The Silent Penitent

"By the way, before the mirror shattered, did you two... hear any other voices?"

Walking down the stretching, dim corridor, Greg suddenly asked the two girls behind him without turning his head.

His voice sounded exceptionally clear in the empty corridor.

Although Silvia was skilled in light-attribute magic, she lacked resistance to the undead and the bizarre phenomena that defied common sense.

Hearing Greg suddenly bring this up, her face turned slightly pale, and her voice trembled: "W-what other voices? I... I didn't hear anything... Don't tell me, Senior Greg, that you heard... something... unclean?"

"That's enough, Greg."

Victoria interrupted him, crossing her arms as her gray eyes scanned the excessively quiet surroundings. "Don't start telling eerie ghost stories in a hellish place like this. You're giving me goosebumps."

"...Fair enough."

Greg responded and said no more.

Although they hadn't given a direct answer, their reactions told him everything.

They hadn't heard it.

"Hey, Hajimi."

Greg called out to Nightmare in his mind.

"When the mirror shattered earlier, was that you suddenly talking to me, trying to take the chance to scare me?"

"Hmm?"

Nightmare's voice carried a rare trace of displeasure. "What is the meaning of this? While it is true that I enjoy stepping on your face with my paws while you are fast asleep, I have never proactively spoken to disturb you while you are handling serious business. I have at least that much discretion."

"True. Sorry, I must have—wait!"

Greg suddenly reacted. "What did you say? You like touching my face with your paws while I'm sleeping?! No wonder I sometimes wake up feeling strange indentations or itchiness on my face! It was your doing all along!"

"Hmm?"

Nightmare's voice returned to its usual laziness. "Did I say something just now? I have absolutely no recollection of such a thing. Perhaps your sleeping posture is simply poor, and you pressed against it yourself."

"Dammit! Don't play dumb! You just admitted it!"

"Are you speaking? How strange, the mana link on my end seems a bit unstable; I can't hear you very clearly... It seems the environmental interference here is too strong. It can't be helped; I shall return to my rest."

Facing the Goddess-cat who had become quite skilled at playing dumb, Greg really couldn't do anything about her for now.

After all, he couldn't just stop and manifest a black cat out of thin air in front of Victoria and Silvia, then introduce her by saying, "This is the Goddess of Night I worship, who enjoys stepping on people's faces with her paw pads," could he?

If he did, the reliable image he had worked so hard to build would likely collapse in an instant.

"Senior Greg, the front... it looks like the end of this corridor."

Silvia's voice pulled Greg's thoughts back. She pointed toward the faint outline of an exit ahead, which was slightly brighter than the corridor.

Although he hadn't figured out the source of that voice yet, now was clearly not the time to dwell on it.

"Yeah."

Greg collected his thoughts, stopped, and turned to face the two girls with a serious expression.

"Get ready. Silvia, cast a layer of 【Light Shield】 on all three of us first."

He then looked at the gray-haired girl. "Victoria, you should have more or less mastered 【Flame Storm】 by now, right?"

Victoria was taken aback.

How did he know she had only barely mastered that high-tier fire magic two days ago?

Though puzzled, she still nodded. "I can cast it, but it requires a long charging time and consumes a lot of mana. I can only do it once."

"Once is enough."

Greg continued, "As soon as we enter, start charging immediately. Silvia and I will cover you and try to create an opening. Once I successfully weaken the target with a potion, find the right moment and launch an all-out saturation attack. Try to finish it in one hit."

"Understood."

The two girls nodded and immediately took action.

Silvia chanted in a low voice, and a soft white light enveloped the three of them in sequence, forming a faint shimmering shield.

Victoria began to adjust her breathing, silently recalling the complex mana circuits of 【Flame Storm】 in preparation for the upcoming outburst.

"One more thing."

Before officially stepping into the space ahead, Greg turned back and added solemnly, "Once we enter this room, we will be unable to make any sound. It's not soundproofing; it's a sort of... rule-based silence."

"This means I won't be able to command you then. All real-time judgments and coordination will depend on our own observations."

He looked into their eyes. "I believe you two can definitely do it. After all, one of you is a Hero, and the other is a Candidate Saintess... So, are you ready?"

Victoria and Silvia exchanged a look and nodded firmly, their gazes becoming determined.

"Let's go."

Greg took the first step and entered that space.

The area was a spacious circular stone chamber, several times larger than the previous altar room.

The dome was high, with crude murals faintly visible, depicting people of another era kneeling before some being. However, the murals themselves were heavily peeled and cracked, making them difficult to see clearly.

The stone walls were a dull grayish-black, etched with even more eerie symbols and patterns related to fragmented faiths.

But the most uncomfortable thing was, as expected, the environment of absolute silence.

The sound of Greg's footsteps vanished the moment he stepped inside.

Victoria's breathing, the rustle of her clothes, even the sound of her own blood flowing and her heart beating—all perceptions belonging to the realm of sound were instantly wiped away as if by an invisible giant hand.

She opened her mouth, but not even the faintest hiss of air came out.

Silvia seemed to want to say something, her lips moving, but there was only dead silence.

This was a silence that transcended physical soundproofing, an absolute silence on a near-conceptual level.

Vision, touch, and smell were normal, but hearing alone was completely stripped away, bringing with it a strange sense of distortion in spatial perception that made one feel involuntarily irritable and faintly panicked.

Just as the three were slightly distracted by this abnormal silence—

In the center of the stone chamber, where the floor was smoothest, the air rippled slightly.

A figure slowly manifested, shifting from ethereal to solid.

It was a tall, thin humanoid creature, nearly two and a half meters tall.

It wore a tattered gray hemp robe stained with dark brown blotches, the hem shredded into wisps.

In its hand, it held an oddly shaped weapon that looked like some sort of ritual scepter, but the scepter itself appeared to have been violently broken multiple times and crudely pieced back together. The shaft was covered in cracks, and the gem embedded at the top was dull and fractured.

Furthermore, its face had no features, no outline—only a patch of constantly twisting darkness.

The Silent Penitent.

This was the name that had popped up in the original game when Greg encountered it.

Unlike the Thirsting Maw, which possessed instant-death skills, the Silent Penitent didn't cast powerful magic. However, in this domain of absolute silence that it ruled, it was the deadliest hunter.