The next morning, the whole family had a discussion on the breakfast table. Mir's suggestion of decoy diaries was received with much less enthusiasm than he had assumed.
"Or you could, you know, just surrender the damn thing to those cultists like we advised before. Problem solved at the root," their mother said, disgruntled at their stubborn refusal to let go of the artifact.
"It's not mine to surrender," Murray chipped in a tone that left little room for negotiations. "It belongs to the Church. I'm just borrowing it."
"Any particular reason why you're borrowing such a dangerous object?" their father said. "You've told me that the diary is a purifier for the Sun's Curse Virus. Artifacts like that aren't so rare, as far as I know. Why is this cult after your diary in particular?"
"I don't know," Murray said, meeting Mir's gaze for a fleeting moment. Both brothers were almost certain that the cultists knew about the special capability of the diary which the two of them were 'abusing' currently.
"Then you should negotiate with your employers– the Church, I mean. Since it is their artifact that has brought trouble to our doorstep, we deserve to be compensated by them," their father said decisively. "What they're doing right now in terms of protection is not enough. We live in a big community. Surely, the Church's negligence in cleaning up their own mess would not look good when spread all across the colony."
Murray almost choked on his soup. Their father was virtually asking him to blackmail Sunbreaker's Church. His casual tone while giving the advice made it seem like he was treating the Church as a customer of his shop.
"We could try that, sure," Mir said. "Father Vincent seems to value Murray a lot. Let's ask him first."
"You've been tagging along with Murray all the time these days. You aren't planning to enter the Church yourself too, are you?" Their mother said in a suspicion-filled tone.
"....Not exactly, but would that be so bad?" Mir replied evasively. "I mean, look at Murray, it's been less than two weeks since he joined the Church and he's already a Mutant Transcender now. Pretty impressive compared to other career paths out there after finishing college."
"Young man," Mir's mother pointed at him with a long spoon handle threateningly. "I can guess what thoughts are running inside your head. Don't you dare start entertaining the idea of giving up on education entirely to join the Church, or any other organizations, for that matter! Graduate first, and then you can do whatever you want."
"...Riiiiight, totally, whatever we want," Murin mumbled under her breath. Mir kicked her under the table to shut her up before their mother could get angrier.
In the end, it was decided that after one more week of playing it safe, Mir and Murin would be accompanied by someone every time they had to leave the house, an arrangement mostly meant to return them to their studious routine. Neither Mir nor Murin were happy with the decision, but they knew arguing over it was futile.
Sticking to their own plan, Mir and Murray went out together to look for a shop that could create the decoys of the diary. They found one eventually among the chain-stores near the entrance of the southern sector. Compared to the businesses surrounding the shop, it was a high-end one, focusing mainly on producing customized materials for corporate offices, including seals, pens and blank sheets, signboards, and registers for various purposes. Copying the craftsmanship of a specific diary was not an unusual order for them.
As they left the store to take a bus to the Church, Murray seemed to grow a little nervous at the prospect of entering a Sacred Ground. After spending several minutes twisting and turning on his seat, he turned to Mir and whispered under the whirring of the engine, "Mir, tell me what you got from the forums about the Philosophy Corridor."
"You didn't look it up after I told you that we're going to visit it today?" Mir asked, incredulous.
"When did I get the time?" Murray complained. Shaking his head despondently, Mir began to explain.
"The Philosophy Corridor is one of the oldest sacred grounds to be graced with Sunbreaker's divinity. Naturally, the Church of Sunbreaker put all of their efforts into taking over the control of the Sacred Ground from the original explorers. Like every sacred ground out there, it has its own set of rules that you need to follow to survive inside. You cannot move around in there freely, as it results in a gruesome death most of the time–"
"Oi, I know what sacred grounds are." Murray raised a hand, interrupting Mir's fast flow. "You don't have to treat me like a kid who just started becoming curious about these things. Keep it simple and brief. What makes it unique?"
"Like the name suggests, the Philosophy Corridor is shaped like one, about a hundred meters in length and a dozen meters wide. It was generated over the remains of a concrete tunnel. The air is filled with active viruses and hallucinogens. You cannot enter with weapons or other materials that can be detached from your body, and yes, this includes clothing. Every ten meters deep, you'll be faced with a question induced by hallucinations. There's no way to avoid it if you want to make it a profitable venture.
"Based on your answers to the questions, you'll gradually be alienated from your peers and competitors inside the tunnel. There is no right or wrong answer there, and you're judged by some sentient being from Sunbreaker's domain who evaluates the reasoning and philosophy behind each answer to determine what creature you may face.
"It is said that the quality of your answer can have an impact on the quality of the creature you end up facing. For the ambitious Transcenders, the forums suggest that they go for the most outlandish answers within reason, because past patterns show that people with extreme characters came back from there with better results."
"Doesn't that mean that we have to give the most generic answer possible if we want to play it safe? We'd be grouped with othere that way, right?" Murray asked. "What type of creatures does the tunnel produce for common answers?"
Mir snorted. "You haven't put much thought behind the infrastructure, have you? The Philosophy Corridor ensures that none of the questions or answers are leaked outside by erasing a major part of your memory inside it. People come out remembering bits and fragments. It took the early discoverers a long time to piece together what the rules of the Sacred Ground were. Otherwise, everyone would be inside it with cheat sheets and prepared answers."
"But there has to be a pattern among those who fought the mutant creatures and came out victorious, right? What's the most common mutant creature corpse to be carried out of the Sacred Ground?" Murray said. Mir was forced to look the data up from Murray's data terminal again.
"It's called an Archer Frog," he read out from the screen, and both brothers leaned over the terminal to get a look at its stats.