Glenn felt his consciousness try and slip away a few times, but he always caught himself at the last second, refusing to fall to the embrace of a peaceful rest amidst the chaos reigning on the Northern Town. When his sight progressively cleared out of the blurriness they were filled with, he realized that four priests were working their Divinity on him. He had been constantly bathing in a warm, reassuring golden light ever since he almost passed out. Whatever trauma the Cursed Book of Doloratrox had inflicted on him was also going away, alongside the pain and the memories of millenniums of suffering.
"...Enn!" '...Enn!'
Two voices were shouting in his still, very foggy head, trying to get his attention. The young man grimaced and grabbed at his head. How did he know that book was called "The Cursed Book of Doloratrox"? The memories...An Apostle, Doloratrox? What—where did this knowledge come from?
Glenn grunted and clenched his teeth, enduring the searing headache. The memories...The sight from within the book, that's where that knowledge came. But why? Did he stare directly at a God? How? In a book? How was that possible? Weren't there restraints on a God's physical appearance in the mortal world?
"Glenn!" Nelg's voice finally reached Glenn, piercing through the cloud of uncertainty and confusion. The young man blinked as all the latent effects from peering into forbidden knowledge disappeared, washed away by the holy power of the Priests of Onnea. He gulped a breath of fresh air like a man about to drown as the cacophonic chaos of voices and sounds rang around him organizing themselves in a comprehensible mess.
"Shit, huff, this..." Glenn clenched at his chest, heaving with difficulty. The four priests finally took a few steps back, exhausted and worried. Behind them, a dozen of paladins were standing there swords and shields drawn, ready to fight.
Oh.
Ready to fight him.
"I'm not..." Glenn winced, struggling to speak, "...I'm not Corrupted yet, so please stand down and give me some space, damn it..."
Respecting his wishes, the paladins all took a step back, their swords still raised and their shoulders covered in golden holy light. The young man closed his eyes and took a long moment to try and decrypt what he was seeing. Something had changed with his eyes; he was seeing it, the magic spells and Divine blessings that had been cast on the Church. He could see everything, plain as day, just standing there waiting for his comprehension.
It was hard to describe what Mana, Aura, and Divinity looked like, but the whole thing was pretty similar to a massive web of every color possible, some Glenn couldn't comprehend. It was like his brain wasn't capable of seeing these colors, unknown and indescribable. Glenn winced as his eyes teared up, strained by this new magical sight.
'Wait, that's Mana Sight!' Glenn suddenly realized. As he did so, the mystical filter that allowed him to see the Energies of the world disappeared, giving back his normal sight.
"Ah, finally communication is passing through! Hey, do you hear me, Glenn?" Nelg shouted in a way that made it impossible to be further ignored. Glenn pressed his lips and grabbed at his head again, nodding slowly.
'Yes, I hear you Nelg. My head hurts like shit.'
Nelg sighed in relief while Diamanes laughed loudly, awed.
"Thank the gods for that. Damn, this was horrible. And I don't have much time, so..." Nelg's voice faded away like a mirage in the sand.
'I'll keep it short,' Diamanes took over for his colleague, 'Killing that book gave a crazy amount of souls to Nelg. He has to digest the whole thing at once, so it's going to take some time and he'll be unconscious in the meanwhile.'
Glenn difficultly turned his body and placed a foot on the floor, struggling to even stand. He had been lying down on a makeshift, wooden operation table visible from all around. The young man glanced at his clothes and winced when he found them in a very poor state. His Imoogi suit was going to need a lot of time to fix itself. In a blink, he dismissed the Imoogi suit and summoned the Lightweaver one. A quick Aqua Mundare made sure he was completely clean from whatever filth could have covered him and also informed him of the pretty low amount of Mana in his reserves.
'How long is Nelg going to be gone for?' Glenn asked as he fully stood up, helping himself to the edge of the table.
"Three weeks, three months, I have no idea how long it's going to take..." Nelg's faded voice echoed in Glenn's mind, before disappearing once again. Glenn shook his head and looked at the Priests and Paladins. Tiredly, he stuck his thumb out, the corner of his lips barely curving upward in a reassuring smile.
"...I'm good, guys. Go get the rest of the monsters instead of wasting your time here."
The paladins exchanged a glance, and all but one left the location, off to slay the monsters created by Abbot Hank's attack. The four priests remained, though, as did Alabaster, the remaining Paladin. Their eyes bawled at the sight of his peerlessly white suit, but Glenn couldn't care less about that.
"What's the situation?" He asked the nearest priest, a battle-ready, mean-looking man with his nose missing. Strapped on the back of his clerical robe was a halberd gleaming under the golden hue of the light shield protecting the Church of Onnea.
