"Damn it, what is that!?"
"My God..."
"The Pope's Scepter... what a blasphemous creation!"
Cries of alarm rang out one after another. The prince had to shout orders at his men before he could finally see what had appeared in the street behind them.
Mother Goddess believers—Mother Goddess believers recognizable at a glance.
They were gaunt as walking skeletons, their skin dry and stretched tight over protruding bones.
The clothes on their bodies hung like scraps draped over coat racks. When the wind whipped them against their bodies, they made a crisp sound like cloth striking wood.
Like corpses crawling out of graves, they shuffled slowly down the street.
These believers looked even sicker and more emaciated than they had during the last rebellion.
"How is that possible... Didn't the Mother Goddess Church receive a great deal of food?" Galahad murmured in disbelief.
The prince's expression darkened at once. He suddenly looked toward the Mystic Society, and only after seeing their surprise did he turn back.
"Perhaps food isn't the problem..." The prince narrowed his eyes at several figures in the crowd that were clearly much larger than the rest.
Those must have been the monsters they had mentioned.
At a glance, they seemed to be Mother Goddess believers as well, but their gaunt bodies were obviously abnormal.
Some had several extra arms. Some had multiple heads. Others simply crawled across the ground on several limbs.
Their bodies remained unnaturally thin, like starving refugees on the brink of death, yet their bellies were swollen as though they were pregnant, dark-red veins bulging beneath their skin.
It was as if someone starving to death had desperately stuffed themselves with far too much food, bursting their stomach and intestines alive.
With grotesquely twisted limbs and numb, lifeless eyes, it was nearly impossible