Abnormal Perception

The bishop's pupils were a pale purple. Within the gem-like irises, countless fine black lines slowly drifted.

Looking closely in the firelight, they seemed like tiny worms wriggling inside.

"The bishop's eyes are strange. Could they be a manifestation of his abilities?"

By now, Little George had stopped trembling in the vision. He stood ramrod straight, his gaze vacant, as if veiled in fog.

The orb representing Little George's thoughts remained still in Ivan's consciousness, without the slightest flicker.

"Does it look like he's hypnotized Little George? Is this how he alters people's memories?"

"I can't let him find out about the Holy Spirit Society."

Ivan tried touching the orb that represented Little George's thoughts, to see if he could wake him.

There was no resistance as he'd expected. His consciousness passed through something like a layer of warm water, and he was instantly enveloped by a sensation of weightlessness.

When he opened his eyes again, his field of vision had abruptly dropped. The smell of old cloth and dust lingered beneath his nose.

Ivan instinctively lowered his head and saw a coarse, patched jacket, its cuffs worn shiny.

He held out both hands. His knuckles were rough, and his palms were calloused. They weren't the transparent tentacles of a jellyfish, but a human body.

"Did I... take control of Little George's body?"

Ivan's consciousness churned with shock. He tried curling his fingers, and the sensation was real. He could even clearly feel the warmth of blood flowing through him.

More astonishingly, he could sense the Shaman Spirituality still lingering inside Little George, and could even summon a faint trickle of water. The bishop's hypnosis had suppressed it, though, and he couldn't use it for now.

"Child, you still haven't answered my question." The bishop's voice sounded beside him, gentle as if soothing a child.

Ivan looked up and met the bishop's gaze. The black lines in those pale purple pupils had vanished, leaving only composure and calm.

He hurriedly put on a half-asleep expression and answered through Little George's mouth:

"I... I believe in the great Lord..."

The bishop showed no surprise at the answer and continued questioning him.

"Every one of us believes in the great Lord. But the Lord's divinity is scattered throughout every corner of His body.

"Do you believe in the Lord's blood, or His eyes?

"Or His brain, His heart, His tentacles?

"Or perhaps His beak-tongue, or His gill filaments?"

"What?" Ivan asked through Little George's throat, his voice carrying just the right amount of confusion.

He really was bewildered. The Lord the bishop spoke of didn't sound human at all. He sounded more like some kind of monster.

"His tentacles," "His gill filaments," "His beak-tongue."

The words instantly brought to mind sea creatures and birds in the sky. He even thought of his own jellyfish form, and a chill crawled up his spine.

"You don't know? Then it seems you're not a missionary sent by another country. You're just a poor child the Peace Officers accidentally caught."

The bishop sighed softly. From beginning to end, he hadn't sensed anything unusual about the child. He'd hypnotized him with ease, without the slightest resistance from his Spirituality.

A storm raged in Ivan's heart, and a bold guess took shape.

"The Creator's worship has been divided into faith in different parts of His body. And this Creator isn't even humanoid."

He tentatively said to the bishop, "I believe in the Lord's entirety. In the Lord Himself."

At that, the bishop looked puzzled and stared at Little George. He leaned closer and closer, making Ivan's skin crawl.

"Is this bishop... interested in little boys or something?"

It was as if the bishop's memories had been scrambled. His words began to falter, and the surroundings started to break apart as well.

"Foolish child, the Lord was never a complete being. He is made up of scattered fragments throughout our world, bringing blessings to mankind."

"How could there be such a thing as the Lord Himself?"

His voice was bewildered. He didn't sound as though he were deliberately lying. It was as if, in his understanding, God had never been a complete being, but had always been a patchwork of organs.

Ivan felt his understanding overturned once again.

"Even the bishop of the Church of Divine Grace in Trino City doesn't know that God exists as a whole?"

He fell into thought. If it wasn't because the bishop lacked sufficient rank, then perhaps the Church of Divine Grace itself wasn't responsible for erasing people's knowledge.

"Then what erased people's knowledge of the Creator and the Old Church? Could it really all be Old Harvey's delusion...?"

Ivan was starting to doubt himself, too. He couldn't prove Old Harvey's claims. If no one else in the world knew the Old Church had existed, then the matter would remain an unsolvable mystery forever.

But given this division into body parts, it was still possible to imagine that the Lord had once been a complete being.

That meant Old Harvey was probably telling the truth. Some kind of force had simply altered most people's memories, and even their understanding of things.

That was why they didn't find it strange that their faith had been divided into separate pieces.

The faith of the Rhine Kingdom amounted to nothing more than the eyes and the blood.

"Um... I... I remembered wrong. I believe in the Lord's eyes. They can guide us along the right path."

At that, the bishop's faltering thoughts seemed to start moving again. He gradually recovered from that strange state.

He rubbed his temples, apparently with a headache, then quickly took a crystalline substance from his robe pocket and swallowed it.

"What was that? A supernatural material related to God's eyes? A crystallized piece of them?"

Watching the bishop take it without hiding what he was doing, Ivan felt a surge of excitement. He'd finally found a material that could grant Gais Beyonder abilities.

He just didn't know how to get his hands on it...

After swallowing the crystal, the bishop's Spirituality recovered somewhat. He looked at Little George's bewildered expression and nodded.

"I see. The Peace Officers were mistaken."

The bishop sighed. As his eyes opened and closed, the surroundings abruptly shattered like a mirror.

"So everything just now really was a dream? The bishop must have hypnotized Little George and drawn him into a dream to question him."

When the bishop had faltered earlier, Ivan had noticed that this space seemed unstable, unlike the real world.

Just as he'd expected, after questioning Little George and confirming there was nothing unusual about him, the bishop had used his ability to end the dream.

As the dream shattered and reality returned, Ivan felt another will inside his body beginning to awaken.

He hurriedly withdrew his Spirituality and returned to his own consciousness.

Little George slowly woke up and looked at the bishop in the shadows, confused.

"Why hasn't he said anything this whole time?"

He was about to open his mouth and ask, but the bishop's gentle voice spoke first:

"All right, child. You can go back now. Guided by God's eyes, you'll walk the right path."

"Uh... Didn't I just get here?" Little George asked, baffled. He had no idea he'd just been hypnotized and drawn into a dream.

"Heh heh. Loyalty to the Lord doesn't need time to be tested."

With that, the bishop turned and sat back in the shadows, as if he had no desire to say another word.

Little George stood there, dazed, unable to make sense of the situation.

Ivan's voice sounded in his mind at just the right moment. "Go on. You were hypnotized just now, but you were under my protection the whole time. It's nothing to worry about."

Little George was still confused, but didn't hesitate. He hurriedly turned around, opened the side door of the church, and stepped back into the sunlight.

A while later, the church's Deacon knocked on the side hall door and entered.

He stood at the entrance and bowed toward the bishop in the shadows.

"Bishop, was this one no good either?"

"Of course not. He's just an ordinary person."

"Then what about your promotion to Tier 4, Dream Mentor...?"

"We'll have to wait. We've gathered enough ordinary people. Without a Beyonder, we can't meet the requirements of the promotion ritual."

"If Abel can't find the Beyonder he discovered that night, then we can only..."