Elden: Ring of Calamity

Chapter 196 Fakes
Tick, tick.
The sound of the second hand beating echoed in the dark and cramped cell, bouncing back and forth again and again through the thick stone wall, and finally superimposed into a deafening sound wave that hit Valenice's eardrums heavily, making her taste the tearing sound over and over again. The excruciating pain almost drove him mad.

There was a long table placed on the open space more than ten steps away from the cell. On it were a solitary lamp, a pocket watch and a several-foot-thick document. It was also the only light source in the entire cell.

For the entire three days, Lucia sat there quietly reviewing the documents most of the time, and did not even cast a single glance at Valenice during the period, let alone the torture and interrogation she imagined.

Valenice looked at the dancing flames in the lamp with squinted eyes, and Lucia behind the table was blurred into a gloomy phantom in the halo—she could no longer tell whether it was the spiritual power of the man of God. The pressure led to the collapse of her own perception, or the long-term claustrophobia and silence invisibly bred the psychological pressure that she could not bear.

All she knew was that she wanted to get out of this situation quickly.

"Please, if you have any questions, just ask—" She begged hoarsely, moving her chapped and bloody lips, "Everything I know, I will definitely have no reservations about you."

Lucia did not respond, and was still reviewing the documents that seemed to never be reduced, as if she had never heard of it, and it seemed that an iron curtain that forbids all sound and light was placed between the two of them, no matter how humble she called , and he never responds.

A hot stream gushed out from the dry corners of her eyes. Valenice gritted her teeth tightly, but she still couldn't stop the trembling from her soul. Her knees were trembling crazily, and tears were streaming down her face. She wanted to scream angrily, but finally But there was only a broken sob.

"Kill me," she begged again.

Suddenly, Lucia raised her head and looked at her. Just this look made Valenice feel like she was forgiven. She struggled desperately to move forward with the chains and shackles on her body, as if she would miss it if she was half a minute away. His next words.

"I won't ask you any more," he said softly, "You have told me all the answers I want."

Valenis froze on the spot as if struck by lightning, "What did you say?"

"Among the priests I have come into contact with, your willpower is surprisingly weak. From the first time I saw you outside the Dark Moon Palace, I have been thinking about how stupid Beta is to choose a waste like you to serve as the priest. Second Priest, aren’t you afraid that you will reveal the secrets that He doesn’t dare to see others?”

"But the second time I saw you in the Two Fingers Church, I understood that He is so confident not because of his trust in you, but because He has already planted a curse of magic in your body, not only you, but also you Those mobs under your command, once you reveal your secrets in any way, you will be torn to pieces by the curse immediately."

Speaking of this, he casually smiled, and said: "He really gave me a lot of insight. The last time I saw a similar method was when the mother of truth treated his priests and believers. The blood of those people was all alive. It was pulled out and painted into a mural that threatened me—I thought this kind of low-level control method would only appear on evil gods and cultists."

"So since then, I have never expected to hear any useful information from you. The reason why you are still alive and seeing me here in this form is only because I need to use you to verify several It's just a conjecture."

On the other side, Valenice, who was already on the verge of collapse, fell into a trance after hearing the news of the divine spell curse.

She knew that in such a situation, Lucia had no reason or need to deceive herself. In other words, even though she was the second priest of Lord Beta, she had never received any real trust and love.After all, counting the time, Lord Beta has returned to the capital for two and a half days, and the fact that he is still imprisoned here is the best proof.

To this day, all that awaits her is the fate of being an insignificant abandoned child.

"What do you want to verify?" She murmured absently.

This is just a subconscious question. If one gets to the bottom of her heart, Valenice probably just wants to capture her own final value before the curtain ends, in order to grasp the remaining meaning of life after the collapse of faith, so she doesn't want to. Expecting Lucia's answer.

But unexpectedly, Lucia answered her again.

"Three things," he put the quill back into the ink bottle, closed the cover of the last document, and said with downcast eyes, "the first thing, I want to know what attitude the Supreme Will has towards Beta."

"Since His Majesty Malika unified the Altar Plateau and was crowned the Eternal Queen, there has never been any violence against the Two Finger Church in the nearly 50 years of the Golden Dynasty. But I not only destroyed your church, but also executed you. Half of the priests and knights were killed, but they did not suffer any form of divine punishment."

"I admit that this is a risky gamble to test the supreme will, but from the moment the result appeared, I understood one thing," he raised his head to look at Valenice, the flickering candlelight reflected in his In the ice-blue eyes, a magnificent and strange brilliance appeared, "Even if they are also pawns, there is still an insurmountable natural moat between being worthwhile and being discarded."

"So I started the second verification - in three days, I have been examining the divine spell curse on you all the time, so as to observe what happened to Beta."

"The results surprised me. Although Beta's divine power is very similar to Epsilon in terms of nature, intensity and even operation rules, if you observe it carefully enough, you will find that they are essentially different."

"The divine powers of Epsilon, Gamma, and Delta all come from the golden tree, or from the supreme will of a higher level. The golden tree is the channel for them to bathe in divine grace and obtain divine power. Because of this, their divine power will inevitably incorporate the law of life of the Eternal Queen, presenting the meaning of endless fertility, which is also the theoretical commonality of every two-fingered angel."

"But Beta is different. From his divine power, I can't feel the slightest breath of the golden tree. It's just a piece of pure and empty gold. Wherever I can see, there is only absolute power, stability and order."

Lucia exhaled deeply, "In other words, Beta, whom you have always been in awe of and worshiped as a god, cannot be said to be a two-fingered divine envoy at all on the original level -"

"No matter how you look at it, he is not the apostle of the supreme will, but a fake of that god."

(End of this chapter)