"You've suffered an unidentified Curse, which took the work of all four of us to dissolve. Most of the surrounding area has been cleared out of monsters and remnants of the Thorn's Cult. Also, I believe I've seen your colleague rush off in the city to help slay more monsters," The priest reported professionally, surprisingly ready for the question. Glenn grunted and took a few steps forward, balancing himself. Nelg appeared in his right hand, silent and in his plain, bastard sword state.
"Which place needs the most help?" Glenn asked as he pushed himself forward. The priest frowned and stepped in front of him.
"I apologize, Sir Glenn, but you're in no shape to go back on the battlefield."
Glenn was about to retort but Diamanes interrupted him, 'Yeah, you already did your part! Leave the grunt work to the others and take a break to regain your Mana! What are you going to do, anyway? Scare the monsters with your empty, exhausted eyes?' The entity jeered disrespectfully, killing Glenn's determination. The young man sighed and dragged himself to a nearby bench, collapsing under the watchful eyes of the four priests and Alabaster.
The Paladin went and sat next to him, patting him on the back while laughing widely.
"Haha, you're slowly but surely becoming a legend, aren't you Glenn?"
The young man sneered and shook his head. What a bunch of bullshit. There was nothing legendary in his life; just horror, pain, and lots of disgusting monsters that deserved killing. Glenn rubbed his forehead and leaned forward, looking at the floor pensively. There was something wrong with this situation. First, most of the Cleaners' force wasn't here, off for an annual meeting. Sure, this was a good opportunity to attack the Northern Town, but to what end? What purpose did it serve to destroy this town? How did it profit the Thorn's Cult the slightest—?
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Ah? Glenn almost slapped himself as he remembered the main tenet of the Thorn's Cult: pain is a blessing, and it must be shared. Did they do all that out of their twisted devotion? What insanity.
Glenn made himself comfortable and entered a Meditation state. He rapidly checked on his Mana Heart, worried about the side effects of using Overload. The Magellanic Clouds were dim but still very much humming with power as the three rings of stars spun around them. He was going to need a bit of time to gather his Mana back. On the other hand, at a safe distance from the Magellanic Clouds was Nelg's Black Sun, humming with growing strength. Soon enough, the sword's First Circle was going to be created, effectively giving Glenn access to another Mana Heart.
Well, that was the plan and what was supposed to happen, but since things seemed to refuse to go Glenn's way these days, he could only hope it would go as planned.
"Nelg?" The young man tried to call his armored doppelganger, but his voice echoed in the dark space without finding its recipient. Glenn sighed.
"This is happening, then..." He muttered, smiling slightly. It would have taken many more months to get all the souls Nelg needed by just doing bounties, but Abbot Hank brought his horrible gift with him and allowed him to skip that process. The sword only needed to digest the souls, which apparently might take a while. Perhaps that was for the better; he was already thinking of new spells to create and more things to do while still in the Northern Town and the Fringe in general.
Glenn peacefully regained his Mana, trusting in Alabaster to protect his back while he did so. He wasn't close with the Paladin, but he did seem reliable and had been the only one to come out of the shield of light to check up on him.
"...I'll have to ask if they have some kind of honorary positions for me, seeing how much work I'm indirectly doing for the Church of Onnea..." Glenn pondered aloud with a small smirk. After a good hour, Glenn's eyes opened, his Mana Heart brimming once again with Mana and ready to slaughter all monsters and cultists in his way. Alabaster was sharpening his sword while discussing with the four other priests charged with watching him. They were talking about Abbot Hank and the surprise attack, and how unexpected it had been as well as the possible reasons for such an assault.
Glenn slowly stood up, clenching and unclenching his fists to verify everything was working as intended in his body.
'Ready to kick some monstrous ass, Glenn?' Diamanes asked with a wicked laugh. Glenn moistened his lips before turning toward the priests.
"...Am I free to go, now?"
The mean-looking priest approached and glanced at him, before nodding approvingly.
"Thanks for your hard work, Sir Glenn," He smiled, before adding with a nefarious grin, "...Good hunt."
Glenn nodded toward Alabaster, who nodded back at him and left the Church of Onnea. The sight of the burned and collapsed houses was the first thing that welcomed him, alongside the scent of burning flesh. Outside of the Church, piled up in a grotesque pile, countless corpses, cultists, and monsters alike were burning. More corpses were added to the pile with each passing minute, and the black smoke coming off the pile kept on growing to fill the sky.
The young man looked away and rolled up his sleeves, ready to tint his immaculate white suit red. He didn't waste another second and jumped on one of the nearby, still-standing roofs, searching for leftover monsters. It didn't take long for him to find some, and it didn't take long either for him to kill them. They weren't particularly strong nor hard to kill, except for a few ones with particularly outstanding regeneration. The monsters were pretty easy to deal with; the Corrupted humans were less so.
