Town Ford.

A black sedan pulled over at the headquarters of the Sanctuary Sect.

The epic battle the previous day had rendered the place a ruin. The chicken farm’s ground had collapsed. From above, a crater leading to a hundred meters underground could be seen.

The authority had deployed a great number of officers to maintain order and lock down the area, forbidding curious civilians and journalists from getting close. The prohibition, however, only drew more attention!

Spectators swarmed the base. Some told the story of angels going head to head with demons with colorful embellishments, while others sold beer and other beverages in the front. As the rumors grew in absurdity, even the citizens of Dulin got wind of the event and came to witness the divine manifestation.

The whole ordeal caused the town’s GDP to spike.

In reality, there had been no witnesses when Mona raided the Sanctuary Sect. The townspeople had gone to sleep, and when they heard the commotion and ran out of their houses, Wayne and Mona had long fled in their car.

The rumors that angels had fought demons were the doing of the local Church of Heavenly Father, meant to exploit the public’s ignorance for their benefit.

Due to the absurd move, conspiracies about the church sprouted: the Sanctuary Sect set up the stage so that once the market was established, the Church of Heavenly Father could steal the market whole by stomping on the bodies of the ‘demons’ from the Sanctuary Sect. That was how the economy worked!

The rumors were nothing but rumors. They might be true and in character for the church in any other places, such as Londan, where followers were few and far between. In the Republic of Erland, however, there was no point in doing so.

The followers that the Sanctuary Sect had attracted didn’t actually follow the faith; they had only pretended to for the sake of the free eggs.

The Church of Heavenly Father was deeply ingrained in the public consciousness in the Republic of Erland. If the church just stayed quiet and conducted business as usual, it would maintain its dominance. It was absurd that they would have created the Sanctuary Sect, thus inviting trouble.

There was no point in that.

“Your version of the story is outdated. There is more than one angel. I came from Dulin. Saint Patrick’s Cathedral also saw a battle between angels and demons...” Wayne waded into the crowd and seized the chance to practice rumormongering.

One could never have too many tricks up one's sleeve. This was a useful trick against Auston.

“Did Saint Patrick’s Cathedral really explode, mate?”

“Why would I lie to you? I was there and saw everything. It went boom and then puff! The mushroom clouds were massive...”

Wayne regaled them with his experience, telling a story with dramatic ups and downs and surprising twists and turns, soon attracting a group of curious spectators.

“Boss, we have work to do.” Mona grabbed Wayne’s arm and sealed it, easily dragging him out of the crowd.

“Don’t go just yet. I’ll come back here to tell you the rest of the story after eating.” Wayne waved them goodbye, turning to Mona with a disgruntled expression. “You told me to come look for demons. I did. But then you told me to do work. Who’s the boss between us again?”

“I’m only making a suggestion, Boss.” She tightened her hold on his arm, sealing it tighter.

“Tsk, you weren’t like this last night...”

Speaking of last night, Wayne couldn’t help but make a strange face. Mona had played an angel incredibly well, haughty, defiant, and frosty. When Kristen pinned her down, especially, she had struggled so convincingly that an outsider would’ve thought she really hated it!

Of course, Wayne played a demon well, too.

Mona blushed when she noticed the strange look on his face, turning away and averting her gaze. Although the process was turbulent, the result was good. She had broken free of the restraint of her memories, feeling like she had recovered herself.

Wayne found the role-playing novel and would like to continue, which was what Mona wanted. She had found a good excuse to explain away her looks of coldness and disgust.

Wayne got to tickle his kink, and Mona was able to recover autonomy. It was a win-win situation.

Wayne led Mona around Ford. According to her, he was a demon-nip and would run into demons once out of ten times that he went for a walk.

“We call this survivorship bias. Just because I’ve run into many demons doesn’t mean that there’s something about me that attracts them.”

They walked into a diner and ordered a few local delicacies. They heard the other customers in the diner complaining about the eggs at home rotting, thus speculating that the Sanctuary Sect might be a cult.

After a quick lunch, Wayne and Mona continued to walk around Ford. It was about time for afternoon tea, and they still hadn’t run into a demon.

“As I said, I don’t draw demons, and evil gods have not returned to Ford.” Wayne clapped, planning on returning to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral to see if the clergy members there had collected any believable information.

“I think you should check the chicken farm, Boss.” Mona looked at the taped off ruined base of the Sanctuary Sect, her eyes flashing with golden light. “We’re here already. We might as well go in for a look. What if we run into evil gods returning to their scene of the crime?”

Her seal was so effective that Wayne had no choice but to follow the friction to the ruins. The place was under tight lockdown by not only the police, but also a few clergy members. Harrington was there, too. He immediately went up to Wayne and Mona when he saw them.

“Now you’re back,” Harrington groused, blaming the two for fleeing too fast that he ended up surrounded by curious crowds. He hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep since last night.

Well, the problem wasn’t that they had quickly fled, but that they had fled without him.

“Aren’t you that person? I think I’ve seen you before.” Wayne shook Harrington’s hand. “Glad you’re here. I have something to investigate. Have your people disperse the crowd as soon as possible. This is a dangerous place. There may be lingering evils around.”

