Black Sail
Chapter 423: LVIII. Number One Most Wanted Criminal

Chapter 423: LVIII. Number One Most Wanted Criminal

In the night, the stained glass of the church shone with exquisite grace due to special materials, and the solemnly arranged seats were all empty.

Only one person, wearing simple Chain Armor and an armband on his sleeve, sat in the first row.

The interior was extremely quiet, Marcus gazed at the altar in front of him, and at the Dragon Lord’s carving in the center of the stone wall.

The haze of death seemed like a phantasmagoric dream.

As if led to a blissful land, and marked with a passage of textual memory.

Marcus believed he had been redeemed, his devout heart had stirred the Dragon Lord, washing away all the killings from the dark and tumultuous years of Old Aran.

In his second life, he would serve the Dragon Lord until he faded into nothingness.

In the "Dragon Lord’s True Prophecy," a catastrophe was mentioned, a great calamity occurring every nine hundred years. In the year 1800 of the Holy Spirit Calendar, there was an invasion of Alien Races during the alignment of the Heavenly Sphere, while in the year 900, eighteen hundred years ago, it was the Divine Mother Sect that brought disaster.

Even earlier records vanished from history, with the years before the Holy Spirit Calendar being the Ancient Era, and any documents that survived were considerably vague.

The prophecy stated that this catastrophe would be initiated by a Magician... and he was in the Western Continent.

The secret emissaries of the Eternal Sect kept a close watch on the eleven Tower Masters of the Tower Alliance, including the Magic King, and also on Akasa, the most powerful Magician in the Alan Royal Court.

The current Pope told Marcus to pay extra attention, he had many names, Akasa was just one of them, and he was quite dangerous.

The Pope was not very concerned about the prophecy; he had other ideas.

Perhaps Marcus was speculating wildly, but the Pope was no longer content with being the most influential religious leader in the world and wanted to become the actual ruler of the entire continent.

Those secret emissaries had already taken action, just taking control of a few of the Magician’s apprentices, as well as the Emperor’s favored, Lagrange.

It was not a matter of great enmity.

Just an ordinary political event.

The Emperor’s momentum grew increasingly massive, with unprecedented strength in Aran under a variety of technological innovations.

You couldn’t expect a person well-fed and entertained to have a fervent conversion to religion.

The Eternal Sect was more like a cancer in Aran, benefiting from the Emperor’s dividends, in the initial blank period after the founding, when a group of military men didn’t know how to win people’s hearts. Even if they wanted to, they lacked sufficient intellectual culture, being semi-literate; a rooster trying to lay an egg, it wasn’t its job, and during the peaceful settlement of the continent, New Aran also went through a few years of confusion.

The Church Court took advantage of this blank period to claim some of the credit, attributing the current prosperity of Aran to the Dragon Lord.

As a figure rising from the Military Government, the Emperor could not step too far, too fast by abolishing the state religion that had been rooted in Aran since ancient times. It would be like secularizing Ban overnight, a recipe for self-inflicted misery, grasping the precipice of doom, and so conceding temporarily was the only option.

But the Pope was a man of means, even after two decades of the Emperor’s overt and covert weakening efforts, he still stood firm, on an equal footing.

To this day.

The rise of various technologies made the Pope feel uneasy; he gradually began to believe the continent was cursed, that the enemies of the Dragon Lord, those dark cults and strange industrial forces, were slowly leading people away from the Dragon Lord, towards the Abyss, to the eternal backside, the nothingness where nothing exists.

In summary.

The Sect was preparing to take control of Lagrange, whether to torture him was yet to be determined; recently the Royal Court had grown weary of the Sect’s endless demands, stamping the Dragon Lord’s Emblem in all places, wanting to set up churches with teachings all along the railway line, one demand more overbearing than the next, and the Royal Court finally bristled, took a stand, and rejected all such demands.

When the news reached the Pope, he was furious, already a Madman with an unstable psyche, suspicious of some divine entity; even the slightest sense of disadvantage felt like the world had collapsed, leading to irrational actions.

He wanted those below to discipline the Royal Court, in any form they could.

In short, he wanted to teach the Emperor... a lesson and let the world know, Aran was not his alone to command.

And those below in the Church Court were also religious Madmen - drink this! I’ve directly arrested the person in charge of your industrial zone, how will you respond, Your Excellency?

