The massive and heavy mechanical spider folded its long limbs into its abdomen and, using the wheel structures on the sides of its limbs, glided at high speed along the straight road, while Judge Vanna stood steadily atop the carapace of this mechanical creation, the slightly fishy night breeze blowing through the streets, the cold air making her mind even more clear.
Those who worshipped the Sun God as heretics were a significant threat to modern civilization—and unfortunately, they were not the only such threat.
There are always malevolent gazes cast toward the human world from the depths of Subspace, and always foolish mortals who attempt to touch those ominous powers; in the collusion between primordial beings and mortals, there are also twisted creatures, forbidden offspring, and residual corruption lurking deep within the City-States, always ready to stir and attempt to pry apart the social order.
Among all these threats, the followers of the Sun God were the most vigilant and vexing for the protectors of the Plunder City-State.
They were not just heretics but also products of some lost history of the old world. More dangerous than most blindly foolish heretics, these worshippers of the Black Sun had what one might call "convictions"—as fanatical and distorted as they were, and though their lower ranks were a mixed bag, among the upper echelons of this detestable cult lay certain "core beliefs" that had remained unchanged for thousands of years.
These beliefs revolved around the "Era of Order" under the light of the olden Sun, not only constituting a system in itself but also having a corresponding, unrecognized by modern civilization, "True Sun calendar." They firmly believed they were descendants of an ancient civilization long lost and that this past glory would be restored.
As a Judge of the Deep Sea Church, Vanna was not overly interested in the heretics' perverse doctrines, but she knew that it was the existence of such doctrines that gave the followers of the Sun God a unity and stubbornness that was far beyond other heretics, allowing them to survive tenaciously after repeated strikes and to grow within the shadows of numerous City-States.
But their resurgence in Plunder was still somewhat unexpected to Vanna.
Ever since the unprecedented crackdown four years ago, the Sun God's believers in Plunder had been severely weakened. According to several investigation reports, those heretics should have relocated their primary members to nearby Rensa, Moco, and even farther away to Cold Harbor City-State, leaving only the most ignorant and indoctrinated lackeys who lacked the qualification to move with the bishop group in Plunder.
These minions hid in the sewers, completely relying on their knowledge of the underworld and the twisted blessings the Black Sun bestowed upon them to evade the pursuers. Over four years, their numbers dwindled, and the only thing they had left was to cling to a feeble existence.
Yet today, four years later, they suddenly gathered again, even daring to risk exposure by conducting a sacrificial ritual at a meeting place... Who had given them the audacity?
Or to say... was something major about to happen in this City-State? Was there a cause significant enough that, even at the risk of extinguishing their last spark, the heretics would draw the Black Sun's gaze to Plunder?
From within the mechanical spider came the vibrations and noise of the continuously operating steam core, and a faint fragrance wafted out from the steam release valves, carried by the night breeze. Vanna temporarily set aside her random thoughts and looked up at the sky.
"Creation of the World" hung high in the night, its pale luminescence illuminating Plunder's uneven mix of houses, chimneys, and towers. The action squad was now moving through the edge of the industrial zone, where the massive steam and thermal fluid pipes crossing between factories were like the arteries of giants threading through the sky above the streets.
Vanna faintly recalled the past, the most profound and terrifying night in her memory—on that midnight filled with the scent of blood, her uncle carried her as they fled from the inferno, the streets were full of people caught in a mass hallucination, walking corpses and fluctuating shadows of flesh, they escaped along the factory pipes, the stench of blood and the chemical grease seeping from the pipes was nauseating...
Suddenly, a vibration from the mechanical spider at her feet jolted Vanna from her memories.
The smooth road came to an end ahead lay the abandoned district on the outskirts of the city area, with uneven and bumpy terrain, the two mechanical spiders ended their gliding mode, stretching out their long limbs to move rapidly over the rough surface.
Before long, the squad arrived at the entrance to an abandoned sewer.
Another team of eight was already on standby, having sealed off the nearby area to prevent unrelated personnel from approaching the entrance.
Vanessa greeted the subordinates here and then followed the person in charge directly into the bowels of the sewer.
Through the profound corridors, through the filthy paths, Vanessa finally arrived at that secret meeting place—here, she saw more guardian soldiers, as well as church priests performing the purification ritual.
A temporary sacrificial platform was situated right in the center of the congregation area; the wooden platform seemed as if it had been scorched by flames. On the platform, one could still see the desecrated totem set up by the Sun God's worshippers—that totem had been burned by fire, but its basic structure remained intact.
Surrounding the platform were dozens of heretics, their hands bound and crouched on the ground. Most of them were shivering, while a few moved their lips silently, murmuring their blasphemous prayers without sound.
But with the ritual site having been destroyed, and the Storm Goddess' attention turned to this place, these heretical prayers were utterly ineffective.
Not far from the sacrificial platform were the bodies of the victims found in nearby caves, laid upon linen cloths with runes drawn upon them. Morticians who had hurried over were examining the state of each corpse.
Several church priests walked around the platform, the bronze chains in their hands swaying gently. From the censers at the end of these chains, white smoke emitted, touching the ground near the platform to be immediately stained with an ominous black shadow. More white smoke carried away these contaminants—the aura left here by the Black Sun was being cleansed bit by bit in this process.
"Your Honor, Judge, please come this way. This is where we've found something amiss," the young guardian pointed at several bodies beside the sacrificial platform and said, "Please be careful, the ground here is not very clean."
Vanessa walked straight towards those bodies, and upon seeing the condition of one of them, she involuntarily furrowed her brow.
It was a heretic wearing a golden mask—undoubtedly, the priest directly in charge of the sacrificial ceremony at this sacrilegious site.
There was a terrifying hole in his chest.
"...What happened here?" Vanessa frowned, "Did this fanatical heretic get too excited at the end of the ceremony and sacrifice himself? I've never heard of such a custom among those who worship the Black Sun."
"That's the bizarre part—he was not a victim of self-sacrifice," the guardian who had brought Vanessa there immediately shook his head, speaking with a strange expression on his face, "According to the heretics we captured... their 'messenger' was sacrificed by a sacrificial victim..."
"Sacrificed by a sacrificial victim?" Vanessa instantly raised her eyebrows, "What kind of madness is that?"
"Indeed, it sounds like madness," the guardian spread his hands helplessly, "In fact, when we arrived, most of the heretics here were already in a state of near-insanity. Many of them had taken to killing each other, and it seems as though they had started to see each other as 'monsters'... possessed by some horrifying entity. It was their crazed breakout from the gathering place that alerted the nearby patrol officers, leading to the exposure of the situation... By the time we got here, there were only a few left who were coherent enough to answer questions, and those few who could still speak fluently insisted it was a sacrificial victim that sacrificed the messenger."
"Driven to madness? Killing each other? And believing that others are possessed monsters?" Vanessa's expression immediately turned grave, "Was an examination done? Is it a result of corruption by the Black Sun?"
"We couldn't find traces of external contamination; it looks more like a spontaneously occurring madness—the factor causing the insanity is rooted within their own psychic world," explained the guardian, pointing towards a young lady walking among the heretics, dressed in a black gown, "Miss Heidi is here already. If we confirm that these heretics aren't tainted by the Black Sun, we'll have to think of solutions in terms of hypnotism."