Mushroom Lord in the Underground City

Chapter 668: Chapter 657: Priests of Nevrilla

By the coast, white waves crashed against the reefs again and again.

The Catman Priest New Moon was squatting on a rock, her tail gently swaying behind her, amber vertical pupils locked onto the movement under the water’s surface.

A dark shadow flashed through the water. She raised her claws, and a column of earth surged up from the sea, bumping a half-forearm-long shining-scaled salmon out of the water.

New Moon’s right claw shot out like lightning, Piercing through the soft flesh behind the fish’s gills. The fish struggled twice on her claw tip, then quickly went still.

She grinned, revealing sharp canine teeth, and brought the fish up to her nose to sniff it.

The fresh scent, tinged with the salty reek of seawater, made her nod in satisfaction. She planned to use this fish to make a soup, to give the High Priest a change of taste.

"Really not easy, meow."

They were now hiding along an uninhabited coastline on the western side of the Empire, close to Eleanor’s territory. Technically it belonged to a Baron of the Blood Race, but because it had no real value, there were no settlements nearby, and thus it was utterly deserted.

This was one of the many hidden refuges of the Hand of Death. The reason they’d chosen to hole up here was precisely its concealment and convenience. Being close to the sea, they could easily get food without large-scale searching, which lowered the risk of being discovered.

Only, as it turned out, they’d miscalculated a bit.

Concealment-wise, it was indeed hidden enough. They’d been holed up here for so long and no one had searched this way.

But when it came to food, problems had arisen.

For some reason, more than half the fish in the sea had vanished. Fishing from the sea was now less efficient than going into the mountains to gather fruit.

She didn’t know the precise reason, but in New Moon’s eyes, since the world was slowly dying, all kinds of anomalies appearing was only natural.

Just a few years ago, she’d never have imagined that Kurg would fall to Puki’s tentacles after working with her for more than ten years.

Speaking of which, a few years ago Puki didn’t even have tentacles.

Suddenly, New Moon’s furry ears twitched, catching the faint wind of claws slicing through the air.

She jerked backward, her supple body bending into a bow.

The fish in her paw flew out with her sudden motion, then was sliced by something invisible in midair, cut into four pieces that fell around them.

The Catman snatched up the Magic Staff lying on the ground and leapt back, but an enemy emerged behind her as well.

However, as Magic Power flared on the staff, a rocky giant hand surged up beneath the feet of that invisible enemy behind her, grabbed it in one go, and squeezed hard. The Purple Blood sprayed over half the Stone Giant’s rising body.

"Purple Blood, it’s Chis from the sea, meow!"

New Moon jumped onto the Stone Giant’s shoulder, raised her Magic Staff high, and smoothed out all the distorted light around, revealing those bizarre-shaped worms.

Their numbers were small, and with New Moon already on alert, they posed no threat to her at all.

She also noticed an Eye Worm hiding in the sea, quietly condensed a Stone Cone in her palm, planning to take the thing out.

Unfortunately, the Eye Worm was very wary. It seemed to sense her movement and immediately burrowed into the depths of the seabed. The other Chis, even though two more were stomped to death by the Stone Giant, showed no desire to fight and slipped back into the water.

Watching the Chis being driven off, there was no joy at all in New Moon’s eyes.

The appearance of sea monsters meant this hideout was not as safe as they’d thought.

And she rather suspected that the scarcity of fish in the sea might have something to do with the Chis as well.

If that was really the case, it meant the number of Chis might be far greater than they and the Empire had anticipated.

After confirming that no invisible Chis were tailing her, the troubled New Moon returned to the hideout.

As soon as she went in, she saw Jini and the still-weak High Priest studying a Puki.

"Jini, what are you doing, meow? How can you just bring a dangerous Puki right in front of my lord?"

"Don’t worry, this is just a Puki in charge of moving cargo at the factory, and I’ve already bound it so tight it can’t move at all," Jini said.

New Moon was still uneasy. The scene of Knight Puki killing Kurg right in front of her was still vivid in her mind.

She tried to persuade: "Lord Mira, this is too dangerous, meow. We already confirmed these Puki have some special transmission ability. If your location is exposed again... we’re too weak now; we need more Power, meow, to stand against them."

"Stand against them, why?" the High Priest asked softly.

The question puzzled New Moon a bit. "Why... they killed Kurg, and didn’t the oracle also say..."

The High Priest just shook her head:

"The oracle didn’t say that."

"New Moon, we shouldn’t presumptuously fill in the blanks of the oracle. That is disrespectful—it’s the arrogance of substituting our own will for divine words."

The Catman hadn’t expected that. She trembled and lowered her head. "Disrespectful... I... I didn’t, meow..."

"I know your devotion." The High Priest stretched out a somewhat thin hand, gently stroking the Catman Priest’s cheek, her gaze drifting to the followers busily arranging the new ritual not far away. "Everyone who has followed me here has firm faith, but we mustn’t make this mistake again. We no longer have any chances left to make up for it."

The High Priest Mira patted the motionless Puki’s mushroom cap. "The oracle is incomplete, but the ’mushroom’ it mentions is, with high probability, these Puki and the Mushroom Race. Whether my Lord intends to destroy them or use them, we must, before we receive the complete oracle, learn as much as we can about them."

New Moon nodded, obediently squatting down beside the Puki, no longer stopping them.

But she still described how she’d been attacked by the Chis at the coast and asked if they should consider relocating again.

Jini only sighed. "There aren’t many safe hideouts left. This is the only one close to Eleanor’s territory. You know that right now, within the Empire, only Eleanor’s lands still have Puki."

"Besides," she glanced toward the new ritual not far away, "we don’t have many materials left. It’d be hard to gather enough to set everything up again from scratch. Not to mention, the followers in charge of gathering people have already set out. If we move now, all sorts of problems are bound to crop up."

All these factors piled together: they simply couldn’t relocate easily.

That previous interrupted ritual had drained more than half of the Hand of Death’s foundation. They no longer had the means, under the Empire’s intensified surveillance, to pull off another large-scale sacrifice.

And outside the Empire, there was only the threat of the Mushroom Race.

The last thing they could do was an internal sacrifice, using the most devout batch of followers to complete the remaining part of the interrupted ritual.

This so-called "gathering" was to bring the faithful followers still scattered in various places together through all sorts of channels for the sacrifice.

Calling it a last-ditch effort was no exaggeration.

New Moon sighed. "If only Kurg were still here. He could always think up some unusual, clever way to solve problems."

...

At the side, the High Priest stroked the Puki’s soft body and, through those several layers of seals, unexpectedly sensed that this Puki actually possessed some sort of Spirit protection method.

But... it was very weak.

She tried to invade it. In the next instant, darkness surged from her pupils, startling New Moon and Jini into repeatedly backing away.

"Th-this... what’s happening, meow?"