It’s not a problem to find a reason for the arrest, invoking the will of the Dragon Lord could solve all issues, otherwise, it would be open defiance of the Dragon Lord. That’s how we do things.

But none of that mattered.

Marcus only needed to fulfill the contents of the prophecy, he wasn’t concerned with politics, only his own path of redemption; he felt his soul becoming clearer and clearer. The desperate souls beneath his sword, the piercing screams of women, even the faces of those still in swaddling clothes no longer haunted his dreams.

As if everything had ended.

Marcus sat quietly in the church, waiting for the report on tonight’s capture operation, quite calm.

Finally, it was as if he had truly liberated himself from the nightmares of the past.

Everything was back on track. After serving the Dragon Lord for more than twenty years, he was reborn and would live another lifetime in the form of a young man.

It was just the clergy everywhere.

The long night dragged on, and in the industrial area, there might have been bloodshed happening, but Marcus was just waiting.

Suddenly.

Within the tightly shut church, a cold draft sprang up, causing the light from over a hundred candles to flicker violently for a moment before returning to calm.

It was as if some unwelcome guest had arrived.

Marcus turned his head around.

Although his appearance was young, he was actually of an advanced age, but he looked as if he were petrified.

The riot at the Northern Prison ten years ago—strictly speaking, eleven years ago—

had released some exceedingly remarkable individuals.

"So it really is you, the priests were telling the truth, you have become young again."

The surprise was thick on the face of the newcomer.

That person’s face bore three horrifying scars that ran from the forehead to the chin, as if slashed by a fierce tiger; one eye was blind and long since removed, leaving an empty socket. His short hair was gray, the frame of his body large, and perhaps due to malnutrition, the already wrinkled skin was also marred with patches of red rash.

Dressed in stolen, tattered clergy robes, it seemed to be raining outside, as the clothes were completely wet.

Marcus never thought he would see such a day, it was too sudden, catching him off guard.

"Vice... Vice-Commander."

It was as though Marcus had died once, but driven by muscle memory, subconscious, instinctive, he stood up, holding a solemn military-like posture, instinctively obedient, cold sweat covering his back and forehead.

Marcus’s lips moved, but his mind was blank, incapable of speaking, as if in the depths of his soul a little person was shouting, drowning out all his words.

But now their positions had been completely reversed.

Marcus was one of the high-ranking Chief Priests of the Eternal Sect, second only to the Pope, the Great Sacrificial Rite, and the High Priest of the Imperial Central Church, holding more authority than even some of the Cardinals.

On the other hand, Zote, once the divine being who covered the skies with one hand across the Western Continent for the Old Aran Witch Hunting Secret Department, was now nothing more than a fugitive who had been on the run for eleven years.

Concerning the prison riot, the small fries, once they were gone, were gone, but some people still needed to be pursued, such as Zote.

He had dodged capture for eleven years amidst intensive manhunts, and the Alan Royal Court’s special pursuit team had completely ground away his former brutality and fearsomeness.

Which greatly changed his temperament.

But it also made him more alert, more cunning, becoming a thorough... demon.

From whispers he had heard on the East Shore of the Beima Duchy, he caught the scent and tracked down Marcus.

"What are you doing here?"

Marcus instinctively took two steps back, and in an instant, that historic terror surged back into his heart.

The man before him, merely by influence, remained the most wanted fugitive in modern Aran.

The remaining good eye of Zote was somewhat moist, like one grasping at a life-saving straw in the Abyss.

"Marcus... I knew I wasn’t mistaken about you, look at you now," Zote’s voice trembled, hands resting on Marcus’s shoulders, "I want to convert to the Church Court. What do you think? I too can serve the Dragon Lord, he really exists! I’ll do anything, we can be like before!"

Marcus was speechless, Zote, even aged, stood taller than the young Marcus.

He stood in front of the Dragon Lord’s sculpture, completely obscuring the candlelight, shrouding Marcus in darkness.

"Are you defying my orders?"

Zote’s face contorted slightly, asking in disbelief, as the candles in the church flickered faintly.

Marcus remained silent, speechless.

Zote choked up and knelt down, grabbing the legs of Marcus’s trousers, his tone desperately pitiful.

"I beg you! I’ll do anything!"