It took a surprisingly low effort to placate his parents after they woke up. They looked less concerned with the whereabouts of the sacred artifact, rather rushing to check whether the robbers had stolen anything else from the house.
"You know, you didn't even ask if I'm alright or something..." Mir muttered, watching them angrily leave the bedroom.
"They're just pissed that Murray didn't find it necessary to tell them that he was bringing something like that into the house," Murin said from the bed, still too weak to move freely.
"It's not something you can go telling everyone about. Do you think Mum would've agreed to let me use an artifact like that before becoming a transcendent?"
"And would that be wrong?" Murin rolled her eyes.
"Not really, no." Mir had to agree.
The older enforcer, named Josephus, had decided to guard the neighborhood for the night after advising Mir to keep his communicator open. The nurse had also taken her leave after Murin regained consciousness, prescribing a common herbal medicine sold in the streets in case the symptoms took too long to recede fully.
Mir returned to his bedroom and found it in a state of chaos. Dozens of books, torn pages, and even his mattress were on the floor. Someone had upended his bed and thrown it against the wall to check for hiding spots underneath. All they had ended up finding was a...uh, magazine that he didn't want anyone to see.
Mir quickly put everything back to order, hoping to be spared of his parents' wrath when they checked his room. They were still too busy making sure that the doors could still be safely locked, that no keys were missing, and that the secret stash of cash hidden in the wall of the staircase hadn't been stolen.
Suddenly, Mir felt fatigued. His thoughts began to grow jumbled and directionless, his vision flashing black every couple of seconds. A wet sensation crawled down his nose, which turned out to be a streak of blood.
Cursing in alarm, Mir was about to go ask his parents for help, only to end up stumbling and falling down like a dead log on the floor.
Vaguely, he heard familiar voices calling him from outside. But his mind was too weary to form a response.
The sound of alarm rattled Mir out of his daze. His room seemed unusually bright. Pulling himself up, he realized that the sun was up. The curtains of the windows in his room had been pulled back, letting in dull light through the tinted glass windows.
One look at the watch told him the sun had been up for a couple of hours. At some point, his parents must have found him passed out on the floor and moved him to his bed.
Mir quickly made his way to the washroom, checking his face in the mirror. His eyes appeared a bit bloody, but nothing else seemed out of sorts. The red stripes on his hand had disappeared too. He recalled his nose leaking blood before he had fallen unconscious. But someone must have cleaned him up afterward.
Hurriedly finishing his business, Mir made his way downstairs, where he found Murray lazily sprawled out on the couch, still in his Deacon robe.
"Good morning, little bro. How was your night?" he said, jumping to his feet energetically.
Mir walked over to him and punched him in the stomach, which Murray made no attempt to dodge.
"Wagh...I suppose I deserved that."
"You sure did, big bro. Now, explain."
Mir snatched a packet of bread and dropped onto the couch to eat as Murray began to speak.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
"It's been almost a month since I've joined the Church as a trainee Deacon. I only told everyone about it after being absolutely certain that I wouldn't be rejected from the official position once this...internship ends. I didn't want anyone to harbor more false hope for me."
"...I see," Mir replied while typing a message on his communicator. A moment later, Murray's communicator vibrated. Getting the hint, Murray checked the message.
"Hehehe, don't worry about eavesdroppers. They know everything I'm gonna tell you anyway." Murray waved his hand dismissively and continued.
"At the end of each internship for the position of a Deacon, the Church of Sunbreaker has a rule that the trainee must reach the Evolution Standard with a minimum score of 75%. The trainees who manage to reach this stage using the Church's resources will be provided with a mission, a mission that is both a fatal obstacle and a precious opportunity for those who cannot become a transcender through the official education system funded by the government. In other words, it's one of the last chances for people like me to make it big."
"I know. A Priest from the Central Church made a visit to our class yesterday. You might know something about that, eh?"
Murray flashed him a dirty grin.
