Goddess Kaleidoscope

End of this chapter

At Elijah's persistent pleas, Lud finally allowed Fallen Leaf to take advantage of the darkness and dig up the remains from the cemetery.

After transforming into a burly man, Fallen Leaf went out carrying a shovel and returned less than half an hour later with a wooden box about a meter long and half a meter wide. Inside were Elijah's remains, which had been buried less than half a month ago, so there was no obvious damage to the box.

In front of everyone present, Luoye opened the box. When Elaine saw that it was indeed her own bone, she breathed a sigh of relief. Then, when she realized that everyone around her was also looking, she suddenly became a little flustered.

"No, no, don't look!"

"..."

Ludwig had to admit that, in a sense, it was indeed a very naked and very explicit scene.

"Alright! I've brought the bones back for you. I'll put them in the basement in a bit. Are you satisfied now?"

"Yes, thank you."

As Elijah spoke, she rose and bowed to everyone in gratitude, then lunged towards her own remains, preparing to crawl back to sleep. But her translucent body passed straight through the remains and the wooden box, crashing headfirst into the ground in a textbook-perfect "flat-ground fall."

"Huh? Huh!?"

Elijah, having missed her target, looked up in bewilderment. She used to just crawl back into bed like this when she wanted to go back to sleep, but this time it suddenly stopped working. The others present were all looking at her with the same pitying gaze one might give a mentally challenged child—their expressions were undeniably wistful.

"No, no, this isn't right! It shouldn't be like this!"

Elaine scrambled to her feet and looked frantically at her remains. Then she suddenly noticed something amiss: something was missing from her body!

"Where's my pendant? Where did my pendant that I used to wear around my neck go?"

"A pendant? What pendant?"

Upon hearing Elizabeth say that something was missing, Ludwig paused for a moment, then instinctively looked at Hume beside him.

Faced with the "stare of the people's police," Hume initially seemed innocent and unmoved, but he quickly became somewhat uncomfortable under the gaze, awkwardly scratched his cheek, and finally raised his hand in embarrassment.

"I...I thought nobody wanted me..."

"Do you think you can take it just because nobody wants it?"

"Old habits die hard!"

Under Ludd's coercion, Hume reluctantly produced the stolen goods: a beautiful emerald pendant. Elizabeth immediately recognized it as her pendant, a farewell gift from the Queen herself when she fled the palace.

Whenever Elijah sees the pendant, she is reminded of her days as the Queen's secretary. It was the most cherished possession of hers, both in life and in death.

Lude looked at the pendant in his hand and vaguely felt that it was not an ordinary piece of jewelry. So he hung the pendant back around Elijah's neck and let her try it again.

This time, it was an easy success. The moment Elijah's spirit flew toward her regret, it was sucked into the pendant in a flash of green light.

"It seems that this silly female ghost can only fall asleep with the help of this pendant, but she just doesn't realize it. Hume, have you ever heard of similar artifacts or magical items?"

"Never heard of it before, this is the first time I've seen it."

Hume shook his head, about to reach out and touch the pendant again, when Ludd, quick as a flash, slammed the lid of Elizabeth's coffin shut. He solemnly warned Hume that one shouldn't mess with those close to them; he would check the basement from time to time, and if the pendant was missing, she would always be the prime suspect.

And so, the little disturbance caused by the female ghost Eliven came to an end. In the following days, she seemed to be sleeping and did not reappear. Meanwhile, Rude continued to be busy with various affairs in the village, as well as dealing with Sharo and the others who were staying in the village for a while.

The knights had only been in the village for a few days when Rudd received news from Hume that Sharo had instructed his men to secretly investigate Rudd and his temple in the village, seemingly suspicious of their identities.

"Holy crap! Does that female knight think I'm part of a cult?"

Having learned from the old astrologer's "mistake," Rudd knew very well that neither the kingdom nor the major religious sects had zero tolerance for demon worship, and would eliminate it without hesitation once it was discovered.

Therefore, from the very beginning of his sect, Ludwig was determined to follow the "great, glorious, and correct" path. Even after he recruited Shanis, he did his best to whitewash her in every way, hoping to transform her into a "presentable" god!

With some doubts in his heart, Lud decided to remain calm and continue doing what he was supposed to do, pretending not to know about their secret observations, and using his actions to dispel their suspicions.

"That's strange, what did I do that made her suspicious?"

"Your Excellency, you have miscalculated this part."

"Aaaaah! How did you suddenly appear like a ghost?!"

