The Situation

Rhine City, Holy Fire Cathedral.

It was a complex of Gothic buildings. A sculpture of a blazing torch crowned the cathedral, giving it its name.

Rhine City was the most important diocese of the Church of the Lord of Flame in the northern Faruk Kingdom. Cardinal Flandre McLean was in charge of church affairs.

Flandre was speaking in the conference room. Bishops from nearby dioceses sat on either side of him.

His tone was grave. "When the stars return to their places, R'lyeh will rise from the sea, and the Great Old Ones will return to the world. Though I hate to admit it, the Cultists' words do describe the truth."

"163 years ago, the Red Moon appeared again. As the Spirit Plane grew more active, gray fog began to spread across the center of the Endless Sea. Even under the blazing sun, visibility remained poor. At night, the fog seeped into every crack and crevice, spreading ever outward."

"The Pope has sent word that gray fog has begun to spread across the Aegean Sea as well. It is winter now, and the wind is blowing south. Otherwise, by the Month of Sprouting, the gray fog would reach the Northern Continent. Still, our situation is far from reassuring. We have less than half a year to prepare."

"The situation is already extremely grave. The Sanctuary Project is officially underway."

"We need to notify every church before the gray fog spreads everywhere. Bishops, do you have any other questions?"

When no one spoke up, Flandre waved a hand. "You may return and make your preparations. May the Lord of Flame be with us."

"May the Lord of Flame be with us."

After all the bishops had left, Flandre's face showed his exhaustion.

The more one knew, the more one understood what kind of monsters they were up against.

The church's secret texts recorded the truth about the previous age.

The Great Old Ones were evil gods who sowed fear and madness. The most famous among them was Cthulhu, who dwelled in R'lyeh City.

The evil gods spread terror through dreams, twisting people's souls. The more spiritually sensitive a creature was, the more keenly it could sense that madness.

For now, people only experienced those evil dreams on Red Moon Night. But once the gray fog blanketed the world, they would have to face that despair every day.

When the evil gods fully awakened, mortals who merely saw their true forms would descend into madness and be transformed into their evil servants. Even Transcendentalists could not expose themselves to the gray fog.

The Holy Scripture said the evil gods had been defeated and sealed away by the gods. In truth, that was mostly a sanitized version of events. Only a small number had been sealed.

After the Red Moon departed, the world's spiritual concentration fell. In that environment, the evil gods' bodies grew less active, and they fell into slumber, like frogs in winter.

They had not been defeated. They had merely found somewhere to sleep.

R'lyeh was the largest city built by the Great Old Ones. Smaller evil god cities could be found in other parts of the world, too.

As the world's spiritual concentration continued to rise, all these cities would reappear in the world. An indescribable horror was about to descend in full.

If the various churches had not worked together after the Red Moon appeared to develop ways of resisting the gray fog, humanity would likely have been forced to hide in the Shelter Lands once again, as they had in the previous age, shivering and praying in despair.

Andes Mountains, Sunset Peak.

It was the second-highest peak in the range, situated at the western edge of the mountains. Beyond it lay sheer cliffs thousands of feet high.

Anyone looking down from above would have seen the snow on the peak gradually melting away, revealing a fortress built from green boulders.

The buildings here were bizarre, entirely at odds with human aesthetic sensibilities. Their spatial structures and dimensions inspired an intense feeling of revulsion.

A bitter, howling wind swept through the fortress. Yet within a certain radius of the fortress, the Gale seemed like a tamed horse, growing gentle.

When the sun reached its highest point, wisps of gray fog rose inside the fortress's tallest building.

Carried by the gentle wind, the fog drifted out of the fortress.

The wind grew stronger and the fog thinner, until it vanished completely into the air without a trace.

Kraun sat in a chair with his eyes closed. His consciousness had entered that wondrous space, which he had named the Sea of Consciousness.

Time Sand had accumulated to fill half the upper cone of the Time Hourglass.

The silver Moon Dew in the Crystal Ball was nearly overflowing, while the golden Sunfire Liquid had reached a third of its capacity. These were the materials for making Heart-Clearing Talismans and Golden Light Talismans.

His consciousness returned to his body. Kraun considered putting Dao Talisman production on his agenda as well.

If the Sunfire Liquid and Moon Dew overflowed, Visualization would no longer produce new materials, and they would go to waste.

Dao Talisman paper required special preparation. First, he had to rinse eggshells with distilled water, dry them, and grind them into powder.

Then he had to take the clean, white part of some stalks and grind that into powder as well.

He would mix the eggshell and stalk powders with egg white, place the mixture in a prepared mold, and spread it about a millimeter thick. Then he would close the mold and press it beneath a heavy object for three days.

Once the Talisman Paper was ready, he had to leave it out under the sun and the moonlight separately.

The paper dried under the sun would be used for Golden Light Talismans, while the paper dried under the moonlight would be used for Heart-Clearing Talismans.

He had been working hard to improve his Golden Light Incantation, so he had little need for Dao Talismans and had never bothered to waste time making them.

Now, with the Moon Dew in the Crystal Ball in his Sea of Consciousness about to overflow, he had no choice but to make some Dao Talismans.

The materials for the Talisman Paper were all common, and he soon had everything ready. He made a sheet of Talisman Paper about one square meter in size.

After finishing the Talisman Paper, Kraun headed for the church.

At the church, Nick had a visitor in his room.

"My old friend, this church you're in charge of is rather shabby," said a fair-skinned priest with a gentle gaze, surveying the room's furnishings and shaking his head slightly.

"Hamfa, even in the harshest place, we must uphold the glory of the Lord of Flame."

"Oh, give it a rest, old friend. You don't need to use that kind of official talk with me. We've known each other since we were chosen as Exorcist Priest apprentices. I know you too well."

Nick glanced out the window and shook his head. "I've been an Exorcist Priest for seven or eight years, and I've been a Father at this church for almost four. When I first came to this run-down little place, of course I wasn't happy about it."

"But now I'm thirty, and I've accepted it. The bishop has his reasons. If he won't assign me an assistant, I'll train one myself. It's better to rely on myself than ask for help."

Hamfa looked at the strands of white hair on his old friend's forehead and the determination in his eyes. A sense of injustice stirred in his heart.

His old friend had been one of the top students in their year of Exorcist Priest graduates, yet he had been assigned to the worst place. No assistant from the Crusader Order had been sent to him either. These past few years must have been difficult.

"What's that look for? Pity?" Nick laughed. "You've got the identity documents and promotion materials I applied for on Kraun's behalf, right?"

"Yes," Hamfa said with a nod. "Did you start training that young man as soon as you got here? It must have cost you a lot of effort and money."