Corrupted faith?

Oh… that explains it.

No wonder there were Corrupted Crocodiles deep in the swamp, that abandoned village had once been a nest for followers of Morgul.

Even the corrupted knowledge the Riverbank tribe came across might have originated there.

For some unknown reason they left in haste, leaving only these two parchments that recorded the secret.

Yano carefully spread the translated letters in front of Chen Yu, his voice carrying a trace of gravity.

“Your Majesty, before I came I specifically asked the priest at the Sun Church, he told me that the Corrupted faith, that is, the worship of Morgul, once flourished within the Kingdom.”

“Unlike other lofty gods who barely respond, Morgul was dangerously generous, nearly never refusing a supplicant’s call, power was within easy reach.”

Yano paused, as if organizing his words, “At first, this chaotic power was a weapon for the weak in the Kingdom, down-and-out rangers used it to reclaim blood debts, the oppressed used it to kindle the flame of revenge.”

“Back then, the chaotic power and the oath-symbol ‘Blood-Dripping Blade’ were the clearest marks of Corrupted believers.”

“But later some Gray Mages encountered the Corrupted faith and, using chaotic power, colluded with hellish demons, bringing an unimaginable bloody apocalypse to the Kingdom.”

“After the Sun Church’s paladins drove the demons out of the Kingdom and herded them into the Corrupted Miasma Mountains, the Corrupted faith faded. It could only be occasionally seen in the Gray Zone or on the Kingdom’s fringes.”

“This power itself has no inherent good or evil, it all depends on the heart of the wielder.” Count Bran interjected at the right moment, puffing out his chest.

“I, Count Bran, am well traveled. While roaming the continent I have seen many Corrupted believers.”

“Some used it to profit and do evil, while others used it to do chivalrous deeds and settle grudges. Morgul’s power is a chaotic abyss, able to swallow light or reflect the deepest obsessions of the heart.”

He cleared his throat and glanced at Chen Yu.

“Ahem, Your Majesty, my point is, this thing might be a hot potato, but it isn’t all worthless. To simply discard it would be such a pity.”

Chen Yu’s gel body trembled slightly in agreement.

“Keep them.”

He said, then his attention immediately turned to the tangled, obscure symbols on the parchment.

“Yano, these words dance like tadpoles, I don’t understand them.”

Yano scratched his head awkwardly, “The Common Tongue is indeed complicated, especially when it involves… forbidden knowledge. It’s full of obscure technical terms and secret vernacular.”

He hurriedly pulled from the leather armor lining a rough scrap filled with annotations, “I spent several days in Old Bahor’s library, barely piecing together this comparison table. Take a look.”

Chen Yu’s gaze flicked back and forth between the letters and the draft. With Yano’s “key,” those entwined mysteries finally began to loosen.

He understood them.

The first record was signed “Corrupted Accomplice” Kelvin.

He had once been a knight in the Kingdom’s Border Garrison, but because of the beauty of his wife Lina, he drew the lust of the border potentate of the White Horse Kingdom, Caron Scott.

Caron used his power to weave accusations and slanders, framing Kelvin so thoroughly that Kelvin’s family was ruined—Lina could not bear the humiliation and took her own life, and the infant in her swaddling did not survive.

Burdened with a towering blood feud, Kelvin was saved in his despair by followers of Morgul, fleeing the Kingdom and eventually drifting to this congregation of believers deep in the swamp.

There, countless souls crushed by fate and trampled by tyranny gathered like him.

The poison-fire of revenge burned him day and night. After years of brutal training and inhuman torment, in a near-death crisis he accidentally touched the threshold of Corruption ascension—the Corrupted Avenger.

“Your Majesty, let Count Bran take a look.”

Count Bran, unable to contain his curiosity, fluttered his wings and leaned in, his little head nearly buried in the parchment.

“Let me see, to obtain the Avenger’s power… requires a strong resolve and will… sacrifice entities related to one’s obsession, including weapons, tokens, limbs…”

“Finally, one must accept the Corruption trial in desperation, defeat the apparition of one’s obsession, and define the will of revenge.”

“Oho, sounds pretty powerful.”

