The wooden door was pushed open once more.
"I told you not to bother me with this kind of thing again..." Duoze stood up and barked impatiently.
However, seeing that the person entering the tavern was not the cultist from before but Alesta, he paused and swallowed the rest of his sentence.
"What is it?" Alesta closed the door, sat down beside Duoze, and poured himself a glass of wheat beer.
"What else could it be? Those unlucky bastards had their bodies corrupted by the Source Crystals you brought. I lied to them, saying it was because they touched some other source of corruption, which stabilized them for the time being."
Duoze gripped his wine glass but did not drink. His expression looked far from relaxed.
"But the issue with the Source Crystals will explode sooner or later. The corruption those things carry is too terrifying. Have you thought about how to handle it?" He glanced toward Alesta.
"You do not need to worry about the Source Crystals. I will find a way." Alesta drank the wheat beer as if nothing was wrong, a rosy glow appearing on his face.
It was clear that he did not have a high tolerance for alcohol.
"What you should be more concerned about right now is something else," he said, the air mixing with a heavy scent of alcohol.
"What?"
"An informant reported that two women who don't know their place are heading our way. You had better go and intercept them immediately," Alesta said.
"Our plan was exposed again?" Duoze opened his mouth, looking somewhat surprised.
"Who knows? Ever since we summoned that unknown god, our plans have never gone smoothly." Alesta let out a self-deprecating laugh and poured himself another glass of beer.
Duoze remained silent. Although Alesta had explicitly told him to intercept them, he showed no intention of moving.
"Can't Moen go?" he asked, still unwilling to give up.
He was truly terrified of running into that unknown god.
"Moen and Morai Sulin are preparing things regarding King Weis. They cannot spare the time." Alesta was already sounding a bit drunk.
"..." Duoze asked again, "What about you? You look pretty idle to me."
Alesta gave him a drunken glance and let out a cold laugh. "If I leave, will you handle the Source Crystals?"
Duoze froze, left speechless.
He knew absolutely nothing about Source Crystals. If he accidentally made a mistake and got corrupted, his end would be far more miserable than that of an ordinary person.
For a mage, corruption was like the fuse to a bomb. A single spark would lead to an irreversible tragedy.
Moen and Alesta both had important work to do, leaving him as the only one with nothing to do.
It seemed he had to handle it himself. He could only hope those two women had nothing to do with that unknown god.
Seeing Duoze still hesitating, Alesta grinned and threw an arm around Duoze's shoulder. "You don't need to worry too much. Since your Life Star skill is a summoning type, no matter what those two are like, you can just test them from a distance. You won't lose much either way."
The air was thick with the scent of alcohol, which was quite pungent.
Duoze pushed him away with some disgust. "Alesta, you're drunk."
"Bullshit. I've only had two glasses. How could I be drunk?" Alesta said defiantly.
"But I do feel a bit dizzy. What's the percentage of this liquor?" he asked dizzily.
"93."
"H-How much?" Alesta sobered up instantly, his face filled with shock.
What was the difference between this and drinking straight alcohol?
...
The carriage continued to travel at a leisurely pace. The atmosphere was no longer as tense after their previous conversation.
However, Grinya Loran had lost interest in how Gexi became stronger because, according to Gexi, it was a matter of talent.
She only needed to wake up early every day and pray to her god for three minutes, and her experience points would soar.
Grinya Loran felt this was something she simply couldn't learn.
After all, Lord Xun Shen couldn't even be bothered to respond to her.
Gexi's experience held no reference value, so Grinya Loran naturally lost interest in it.
Furthermore, Gexi's words had caused Grinya Loran to lose confidence in becoming stronger.
The idea that the stronger one became, the easier it was to be corrupted, made it hard not to feel disappointed no matter how she thought about it.
A high-level mage, who appeared glorious and brilliant in the eyes of others, was secretly struggling to resist corruption from the gods, and a moment's lapse would lead to a miserable end.
Grinya Loran could not understand why even the righteous gods, who seemed so radiant, would be so cruel to the humans who believed in them.
Gexi's answer was that corruption was not the result of malice from the gods as she understood it. Rather, it came from the unconscious divine pressure released by the gods. It was like a person stepping on an anthill. The destruction of the ants was not out of hatred, but because their very existence was incompatible with human activity.
To the gods, the significance of humanity's existence was merely as a tool to provide Faith Energy.
After recognizing this cruel reality, Grinya Loran found that she could no longer look at the gods the same way.
The filters she once had for the gods shattered. Perhaps there was no distinction between good and evil among the gods; to humans, they were all equally terrifying.
"Alright, we've arrived at Axi Town." The carriage suddenly stopped, and the horse owner flipped down from the horse's back.
Grinya Loran stood up from the wooden boards and looked around.
But no matter where she looked, there was no sign of human architecture. The so-called Axi Town seemed to have vanished into thin air.
"Where is this?" she asked with confusion.
"Your destination," the horse owner said while gathering the reins.
"But this isn't Axi Town. We want to go to Axi Town." Grinya Loran frowned. "We agreed on a price at the start. What do you mean by taking us the wrong way?"
The horse owner wrapped the reins around his arm and turned his head to look at her. "I didn't take the wrong road. This is your destination."
"But there is no Axi Town here!" Grinya Loran shouted.
Gexi stopped her, shaking her head to signal her to stay silent.
"He is right. This is the destination." The corners of Gexi's mouth curled up as she looked at the horse owner with a smile. "But it is not our destination. It is yours."
"What are you talking about?" Grinya Loran clearly hadn't figured out the scene before her yet and was still a bit confused.
Gexi took out her crystal ball, which sparkled like a diamond under the brilliant sun. She smiled and said, "I am a diviner. How could I not cast a reading for myself before leaving home?"
"So you knew I was a member of the Diao Cult?" The horse owner froze.
"Of course." Gexi nodded, mana flashing through the crystal ball like an electric current.
"Though I did have a moment of doubt when I saw that you also longed for that beautiful future." She narrowed her eyes as her mana gradually became violent. "It's truly ridiculous. A member of a cult actually longing for a life like that."
"What's so ridiculous about it? Do you think little people like us have the chance to choose for ourselves?" The horse owner let out a self-deprecating sneer.
"We risk our lives for whoever feeds us."
"This is just the struggle of a little person. What could people like you possibly understand!"
The moment his words landed,
"Pffft—!"
Warm blood sprayed into the air like a firework. The horse owner stared down blankly at the dark red blade piercing through his body. He felt neither disbelief nor panic.
He only felt relief.
The expressions of Gexi and Grinya Loran changed drastically. They both gripped their weapons and stared with extreme caution at the man behind the horse owner.
"Since you do not believe in the gods from the bottom of your heart, then the cult has no use for you." Duoze looked at the horse owner's body as it hit the ground without a trace of emotion, as if he had just crushed an ant on the side of the road—simple and feelingless.
Rate on N.U.