Suddenly, Elijah appeared behind Ludwig, startling him so much that he jumped off his chair. The ghost hadn't shown up for days, and her appearance gave him quite a "surprise."

"Miss Elijah, you're supposed to be a highly educated ghost, can't you at least knock before entering a living person's room?"

"I knocked!"

What were you knocking on?

"When you tap this thing, it actually sounds pretty good."

Elizabeth pointed at the wooden wind chimes hanging on Ludd's window, and gently tapped them with her small hand. A gust of wind made the chimes tinkle. Ludd was speechless. "Who's going to react when you tap that?!"

Fortunately, Lude's body is still relatively young, and his heart can still hold up, so after recovering, he was too lazy to argue with a ghost.

What did you say I did wrong?

"Here, the required land area calculated in your document is incorrect, and several parameters are also wrong."

"You can calculate this."

"Of course! I was Her Majesty's most trusted secretary back then. No document that passed through my hands ever had a single error in terms of numbers."

"Oh! In that case, could you calculate it for me?"

Seeing the female ghost proudly proclaim herself a professional, Lu De revealed a meaningful smile, then stood up to offer his seat and gestured for her to proceed.

Elijah didn't stand on ceremony and plopped down. Then, she concentrated her necromantic power to slightly solidify her hands, allowing her to touch objects and easily pick up the paper and pen.

Seeing this, Lu De's expression began to turn uncontrollably wicked. A female ghost secretary who was proficient in copywriting and theoretically didn't need sleep—wasn't this exactly what he desperately needed?

At this moment, Elaine was engrossed in her work at her desk, happily performing the secretarial tasks that she hadn't done in a long time, completely unaware that a truly terrifying "evil spirit" was standing right behind her.

End of this chapter

Counting the days, Sharo and her warlord knights had been in Pine Village for five days. After a series of covert investigations, Sharo discovered that the village was full of suspicious points and increasingly felt that something was wrong.

Sharo summarized these suspicious points into three points!

The first point of doubt is that the legendary dragon that supposedly delivered meat to the village throughout the winter did not appear.

Although thousands of people in the village claimed with certainty that they had witnessed the dragon bringing them food, Sharo did not readily believe them simply because of the unanimous testimony of all the villagers.

It's important to understand that while humans and dragons aren't mortal enemies, they're not exactly inseparable allies either. Furthermore, Sharo knew perfectly well why Master Hamilton and his group had risked entering the Void Forest. Therefore, she could understand the dragons' furious attack on the border village, but for a priest to tirelessly provide food to a group of humans for an entire winter simply because he had used divine magic to heal the female dragon seemed somewhat illogical.

The second point of suspicion is that the villagers' behavior is somewhat strange.

With spring approaching and the climate soon becoming suitable for farming, the villagers of Songshu Village have taken many actions that are different from those in other places during the process of cultivating their fields.

What struck Sharo as most sinister was a mixture of powders the villagers sprinkled in the fields. It was said to be mainly composed of wood ash and crushed wild boar bone powder. Their village had accumulated quite a bit of these two ingredients that winter; they had cut down a large grove of trees north of the village to make stew.

The priests instructed them to collect the ashes from the fire and the cleaned pork bones, then break them up and mix them together, saying it was a gift from the goddess.

The wisdom of sowing seeds in the field before planting can effectively increase yield.

In all his years, Shaluo had seen villagers perform sacrifices to pray to the gods for a good harvest before spring plowing, but he had never seen anyone say that sprinkling bone meal on the ground could increase yields. Normal religious rituals rarely use bones; on the contrary, they are used more often in heretical sacrifices of demon worship.

So Sharo sent his men to inspect the village's bone meal warehouse, where they found an astonishing amount of bone fragments. Apart from a few larger pieces of remains that could be vaguely identified as animal bones, the rest of the fragments were so finely broken that they were impossible to distinguish.

The third and most serious point of suspicion is that the mage accompanying Sharo discovered that there were undead appearing near the village.

This world is known for its "zero tolerance" policy towards the dead; once discovered, they must be eliminated immediately. This is because the dead pose a threat to the safety of living beings and, in severe cases, can even cause plagues.

Therefore, in addition to inspecting the distribution of relief food, Sharo had another important mission when he led the team here: to eliminate the dead.

Even before the incident occurred at the border, Earl Ramli worried that the disaster would cause the deaths of many settlers, which in turn would breed undead to wreak havoc on the world. Therefore, the troops that Sharo led included a full-strength battalion of 120 warlord knights, six mages, and a large quantity of purification potions, specifically to deal with any potential undead.

