Although this young secretary of Emilius possessed an arrogance that looked down on everything, at least he did not display it in his daily life or work. On the contrary, that pride gave him efficiency far beyond that of ordinary people.
Klein rested briefly in the admiral's office. After casually cutting out an ugly Paper Figurine to clean up the traces of today's battle, Lü'er An returned with a listless man in his thirties.
"Your Excellency, Navy Admiral, this is Flett Ken, the leader of the Naturism Sect on Oravi Island. A 'Lunatic.'"
He lowered the head that had been held high just two hours ago and reported softly.
"Lunatic" naturally did not refer to the mental state of this cult leader, but to Sequence 8 of the Prisoner Pathway. Klein had learned about this Pathway from Sharron and Maric in Backlund. Almost all of them were members of the Rose School. Sharron and the others belonged to its Temperance faction, while the Indulgence faction had such "fine traditions" as slaughter, bloody sacrifices, and promiscuity—highly consistent with what had happened tonight.
According to this Lunatic, they were a branch of the Rose School. The school's saint, Zatwin, had preached to them, allowing them to grow to their current scale. The Rose School's Chained God was an incarnation of the Mother Tree of Desire, and the one they truly worshipped was the evil, secret God known as the Mother Tree of Desire.
Klein showed no courtesy toward such a cultist. He secretly switched Creeping Hunger to the soul of an Interrogator and released a certain amount of pressure in place of the already-used Ninth Law Charm. Before long, he had extracted everything from Flett.
His initial guess had been correct. The thing that had contaminated Cynthia was indeed the black rhinoceros-horn-shaped