Two days after the 'bloodbath' incident, the system finally showed up again.
[The God Path – Quest 2: "Form an army of 50 undead monsters" has arrived]
[The quest has two rewards]
It wasn't the type of quest I had expected would come. I was prepared to deal with something harder than the first quest. However, the second quest ended up being pretty easy to accomplish. I just had to form an army of 50 undead monsters, right?
With Necromancy at my side, that was as easy as eating a pie. I already had complete control over 5 monsters, whom I had trained with for the past two days. I could use them to kill more monsters and then turn them into undead under my control.
But, because it was so easy to pull off, I started having doubts about it.
Was that all there was to the quest? I questioned myself. And even though the system didn't give me any reason to, I started thinking of a possible catch in this whole deal.
A possibility came to mind very soon.
What if, after completing this quest, I am given an incredibly hard quest that I am unable to fulfill because I didn't take this one seriously?
It was a definite possibility. And since it had come to mind, I had to make sure I don't screw up.
***************
The entire city was in chaos because of the incident in the forest. The name of the city was – no, not important. Because of what happened in a few days, the name of that city is irrelevant.
But back to the situation, there really wasn't a better word to describe it than 'chaotic'. The adventurers had been divided into two groups.
One was the group of cowards who became too afraid to go into the forests, or other monster infested areas for that matter, because of what happened to that party of 8 adventurers.
The other group was the group of idiots who were determined to go into the forest and kill monsters as much as they could to restore the faith people had lost in their abilities.
Because of this division, the adventurer's guild was in a state of crisis. And THAT benefitted the church.
The Royal Church, as they were called, was an organization that held as much power as the adventurer's guild did. Politically, neither of them had anything over the king. But, when it came to an ordinary city like the one I lived in, these two parties directly rivaled the mayor.
The reason adventurer's guild was given this much power was obvious – they were the goddamned adventurer's guild. They were the one thing keeping the monsters outside from rampaging through the city.
But the Royal Church – they were a mystery to me. The populous wasn't that religious to be honest. If you would compare the percentage of people who can be considered religious to the percentage on modern day Earth, I reckon there would hardly be any difference. In other words, while a lot of people believed in the gods the church preached about, they weren't very religious. So, it didn't make sense for the Royal Church to have that much power.
That was something I had been curious about - ever since I got my memories back and started thinking instead of wasting my life away. That day I got the opportunity to find out the answer.
"We will have to go to the church." Himdere, my mother, told all us siblings. Hearing that, my eldest siblings, Hans, had an ugly expression on his face.
"Why do we have to go there?!" He asked our mother but without even waiting for an answer, he left.
"Hah!" Mother sighed and said, "If he doesn't want to come, so be it. The rest of us will go."
***************
The reason why Hans was so irritated became clear to me as soon as I entered the church. On all sides, there were humungous walls of white filled with paintings depicting legends. But they weren't just any legends; they were a selected group of legends having one thing in common – the defeat of the sword wielders.
Even the statue of the god was something that signified that very thing as the god Emoliv, who was the greatest of all the deities the church prayed to, was shown stepping on a demon's defeated corpse who had six hands and all hands held a different kind of sword.
I didn't know what problem the church had with sword wielders but I knew how to find out about it.
In a glass tube in front of the statue of Emoliv, the church kept a number of scrolls.
"What are those?" I had asked in a low voice to Helga. Because she was so cocky and hungry for praise, it was really easy getting any information out of her as I just had to butter her up a bit.
"It's common knowledge that these scrolls contain great secrets about the church, the religion and the gods. If you read one of those scrolls and you aren't a high-ranking member of the church, well, your life is forfeit. Not only is it considered a sin on par with murder but is also a crime punishable by the law." She had told me.
Truth is, I already knew about the scrolls. I just wanted to confirm what I had heard was correct. Since Helga said it and my mother, who had listened in on it, didn't interrupt at all, I knew that everything she was saying was the truth.
