"Done!" Jacques covered the cargo on the wagon;

he had already inscribed the sacred ciphers onto those goods.

It wasn't conspicuous, but it wasn't secluded either. As long as the checkpoint at the city gate acted normally, it would definitely be discovered.

"You shouldn't be here." A voice snapped Jacques back to attention.

Turning around, Jacques saw the old priest.

A thousand thoughts rushed through his mind, and in that instant Jacques's quick thinking was forced to the surface.

"Oh—it's you." Jacques quickly put on a relaxed façade, then, unwilling to concede, added, "Naimes must be involved in the whalehide ore situation. I have to find out what rule he broke."

"So you came to inspect this caravan." Chapters first released on novel★fire.net

"Old Priest, please pretend you didn't see me. I'll leave once I've finished the inspection." Jacques pleaded, matching the tone and demeanor he'd used with the old priest before.

He needed to hide the fact that he had been in contact with Isabella, to act as if he still didn't know the old priest's information.

That would buy him time and lower the old priest's guard.

"You're a good boy." The old priest said with a gentle smile. "Although you can be impulsive at times, that's only because you've experienced too little."

"If you go through more, you'll become a proper holy knight."

"I..." Jacques was about to say something, but the old priest cut him off.

"I'm sorry, Jacques."

"Everything has unfolded like the will of God;

everything is moving toward what I least desire," the old priest said, and then suddenly a great noise echoed from afar.

With his perception, he quickly determined the sound came from the church.

"I suppose someone discovered the failed products beneath the church."

"Is it Naimes? Or Isabella?" The old priest was not alarmed;

instead there was a kind of relieved ease about him.

His attitude toward the experiment had always been conflicted.

Since that failure years ago, he'd lost too much because of the experiment.

He couldn't let it go;

he felt he should repent and atone for his sins.

Yet he also felt he could not allow this to simply remain a failure—if it did, his sins would never be fully cleansed.

So he found himself restarting the experiment.

Reason told him he should stop, should end everything, but all the circumstances seemed to conspire to help.

When he finally saw the experiment near success and the necessary elements fall into place, he couldn't hold back anymore.

At that moment his last escape was cut off;

he no longer had the option to waver, and his heart settled.

What greeted the old priest was Jacques's sword.

The instant the sword flashed, Jacques unleashed everything he had.

The power of the Holy Bone, the family-secret path of the saint—he activated them all.

With full force he swung the sword at the old priest.

The blade struck, blood sprayed, and the old priest fell split into two corpses.

Yet Jacques's expression changed drastically.

"The feel is wrong!" Jacques had taken part in hunts and slain animals with his sword;

he knew what the sensation was when a blade bit into flesh and severed bone.

Sure enough, the surroundings dimmed in an instant.

While Jacques remained on guard, a light from nowhere descended and enveloped him.

He felt like the protagonist on a stage—suddenly the center of the entire world.

Jacques didn't know what the old priest was doing or what was happening;

all he could do was stand with his sword ready.

Then he saw another light appear farther off.

The figure bathed in that light was terribly familiar: it was the man he hated, Naimes.

Only then Naimes looked very young, about Jacques's current age—just newly an adult.

He was running down a corridor.

Wearing armor, sword in hand, he cleaved the door at the end of the corridor and burst into a courtyard where servants were carrying trays and bowls.

"That place is... Dartmenli's annex?" Jacques immediately recognized where Naimes was—it was an estate beside the Dartmanley residence where many families' servants worked, responsible for preparing food for elite family members.

Because they used numerous precious medicines and feared poisoning of the family elite, the place was usually closed to outsiders.

Then Jacques saw Naimes seize a servant and, with reddened eyes, ask, "Where are the things?"

With the answer extracted by the sword in his hand, Naimes rushed into a room. He swung his sword wildly, forcing the guards aside, then pushed open the door.

The instant he saw what was inside, Naimes seemed to lose all strength;

he collapsed on the threshold, staring at the contents, and began to retch uncontrollably.

A terrible premonition rose in Jacques. He stepped forward, inching closer, terrified yet unable to stop himself from looking inside.

Then he saw an image he would never forget.

The room was large, with more than a dozen racks. On each rack hung a person.

Tubes were inserted into those bodies—some bleeding out, some receiving food or medicines through them.

Their bodies were emaciated, covered in countless scars, missing limbs;

the wounds still showed blood, and the bloodstained areas bore dense cuts.

Jacques could even imagine how strips of flesh had been taken piece by piece from those bodies.

"Ugh—" Jacques retched and trembled all over.

What drove him further into madness was that each of those racks bore an identity tag.

Among them he saw the names of his parents.

On the rack labeled with his parents' names hung two almost unrecognizable figures. From the moment he entered, they stared at him.

How to describe those two pairs of eyes?

For a moment Jacques felt the world spin.

He could no longer stand and collapsed to the ground.

He had always believed his parents died fighting evil.

He never imagined they were still alive—reduced to such a pitiful state!

"AAAAAHHHH!!!" Jacques roared in rage.

He was furious at his own ignorance, furious at the Dartmanley family for treating him and his parents this way.

He was furious at Naimes.

Naimes had discovered this back then—why didn't he expose it fully? Why didn't he make the church destroy the Dartmanley family? Why didn't he kill his former self?!

What had he been doing all these years?

Pathetically taking pride in the Dartmanley family, repeatedly fighting for that so-called family?

Jacques felt like a fool, a clown meant only to entertain others.

Everything was driving him to madness.

And then, at that moment, the fastenings on those racks snapped.

Those deformed, barely-human figures began to crawl toward him, intent on killing him.