It is worth mentioning that the Earl's operation did not involve cooperation with any religious sect. Even though everyone in the world knows that the priests' magic is a natural counter to the undead, the Earl still intends to rely on the power of mortals to deal with this crisis. From this, it is not difficult to see the Earl's attitude towards religion.

After arriving at the border, Sharo's contingent split into three groups. One company remained in Riverwood to tidy up the local situation and serve as a transit point for supplies. One of the other two companies patrolled from east to west, while the remaining company, led by Sharo himself, went to Pine Village, which they believed was in the worst situation. However, they found that the village was surprisingly peaceful.

Sharo did not let his guard down just because the village was peaceful. His magicians immediately checked the village cemetery and the surrounding area to confirm the number of deaths. As a result, the magicians unexpectedly discovered traces of the dead wandering near the village.

This discovery immediately intensified Sharo's suspicions about Rudd. It was clearly abnormal that such a seemingly highly accomplished old priest had not noticed the presence of undead near his temple, and had even turned a deaf ear to it.

Then, something even more unusual happened.

In order to track down the undead, the accompanying mage set up magical traps in the graveyard, a place where the undead most like to appear, waiting for them to take the bait.

But this morning, when the magician went to check the traps, the knight accompanying him unexpectedly discovered that the cemetery had been tampered with. Someone had come here last night and secretly dug up an unmarked grave in the corner of the cemetery.

After careful consideration and calm analysis, Sharo concluded that all signs indicated that the village not only had a problem, but a major one.

However, realizing that something was wrong, Sharo did not impulsively take any action against Lud and his temple. Instead, after making some preparations, he quietly went to the village chief to ask if the village had any needs. Then, in front of him, he wrote a report letter.

The report clearly states that everything is fine in Songshu Village in the border area, the villagers have successfully survived the winter, and everything is normal.

But in reality, on the back of the letter in the report, Sharo had already written a request for help in shadow ink, saying that he had discovered suspected demonic worship in Pine Village on the border and asked Wolfhelm City to send reinforcements immediately.

Sharo was very clear-headed. This village was definitely not as peaceful as it seemed on the surface. Master Hamilton and Captain Jegan's elite Silver Knights might have discovered something amiss, which is why they all ended up in this hellish place.

Hamilton was one of the top archmages, and the Silver Wing Knights were the elite force of the Earl's territory, far superior to the military police like the Overseer Knights. If even these powerful figures had fallen, then Sharo's small force would likely be no match for them.

Therefore, the female knight appeared to be perfectly normal, but she kept reminding herself to remain calm, pretend not to know anything to lull her opponent into a false sense of security, and then take down this den of demons in one fell swoop when reinforcements arrived!

The report was quickly sent out by fast horse, while Sharo remained in the village, occasionally going to the temple to chat with Rud, pretending that he knew nothing.

However, Sara didn't know that while she thought she was monitoring the Abyss, the "Abyss" she perceived was also secretly watching her. Their pretense was all an act!

End of this chapter

Since discovering that Elijah is very good at copywriting, Lude has now successfully freed his hands!

Under Lude's coaxing, Elijah has returned to her old ways and is now his full-time secretary. Elijah herself is quite happy with these tasks that have been handed to her. After all, she has been idle for nearly three hundred years, and having something to do is a rare form of entertainment.

Thanks to this secretary who was useful in every sense of the word, Ludwig was finally able to free himself from the complicated work of village administration and focus his main energy back on missionary work.

Thanks to this significant increase in the number of villagers, Songshu Village has now effectively reached the size of a township. After a winter of influence, more than two-thirds of the newly joined villagers have converted to his Medicine God Cult.

The remaining villagers who didn't join were mostly ordinary believers who had already converted to other denominations. These villagers weren't actually unwilling to convert; it was mainly because their respective denominations contained doctrines about divine retribution for apostasy, which made them somewhat hesitant.

It's worth noting that while there are quite a few religious sects in the world that punish apostasy, these are mostly small or medium-sized sects, often second or third tier. Larger sects that have reached a first-tier level, on the other hand, have far fewer rigid rules and restrictions, allowing their followers to come and go freely.

The reason for such lenient rules is that the management of these large sects understands that too many restrictions, while able to curb the loss of existing believers to some extent, also deter newcomers from joining.

It is not hard to see that those first-class sects that are able to grow big, regardless of the quality of their gods, certainly have shrewd leaders, otherwise they would not have been able to lead their "company" to stand out from the fierce competition.