Fran gently stroked the brass pocket watch in her hand. Although her expression hadn't changed much from usual, Haida could inexplicably sense her mood was quite high.
Even her pale complexion looked somewhat healthier with the rosy flush.
Fran seemed happy.
Was it the alcohol, or something else? Haida felt curiously intrigued.
Haida quietly gazed at the wine as crimson as blood on the small table of the platform but didn't actually pick it up for a sip. Even though this slender goblet contained pure wine, untainted by human blood, drinking during a mission went against her habits.
When executing a hunt, Secrets-Hunters should maintain absolute focus throughout, except for necessary acts of disguise.
The corner of Fran's lips lifted slightly, her amber gaze faintly carrying a hint of satisfaction.
She had wanted to play with the "Swaying Heart-Clock" in a Conan-esque way for a very long time! Now she had finally achieved her wish with Professor Terence… How satisfying.
Seriously, using a hypnotic needle on someone's neck and then solving the case using their identity is just super cool, right?
Vivian was currently trying hard to control her body, preventing her muscles from trembling.
A Confidential Division investigator's detection abilities were extremely excellent… This made her feel countless gazes fixed upon her right now.
Those gazes were brazen and unrestrained, curious without the slightest concealment. They seemed to pierce through robes, strip away skin and flesh, looking directly at the deeper things wrapped within the skin…
Joyous dancers were passionately swaying their waists. Accompanied by the club's chaotic, flashing lights, they slowly approached the group.
They were singing. The cacophonous singing blended with the surrounding human voices. If one listened carefully, one's thoughts would inadvertently drown in it, then together with all the guests of the Sated Club, deeply sink into this grand intoxication.
A lead dancer with flawlessly beautiful features and black hair, stepping with rhythmic dance moves, came before Professor Terence.
She didn't converse with him. Instead, she began removing her clothes piece by piece. These soft coverings were neatly folded to one side in order.
Fluttering silk gauze, a thin silk skirt, close-fitting undergarments, lustrous skin…
The lead dancer stood completely naked before Professor Terence, proudly showcasing the slender, intertwined bones and muscles beneath her skin.
Right in the center of her chest, one could see a scorch mark from branding—the Red Cup's inverted triangle holy emblem.
"Are you the 'Mr. Sines' the receptionist mentioned?"
Terence asked in a deep, low voice, looking at the lead dancer who had already seated herself on the platform sofa.
Sines reservedly nodded but didn't speak.
She glanced at another dancer beside her. The other woman understandingly reached into her own throat and extracted a bloody vocal tract along with the pharynx.
Sines took this broken organ, which was still squirming, and reattached it to her own neck.
"Foreign Deacon, I'm very happy to see you could come to my club. Please don't stand on ceremony. Empty your mind and accept the service of your blood kin brethren…"
Other dancers slowly swarmed around the seating platform. One of them took a sip of the crimson wine, then came to Terence's front, wrapping around him like a water snake, seeking to join lips.
Cheers and whistles could even be heard from other guests around.
"I do not practice indulgence. I am unable to enjoy your enthusiastic hospitality. I hope you will understand."
Professor Terence coldly and firmly pushed away the dancer's soft body before him. He scanned the surroundings again, meeting the eyes of every guest daring to peer at this place.
Under his authoritative presence, the noisy disturbance gradually subsided. Only the rejected dancer had tears in her eyes, seeming somewhat wronged.
"Oh, I see… You are an ascetic. No wonder, even as blood kin, you are incompatible with the club's members."
Somewhat surprised by Terence's unyielding attitude, Sines frowned but quickly judged his identity based on his demeanor and actions.
"As blood kin, even if our practiced beliefs differ, we are still flesh and blood compatriots. You too were summoned by the Master, so you must know about the ritual we have been preparing recently. If you have nothing else to do… go prepare the offerings."
"Of course, if you wish to join this revelry, our interaction will be more harmonious… Endless asceticism brings only emptiness. To truly ascend, we should experience the extremes of sensation."
Sines looked at Terence and let out a sigh, seemingly regretting that a blood kin had strayed onto a wrong path.
"I stand by my own judgment."
Terence refused again. As a White Cup Error-Purger and professor at Norlington Central Academy, he naturally couldn't truly join such a degenerate party.
"Then I can only respect your choice, blood kin compatriot who chooses asceticism…" Sines flicked her fingertips, putting her skin and garments back on beside her.
