In his Divine Kingdom, Xi Wei watched as Marni and the others tricked the Rotten Bones believers into heading towards the refugee settlement, and nodded in satisfaction.
The reason he gave Lia such a quest was naturally because he noticed that their goal wasn't to kill her when he was spying on the cultists' conversation, but to offer her as a sacrifice to the Rotten Bones Cult.
Xi Wei immediately guessed the Rotten Bones Cult's goal. It was most likely the same as himself, seeking weak gods as bait to strengthen itself.
The System on the girl was not that important, since it was perfectly normal for devout believers to have signs of divine power, and a small fry like the Rotten Bones Cult wouldn't be able to analyze it.
Even if Xi Wei felt that he could fight now, he wanted to prepare for a while more just to be safe. To prevent the Rotten Bones Cult from tracing the girl's divine power back to him, Xi Wei gave her a quest to find a way to escape.
"With that, the foundation is complete. I'll be ready when Lia returns to the starter village. After bullying my believers for so long, I'll soon be ready to retaliate against that small fry Evil God." Xi Wei scratched what was probably his chin with his tentacles.
He now had enough divine energy to reshape his appearance, but the imminent threat of the Rotten Bones Cult forced him to put that aside for the time being and start preparing a strategy to face it.
"Since there's no problem over at Wickidor's place for now, let's focus on the starter village …"
Although it was said to be the starter village, it was actually developing and flourishing with each passing day.
The clearers had pushed the Valley of the Tragic Dead to 5%, and planned to work towards 6% after a day's rest. Meanwhile, almost every monster they could find between the entrance and 2% had been killed by other Players, and the average Players were also starting to advance towards 3%.
What Xi Wei really paid attention to was the organization known as the Society of the Secret Eye that was hiding near the starter village.
Unlike the Rotten Bones Church, the Society of the Secret Eye was purely a group of people with no common beliefs or goals. Although it wasn't clear what their structure was, they had more people and more powerful fighters than the players.
The Rotten Bones Church and the Society of the Secret Eye were obstacles to Xi Wei's Church of Games from two different aspects. The believers of the Rotten Bones Church weren't as powerful as the players, but the Rotten Bones God was a threat to Xi Wei. While the Society of the Secret Eye wasn't a threat to Xi Wei himself, they would be a huge threat to the safety of the players in the newbie village if they were to come out in full force.
While the clearers were having a rest day, Edward did not actually rest. Instead, he received a new quest from Angora — the quest to investigate the Society of the Secret Eye that was delayed due to the banquet.
Interestingly enough, although he didn't expect much from the two idiotic Players who accepted the quest before, they had somehow stumbled upon a base of the Secret Eye Society near the starter village. Although they were immediately wiped out by their enemies, they were still the result of Xi Wei's divine-powered computer (or Pantheon Brain?). It was returned to Angora as proof of the quest's completion.
Angora then handed the information to Edward as part of the quest description.
Unlike the two idiotic Players who had boldly charged into the enemy's base, Edward had snuck in quietly. Since Xi Wei didn't have a rogue as a basic class, Edward was actually a mage who had more options when faced with different terrains, and the difficulty of sneaking in was second only to a ranger who could move quickly.
"There are two people in the corridor up ahead. Assassinate them when they pass!"Edward muttered to himself as he hid in the ventilation hole because he was still a child, tilting his head to try and hear what the two were talking about.
Having experienced many battles, Edward was no longer a hunter who had just left his village. Moreover, he had already noticed that there weren't many clean people in this base.
The sale of forbidden hallucinogenic potions that could ruin families, the inhumane slave trade, the use of unsold slaves as experimental materials for black magic and new hallucinogenic potions, the sale of the organs of the slaves who died in experiments to the cultists as ritual materials … Just looking at the information he had found, Edward wanted nothing more than to burn this place to ashes.
From this perspective, Edward wouldn't feel the slightest bit guilty even if he killed all the enemies in the settlement.
The voices of the two bandits grew louder as they approached.
"I heard that Crow Head and the others caught two intruders."
"Hey, that's old news. They're already dead."
"Dead? Why not sell them as slaves? You could make some extra money too. "
"You don't get it. Boss Black Whip was trying to get some information from them, wanting to know who hired them to scout the place. He probably wanted to sell them as slaves after getting the information. "
"But what happened? They wouldn't say anything even if they died? "
"It's fine if they died."
"What's wrong?"
"One of them, even though he was caught and shackled, he kept telling jokes and gags, trying to get information out of Boss Black Whip. Even when he was tortured, it was as if he couldn't feel the pain …"
"What a tough guy. What about the other guy? "
"He was laughing."
"Sneering? Facing his impending tragic fate with a soundless smile? "
"No, he was laughing like a fool. He seemed to have a low threshold for humor. He was amused by the joker. "
"…"
"In the end, Boss Black Whip chopped the joker's head off in a fit of rage!"
"Sigh, how tragic. Did he get scared at the end? "
"No. His last words were, 'Wait a minute, wait till I'm done. I promise you'll laugh!'"
"Was he an idiot? The other guy must've been scared out of his wits. "
"No, the other guy looked at his head and laughed like a maniac!"
"Laughing maniacally, huh …"
"He said, 'Hahaha, you idiot, you're killing me!'"
"???"
"Then Boss Black Whip chopped him to death."
"… What are these two doing here?"
"Who knows, but Boss Black Whip said there'd be more idiots like them, so we'll have to be more careful with our patrols."
Just as the two of them walked through a narrow ventilation duct, a black shadow jumped out of the duct on the ceiling, and before they could react, one of them was burned to ashes, and the other was frozen into ice, shattering into ice shards on the ground.
Edward coldly looked at the two corpses. His face revealed a callous expression. He exhaled a breath of white air and slowly said.