Chapter 805: Golden Rot
The road from the frozen coast to the holy city had been long enough for the wind to lose the sharp salt of the half-frozen sea and gain the dry bite of mountain air. Snow lay packed along the road in dirty layers, crushed by wagons, boots, and military hooves. Looking at the sight of the city made him quite conflicted. Solania rose ahead in white stone and pale gold, beautiful in the way a tomb could be beautiful if enough people polished it and prayed around it.
Banners were lifted up, holy order banners, imperial banners, people parading in the streets, but there was no joy in these festivities. The fabric snapped above the streets, bright against the gray sky, each symbol trying to proclaim unity, victory, devotion, and order. The people below them looked nothing like the banners promised. They walked because the procession required walking, cheered because someone had clearly instructed them to cheer, and stood in the cold because refusing to appear at a holy celebration probably counted as some form of spiritual misconduct.
Too many were too depressed looking, a few were outright crying, and a good deal were enjoying the atmosphere while their eyes never felt that joy. A child clapped because the adults around him clapped, but the woman holding his hand stared past the procession with red-rimmed eyes. Priests moved through the crowd with practiced smiles, murmuring blessings, smoothing grief into silence one person at a time. It was celebration arranged over mourning like a clean cloth thrown over a corpse.
At the door of the city, a few dozen guards were stationed. Their armors half frozen, while their beards and mustache was mixed with ice and snow. They noticed Ludwig, wearing his regalia and a black cloak over it. He felt out of place. A lone man walking down the frozen lands of Solania as if he was a person who belonged here.
Which was quite the contradiction. Everything about Solania seemed designed to reject him. The holy symbols carved into the gate, the sanctified wards hidden in the stone, the paladins standing watch, the faint pressure of divine magic soaking into the city. Ludwig carried death in his lantern, dark magic in his history, a lich hidden away in his book, the eyes of Envy, the crown of Pride, and enough bad decisions to qualify as a national threat. He adjusted his cloak and kept walking anyway.
He walked up to the gate and was immediately blocked by the guards. "Identifications." The man who spoke had a thick beard stiff with ice, but his spear moved across the path with professional steadiness. His eyes scanned Ludwig’s clothing, then the cloak, then the way he stood too comfortably in the cold.
Ludwig pulled out a token, his guild token. The metal caught the weak daylight and reflected the rank mark clearly enough that both guards stiffened. He held it between two fingers without flourish, letting the token speak first.
"Oh, that’s an S class adventurer token, haven’t seen those in a long time," one of the guards said.
The other nudged him, "There is only one guy who has that," he said, "You’re Ludwig? Right?"
"Yes. May I come in now?"
"We’ll still need to know the reason for your arrival here?" The guard tried to sound formal, but his eyes drifted briefly toward the mountain range behind Ludwig.
"Care to take a wild guess?" Ludwig asked as he looked back at the mountain then at the city. The peaks loomed beyond the road, white and gray, their silence far too heavy for simple stone. Somewhere beyond them, armies of things that should not be crossing into these lands were gathering or already moving.
"I see... let him in, we need every hand, especially capable hands. Welcome to Solania, the city of Order." The guard stepped aside and signaled to the others. The title was spoken with automatic pride, repeated too often to be questioned.
Ludwig didn’t even comment on how absurd that sounded. City of order? It’s the most fucked up place on the continent right now. He kept the thought to himself as he passed through the gate. Saying it aloud would only complicate things, and he was trying, with heroic restraint, not to start his Solania visit by insulting the city’s entire identity.
Ludwig placed his hand on his side, where the Malvolume Codex was, and where Kaiser decided that he’ll stay for the time being alongside Gale. Kaiser had made the correct choice, irritating as it was to admit. Too much holy power permeated the city. He couldn’t move comfortably as a Lich. Even with the lantern’s disguise he will still feel the holy power that’s soaking the place. It was everywhere, woven into walls, streets, lamps, statues, and banners. It did not burn Ludwig directly thanks to the lantern’s veil, but he could feel it pressing against the edges of his senses.
Ludwig walked past the guards, and had an even better view of the people. They looked miserable from up close. The mix of holy order members and civilians seemed to weigh even more on them, as if displaying displeasure or sadness was a sin. Paladins stood at intersections, armored and still. Priests moved in clean robes despite the slush underfoot, offering blessings to citizens who bowed too quickly. Civilians smiled when watched and sagged when the watchers turned away.