And so, I just had to get my hands on one of those scrolls. And I decided I would do it that very night.
***************
In the pale of the moonlight, a blonde nun was praying to the god Emoliv. She was sitting on her knees, and even prostrating herself from time-to-time.
"Oh, my lord Emoliv, heed my prayers!" She cried out. "Please give your love to me! Please give me the holy power that I deserve! I have served you for all my life; do I not even deserve such a petty reward?"
Her ivory complexion had glamour equivalent to the moonlight. Her sapphire-like eyes shone and her pink lips shaking with lust painted the picture of a demonic angel. Her rather mediocre stature assimilated well with the surroundings as well.
It would have been a bizarre sight if anyone saw it. But, she didn't worry as no one would.
The church's doors were closed at night and doesn't matter who it was, they wouldn't dare risk angering all the religious populous of the world by opening them. As for the other nuns and priests, none of them were allowed to live inside the church. Only she – the high priestess – could live inside the church. And so, she was alone and had the freedom to do whatever she wanted.
"Oh, my lord Emoliv, you have to choose me. You have to reward my devotion to you. You have to." As if imagining Emoliv ravaging her body, she moaned.
For years, this lustful woman had acted like an oh-so-pure nun in front of the world while secretly praying to Emoliv to impregnate her.
It was considered a custom that the god Emoliv impregnates a nun of the Royal Church and she gives birth to a hero, a hero who could save the world.
This happened every single time when the world was in any danger, be it by an incredibly powerful demon lord or a natural disaster or something else. The hero would be born, possessing the skills needed to get rid of the problems.
Because of how valuable these heroes were, the nuns who gave birth to them, who had been chosen by god Emoliv himself, were treated as queens, or maybe even better than queens.
This woman wanted that for herself.
She was a greedy, lustful and beautiful woman with a perverted mind. In other words, she was the complete opposite of what an ideal nun should be like. And yet, her acting skills were good enough for her to be considered an ideal nun by the church.
"Ah! My lord Emoliv, if you do not choose me, I will lose faith and make sure others do so too." Overcome by lust, she crawled towards his statue as she said, "I am a high-priestess with a lot of influence, you see. I can change the minds of many. You wouldn't want that to happen now, would – who's there?"
Her voice turned stern and she immediately seated herself upright as she looked in the direction she had just sensed a presence from.
She stood up, adjusted her dress, wiped off her face and asked again, "Who's there? Who dares come in-"
The answer to her questions came in front of her, making her freeze. It was a dark fox. But, it was different than a usual dark fox. Generally, dark foxes just look like black foxes. But, this one was exuding a vile aura, an aura of death.
"Don't tell me it's-"
She couldn't complete the sentence. The very thought of an undead being inside the church terrified her. The dark fox looked at her cautiously for a while and then ran away. She noticed that there was something in its mouth.
She quickly started to look around to see what it could be and then found the answer when she looked back at a particular glass tube.
***************
The undead dark fox of mine was more useful than I initially gave it credit for.
I had sent it to the church with this command. "Sneak into the church, make sure you are not spotted, get the scrolls and bring them back to me. You can take as much time as you need to but make sure no one sees you."
These were simple commands for a human but for a monster, they were complex. No ordinary monster could pull it off. But, a dark fox was basically fox 2.0. It had the cunning of the foxes found on earth and some more.
It followed my instructions to the letter, and bought the scrolls without letting anyone see it.
… Hah!
I only wish I could really say that.
But as soon as the dark fox entered through the windows in my room (which was on the ground floor), I felt an alarm going off in my head.
I quickly jumped away from the window and realized that if I had been even a second late, I might have died, again.
The whole wall that stood between my room and the house's lawn was blown to bits.
"You!" A blonde nun with beautiful features but an ugly aura entered through that large hole and said, "You dare to steal the scrolls from the church! It is time for you to die!"