Chapter 140

Priest Morris

The cashmere carpet shimmered with a lustrous sheen beneath the flickering light of the fireplace, and the lavish, solid walls blocked out the chill brought by the snowstorm outside.

Seven or eight-year-old Morris curled up on his mother’s lap, letting her comb through his slightly wavy brown hair.

His tall and strong father was slicing the steak on the table with a silver knife and fork, as the aroma of meat fat mixed with spices wafted through the room.

“With such heavy snow this year, I hope nothing happens at the mine,” his mother said with a furrowed brow, her voice laced with unease.

She had seen the kingdom go through famine before.

“It’s just royal property. What’s there to worry about?” his father replied as he placed a piece of steak into little Morris’s mouth. The knife and fork gleamed with a cold light under the candlelight. “I only care whether our family has enough to eat.”

The boy looked up, his brown eyes filled with admiration. “Daddy is the kingdom’s greatest engineer! Even the nobles are scrambling to curry favor with our family!”

The man gently stroked his son’s cheek.

“Daddy, tell me the story about the wizards again!”

“Of course.” The man sat tenderly beside the child, the firelight dancing across his sharply defined profile. “Wizards are the most magnificent beings in this world. They uphold the laws of this world and…”

Morris nestled into a more comfortable spot in his mother’s embrace, his eyelids growing heavy.

His feet, wrapped in wool socks, rubbed against the carpet as the room filled with the sweet scent of steak and burning pinewood...

Knock knock knock—

“P… Priest… Priest Morris, please wake up…”

“Damn it!”

Middle-aged Morris abruptly sat up from the soft wool bed, though the bedroom before his eyes was even more luxurious than the one in his dream.

Yet the warm, sweet scent of the dream had been replaced by the lingering stench of sulfur and gunpowder in the air. Ever since his father’s death, it had become the smell he loathed most—one that made him nauseous at every moment.

“If you don’t give me a reasonable explanation, I’ll sell you off to the royal mines!”

The servant outside the door trembled like a leaf in the wind.

Struggling to keep his noodle-like legs upright, he stammered, “Priest Morris, Madam Dana—whom you scheduled an appointment with yesterday—is waiting for you in the front hall.”

The expression of fury on Morris’s face suddenly froze. Slowly, he loosened his grip on the bed sheet, his knuckles cracking audibly.

Madam Dana—widow of a powerful count from the Kingdom of Atley, a fat lamb in his eyes who controlled over a hundred mines, estates, and smelting factories—his latest hand-picked devout believer.

“Tell the lady I am currently leading a mass,” his voice abruptly softened into a warm breeze. “Ask her to wait a moment—I’ll be there shortly.”

The servant let out a breath of relief. “Yes, Priest Morris.”

Once the servant had hurried off as if fleeing for his life—

Morris stood before the full-length mirror, carefully adjusting his priest’s robe of red and gray.

After cleverly tucking the gray portions into the collar, the robe looked almost indistinguishable from that of a bishop.

Then, with the utmost solemnity, he retrieved the Holy Tome of Thorn from the bookshelf, smoothing the faint creases at the book’s corner with his fingertips, and began his recitation at dawn.

Only after the sand had emptied through the hourglass did Morris lift his head and stride into the front hall.

“Madam, Priest Morris has arrived.”

The lavishly dressed noblewoman immediately stood, her entire body of fat quivering violently with excitement.

“Madam Dana.”

“Priest Morris, you’ve finally come!”

“My time today is limited. Whatever wish you carry, speak it. The Lord hears all voices of His faithful.”

In her excitement, Dana removed a locket photo from her thick neck. When she opened the lid, it revealed a man and a little girl.

“May the great Lord allow me to see them once more—they need me!” The noblewoman’s tears streaked through her powdered face.

Morris lowered his head slightly to glance at the two figures in the photo, a faint expression of regret curling at the corner of his lips.

“Madam Dana, I must offer you my apologies. The Lord’s Eternal Dream is opened only to His most devout followers.” He paused, then continued, “But if I recall correctly, you… have yet to meet the standards of true devotion?”

As if awakening from a daze, Dana pulled a roll of parchment contract from her velvet handbag and held it out before Morris with both hands.

“This is the kingdom’s most fertile vineyard.” She signaled to the knight at the door, who brought forth a heavy oak box and opened it. “Here are two hundred gold coins. This is my offering to the Lord as a faithful believer. I am willing to become His truest devotee.”

“All I ask… all I ask is to see them once again!”

Morris brushed his fingertips over the oak box, the cold coins inside gleaming with dazzling brilliance.

“To those who give, grace shall be bestowed.”

He withdrew an obsidian chalice filled with golden liquid. When Dana looked into it, the surface shimmered and revealed the faces of her late husband and daughter.

“Drink the holy water, and you shall step into the Eternal Dream. There, you will find everything you long for.”

Dana took the chalice with trembling hands.

Though her heart screamed countless times to stop, the two within the holy water smiled at her.

Gulp—gulp—

She tilted her head back, swallowing the holy water laced with a faint fruit fragrance. Then she slowly collapsed into the armchair beside her, the necklace with portraits of her husband and beloved daughter slipping to the floor. Yet, at the corner of her mouth, a blissful smile gradually surfaced.

“You all, go stand guard outside. Madam Dana will be journeying in the Eternal Dream for some time… Rest assured, she is safe here.”

The knights exchanged glances, checked once more on their lady’s condition, and finally withdrew from the hall.

Once the outsiders had left, Morris could no longer contain himself. He tore open the wax-sealed deed.

In the Kingdom of Atley, every agricultural estate required the king’s personal signature. This vineyard alone could yield an annual profit of no less than one thousand gold coins.

Even if he did not intend to manage it himself, he could sell it in one go for more than five thousand gold coins.

That sum would have been enough for him to squander away for several lifetimes.

Just as he was imagining how to spend that fortune, a steady, kindly voice spoke from behind him.

“Bishop Anthony!” Morris widened his eyes in disbelief; he could not understand why the bishop would have returned so suddenly.

A few days earlier, the local clergy had received word that wizards had noticed anomalies in the Kingdom of Atley, and bishops from the surrounding districts had left the city early to avoid danger.

By all rights, this man should have been vacationing at some estate outside the city, so why had he come back at a time like this?

He forced a smile that was worse than crying. “Bishop Anthony, why have you returned?”

“The archbishop sent a divine oracle this morning,” Bishop Anthony said as his staff tapped lightly on the floor. “My Lord’s descent is imminent; I must personally command the clergy in Steel City.”

Anthony suddenly sighed. His face, a little younger than Morris’s, wore a look of needless worry. “Priest Morris, you have worked hard recently. Now that I have returned you should rest for a few days. Leave Madam Dana to me; I will spread the Lord’s will there.”

With that he plucked the yellowed deed from Morris’s hands, and a servant carried away the oak box filled with gold coins.

He patted the rigid Morris with a bland smile.

“Priest, you may go back to your room and have a proper sleep. Believe me… it will do you good.”

After saying this, he reached out and tapped Morris’s shoulder.

Morris did not know how he had returned to his room. The moment he shut the door, his eyes filled with blood, and rage drowned his reason.

He smashed everything in the room with all his might and howled hysterically.

“I came first, I was the first to join the Nightmare Faith, I should be the bishop of Steel City!”

“That damned bastard!”

The crystal chandelier swayed with the tumult. He seized a gilded candlestick and hurled it hard at the wall. “I will kill that thief… I must kill him…”