Ke-style law enforcement officers

Chapter 734 Mercy
Adult beings, whose bodies and souls have been tainted by all the filth of the mortal world, must use the temple stone to cleanse themselves of their sins if they wish to gain the approval of the gods and become His offspring.

Young children do not need this.

This is the message that the priest with the hook has been conveying to the captain all along.

The long-standing deal between the captain and the Temple of Hooked Finger involved finding innocent, homeless children from all over the world and sending them to the Temple of Blessing within the Kingdom of Losk. There, priests would select the best children to become servants of the gods and lead them into the temple.

...

This is a tremendous act of kindness, and you can also receive a generous reward. Why not do it?

Unfortunately, not all young children can gain the favor of the priests.

Every time the captain brought back children, two or three of them would have problems during the blessing ceremony, resulting in varying degrees of disability. This was not because the gods were cruel, but because the children were born with inherent flaws.

At least that's what the priest with the hooked finger said.

That's why there's that secluded little village behind the Ula Xilu Temple.

The captain took in the children the gods had abandoned.

He also put his daughter, Aegon, in charge of taking care of the village, and the village has grown from just a few people to a dozen or so to over a hundred...

……

During his travels overseas, the captain also collected a lot of temple stones through various channels.

As he himself said, he was just a businessman obsessed with money, and he had neither the awareness nor the delusion to serve the gods.

But he longed to see where the children chosen by the priests ultimately went.

He wanted to see how children received divine blessings…

perhaps…

Perhaps this is a more honest way of putting it.

He was tired of the monotonous and arduous life on the sea; he was tired of the spoiled food and bacteria-infested fresh water on board…

What if one day he could live under the temple's banner?

Perhaps the temple can cure the chronic ailments he's developed from years of sailing...

...

After receiving the bag of temple stones from Milo, the captain finally gained the right to enter the Temple of Blessings for worship.

And he finally saw what the so-called blessing was all about.

...

The deepest part of the prayer hall, as cold as an ice cave.

The captain met the so-called priest.

It was a bizarre creature more ferocious than any sea beast. A loose robe printed with hook-shaped patterns covered its torso, and beneath the robe protruded countless slender arms…

The priest, like a giant spider web, hangs in the center of this dark space at the deepest part of the temple.

...

In the surrounding corners, more than a dozen large pots had already been stacked up. These containers, engraved with ancient script and incantations, were produced by the Ula Xilu Temple and were the final products after being fired in the tower. Under the lids of those pots that could no longer be completely sealed, something seemed to be wriggling, pushing against the lids again and again, making a soft "bang-bang" sound.

……

The priest gave the captain the opportunity to meet the priest.

After the captain offered up all his temple stones, he was left to languish.

The priest's glossy, jet-black arm, like the limb of some arthropod, reached out, took the temple stone, and retrieved it beneath his robe.

...

What followed was the so-called blessing and selection process.

That will be the devastating blow that shatters the captain's soul and reason.

The so-called selection process involved priests using the spiked structures at the ends of their long arms to extract a fleshy, mud-like substance from the large jars produced in Ulahiru, and then inserting it one by one into the chests of the children, injecting…

……

The children were very quiet from the moment they entered.

No one was frightened to tears by the priest's sinister appearance, and no one even showed any sign of pain when he was pierced.

Their faces were filled with confusion.

And under the captain's astonished gaze, their bewildered faces began to swell, contort, and tear...

Finally, one by one, they exploded in front of the captain, scattering into scarlet fragments that were evenly smeared on every inch of the hall's walls, floor, and the captain's face.

...

There were no cries or wails.

There were only a series of dozens of soft, sputtering sounds...

The priest hung in the center of the hall from beginning to end, with only two of its countless arms that resembled human hands crossed in front of its chest, calmly watching the bursting children before it.

...

In the end, only two boys remained in the thick blood plasma.

One of them had lost both legs, but was not dead. He crawled expressionlessly on the ground toward the captain.

The remaining girl stood unharmed in the blood plasma, her eyes now blood red.

The priest extended his hand, which resembled a human skeleton.

It took the girl's hand and slowly led her into the shadows deep within the hall.

……

...

The captain knelt there amidst the thick, sticky blood and gore, watching the legless child slowly incline toward him until he finally stopped moving.

...

That's why the captain rushed towards the village in a daze.

In reality, no one was chasing him.

