Cthulhu Gonfalon

“Have you all heard? In the last few days, there have been several massacres along the dividing line between the aristocratic party and merchant party. How appalling!”

A few adventurers were chatting in a small tavern. One of them who was dressed like a paladin might have drunk a drop too much, so he spoke a little loudly, “Really, it’s too terrifying!”

“Was it very scary?” a rough-hewn warrior asked. “We’ve only heard some vague news about a succession of a few mass murder cases…”

“Murder cases? Haha… Murder cases!” the paladin sneered. He shook his head vigorously, took a large gulp of wine and then said, “How are these murder cases! It’s a cult offering!”

Upon hearing this, silence instantly prevailed over this tavern which was quite a boisterous scene just a moment ago. Everyone shut their mouths and looked in the direction of this paladin.

To these old hands, murder cases were no big deal. Throughout their lifetime, they had their blades stained with blood as they drifted about seeking a living. Most of them had taken lives before, and more than one life at that. But cult offerings were different. Heretics killed people as sacrifices for the purpose of summoning devils to the mortal world. When the devils arrived in the mortal world, they were bound to cause great damage. The least serious thing would be the loss of lives in a village. But in the future, it might even be the loss of lives of an entire city of people.

In addition, they were not weak themselves. In the face of ordinary ruffians and scoundrels, the winner would not be known before a real fight, which was why they were unfazed by murder cases. But if facing devils, their strengths were not even worth mentioning. When the devils started out on a killing spree, these adventurers would not be any much stronger than ordinary humans. They would not necessarily be able to escape either.

This was why when they heard this phrase, everyone was shocked. Many of them immediately made up their minds that if there were indeed cult activities in this region, they would leave right away and as far as possible!

Of course, there were also some who were instantly excited about the opportunity to earn money or fame, or even the chance for them to perform chivalrous deeds. Fighting against cults was one of the few matters on which countries on the Main Plane took a unanimous stance. Once a certain organization was determined as a cult, there was nothing much that needed to be further said. The most lenient form of punishment was the extermination of all the heretics of the cult. A slightly harsher punishment included the implication of family and friends—for instance, situations where only the heretic of concern was killed were in fact, relatively few in comparison. Under normal circumstances, at least the closest family members, like parents, wives and children, would die together.

One of the most recent strikes against cults was His Majesty, the Void Mask’s annihilation of the “Isis” organization. Although everyone knew that this organization was backed by the Orc gods and that its members were not abyssal devils, Sui Xiong had nonetheless branded it as a cult. With no one willing to stand up to exonerate them, then naturally, the trouble would be to get them to accept death.

And from what this paladin had said, it was truly a cult creating the commotion at the border between the aristocratic party and merchant party this time around—they were already in the midst of bringing a cult offering into play.

“What is the specific situation?” asked a warrior who had come closer. His face was filled with worry.

The paladin who was almost 70% drunk sighed and said, “A few days ago, I set out from Copper Hand City and intended to head to Silver Shield City. One night, when I was staying in a small village… I won’t tell you the make of the village, anyway it’s meaningless to speak of it when there’s no one alive there. In the middle of the night, I suddenly awoke from sleep and felt a strong sense of danger…”

“A strong sense of danger?” asked that warrior, who froze in shock. “What danger could it be to be able to wake you up from sleep?”

“I’m not so sure myself. But my experience told me to hide. Only if I hid could I live,” said that paladin. He shook his head and took another gulp of wine, then said, “So I hastened to make the room look like I had woken up in the middle of the night and left in a hurry, then I hid under the bed.”

“But hiding under the bed is no guarantee for your safety. The bed board may not be able to cover your entire body, and someone might hear your breathing,” the warrior said.

The paladin smiled and said, “Of course I have my ways. But I won’t be telling you.”

So indeed, he did not share the exact method he had used to hide and merely continued to say, “I hid for an hour or so until the sense of danger I felt was finally gone before I climbed out from under the bed. Alas, the moment I came out from my hiding place, there was such a thick smell of blood!”

“The entire village was dead?” guessed a warrior who was sitting at the same table.

The paladin nodded. As he raised his wine glass, his hand trembled involuntarily.

“I put on my gear and looked out of the window. In the public square right in the middle of the village, there were a few Sacred Warriors who were glowing with white light. They seemed to be talking about something. There was also a priest conducting a purification ceremony with two of the Sacred Warriors—from the light their bodies emitted, I could clearly see the dead bodies of the villagers strewn all over the ground. Their blood filled the entire place to form a magic array that made my hairs stand on end the moment I laid eyes on it!”

At this point, more than one adventurer was already packing up and preparing to run away.

“Who are those clergymen?” another adventurer asked.

“They are followers of the Master of Justice,” replied the paladin. “Watching them made my hairs stand on end. I hurriedly ran over to them. After a short chat with them, I found out that someone had just held a ceremony to make an offering here. That person wanted to open the portal leading to the abyss to summon the powerful devils. But that fellow was not lucky enough because the souls of the ordinary villagers don’t have much strength. So he could not completely open the portal. The clergymen had detected the evil aura, so with their teleportation spell, they arrived directly in the vicinity within a short moment. And because they had come so quickly, those heretics were forced to make a hasty escape, leaving behind only the scene of an offering used in an unsuccessful summoning ceremony.”

“Then you got to count yourself lucky. If the clergymen didn’t come, when the devils were summoned, you’d be found even if you were hiding under the bed.”

“Yes, I was lucky. But that village was out of luck!” the paladin said with a sigh. “I was dragged into a lengthy interrogation. And I even had to undergo the lie-detector test three times before the clergymen were finally convinced that I had nothing to do with this matter. So they let me go. Right, they even dragged me into helping out with the funerals of the villagers—a total of 51 people, men and women, old and young, and repairing a leakage…”

With that, the paladin shook his head again as he took another drink.

There was a long silence in the tavern. Then another adventurer said, “But… there are murder cases elsewhere too. I can recall a dozen deaths in Grey Goat Village.”

“Offerings, those are certainly offerings!” the paladin said adamantly. “Once these cults hold large-scale activities, they will absolutely make more than one offering!”

The adventurers looked at one another, mostly seeing their unease reflected in each other’s eyes.

“So… which place is safest for us to go to now?” a young adventurer asked at long last. He could not hold himself back any further and raised the question that everyone was concerned about.

“Go to the capital. It may be safer there,” someone said.

“No! Leave the Commonwealth of Gold Coins as soon as possible. That’s the one true way to stay safe!” said another.

“But after leaving the Commonwealth of Gold Coins, where else can we go?” someone asked.

“Get on a boat and head south. Even if the cults want to make offerings, they usually will not make trouble at sea…”

“No! Head north instead. Or simply go directly to the Republic of Northwest!” a middle-aged adventurer said loudly. “There is law and order in the Republic of Northwest, and the security is very good. It’s not easy to get a job, but it’s still possible to make a living as a worker… I’m getting on in my years, so I can just take advantage of this opportunity to retire!”

The adventurers had a frenzied discussion, and soon, people were leaving. In the end, the only one left in the entire tavern was the drunk paladin who had fallen asleep on the table.

However, no one noticed that the edges of his mouth had curved into a somewhat cunning smile…