Harrington nodded solemnly. Knowing that Wayne and Mona were not nobodies, he gathered the clergy without hesitation and dispersed the crowds with magic.

“Oh, I still don’t know your name—”

When Harrington finished the evacuation and turned around, Wayne and Mona were long gone.

“Telling me your names won’t interrupt your investigation!”

***

The chicken farm of the Sanctuary Sect was far smaller than the one built by the Geocentrism Sect, but the source of the eggs and the layout of the underground maze were identical to those of the Geocentrism Sect, as if they had gone to the same school.

Or perhaps the Geocentrism Sect was a pilot project, and the newly emerging cults, including the Sanctuary Sect, were all copying it.

“Copying the wrong answer?” Wayne grumbled. “No wonder you amount to nothing.”

Mona cleared a path in the collapsed underground maze with earth magic. Following her memories, she found the evil god statue. She looked for leads she might have missed with her thoughts.

Wayne grabbed in the air and sniffed, tracing the smell of the Void to the melted, broken statue buried in the rubble. After refining it with sacred flames, he extracted a heavy piece of gold.

“I’ll consider this nature’s gift.”

That small amount of gold wasn’t enough to make him smile. He held the broken statue in his hand and detected the corruptive power of the Void. He waved Mona over.

“The statue can still corrupt. I have a plan that may work.”

He explained his plan concisely: again, he would pretend to have been corrupted by the evil god to infiltrate the enemy’s ranks and collect information.

“Boss, should I play a captured clergywoman to make your act as a demon’s minion more convincing?” Mona smiled, remembering her old self. She had been so pure-hearted back then that she would blush for days from getting patted on the backside.

“That can be arranged. We’ll see how things go...”

Wayne waved at Mona to put some distance between them. Thinking back to the long white robe that the followers of the Sanctuary Sect wore, he conjured an identical attire on himself by reforging matters with his thoughts.

Mona moved away from the heart of the underground palace and subdued her energy to go into hiding. She knew almost all of Wayne’s secrets, so she wasn’t worried about him getting corrupted by evil gods from the Astral Plane. If they dared to try, they might just find themselves corrupted instead!

Wayne clutched the piece of gold and mimicked the information contained inside. His body changed accordingly. One arm transformed into a pale tentacle with bulging veins writhing under the skin, crawling up his shoulders to cover his chest and neck like earthworms.

“Ah!” he cried out. Then, after clearing his throat, he continued to scream.

“Ahhhh—”

In no time, he underwent a dramatic mutation, from humanoid to completely inhuman. By the end of it, he had turned into a sludge with swinging, melting tentacles, each adorned with crimson lips. When the red mouths opened, inside were either human eyeballs or two rows of cold white teeth.

Amid his pained cries, a trace of thoughts descended from the Astral Plane through the statue, the airy voice reaching Wayne’s mind.

“My subject, do you call to me?”

“Who-who are you... I’m suffering—no, I’m coming to understand everything...”

“My subject, I’m Lord Santuary, your lord in Heaven and the one you will serve in your lifetime.” Lord Sanctuary’s voice grew authoritative. He observed Wayne’s change in delight, sensing the great potential hidden in this body. Perhaps Wayne could be his vessel for descent. “My subject and child, give your faith your name.”

“Bru-Bruce.”

“Brubruce, there is no need to struggle, much less feel lost. The knowledge is my reward to you. Grasp everything, and you’ll gain extraordinary power and an immortal life. You’ll be an angel of the Sanctuary and my agent in the human world.”

Lord Sanctuary pushed further with his thoughts to perfect the vessel. Reforging the gold into a divine statue, he opened an elemental space for Wayne to facilitate the evolution.

Eat. Eat your fill so that I can better exploit you.

Lord Sanctuary was doing what the Lord of the Void had done, confidently opening their storage of the four elements to Wayne. It might seem like an absurd move that only an inexperienced bumpkin would make, but it was the result of a disparity of information. Lord Sanctuary could not see through Wayne’s life essence, so he foresaw Wayne being corrupted and reshaped.

Under the circumstances, Lord Sanctuary would have total control over Wayne, able to descend and take over Wayne’s body at any time. In that case, what was wrong with giving him some four elements? A chick wasn’t going to finish an entire mountain of rice grains.

Such impoverished elemental space. You aren’t a very successful evil god, are you? You can’t even match the Lord of the Void. Wayne cursed silently. The pay was so terrible that it didn’t deserve his incredible acting. The Book of Greed didn’t even bother to open its mouth.

He contacted Lord Sanctuary with his thoughts piously, “Lord in Heaven, your subject, Bruce, will devote his eternal loyalty to you. What should I do for you?”

Good for you! Lord Sanctuary was satisfied with his corruptive influence. Not doubting Wayne’s loyalty for a second, he said slowly, “Inside the treasury of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral is a holy grail that contains divine blood. I’ll grant you the ability to parasitize others so that you can steal the holy grail. After you succeed, I’ll tell you where you should deliver the item.”

“Rest assured that I will complete this mission.”

“Go ahead. As quickly as possible.”