South Innis.
"Why... why were my parents hunted down and killed by the Church?"
Connie looked at Dairis, the Silver Ring Witch, and asked with agitation.
She had suspected this for a long time.
After all, she did not believe her parents could have turned to an evil cult.
And the catastrophe that had befallen their entire family had begun because of this very matter.
"They were both upright and kind people, yet they discovered the evil the Empire and the Church had hidden away." Dairis gave a cold laugh. "Do you know where the fuel for the 'Augmented Ones' comes from? That evil substance called 'oil'?"
"I don't know."
Of course Connie did not know. Even Baldwin of the Suppression Bureau had been kept in the dark.
"That 'oil' is the greasy residue left after human bodies are boiled..." Dairis revealed the answer directly. "And... they cannot be ordinary people. They must be people who have mastered a certain method of extracting spirituality—those who can be considered half Extraordinary!"
"Before the many secret societies were wiped out, the fuel for the 'Augmented Ones' mainly came from believers like us... But once the Empire rose to glory and purged the secret believers within its borders, it could only burn its own believers. The Sun Church opened part of the Radiance Meditation Method to its followers, and then those steadfast believers of the sun became fuel for the Empire's war machine!"
"Otherwise, why do you think such a glorious and powerful Empire keeps suffering plagues and contamination incidents within its borders, causing entire villages to perish for no apparent reason?"
"But compared with Imperial citizens, the natives of the colonies have it worst... Here, hunts and exterminations require no reason at all!"
"Your parents discovered that there was something suspicious behind