Second Genesis

Grey stumbled down the hallways, checking back to make sure he wasn’t leaving a trail of blood. Luckily, the cloak had a very special secondary function... as a nice towel.

It caught most of what Grey was leaking in its folds silently, and it muted what grunts and movements he was making enough that the further he pushed into it, the less of a chance there was that whoever was coming would catch him.

But there was definitely another worry eating away at Grey.

The only other exit he knew out of this place and the only one he could use right now was Baron Giyoto’s. Not only was there a sea of black between him and there, but stepping into it would likely alert the man.

Even if he did manage to make it out through there, he would end up in the sewers, of which the only exit he was aware of happened to be right through the old man’s office.

No matter how he looked at it, if he used the options he was aware of, then he would have to face off against a monster of the Vanguard Class he had no shot against.

’One problem at a time, Grey. One problem at a time.’ 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

He didn’t have any revives left. So his first order of business was finding where the hell he could hide, and then he would go through Joaquin’s things and hope there was something in there he could use.

So Grey did his best old lady walking the street impression and shuffled forward for all that he was worth.

**

"Your Holiness!"

A squadron of five knights raced down. They didn’t know what they expected to find down here, but the Bishop standing in a daze was the last thing they expected.

They all fell to a knee immediately as a sign of respect. But anyone who knew anything about the hierarchy of the church would find this to be an incredibly uncomfortable matter.

Why were they seemingly showing just as much respect to the Bishop as they would to the Goddess?

And if the Bishop was really so disrespectful as to command as much of his Holy Knights, then why would he display such fear toward Joaquin?

When the Bishop didn’t reply, Sir Kulin slowly peeked up. He was the leader of this small squadron. While he wasn’t a powerhouse on the highest levels, he was definitely decent amongst the Vector Class.

The rest of his squadron were made up of those of the Established Class.

They would have liked to cobble together a squad that was stronger than this, but... well, the politics of the church weren’t the best and on short notice, these were about the only people they could pull in to investigate the deaths of a pair of Established Class Knights that weren’t of much use.

One would think that they would be more concerned with the vault of spatial items, but as far as they were concerned, that wouldn’t go very far.

Spatial items couldn’t be stored in other spatial items, so anyone who went would have to carry it all themselves. And it couldn’t have been a large party that went, otherwise they would have been long exposed before they made it so far.

This was all to say that it was impossible to take a significant number of those items. At best they would just take a few of the more powerful ones.

Not only would those spatial items have a signature that would be incredibly easy to find after the fact, they wouldn’t tip the scales enough alone to tip the balance of the Fog of Chaos.

Simply put... it was beneath their paygrade to care.

Now, whether all this reasoning was actually true was another matter entirely. But much like with all organizations rotting from the inside out, they probably wouldn’t know the truth until it was too late to matter.

"Your Holiness?"

The Bishop wasn’t moving at all. At this point, even the other Holy Knights were slowly peeking up, trying to figure out what was going on.

Sir Kulin held up a hand and stopped the others from moving. The Bishop wouldn’t hesitate to kill someone of the Established Class, but a Vector Class Holy Knight was too valuable. He would take the risk himself.

Stepping forward he wrapped around, only to find that the Bishop was staring into space.

’... Enlightenment?’

The moment Sir Kulin had the thought, the figure of the Bishop flickered and vanished, having finally run out of energy.

Sir Kulin stood in silence.

Could it be that the Bishop was the one to kill everyone here to reach his state of enlightenment?

Honestly, Sir Kulin wouldn’t put it beyond him to do something like that. But there was no way to confirm.

The Bishop definitely wouldn’t want to be interrupted while he was at his retreat, and certainly not if he had had a sudden epiphany.

But if Sir Kulin finally got through to ask, and he was actually asking about something the Bishop expected them to just sweep under the rug and not talk about, even he would get into trouble.

To make matters worse, if he waited for an answer before he did anything, and there was someone else who had done all of this, they would escape by the time he could handle it.

Sir Kulin gritted his teeth. This shouldn’t be such a difficult choice to make.

After a long while, he took a breath and exhaled.

"You all return, clean up the bodies, and tell everyone that Bishop Calixan has told me to personally handle this matter. Understand?"

The Holy Knight squadron all nodded solemnly. They had always had great respect for their captain, and they could tell he was taking another risk for them.

Right now, it felt like both choices were the wrong choice, but they had to make one.

"We will handle it." A female Holy Knight who went by Sir Chen placed a fist across her chest and bowed.

Sir Kulin nodded and then looked toward the fleshy blob that was left of Joaquin.

Unfortunately for Joaquin and the Bishop, the blob was entirely unrecognizable. If Sir Kulin had known this was Joaquin, he would have thought to check access logs. If he had checked access logs, he would have seen the request for Joaquin’s spatial item, and he would have been able to find the reason an exception was made to hand it out early.

And if he could have done that, then the link between what happened here, the missing tool belt in their vault inventory, and Grey wouldn’t have been all that hard a leap to make.