"The Church of the God of Order?"
The fat noble's description sounded familiar to Annan. "The church with the dungeon?"
"You know it?"
"I stayed there for a day when I arrived."
"Wonderful! You'll have no trouble passing the test!"
Annan made no promises. "Tell me about the Order Church."
Before the Otherworld crisis broke out, the Order Church had long helped maintain order in Strange Tales City. Its dungeon, nearly as large as the City-States' prison, said it all.
But after the gods fell silent, every church was left lost and helpless, believing itself abandoned. Churches devoted to order and goodness could barely keep functioning, while those devoted to evil and chaos had begun killing and offering sacrifices in an attempt to contact their gods.
Without Divine Arts to support it, the Order Church gradually withdrew from its role in maintaining order in Strange Tales City. When the Oddities arrived, it fell apart completely.
The fat noble knew all this because he had escaped from there himself. His experience had been much like Annan's.
At the start of the Oddities crisis, he had gone to the Order Church for shelter, only to find it had already become an Oddities' lair. After a night of screams and howls that left him trembling, he fled in daylight to seek refuge in the Royal City. He had been trapped there ever since.
"That shadow is Archbishop Baron Valencia. I'd recognize him even on my deathbed!"
The fat noble said Archbishop Baron Valencia was fiercely controlling, but also a tragic figure. He had been ambitious, only to face the Year of Turmoil and then the Oddities crisis. The last time the noble had seen him alive, the archbishop had looked ready to buckle under the pressure.
Annan had an idea...
While daylight