Chapter 126: Temple

Chapter 126: Temple

「I’ve the ability to allow you an evolution, and an immediate one, at that.」

『It’d probably be a good idea for us to play along a bit in order to get him to tell us a bit more.』

The Principality of Falsehood would allow us the ability to discern the truth from lies, so listening to him a bit longer wouldn’t really result in any sort of harm. That said, his comment regarding the Black Cat Tribe’s ability to evolve meant that evolving as a Black Catsman probably had some sort of trick to it. This was a chance for us to learn a bit more about the process, so, the risk was well worth it, at least in my eyes.

(Information already sufficient. His evolution not true evolution. Involves transformation into Evil Being.)

『True.』

(Won’t lower head to man like this. Not even as act.)

『Ah, I getcha.』

Alright, yeah. Fran’s choice was definitely the better of the two choices. Rynford thought his words to be the truth, but there was no way for us to determine the correctness of the information he provided. Not everything he thought to be true really would be true, after all. Moreover, we had no idea what he’d end up doing should we show him some sort of opening. Playing along wasn’t exactly what you could call perfectly safe.

「Nn. Can just force information from him later.」

Fran pulled tightened her grip on me as she got herself into a combat ready stance.

「Oh? So you choose not to obey? Fine. I’ll just defeat you and force you into a transformation.」

「Impossible.」

「Fuofuofuofuo! Your words appear much sharper than your skills. I assume you possess some sort of trump card, but I assure you that the magic tool you just used will be insufficient if you wish to defeat me.」

Ah, right, he had Appraisal. He must’ve seen Fran’s fake stats, and thought her to be far too weak to defeat him. He’d likely feel different if he ended up seeing her real stats. I guess that was technically the whole point of using the skill in the first place though, so yeah.

『Welp, his fault, not ours.』

I activated my telekinetic catapult and launched myself right at him. There were only ten meters between us, so my flight but lasted for an instant.

But I was unable to impale the old man.

「That’s a formidable magic sword you have there. Still, it lacks the power needed to pierce the divine protection bestowed upon me by the Evil God himself.」

I was stopped and sent flying by some sort of ridiculously powerful protective barrier. I hadn’t gone all out because I didn’t use Overboost, but I hadn’t really held back either. He’d actually managed to block an attack that made use of element enhancements, Poison Fang, and Vibration Blade.

Sheet. I ended flying a bit too far. There was quite a bit of distance between Fran and I.

(Master, Urushi. Stay at current location.)

『Alright. I’ll sit around and peek at his skills to see if I can figure anything out.』

(Nn.)

(Woof.)

「How close. You would have been able to interrupt the ritual had you killed me with that blow. That said, delaying its completion for another ten minutes would be all your interruption would’ve managed, for not even my death can stop the gears I’ve set into motion!」

「Ritual?」

「Fuofuofuofuo! It doesn’t matter how much information you pry from me! It’s far too late! The ritual has already reached a state of completion!.」

「Woof woof!」

Again, that didn’t mean we ignored everything and just singlemindedly charged towards our destination. We still stopped to eliminate whatever enemies we happened to encounter on our way there. All the aforementioned enemies had ended up being forced into their transformations, and so not a single one of them had managed to retain a sane state of mind.

Seeing the Evil Human’s rampaging about had honestly made us feel a bit hesitant about leaving most of them as is, but Rynford and Zerais were probably plotting something to make this whole ordeal even worse than it already was, so we still ended choosing to pursue them instead.

『Take the route that’ll get us to where Zeras and Rynford are fastest.』

「Woof!」

We managed to reach the source of Rynford’s scent about twenty odd minutes later. The trip had resulted in us butchering three additional Evil Humans along the way.

『You sure it’s here?』

「Woof.」

There didn’t seem to be much magical energy leaking from the building’s premises, and we weren’t able to sense any presences inside of it either. But I trusted Urushi’s nose. If he said that this was the place, then it probably was.

『Why a temple of all places?』

The place that Urushi had led us to was, without a doubt, a place of worship, a house of God.

This world’s religious practice wasn’t one segregated by different sects or cults. Every single temple was dedicated to every single God. People of certain races and occupations might end up having greater dedication to one God than the rest, but it’d never be by a large margin.

All in all, the church was a simple, powerless organisation. It never named any particular popes or pontiffs. This was the result of the people believing it forbidden to use the Gods’ names in self interest. It was said that anyone that did commit such a taboo would soon meet fate in the form of death. That, to me, seemed like nothing but just another urban legend, however, this world’s denizens apparently believed it to be true. I couldn’t help but feel as if applying such an axiom to the religious organisations we had back on Earth would result in about eighty percent of their staff getting wiped out.

There was a sort of Priest-like position, but it wasn’t anything special. Priests were just responsible for managing their temples, and that was it. Anyone could become a priest so long as they had the Oracle skill.

Job classes could actually be considered one of the Gods’ blessings, and thus, one could change their job at any given temple simply by offering a prayer. Each prayer would come with a three thousand Golde fee in order for the temple to pay its maintenance costs and keep its priests out of poverty.

One could also change jobs at the Adventurer’s Guild, as Fran had done twice already in the past. The reason for that was because the guild possessed a magic item that happened to have said ability. I’d assumed that said item was considered a blasphemy or something, but apparently, all the second hand information I’d obtained said that it wasn’t.

Anyways, enough digressing. All that aside, a temple was still a temple. It only made sense for the Gods’ Divine Protection to prevent anything less than desirable from entering its grounds.

So, given that, how the hell did Rynford managed to worm his way inside? The guy was totally connected to the Evil God. No doubts there whatsoever.

『Just what the hell is going on here...?』

「Will know once inside.」

「Woof!」

『True, I guess...』

We killed our presences as we approached the building. There weren’t any back doors, and the windows were too small to climb through, even for Fran. They’d only been constructed for the sake of letting light into the building’s interior.

Peeking through the windows didn’t reward us with any clues either. That said, we did manage to sense a slight bit of magical energy.

『I can feel a blatant evil energy in this magic, so it’s gotta be him... But still, why the temple?』

We’d never entered any temples ourselves, but we’d passed by a few on occasion. The magic that we’d felt on all those occasions had been pure. What we were feeling here was far too sinister to be of the same make.

Looks like we’re going to have to break in, I guess...

『Alright... Let’s go.』

We steeled ourselves as we gave the door a gentle push and got ready to make our way inside.