The Cult of Suffering, formally known as the Cult of Suffering and Blood, was one of the Seven Great Cults.
It worshipped primordial suffering.
Unlike the loosely organized Cult of Life, whose members acted independently, the Cult of Suffering possessed a strict and massive organizational structure.
Its ranks were divided much like those of the Radiant Holy See.
Its strongholds were spread across the entire continent. It pleased its god and gained power by creating suffering, making it the most dangerous evil cult—several small nations had already been destroyed by wars it provoked, their people slaughtered, blood and wails resounding through the skies.
Sharp had been a Soldier Captain for three years. He now led an elite squad of six, and in those short three years, he had invaded several Church Worlds.
He was about to advance to Tier Three and currently had seventeen Combat Skill Points.
Invading Church Worlds, fighting over Border Worlds, and carrying out massacres within them were also important ways for the Cult of Suffering to please its god.
They were both believers and soldiers.
To an elite squad like theirs, slaughter was no more than a trivial matter.
Children, women, or old people—it made no difference to them. They were all merely numbers.
Killing was no longer what mattered. What Sharp studied now was how to make people die in greater pain.
Only suffering could better please the god.
Soldier Captain Sharp even fancied himself an artist of murder.
He had once carved a fetus from a pregnant woman's belly and let her bleed to death; he had also pulled out all of a child's fingernails, burned through the child's skin, and let infection take the child's life.
Sharp was obsessed with this Art of Suffering.
And gradually, he came to understand that lives could