"The diary isn't actually something I got from the Church directly. You don't really believe the Church would give away precious sacred artifacts to trainees, did you? I came to possess it during the mission. The cover of the diary convinced me that it belongs to the domain of Sunbreaker, as it bears his seal. At that time, there were several extra pages on it that the Church ended up removing when I handed it over to my trainer Priest. Those removed pages were full of tiny scribblings, written in a language I didn't recognize. Later, my trainer told me that the language was a mixture of several archaic ones long lost in the river of time; and few people in the Church could barely decipher its contents. It would take a while for them to fully understand what was written on those pages. But their preliminary understanding was that these words were all 'wishes', seemingly made by a man who wanted to be blessed accordingly by his creator.
One of the Bishops in the central church was bold enough to copy the writing style and write his own wish in the current common language of the Empire. Turns out, that worked too.
The Bishop wished for his recent spiritual sickness to be cured for one hour. For the next hour, he indeed felt much better than usual. After dozens of rounds of experiments, we realized that the diary's power is rather weak and inconsistent. The lower your spiritual enhancement is, the bigger an effect the diary has on you, although there were several exceptions to this rule as well. Bishops and Priests were affected minimally, while Deacons and trainee Deacons suffered a greater level of influence, almost passing out each time they made a wish. The Archbishop of the Capital made a wish too, and it couldn't affect him at all."
"Damn! So this whole time, I've been sleeping like the dead because of that diary?! I made two wishes in the last two days, and both times, I ended up unconscious! You could've warned me, asshole!" Mir growled.
"You looked scared enough as it was. Why would I tell you about the side effects? I needed you to win the license to enter a Sacred Ground. I knew you wouldn't dare to be too creative with your ideas as long as I gave you a specific example to try out. I even checked your bedroom that night to see whether you took the bait or not, just in case I had to force you to study that night. You didn't disappoint me, little bro."
"...My bedroom was locked that night," Mir said in a strangled tone, glaring at his brother.
"I know. I used the spare key, dumbass. Anyway, let me finish the story first. So when the Church realized that the diary wasn't anything too special, news arrived through one of its channels that the Ravensworth Family, a great power in the Circle of Commonwealth, has been looking desperately for a sacred artifact that matches this diary perfectly in terms of description, albeit with a different type of power.
"Now, the Church became very curious, not able to comprehend why a family so powerful would be looking for that treasure. They too, felt it would be worth spending some resources to find out what was going on. So the Archbishop ordered the informants to leak the news that the Church has recently discovered a sacred artifact that looks exactly similar to their target. However, the Church thinks that the diary is nothing special and left it in the lower treasury for the Deacons and Priests to use."
Mir's mouth opened and closed repeatedly as all the dots began to add up in his mind. No wonder...
"Of course, we weren't informed of these political moves among the higher-ups. But my trainer is someone who greatly values me. He hinted that I should borrow the diary for a while so that I can become the bait the Church needs to hook some spies and trackers of the Ravensworth Family. Once caught breaking the law, the Church can use that excuse to interrogate them through...extraordinary means, if you know what I'm saying, hehehe. That's a simple method to find out what the real treasure might be. Since this diary was found in a Sacred Ground of our District, the other diary might just be around that place too, firmly grasped under the Church's palm. All they'd need to do is search for it using the information collected from the trackers and spies."
"...And you agreed?! You agreed to put the entire family in danger so that your damned church can catch some spies?!" Mir jumped up to his feet, ready to make a black-eye Murray's face.
"Mir, do you think the Church wouldn't provide us with protection? If something happens to us, who's gonna volunteer as the next bait in the future? Do you think the foreign investigator last night left because he couldn't trace the artifact that you hid in Mackie's pond? We were already here, watching him openly. He knew if he used another clear tracing method, we'd learn how to use it too. Who'd profit from that, huh? He left because he could do nothing but leave. Stop overreacting, little bro."