplants was expected. Even outside the cult, some secular transcendent organizations possessed similar technologies—

Some elderly mages and extreme druids extended their lives through biochemical modifications or transcendent rituals. Nobles wouldn’t hesitate to use implants to enhance their declining bodies. The upper echelons of this world’s technology had always been advanced; the only issues were accessibility and cost.

What puzzled Gawain was whether Bald’s transformation into a Dark Druid was solely because of this heart.

“Did you become this way to repay a debt?” Gawain asked, frowning. “I doubt it’s that simple.”

“They didn’t just implant this heart,” Bald shook his head. “Along with it came ‘knowledge’ flooding into my mind.”

“An ordinary heart can’t power a high-level transcendent’s body, so they used something called the ‘Divine Sin Factor’ to create it. These factors carry the knowledge of the gods.”

“From that day, I spent three full years in the cult’s underground chambers, surrounded by darkness and nightmares. I stared into those indescribable monsters in my dreams. I called upon my war god, but it only dragged me deeper into the nightmare. I saw their malice, their madness, their calculations of the end times in a palace of false chaos…”

“In the end, I thought I was dead—killed by severe physical and spiritual rejection. The priests watching over me even dragged me to the lab, preparing to dissect me after death. But at the last moment, I woke from the nightmare.”

“I lost my faith in the war god—not just inwardly, but completely. All the blessings and powers once granted by him vanished.”

“After that, I became a priest of the Cult of All-Things’ End, just as you see now.”

Bald’s story ended. Gawain frowned, absorbing the weight of his words.

He had a vague suspicion about the purpose behind the cult’s experiments on Bald.

Those fanatical cultists had surgically and mentally shattered Bald’s “spiritual seal”! They had ripped a “God-Blessed” warrior from the domain of the war god!

This brilliant yet diabolical experiment reminded Gawain of the Renegades, and of the “ghosts” Veronica had mentioned.

Based on the intelligence he had, Gawain was almost certain that some Renegades were active deep within the Cult of All-Things’ End.

Gawain placed his hand on the table, his index finger tapping lightly as his gaze swept over the artificial heart beating in Bald’s chest. A sudden wave of emotion stirred within him—

This man, in the eyes of the cultists, had initially been nothing more than an “experimental subject.”

The utterly deranged cultists and the out-of-control Renegades cared little for a person’s status in the secular world. They chose Bald Windel purely for his value as experimental material. If Bald’s identity as the “Wolf General” meant anything to them, it was only that it helped worsen relations between Typhon and Ansu, adding fuel to the internal pressures and conflicts within Ansu.

Thinking conspiratorially, Gawain suspected that the mutated creature attack Bald and his men encountered near the Dark Mountains had been orchestrated by the cultists. There was undoubtedly a secret, complex connection between the Cult of All-Things’ End and the Gondor Wastelands. What surprised him most was that they had the ability, so many years ago, to command some of the mutated creatures beyond the Great Wall… Perhaps Bald’s ambush was the cult’s first attempt to infiltrate and undermine the Great Wall?

It was a vast, intricate, and secretive plan, spanning time and space. But if it was devised by one or several Renegades, Gawain wasn’t surprised.

They could scheme for a thousand years, and carry out a single plan over a millennium.

“Renegades…” Gawain exhaled softly, his gaze drifting into the distance. “Truly terrifying ghosts…”

…

Meanwhile, Veronica—or rather, Ophelia Norton—stood expressionless in the plaza before the Saint Luan Cathedral, watching the gathered nuns assemble.

After helping restore order to the Holy Light Cathedral and assisting the White Knights in taking over the Northern Church, she had arrived in the southern territories with the second wave of “migration groups.” At the invitation of the Grant Archbishop Leight, she had come to the White Knights’ training base—the former southern diocesan headquarters in Luan City.

Her first purpose in coming here was to observe the training of the White Knights and to see the new Holy Light equipment firsthand. The second was to inspect the recently established order of nuns in the southern church and to promote those who adhered to the new doctrines to other dioceses across the empire.

Once a rebellious outcast, now a saintly princess, Veronica slowly shifted her gaze. The young nuns under her watch straightened their backs, their expressions solemn and focused. They wore pristine, uniform white clerical robes—clearly redesigned for ease of movement. Each gripped a metal staff nearly as tall as themselves, its ends adorned with intricate mechanical parts and glowing runes—undeniably a new type of magitech device.

Beyond the essential staffs, every nun was equipped with lightweight magitech bracers and mechanical gauntlets. Prayer books and potion vials hung from their waists, and of course, the holy emblem of their order was proudly emblazoned on each combat backpack.

“The combat backpacks are lightweight, designed with both aesthetics and comfort in mind…” Leight explained quietly beside Veronica.

“So…” Veronica tightened her grip on her platinum scepter and spoke slowly, “this is the newly trained order of nuns from the southern region?”

“The official name is ‘Battle Nuns,’ and the leaders of each combat squad are called ‘Warrior Nuns,’” Leight nodded. “They’ve just completed their training, but they’re already dependable clerics. Each young woman is a steadfast and courageous warrior of the Holy Light, ready to faithfully spread the gospel and uphold the empire’s new order.”

Veronica felt a stirring in her emotions, something she hadn’t experienced in centuries. “…And those things in their hands are the tools they use to spread the gospel?”

“Yes. The provisional name is ‘Gospel Angels,’” Leight said proudly, a smile touching his lips. “When not firing, they function as staffs—capable of casting healing spells imbued with the Holy Light.”

When not firing, they function as staffs…

Veronica—Orphilia—drew a slow breath and closed her eyes briefly.

The Cecilians… truly a fearsome people.

(End of chapter)