Ludwig walked through the people, and between them, moving closer, toward a destination any Undead with sanity and sentient would never dare walk into. The Sacrosanctum. The building rose at the heart of the city like a frozen flame, all white towers, golden arches, and statues of saints and heroes carved with impossible serenity. Holy energy rolled from it in slow waves, dense enough that Ludwig could feel the lantern working harder to keep him wrapped in illusion.
He needed to meet with the higherups of the church. That sentence alone sounded like the opening to a very stupid obituary. He could not solve this from the outside. Not while Sloth sat somewhere inside Solania’s authority, not while the Pope’s name already hovered near the next Sin, not while Mot remained one of the few beings who might understand the thing gnawing at the sky before it woke fully.
And the first of the goals he had, was to stop the skies from breaking. And only Mot can do that. The fractured sky from the failed future remained in his mind, vile darkness spreading downward, tendrils descending from a god that should have remained asleep.
’I’ll need to meet Mot.’ He sighed as much as he hated the fact he’ll need to meet with the creepy Kid. Mot was useful, horrifying, and impossible to read in ways Ludwig disliked deeply.
Soon, he arrived to the gates of the Sacrosanctum. The crowd thickened near the entrance, not because people were allowed inside, but because standing close to the holy center of the city seemed to be the only hope some had left. Golden gates, large and barricaded. People were staying near it, some praying to the massive statues of heroes that were erect there, some prayed to whatever one of the four gods the Holy Order represented. And some simply stood there. Watching.
"The Sacrosanctum is not open for commoners, please move back," one of the guards spoke to a man who was begging for a blessing to his dead son. The man was on his knees, clutching a bundle of cloth that might have been the dead boy’s clothing or simply the last thing he owned. Behind him, the golden gates stood shut, beautiful and useless to the grief gathered before them.
Ludwig approached, the guard looked at him, seeing his strange attire, one that wasn’t fit for the coldness of this place. He asked, "You’re a stranger to this place, what is it that you want?"
"Mot."
"The saint? He’s busy with holy matters, please return next week." The answer came too quickly, the kind of reflexive refusal given to anyone who asked for someone important without permission.
’There will be no next week.’ Ludwig’s eyes flicked briefly to the upper towers of the Sacrosanctum, where holy light glimmered behind narrow windows. Broken sky. Dead city. Monsters around the tower. Too late. Always too late unless he moved now.
"Can you deliver a message?" Ludwig asked.
The guard frowned, "Depends, what’s the message?"
"Tell him that if he acts, the sky will break," Ludwig said as he turned and walked away. He did not wait for the guard’s expression to settle into confusion. There was no point explaining it at the gate. If Mot heard the message, he would understand enough. If he didn’t, then they were all probably screwed in a much more celestial way.
The guard was confused by what the strange young man just said. It must have been the ramblings of a madman. He looked up, "How does a sky even break?" he snorted and completely ignored Ludwig’s words. His shoulders shifted beneath his armor as if throwing off the discomfort of the statement. The grieving man at the gate resumed pleading, and the guard returned his attention there.
Ludwig on the other hand didn’t want to go further down the Sacrosanctum for one reason only.
[The Hero of the People is present inside the Sacrosanctum]
[Necros forbids a direct meeting with the Hero at this point in time. One of the Former apostles is alongside him. Revealing your existence directly will compromise your quest in fighting the Slothful Death.]
[Existence Quest IV has begun!]
The Shrike. Sister Gallows is inside the Sacrosanctum. She is plotting something with the forces of Sloth.
The catacombs of the Sacrosanctum have multiple passageways that lead outside of Solania and also inside it.
Eliminate Sister Gallows without revealing your presence. Use the catacombs and sewers to access the internal structure of the Sacrosanctum. Find Sister Gallows when she is within the lower parts of the Catacombs and eliminate her.
Reward: Soul Letting Lantern Upgrade.
[Eternal Quest IV has been suspended.]
[You must clear Existence IV first.]
’Fine,’ Ludwig tightened the hood over his head, ’I always wanted to fuck that bitch up. I guess today is a good day.’ The system windows faded, but their weight stayed. Hiro was inside. A former apostle was with him. Sister Gallows was in the Sacrosanctum, plotting with Sloth’s forces, and Ludwig had been handed a murder route through catacombs and sewers like the world’s most inconvenient tour guide.
He looked once more at the golden gates, at the grieving commoners denied entry, at the guards holding order together with spears and tired eyes, then turned away fully. If the front door belonged to saints, heroes, and politics, then fine. He would use the underside. Most rotten things looked cleaner from above anyway.
