48 · Extraordinary Items

He took a deep breath and began recalling what he knew about the Church.

The Northern Continent Church was a polytheistic religious organization whose followers were spread across all the nations of the Northern Continent. It could be said to be the dominant faith throughout the continent.

At the height of its influence, the Church's leader could easily interfere in the succession of a nation's royal heir and the policies issued by its king.

The Church claimed that the gods dwelled on the divine mountain of Oterian in the Spirit Realm. Since it worshipped many gods, the Church's clergy blindly revered the existence of all supernatural entities.

But as Clovin's chairman, Andrich knew that the so-called Spirit Realm was nothing like the beautiful place the Church proclaimed it to be. In the eyes of psionicists, it was practically hell. Supernatural entities were everywhere in the Spirit Realm, posing an immense threat to human society and causing untold harm.

To this day, Clovin's personnel referred to independent-minded entities in the Spirit Realm as demons.

So he didn't know whether there were gods in the Spirit Realm, but demons were certainly everywhere.

After Emperor Renard founded the Empire, he did everything he could to suppress the Church within its borders. At the time, the Church's Holy See was still in the Empire, but under the Emperor's pressure, it had no choice but to move abroad, leaving the region where the Church had been established for a thousand years.

The orthodox Church within the Empire had, in effect, become completely independent of the Northern Continent Church system.

Furthermore, the Church within the Empire was guided and monitored by Clovin's Fifth Bureau.

The Fifth Bureau was responsible for safeguarding the Empire's ideology, worldview, and most sensitive core—theories of religion.

The Fifth Bureau was the immune system of the Empire's brain, responsible for identifying, eliminating, and even reconstructing any "heretical thought" that might threaten the will of the Iron Glory Empire.

Thus, the Church within the Empire was practically a semi-official organization. The remaining Church factions that refused to submit to the Empire's rule—all those hardliners—were illegal religious groups.

These illegal sects often maintained close ties with the Church beyond the Empire's borders, making them enemies Clovin was duty-bound to kill on sight.

The Order of Hidden Cultivation was one such remnant hardline organization. It had been suppressed since the Emperor's reign began. Andrich knew that this secretive religious sect had always been devoted to exploring forbidden knowledge, particularly matters related to the Spirit Realm and the so-called holy beings they worshipped.

He continued reading. The final report on the incident included a list of extraordinary items connected to it.

The list contained three extraordinary items, each assigned an internal number used by Clovin to record such objects:

Evidence No. S-234-1: A one-Fenso coin.

Notes: Recovered from the corpse of the suspect Malcolm, a low-ranking cleric of the Order of Hidden Cultivation. Senior investigators could see unusual stains on the coin's surface, but to ordinary people, it appeared perfectly normal.

It retained a distinctive psionic fluctuation. Experiments in which detained prisoners held the coin showed that its possessor would involuntarily use it to decide the likelihood of an event, and would have absolute faith in the result.

Furthermore, the coin's result would inevitably come to pass in an unexpected way.

Example: A death-row prisoner was once made to hold the coin and predict whether he would die that day, the day his sentence was to be carried out.

The coin landed heads up. Even after Clovin personnel told him his execution would not be carried out, the prisoner remained convinced he would die that day, stubbornly believing that Clovin was joking when they said he would be spared.

When he returned to his cell, he was killed by a cellmate. Asked why he had killed the prisoner, the cellmate said he had learned that Clovin would not execute him and had become so twisted with jealousy that he had murdered him outright.

The conclusion was that Item No. S-235-1 was exceptionally adept at manipulating and swaying people, often leading them into dangerous decisions. Whether Item No. S-234-1 possessed independent thought remained under investigation.

Evidence No. SS-235-2: A blank notebook made of unusual material.

Notes: Found on the corpse of the Order of Hidden Cultivation's High Priest at the scene at 35 Elysée Avenue. When discovered, the notebook was entirely blank, as if it were an ordinary empty notebook.

An initial examination by senior investigators detected psionic fluctuations within it.

Analysis of its material was ongoing. It was suspected to be a kind of psionic medium or contract object, and was very likely the core item used in the Order of Hidden Cultivation's ritual.

Its purpose was still under investigation. It had no effect on ordinary people; further analysis would be conducted by psionicists.

Evidence No. SSS-235-3: A manuscript containing the ritual for summoning and communicating with an entity from the Spirit Realm.

Notes: The Order of Hidden Cultivation's High Priest had been clutching the manuscript tightly in both hands at the time of death.

The manuscript carried psionic fluctuations. The ritual described within invoked an unknown entity from the Spirit Realm known as the "Holy True Lord."

It had no effect on ordinary people. Whether the manuscript had any other properties was still under investigation...

The numbers on this list were unique to Clovin's system for cataloguing extraordinary items. The first letters indicated the danger level of the item.

There were four levels in total. The most dangerous, SSS, denoted items that must never be used or even touched. Related information was classified at the highest level within Clovin and could only be accessed by Clovin's chairman and leadership.

Next came the extremely dangerous SS level. These items could be handled but not used. Related information was highly classified and accessible to the heads of Clovin's various bureaus.

Below that was the highly dangerous S level. These items could be handled and used in a limited capacity. Related information was classified as important and available to senior investigators of the Ninth Bureau.

Finally, there was the dangerous A level. These items could be handled and their use requested. Related information was confidential and available to all of Clovin's psionic investigators.

The number in the middle represented the "incident" associated with the extraordinary item. The one-Fenso coin, numbered S-235-1, was the first extraordinary item in Incident 235 with a danger rating of S.

The final number indicated the item's number within the incident.

After reading the reports, Andrich leaned back in his high-backed chair, closed his eyes, and rubbed his throbbing temples.

When Clovin was founded, it established danger ratings for extraordinary items. So far, it had contained only two SSS-level items... This manuscript was the second.

After all, Clovin had been founded at the same time as the Empire, less than twenty years ago.

This incident—the catastrophic psionic loss of control and Spirit Realm entity's arrival on Elysian Avenue, Incident 235—had involved three extraordinary items. That was far more than in any previous extraordinary incident Clovin had encountered.

But aside from the number and danger levels of the extraordinary items... Andrich opened a drawer and took out a report that the Third Bureau's Special Affairs Group had submitted earlier and that he had placed inside.

<Supplementary Oral Report by Senior Investigator Kalieqin Regarding the Catastrophic Psionic Loss-of-Control Incident at Jeffrey's Apartment>

All right. Now all the investigation reports on Incident 235 were on this desk.

Three extraordinary items, including one SSS-level dangerous item; a powerful third-party psionicist whose psionic projection had appeared in Jeffrey's apartment of death, with their identity still unknown.

Two contaminated areas, and the arrival of a psionic entity.

Andrich felt his mind going numb.