It was indeed powerful.

Kelvin described in his record that each time he used Corrupted power, his will had to endure a test.

If reason could not withstand the erosion of madness, the mind would fall into a period of weakness and confusion.

But if it passed, one would receive a tremendous boon: the body’s attributes would be temporarily enhanced across the board, especially the knight’s primary attribute—strength—which, under the boost of chaotic power, soared to terrifying heights.

He once used that power to tear off a forest giant bear’s arm with his bare hands.

“Shh…” Count Bran inhaled sharply, instinctively shrinking his neck, his small wings fluttering nervously.

“This Kelvin… is a ruthless guy.”

“Next page then, the knight, His Majesty is waiting to read.” Count Bran urged.

Yano quickly flipped the next sheet.

The second record was not Kelvin’s own experience, but a legacy Kelving transcribed with complex feelings for a deceased man—the Corrupted Mercy-Giver, Fabian Garrett.

This story carried a completely different weight and a faint glow.

Fabian was not a struggling underclassman;

he came from a wealthy mercantile family, yet because of a merciful heart he abandoned a comfortable life to join the Sun Church that served the light.

The first half of his life was spent in the dirtiest slums at the capital, guarding a ramshackle little chapel.

Day after day he witnessed human hell—disease spreading through narrow alleys, hunger draining the light from mothers’ eyes, despairing fathers selling their souls for a crust of black bread… He prayed, he gave alms, he used his meager holy arts to ease suffering.

But the doctrine of light felt painfully pale in the face of boundless misery.

He began to question why the sun’s light could not shine on these corners.

Why couldn’t devout prayers buy a bowl of life-saving porridge?

His faith quietly collapsed under repeated self-doubt.

In his confusion he unexpectedly contacted Morgul’s Corrupted power.

This force, denounced as forbidden and full of chaos, allowed Fabian to see another possibility.

He did not, like Kelvin, let hatred consume him. Instead, within the chaos he attained a twisted kind of insight.

He wrote in the record:

“What is the difference between divine power and mundane fire? Fire can burn cities, but it can also forge iron and warm a home.”

“Morgul’s chaos is a flood of destruction, but it is also… the beginning of remaking. It tears away every falsehood and leaves the most basic thing in life—the desire to live.”

“If I can use this chaotic power to add even a tiny glimmer to the dying life-fires in the abyss of despair… then enduring the pain that follows is the path I choose.”

Thus, this old priest who turned his back on the sun set foot on a bitter path of self-exile.

He ventured into plague-ridden villages, walked onto scorched earth ravaged by war, lingered in all the “troubled places” the light had forgotten.

He no longer prayed for divine grace;

instead, he used his own flesh as a bridge to guide that violent Corruption, transforming it into a… twisted yet effective healing energy.

He became a “Corrupted Mercy-Giver.”

Kelvin recorded Fabian’s path with strokes full of reverence and a slight tremor.

The Mercy-Giver’s trials were sacrifice and endurance.

To walk this path, one had to willingly shoulder others’ desperate plight.

To become a Mercy-Giver, one needed to find at least five people on the brink of death and, with Morgul’s power, forcibly pull them back from death’s edge.

However, this reversal-of-life “miracle” did not come without price.

Every rescue cost the caster personally—those lethal wounds and life-eroding maladies would be forcibly stripped from the recipient by the Corruption, and instead would be imprinted back onto the caster’s flesh and soul, multiplied.

Each time this formidable healing was used, the caster’s own Corruption deepened by one degree.

Their bodies would gradually mutate—skin might sprout scales or ulcers, limbs might twist and deform, even inappropriate organs might grow.

Mentally they endured constant assault;

chaotic whispers ceaselessly lingered in their ears, trying to drag them into complete madness.

One could say the Mercy-Giver is a healer walking a razor’s edge, using their ever-eroding life and soul to buy others a chance to live.

And two years after becoming a “Mercy-Giver,” Father Fabian, aged and twisted by mutation, died in an unremarkable swamp village, leaving behind the Mercy-Giver’s trial.

When Kelvin described his corpse, he wrote that it could no longer be recognized as human.