The priest told him that since he had offered the temple stone, he could follow the priest into the depths of the temple after the selection process was complete.

But the captain did not respond.

He rushed out of the prayer hall as if fleeing, ran into the mountains and forests, and ran wildly like a madman.

...

……

The only thing echoing in his mind during this time was the words from the Fingertip Priest—

"This is a tremendous act of kindness, and we can also get a generous reward. Why not do it?"

The captain had indeed firmly believed this throughout his many years of voyages.

He brought homeless children into the temple, and the children will have a better future.

But what he thought was salvation was actually a series of cold-blooded massacres behind the high walls of the palace.

He then thought he must be going crazy.

……

However, the truth is that sometimes going mad is actually the most merciful outcome.

On the way to the village.

He saw heavy jugs being carried off the warships on the Zulu River, being transported one by one by the Knights of Losk back to the Ulahiru Mausoleum.

These brand-new, high-quality jars from Ula Xilu left empty, only to return filled with thick blood and bits of flesh.

These scraps of meat would then be sent back to the mausoleum tower for refining and cooking.

It eventually appeared deep within the Hall of Prayer.

...

This is the blessing spoken of by the Finger Priest.

Filthy flesh and blood.

...

The knights of the Kingdom of Losk paid no attention to the strange, crazed man running wildly across the plains.

The captain seemed to catch a glimpse of a familiar face among the gray-robed followers of the knights behind the mortuary, but only for a moment. He wasn't sure if he was mistaken, but he didn't dare linger.

……

The captain didn't understand why he was so eager to get back to the village, nor did he know what to do after returning and seeing the survivors of the massacre.

Perhaps he should end his own life.

Instead of enduring the way those children look at him as a savior...

...

He frantically traversed the jungle, letting the sharp branches of the bushes tear at the skin on his face and arms.

However, terror did not pursue him.

But it was on the road ahead of him.

To be precise, it was at his finish line.

……

...

The captain stopped at the entrance to the village.

He seemed to realize something.

A cold wind kept wafting from the cracks in the stone wall, carrying a strong, pungent smell of blood, a smell that even overpowered the stench of the blood and bits of flesh clinging to the captain himself…

He stood there, stunned.

Much later, he suddenly laughed for no apparent reason.

"Hahaha……"

"Aha...haha..."

"Hahaha……"

...

There was a twisted sense of relief in his laughter.

It was as if all the sins I had committed had been forgiven in some other way in an instant.

So there was even a hint of joy and excitement in the laughter.

He stood there, supporting himself on his knees, in front of the crack in the stone wall, laughing uncontrollably until he was bent over...

...

……

After a long while, a group of people dressed like assassins emerged one by one from the cracks in the stone wall.

They all wore long, fitted gray-blue robes with light armor underneath, and their arm guards were inlaid with a blue jewel, inside which some kind of runic pattern seemed to float.

These people's long clothes were stained with blood, more or less.

They saw the captain leaning over and laughing in front of the gap, but they only glanced at him indifferently before walking past him.

The last person to emerge from the crack was holding a map that was also stained with blood.

It was the map that the captain himself handed to Milo...

...

So he laughed even louder.

But the group of people who emerged from the crack didn't give him another second glance.

...

"Perhaps we should inform the Purification Legion of this news."

"A human, a critically wounded and dying dragon, do you think that's necessary?"

"..."

The temple apostles left the village.

He left behind a madman and a pile of corpses.

...

The truth is, all of the captain's memories of Milo and Freya had already been handed over to the priest along with the temple stone in the prayer hall.

He rushed back to the village like a madman, driven by his own subconscious desire to salvage something.

But it was all in vain.

...

No matter how fast he runs, he can't possibly outrun the apostles of the Temple of Hooks.

Perhaps from the moment he rescued the human and the Greek at sea, his tragic end was already sealed.

No, the seeds of evil were sown much earlier, from the very first voyage he embarked on to gather young children for the Temple of the Hook.

He was merely a soul fooled by fate and the gods.

Madness may be an endless torment for ordinary life, but for the captain, it may be a kind of liberation.

……

In fact, the apostles of the temple were targeting the fleeing Greeks.

As for the ever-present stench of blood emanating from the village…

That was just something I did on a whim.

...

"It is also a torment for inferior beings who are not recognized by the gods to continue to live in the world."

"To help them find relief is also a form of kindness."

These were the last words left by the temple apostles before they departed.

……

(End of this chapter)