Chapter 42: A Glimpse of the Truth

Nora silently lowered her head.

It seemed the enemy was far more troublesome than she had imagined.

Nora tightened her grip on the flail in her hand. She had originally expected to encounter a cultist gathering, perhaps with one or two sea monsters to deal with at the end; she certainly had not expected this place to be crawling entirely with monsters.

Nora closed her eyes in a brief moment of despair. Could she truly accomplish her original goal? Although she was a Gravedigger and had brought all her equipment, against this sheer number of monsters...

And yet Hugh had actually set them free! Was this madman unaware that all these monsters were completely devoid of reason?

What am I even thinking? Cultists are madmen to begin with. Nora bit her lip hard and tried to press her back against the rock wall. She figured she understood Hugh's intentions now; the monster before her was merely testing her, and only by defeating it would she earn the right to negotiate with him.

Damn cult leader!

Nora raised her tower shield, waiting for a long time without receiving an attack from the opposite side. She carefully nudged the shield aside a fraction, using her peripheral vision to observe the other party's movements.

She was clad in the thickest White Raven heavy armor, and she wielded the kind of heavy shield usually reserved for breaking enemy lines. She was confident she could take any attack head-on—yes, even from that gigantic monster.

If there was only one...

No problem, she would win.

Nora mentally pumped herself up.

At that moment, the voice of the six-armed monster sounded from above: "Hello, my name is Ashe."

It was speaking?

Th-this was impossible. Could it be that it still retained its sanity?

Impossible. That was a creature of the deep sea.

Nora tightened her grip on the shield, yet the anticipated attack never came.

Hesitating for a long time, she shifted the shield aside a little more.

As she moved the tower shield, her vision was met with Ashe's somewhat perplexed face. Seeing that Nora remained completely still, Ashe decided to bend down to converse with her.

Before she could open her mouth to speak, Ashe looked in surprise at the mist surrounding them. She gave a sniff and inhaled a deep lungful of it.

"It smells so good, like aquatic plants in a coral reef... Um, what do you need to know? About the contamination? Or matters beneath the Abyss?"

Nora stood frozen, only then realizing that her censer was still burning.

She looked at the censer, then looked at Ashe.

"Not contaminated?!"

Ashe gave her a strange look and nodded. "Yes, only Monica is contaminated among us."

Finding it tiring to keep her waist bent, she straightened up once more, her tall figure blocking the sunset on the distant sea.

Nora looked up dazedly as Ashe gradually stood up, and then...

Clack!

The back of Ashe's helmet struck her own armor again.

With a flash of annoyance, Nora removed her helmet. She looked doubtfully at the towering Ashe before her; reason told her that the purification censer could not be wrong, and the other party did not look like she had lost her mind, yet she simply could not comprehend it.

Biting her lower lip, Nora could not help asking, "How do you manage to remain uncontaminated?"

Ashe looked at Nora with mild confusion, stepped aside, and pointed toward Monica. "Only she was contaminated, we are fine. The only one who needs your treatment is her."

Nora glanced at Ashe, searching her eyes in vain for any sign of madness or cruelty; all she seemed to find was... bewilderment?

"This is impossible."

Nora took a deep breath of the purifying smoke from her censer—ah, a sweet orange scent.

Raising her head again, everything before her remained exactly the same.

Could all of this be real?

This creature from the sea had not gone mad? And was perhaps even... friendly?

No, no, something must be wrong somewhere.

A sudden panic flickered in Nora's heart. She carefully pivoted, keeping a wary eye on Ashe, and slowly retreated toward the shoreline.

With a swing of her flail, the mist drifted away. Upon contacting the seawater, the smoke filtered downward like specks of coffee powder poured into a cup of water.

The sirens exchanged glances; though hesitation was evident on their faces, they did not dodge.

The mist entered the water and gradually dissolved, spreading around the sirens.

"Mmm, it sort of smells like sweet shrimp."

"No, only the pearls inside giant clams have a scent like this!"

"This is clearly the smell of sunlight in coral!"

The sirens began to argue in low voices. Though their opinions differed, they all agreed it was a very pleasant scent.

Hugh stood to the side, watching with a peculiar expression.

How strange. Could scents even be smelled underwater? He thought idly. Although Nora's behavior was bizarre, he did not stop her, knowing this was her method for dealing with contamination.

During his very first meeting with Nora, the information she had transmitted into his mind via her censer contained similar explanations...

Wait, was that censer actually meant for preaching?

Hugh cast a somewhat odd look at Nora's flail.

Wielding a flail and hammering the doctrine directly into your brain—did they call that preaching?

Well, it certainly worked; at least by now, Hugh had learned quite a bit of knowledge regarding the Silent Sanctuary.

If only the process could be a bit gentler...

Watching the whispering banshees, Hugh's eyes suddenly lit up.

He noticed that the contamination on Monica's body was slowly coming to a halt.

Those black, leech-like substances that had been writhing constantly seemed as though they had been plunged into ice water, gradually ceasing their movement.

A trace of pain also appeared on Monica's face.

It worked!

As expected of a Gravedigger of the Silent Sanctuary, she truly could combat contamination!

"Look!"

"Monica seems to be getting better!"

"Look at the contamination on her body!"

"The contamination, it's receding!"

"It actually works! The treatment methods on land are so peculiar!"

The sirens began to cast reverent gazes at the flail and tower shield in Nora's hands; though they looked bizarre, they were genuinely effective.

Nora blushed slightly. She felt her guardedness was like a joke. Having now calmed down, she looked up and down at Ashe and the banshees in the water, her gaze lingering for a moment on their scales before finally turning to Hugh. "They come from the sea? They've always lived in the ocean?"

"Yes," Hugh replied, sensing that something was amiss as well. "There has been contamination in the sea lately, driving living beings mad, so I came to..."

"You said there is contamination in the sea?"

"Yes, look at Monica, that stuff on her body is..."

"I know," Nora interrupted Hugh again, her expression exceedingly complex, as if she had just witnessed something utterly inconceivable.

She seemed to want to say something, but found it almost too absurd to utter. This subtle emotional tension was palpable even to Hugh and the sirens nearby.

"I know Monica is contaminated, and I also know there is contamination in the sea."

Hugh and Ashe exchanged confused glances, but Nora's next sentence left them completely rooted to the spot.

"But this contamination has been going on for over a thousand years."