"Lord Sines, please take me back to the great Master now! I cannot endure this frail skin for another moment. I beg you, let me glimpse the Master's majesty, then dissolve in His glory…"
Haida, who had been maintaining silence, suddenly prostrated herself before Sines, pleading to be used as a ritual offering.
Her attitude was extremely earnest, nearly sobbing with emotion, like the purest fanatic. Even Vivian beside her was startled.
Sister Haida's acting is this good? It's like it's real… No, it's more real than real! Isn't she the type who's not good with words? How is she an ultimate actor…
Fran also seemed somewhat surprised. Her brows hidden in the hood's shadow lifted lightly, but then immediately returned to normal.
A sense of familiarity. The emotions Haida displayed were very similar to another person.
Hmm… It's Mrs. Solani. No wonder.
Haida must have undergone profiling or similar psychological training. Having only had contact once, she could simulate another person's behavioral patterns with a not-low degree of completion.
Sines looked Haida up and down, her eyes gaining a hint of satisfaction and admiration. She then looked somewhat puzzledly at Professor Terence.
"Deacon… you brought a gift? You really shouldn't have."
Terence could only follow Haida's performance.
"Since I was coming, I should prepare something. It's proper courtesy."
Sines looked at Haida with a touch of indulgence.
"Alright, then let's go to the ritual site to prepare. Child, I envy you… To become bone and blood in the cup before us. You are truly favored by our Master."
Under the hood's shadow, Vivian bit her lip somewhat helplessly.
Wasn't this just a simple contact mission? Just now, Sines even told us to leave. Couldn't we have left accordingly, then cluster-advanced with the purge forces and killed all these heretics? How did we inexplicably go deep behind enemy lines again?
What is Sister Haida thinking?
But suddenly, Vivian recalled the mission report from the night Sister Haida was injured and disappeared.
She had apparently single-handedly killed all the Evil Spawn in a nest and even ripped out a Deacon's head along with the spine with her bare hands.
…Inexplicably, she suddenly wasn't so afraid anymore.
——
Passing through the club's bustling main hall, the group followed Sines to an empty dark room. It was filled with the foul stench of decomposing flesh, and dried, deep blood plasma was everywhere on the ground.
A massive ritual array was etched on the room's ceramic tile floor, drawn with pure blood.
This blood maintained an almost transparent freshness, its color vivid, brimming with abnormal life force, flowing murmuringly in the array's grooves like sweet spring water.
The fanatical madness in Haida's hazel-gray eyes vanished and calmed in an instant. She regained reason and focus. Even her breathing and heartbeat returned to normal levels.
She dissolved the profiling personality simulation state and identified the ritual array before her.
A second-category ritual, [Summon the Blood Kin].
Using living humanoid creatures as offerings. After the offerings are dissolved, their life force will accumulate in the ritual array, used to summon an unknown Red Cup affiliated being. It might summon an ordinary ghoul, perhaps a Red Cup Holy Scion.
"Child, throw yourself into His embrace. Feel His loving kindness and warmth."
Sines reached out to gently stroke Haida's waist, intimately leaning close to her, encouraging her to step into the bloody, filthy ritual array.
The next moment, a wooden-handled switchblade engraved with classical patterns had already slit her throat. Blood plasma splashed out like a burst dam.
"Move!"
One of Haida's two switchblades slashed Sines's throat; the second pierced her chest.
After completing the strike, she extremely quickly retracted the switchblade, completing the bloodletting process. She then took out two black firearms and in an instant poured two magazines of steel-cored bullets at this heterodox Deacon.
The gun muzzles' roars sounded like rhythmic piano vibrations, ringing out without interruption.
"Is this the combat capability of a Burial Attendant… It's always so astonishing to see, no matter when."
Professor Terence narrowed his eyes, slightly relieved Haida was his teammate.
This was an extreme-range assassination almost surpassing human reaction speed. If the target were him… he felt not at all that he would have a chance of survival.
"Child, take a finishing shot." He raised a hand, giving an instruction to his assistant.
"Understood, Professor. Watch this!"
Child took down the unusually large sniper rifle from his back, aimed at the center of Sines's torso, and precisely pulled the trigger.
The moment the bullet left the chamber, the surrounding air twisted into an invisible wave.
This sniper rifle was a White Cup sect prototype, solidified with a White Cup unique second-category lower-level secret art, [Redundant Knowledge Intrusion]. It could forcibly pour an extremely large amount of disordered information into the target's mind, causing mental collapse.
