Chapter 43: Know Too Much

In his Divine Kingdom, Xi Wei watched as Marni tricked the Rotten Bones cultist, giving them the slip and heading for the refugee settlement.

His ball form ‘nodded’. The reason he had assigned Leah her quest was naturally because he had discovered (by spying on the cult’s meeting) that the cultists were not planning to kill her, but to sacrifice her as a living offering to Rotten Bones.

He could guess Rotten Bones’ intention at once: like himself, the evil god would feed on weaker gods to increase its own power.

The System the girl had was not quite important since it was normal for any devout believers to possess divine miracles on their person, and a weakling like Rotten Bones would never be able to find out anything.

Even if Xi Wei believed that he now had the ability to fight, he would rather keep vigilant to stay on the safe side and prevent Rotten Bones from tracing Leah’s power to reach him. That was why he set a quest so that the girl would think about fleeing instead.

“With that, some of the bedrock is laid. I would be ready when Leah arrives at the starter village… it is soon time for payback after that pushover evil god bullied my believer for so long.” Xi Wei stroked what was supposed to be his chin with his tentacles.

He now had enough divine energy to change his appearance, but he held that thought with the imminent threat of Rotten Bones, and began to prepare some strategies against them.

“Well, Wickidor is mostly alright now. Let’s turn to the starter village…”

The small town was developing rapidly and prospering with every passing day.

The frontline parties had managed to explore the Valley of the Tragic Dead by 5% now, and were taking a break for the day before pushing up to 6%. Moreover, almost every monster they could reach from the entrance to the 2% range were clubbed to death, with other casual Players also starting towards 3%.

Still, Xi Wei’s attention was fixated upon the group called the Secret Eye Society lurking near starter village.

Unlike Rotten Bones, the Secret Eye Society was an organization that focused entirely on profits and shared not mutual beliefs. While there was no telling how it was founded, the group has numbers and advanced combat ability that surpassed the Players.

By coincidence, the Rotten Bones and the Secret Eye had become two obstacles on two different frontiers against the church of God of Games. On one side, the Rotten Bones cultists lacked ability compared to Players, but the living evil god Rotten Bones was an actual threat to Xi Wei. On the other hand, the Secret Eye Society could not threaten Xi Wei, but if they would go out in force, they were a great threat to the Players of the starter village.

***

Edward was not resting despite the frontline party taking a day off. Instead, he had taken on a new quest from Angora to investigate the Secret Eye Society which was assigned to him a little late because the young lord was having a party.

Interestingly, the two morons to whom Angora had assigned the same quest but had no faith in actually stumbled upon a Secret Eye Society base nearby the starter village. Although they were killed almost immediately when they were caught, their findings were relayed to Angora accordingly as a completed quest through Xi Wei’s divinely powered computer (or divine brain).

In turn, Angora handed the information as quest details to Edward.

Unlike those two dimwitted Players who simply walked right into the enemy’s base, Edward infiltrated it quietly. While Xi Wei did not set thief as one of the basic classes, Edward was still a mage who has many options at his disposal for different environments, and was the next best class to slip in beneath rangers.

‘Two men in the walkway up front. I’ll take them out quietly when they approach!’ Edward thought to himself while using his child-sized body to hide in a vent, leaning slightly to a side as he tried to listen in on their conversation.

Having gone through many battles, Edward was no longer the hunter who just left the village.

When he infiltrated the base, he noticed immediately that no one here was clean: they were selling hallucinating potions that would leave broken families and trading slaves. In the case of the latter, any slave that was not purchased would be used as test subjects for black magic and new hallucinogens, whereas dead slaves would have their organs harvested and sold to cultists who used them as ritual tools… the things he had seen left Edward feeling an impulse to simply burn down the place.

In fact, Edward would not feel any guilt even if he would kill every single person in this place.

Meanwhile, the two men’s conversation grew louder.

“I heard the old pig and the others caught two men trying to sneak in.”

“That’s old news. They’re dead.”

“Dead? Why not sell them as slaves? It’s a quick buck.”

“You don’t get it. Boss Black Whip did try to get them to talk and spill the beans on who hired them at the time, and probably would sell them as slaves after getting the details.”

“And? They died without talking?”

“Wouldn’t that be nice.”

“What? What happened?”

“One of them was cracking jokes and making merry, even after he was restrained in a cangue. Instead, he was trying to trick Black Whip for information, and it’s like he couldn’t feel pain even after the torture started…”

“Tough nut. How about the other one?”

“He was… laughing.”

“Laughing coldly? Or that silent grin in the face of impending doom?”

“No, laughing crazily. It’s as if he’s easily entertained—he kept laughing as the comedian cracked his jokes.”

“…”

“Well, in the end, Black Whip saw red and actually cracked. He chopped off the comedian’s head with a swing!”

“Wow, tough life. Did he get spooked in the end?”

“Nah. His last words were ‘hold up, let me finish his one—you’ll definitely laugh out loud!’…”

“Is he mad? Well, the other guy must be scared out of his wits.”

“Nope. When he saw his friend’s head drop off, he was laughing madly!”

“What the hell…”

“His words were ‘Hahaha, you lame thing, I’m dying here!'”

“???”

“Yeah. Then Black Whip cut him down too.”

“…Where did they come from?”

“Heaven knows. That said, Black Whip told us that more of those idiots would be coming, and we should be more careful with the patrol.”

Just as the two who seemed to be playing a sketch passed through a narrow vent, a black figure leaped out of it. Before the men could react, one was burnt to dust, another frozen into ice that shattered.

Edward stared at their corpses coldly, breathing out vapors before slowly saying, “You know too much.”