Chapter 22: Invitation

Chapter 22: Invitation

Klein had already rehearsed an answer to Bishop Elektra’s final question. Hearing it, he sighed and said, “It was my father—a true elder of wisdom. Unfortunately, he passed away in an accident many years ago.”

As he spoke, he fused into his words the feelings left by the original owner’s parents’ deaths, the emotions accumulated from being in a foreign land and unable to return home, and the marks left behind by his time in Tingen. His tone seemed calm, even carrying a faint smile, yet hidden within it was a lingering quality of grief that endured without becoming mournful.

“I am sorry. He must already have entered the divine kingdom and be sleeping peacefully under the Goddess’s gaze.” Bishop Elektra spoke with sincerity and tapped four times clockwise on his chest, drawing a crimson moon.

Before Dawn Dantes could reply, he looked at him and extended an invitation.

“The day after tomorrow, there will be a Moon Mass held for the deceased, to help them slumber into the Goddess’s kingdom and obtain eternal peace. Would you be interested in attending?”

The Evernight Church did not have many feast days. The most important was Winter Gifts Day; next came the grand Mass during the full moon, also called Moon Mass. After that were the normal weekly Sunday Masses and prayers. However, because different dioceses and different cathedrals had their own patron saints or angels, each would also have a special feast day belonging to itself.

“That is exactly what I desire.” Klein rose and bowed, speaking with genuine feeling.

This would allow him to fully come into contact with the priests and bishops of Saint Samuel Cathedral, perhaps even establish a connection with the diocesan bishop, laying the foundation for later entering and exiting certain areas of the cathedral.

At the same time, he once again felt why the Evernight pathway could be exchanged with the Death pathway.

Both possessed authorities such as serenity, eternal sleep, and darkness. Both represented conclusion and the end.

Afterward, Mori Macht did not continue probing Dawn Dantes’s identity and experiences, as though the earlier questions truly had only been casual. He and his wife Liana chatted about the years they had spent vacationing at the Desi Bay. Klein, who had crammed relevant information and had lived there for two days, responded in the tone of a local, focusing especially on Desi-style grilled fish.

During this process, he also seemingly casually mentioned the hunting he had done while conducting business in West Balam, appearing quite familiar with the primitive jungles there.

He was laying some necessary groundwork for Dawn Dantes’s second layer of identity. Unlike East Balam, West Balam saw the colonial forces of Loen and Intis in relative balance, often clashing with each other. Even the areas they actually controlled shifted from time to time. To investigate the movements of a merchant or adventurer there was no simple matter, especially when Dawn Dantes might have been using an alias.

As for his hunting experiences in the primitive jungles of West Balam, Klein had not fabricated them at random, nor copied them from some magazine or newspaper. He had used the glorious deeds once mentioned by the strongest hunter of the Fog Sea, Anderson, as a blueprint—extracting details, abandoning the main structure, and then reinterpreting them himself. They were both true and false.

Hearing about the huge pythons in the jungle, the man-eating fish with sharp teeth, and the flowers that could capture prey on their own, Councilman Macht’s wife, Liana, exclaimed from time to time, looking both frightened and eager to hear more. The councilman and the bishop were likewise very interested, unable to stop themselves from interrupting Dawn Dantes’s descriptions to ask for details.

“You truly are an outstanding hunter! When I served in East Balam, I never had the chance to enter the jungle. I never imagined it would be so dangerous there.”…