Avery shuddered when he thought about the monstrous entity that had nearly killed them all.

It was unlike anything else he had encountered or heard about. Honestly, he would have rather faced down twenty queen energy lifeforms than that thing. At least he knew how to fight them.

Still, there was no telling if they might ever encounter that monstrosity or something like it again, and he could not say he was not intrigued to know more about it.

"Sure, go ahead and tell me what you’ve found." Avery said, picking up his chair and moving himself closer to Jasmine.

Sitting side by side, he watched as she swiftly pulled up several windows on the computer and selected one to take up the entire screen.

Seeing what was being displayed, Avery’s face scrunched up in confusion.

"You know, I didn’t peg you for the religious sort. Especially one that’s not even from the Dramid Alliance. Have you just been waiting all of this time for the right moment to try and indoctrinate me?"

Avery’s tone had been joking, but Jasmine turned to him with a grave expression on her face and said, "Yes, you’re correct. Now, I’m confident that you’re ready to recognize the glory and the prosperity our nine gods will bring to the entire universe." 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

For around half a minute, Avery was waiting for her to crack and start laughing at what he thought was obviously a joke.

However, Jasmine just kept staring at him intently without wavering.

It was only when he was beginning to show the slightest bit of uncertainty that she grinned at him and giggled.

"Hehe. You had me going there for a moment. You can really hold that serious look well. I’m glad you aren’t actually part of some cult, I feel like you would be a scarily good recruiter."

"It’s something I picked up while being educated back on Azade to one day succeeded my mother. The skill also came in handy during my days as part of the Alliance Police. I had to keep a straight face and not let my emotions reveal anything while listening to the fanciful tails or criminals or the occasional stupid orders from my superiors. You don’t know how many times I wanted to roll my eyes and scoff."

Avery could tell that she held a bit of bitterness towards parts of her past job. Likely even small grievances felt enhanced due to the unfortunate way her career in the Alliance Police had ended.

Fortunately, she was past all of that now and was happy where she was at. Though, like everyone else that was part of this mission, she could have done without having encountered an incomprehensible nightmare creature that wanted to slaughter all of them.

"So, all jokes aside, why are we looking at a religious text from the Reswen Theocracy?"

From just glancing at the title, he could tell that this was not anything he had ever seen before and was pretty old.

While he would not consider himself an expert on the other galactic power that shared a border with the Dramid Alliance he had done at least a little research after taking ownership of the corvette they had captured during his first escort mission.

What he knew was that the text that Jasmine had brought up was not part of the Theocracy’s main doctrine.

"This is where I found a reference to what I believe we faced in that overrun system. I did say that the source was not particularly reliable. But the stories in this book do have a creature in it that are almost exactly like that monster." Jasmine said, flipping through the pages to the first relevant part.

She gave Avery a bit of background before going over the actual stories in the text.

Apparently, the book they were looking at was really old and was not part of the Reswen Theocracy’s usual teachings any longer. And it had not been for over two thousand years.

That meant it was basically archaic, and its actual publication was unknown. So, it was basically ancient.

It became apparent pretty quickly why this text was not widely circulated anymore. Only three of the Reswen Theocracy’s Pantheon of nine gods were present in the stories’ events, and they were not portrayed in the way gods normally would be.

The main part of the book was centered around the three gods battles against a being called the "Devil of Oppression".

Entire cities were destroyed, people slaughtered, and even the three gods were barely able to fight the monster and were forced to retreat seven times before finally driving it away at great sacrifice that saw them all forced into some sort of rejuvenating sleep that lasted for decades. Leaving the people of the infant Reswen Theocracy that only composed a single solar system in a long dark age without the guidance of their deities.

Truthfully, Avery would have considered it all to just be a fanciful tale thought up by the mind of some religious nutjob if not for the depiction of the monster being basically exactly like the entity they had just barely escaped from.

It was a bit chilling to think that maybe the records here were not entirely fabricated but potentially rooted in real events. Even if they were likely still exaggerated by the author.

"Is there anything else?" Avery asked after digesting the information.

"Not that we have. I only discovered this because it was saved on Oliva’s ship’s computer. Being a vessel that originated in the Theocracy, there are plenty of religious records that were wasting memory space."

"I’d surmise that the captain or one of the higher-ranking officer when the corvette was still part of the Theocracy’s fleet was a bit of fanatic for stories like these. There’s a lot more that I found, but this was the it when it came to mentions of the ’Devil of Oppression’ that I’m fairly certain might be the creature we saw."

Avery pursed his lips for a couple of moments before asking Jasmine to keep this just between the two of them.

This was something he would want to look into more before he started claiming that a monster from an ancient tale from the Reswen Theocracy had returned.

For now, the thing was not a problem, and Avery could hope that he would never come across the entity again

Nevertheless, there were no guarantees out in space, and if there was going to be a next time, he wanted to be better prepared.

If that meant combing through old theological records from a faraway galactical power, then that was what he would do. No matter how strange it all seemed to him as he really thought about it.