At such close range, his big rifle was like a heavy cannon. Sines's slender body was directly blasted into two halves.
"Starting off with relentless saturation firepower… it's truly a feast for the eyes. Perhaps I have nothing to do here?"
Fran looked at the two pieces of rotten flesh on the floor, somewhat regretting she hadn't taken a bucket of popcorn from the Sated Club's guests.
After confirming Sines was thoroughly dead, Haida came to the bloody ritual array. She softly recited a Secrets-Hunter prayer, then stabbed one of her switchblades into the floor pattern, leaving an extremely deep gash.
The blood in the ritual groove began to boil violently, even emitting pale white smoke. But it soon solidified into deep black grime, losing all life force.
Although it seemed she just made a plain and ordinary cut, this was actually the Secrets-Hunter Cult's second-category lower-level secret art [Tear the Secret Rite].
This secret art could destroy the vast majority of second and third-category rituals without causing a backlash.
Using purely physical means to destroy the ritual array in that situation, while possible, would have forcibly activated the entire ritual before destruction. That would have been somewhat troublesome…
——
Simultaneously, the Secrets-Hunter purge forces' "Outrider Hunters" all entered the Sated Club.
These Burial Court hunters were fully armed, well-trained, and without hesitation in stripping away the lives of Red Cup believers.
Under nearly absolute firepower suppression, the originally bustling, jubilant heterodox nest soon held nothing but deathly silence.
Joking aside, how can flesh and blood possibly block steel-cored bullets engraved with prayers?
…
"It's good the [Summon the Blood Kin] ritual was destroyed. Otherwise, if a 'Holy Scion'-level affiliated being had really been summoned, my old bones would have been donated here."
Professor Terence looked at the dead Sines and the destroyed ritual array, his constantly tightly furrowed brows also slightly relaxed. The coldness in his eyes softened considerably.
Fran wagged her index finger, offering a correction.
"The offerings weren't enough. The life force stored here was only enough to summon ordinary Evil Spawn. Getting even one ghoul would be a big prize. No need to worry."
"The purge forces outside should have also taken care of it…"
Vivian clearly heard the screams and gunfire from the main hall. the abrupt cessation of the accompaniment music also confirmed this.
If nothing unexpected occurred, the Sated Club incident should come to an end here.
But the world is always full of all kinds of surprises, isn't it?
"Pay attention to Sines. She's not dead yet."
Fran's somewhat lazy voice suddenly came.
Haida looked somewhat puzzledly at Sines's corpse. Switchblades and bullets engraved with prayers could simultaneously destroy both spirit and flesh. As merely a Deacon, she shouldn't possibly survive?
Sines's slender, beautiful, and tattered body stood up, but only the upper half.
Using massively proliferated blood vessels and intestines as her new lower half, she stood again.
Her broken skull continuously overflowed with red and white pulpy matter—that was proliferating brain matter.
"This… How is it possible?"
Professor Terence felt it was unbelievable. A mere Deacon could absolutely not achieve this degree. Having Child take a finishing shot was already special preferential treatment; normally Haida's few shots would ensure her complete annihilation.
"Right, it's impossible for a Deacon. So… Sines is a 'High Priest.'"
Fran lightly passed by everyone, coming before Sines. She undid her travel cloak, took out a set of scalpel blades from her carried medical kit, and skillfully fitted them with blades.
"You… are my Master's betrayer? No… you are infiltrators, servants of false gods… Aaah…"
Sines hysterically moaned. Flesh and blood grew like budding sprouts. She was furious beyond measure, wishing to tear everyone in the dark room to pieces the next second.
But Fran stared at her, expression comfortable and enjoying, even flushing slightly. The lustrous smile at the corner of her lips was nearly impossible to suppress.
That was extremely pure happiness… like receiving a beloved toy.
She began to wield the scalpel.
Cutting muscle along the grain, peeling sinews along the bones, extracting organs by opening cavities… the scalpel's mirror-smooth cutting edge was soon completely stained with blood plasma. The surroundings were filled with flesh and tissue discarded by Fran.
+++
T/N: Hey readers~! New Translator here! Before I say anything, I'd first like to thank the original author for creating this wonderful story. Without them, I wouldn't have the chance to share this adventure with you. I hope my translation does justice to their work, and that together, we can enjoy this story.
With that said, I'm happy to let you know I'll be uploading daily chapters. And for those who wish to support my work and gain early access, I've set up a Patreon where advanced chapters will be available.
[email protected]/PeakTL