Thankfully, the Magi Brotherhood had sent a strong regiment of their mages to contain the Corrupted, creating wards and barriers to seal them in place until someone strong enough would be able to take care of them. Someone like Glenn.
The following week was particularly hectic. Glenn's schedule consisted of waking up, eating, killing monsters, eating, killing monsters, sleeping, rinse and repeat. Sometimes, he would meet Milena or Liara, the two as exhausted as he was, coming back from executing a Corrupted Knight or Magi. The two worked in tandem, so more often than not they were together. But sometimes they weren't, and that would be the days they'd come back the most tired.
Glenn also heard some news from Javier. The Pale Son had been spending his time hunting the remnants of the Thorn's Cult, killing every last one of their forces. After the initial assault, most efforts had been dedicated to slaughtering every member of the Cult, and to execute any Corrupted Ones. After a week, they were done with these two tasks, but it still wasn't the time to rest. At least for Glenn, it wasn't.
Milena and Liara did manage to take a well-deserved break from fighting. Glenn, instead, was still working alongside members of the Church of Onnea to purify and kill every ghost that had been created with the attack. He discovered that around the time he killed the Abbot, every rabid citizen woke up from their rage, confirming the presence of some mind-controlling sorcery. It kind of made sense in Glenn's mind that it was something like that. Brainwashing a whole town was something that would take way too much time, and it would be found out extremely fast.
Using a ritual to make all the mundane citizens attack the Knights, Mages and Divinity-users of the town was much simpler and less risky. But, if the caster died, the spell would be broken and the people freed from its hold. Abbot Hank probably never imagined that someone using a soul-stealing weapon would appear, much less so the Savior he desired so much. With his soul gone, the Abbot was doomed to never live again, the efforts of his God to save him rendered entirely useless.
Epinos had lost a devout follower and many pawns that day, but the Northern Town had lost even more. More than five thousand citizens were killed, while triple that had been gravely wounded. In terms of military strength, the Church of Onnea had been the one organization that had suffered the most, with more than a hundred Paladins and forty Priests killed. The Cleaner's Workshop mourned the loss of most of the Copper ranks, seventy of them, and a few dozen Silver ranks. Less than ten Gold ranks had found an enemy strong enough to defeat them. There was no loss in the higher-ranked Fixers, even though they were the ones who contributed the most to the fights. The Magi Brotherhood barely had any losses to lament, for every one of their employees was protected with evacuation spells if required. The Bureau of Identification outside King's Rise had been destroyed, though, as was the machine used in the Identification process. There wouldn't be new citizens in the Northern Town for a while.
Coming back to Glenn, the young man was now worked to the bones to dispense Divine Blessing and execute the haunting souls of the battle, to try and make the Northern Town a little safer. The grudges the citizens felt after killing their close ones during the mind-controlled madness were more than enough to disrupt the Mana and create ghosts of all kinds. The second clean-up took more than a month and managed to make the town habitable once again.
Many problems had surged after this clean-up, unseen previously due to the havoc. The Fields, the main source of alimentation for the Town, had all been burned to the ground. The Scarecrows were standing without fields to protect, standing on ash and destruction. The water sources had also been tainted with rotten corpses, making it much harder to access basic facilities and making the usage of Water Shard mandatory in every part of the town.
On a more positive note, the rebuilding efforts were running well, pioneered by the Maron Company and their skilled workers. This had the effect of cementing the Company's position in the Northern Town and affirming its leadership in the merchandise business. The main provider of materials, food, Shards, and working forces; the Maron Company.
After all that time, Nelg had still not woken up, and neither did Redan. Thankfully, the old man had been spared by the attacks as he remained in a mainly untouched aisle of the Church back during the assault. Glenn barely had any time to work on his spells in the end as more Rifts and more monsters appeared; it felt like the Mana had felt the disturbance in the Northern Town and chosen to make use of the opportunity to worsen the mayhem.
All in all, a lot of work, and not a lot of time to think. Things were indeed starting to slow down, but it was still way too hectic for Glenn. He couldn't even experiment with his newfound power, Mana Sight. Maintaining these constant efforts was straining, but Glenn was glad to be doing something, pulling his mind away from the scenes of hell itself he saw in the Cursed Book of Doloratrox. Technically, he wasn't forced to work hard as he was, but he heard rumors inside the Workshop of his rank up to Platinum rank being discussed. That was something he never considered before, but certainly something he'd like to have. So, he was hitting two birds with one stone by working this hard; he pushed away his psychological trauma and increased his chance at a guaranteed life of luxury.
Because who would refuse to live in the best conditions possible? Certainly not him.
At last, maybe because he felt he was doing excellent work, or maybe because of Kevin's complaints from overworking, Glenn took a one-day break from the constant slaughter.
Just one day to rest his mind amidst the horror, pain, and blood.
A breather, as they say.