After Ebner led Mobet and the elf Siatas away from the Church of Serenity and reunited with Groselle and the other "protagonists" who had emerged from Groselle's Travels, he brought them to his own territory, Beldan. There, he temporarily settled them down and assigned tasks to each of them.
During this period, Siatas expressed her desire to have an audience with the "Queen of Calamity," Cohinem, while Groselle revealed his intention to search for the Giant King's Court.
Only the ascetic Snowman adapted wherever he went… In his words, as long as he devoutly chanted the Lord's name and spread the Lord's radiance, it made no difference where he was.
Although Ebner knew very well where Cohinem was, he did not grant Siatas's wish. Instead, he temporarily handed the Trident to her and sent her to the seabed near the waters of the Southern Continent to search for the hidden elven settlement that Danitz had once encountered.
The date of July 7th, when that settlement would open, was already very close, so preparations naturally had to be made in advance.
After being told that this matter was key to the "Queen of Calamity's" escape from confinement, Siatas gladly accepted the mission.
As for Groselle, being a giant with obvious physical advantages, he was arranged by Ebner to join Beldan's engineering team, taking charge of tasks that normally required a "tower crane"—of course, all operations were carried out at night when no one was around.
Mobet, meanwhile, was appointed as the executive governor of Beldan City.
After arranging these "protagonists," Ebner began brewing a batch of "Daniel Pure Dew." While offering sacrifices to the Evernight Goddess, he did not forget to also send some to the Earth Mother…
After all, according to rumors, "Daniel Pure Dew" was capable of pleasing goddesses and mother goddesses alike, improving the effects of rituals involving Them.
After completing all this, before Ebner could even rest for a moment, Mr. Fool sent over three more "messages":
The first stated that the "Pale Admiral" needed a few days of preparation and had scheduled the time to research the secrets on her body for next Monday night.
The second said that Klein wanted to borrow Groselle's Travels this Friday night.
The third was a request for help from Mr. Hanged Man—an artisan he knew had encountered a problem.
Ebner did not hesitate with the first two messages and immediately agreed to them.
As for the third request for help, after thinking it over for a while, Ebner decided to first go find Bernadette.
That controlled "Artisan" was, after all, a descendant of Old Huang. Having Bernadette, Old Huang's daughter, handle the matter was only natural.
Additionally, Ebner also wanted to take this opportunity to borrow the Hermit card from Bernadette and have a look.
Sure enough, after hearing that the "Artisan" was a descendant of Sharf, Bernadette followed Ebner and "teleported" to Bayam, appearing before Mr. Hanged Man,
which led to the earlier scene where Ebner introduced Bernadette's identity to Alger.
Bernadette… the "Mystic Queen"… Why did Mr. Tower bring her here? Could it be that the "Mystic Queen" had also joined Mr. Fool's ranks? Had she become an Angel under His command? "Sage"… was that the name of Sequence 2 on the Mystery Prier pathway?
After hearing Ebner's introduction, Alger the Hanged Man could not help but let his imagination run wild.
Bernadette gave him a strange look, then turned her head and activated the Eye of Mystery Prying, examining the house located near the harbor.
A moment later, she nodded and said to Ebner beside her, "It is indeed Sharf's bloodline… There are also three cultists hidden around him. It appears they believe in the 'Primordial Moon.'"
"'Primordial Moon'?" Ebner frowned. After all, the portion of the "Beauty Goddess" once controlled by the Mother Goddess of Depravity had long since been reclaimed by Lilith. The vast majority of low- and mid-Sequence "Primordial Moon" believers on both the Northern and Southern Continents were either dead or had already been subtly influenced by Lilith, making it impossible for them to act like this now.
Unless those people believed in the 'Brown Moon' controlled by the Mother Tree of Desire…
Strange. I clearly warned Klein and Alger about the special nature of that Werewolf characteristic, so how did Sharf still end up being targeted by the Mother Tree of Desire's people? And I can't even "retroactively trace" the specific cause and effect.
Because the source of their faith involved an existence above True Gods, Ebner's Cognizer abilities were greatly restricted.
After lowering his head and thinking for a few seconds, Ebner asked, "What do you plan to do?"
"Naturally, we directly clean up those 'Primordial Moon' believers and take him away," Bernadette said in a gentle and calm voice.
Unlike Cattleya's cautious handling of this matter in the original story, Bernadette, as an Angel, naturally had no need to worry about any possible "powerhouses" near Sharf.
Next, no one saw her make any particular move, but merely two seconds later, Bernadette's gentle voice sounded again, "Alright, follow me inside."
After she finished speaking, her figure and Ebner's disappeared together.
Using 'Teleportation' and not even taking me along… Alger muttered inwardly. On the surface, however, he smashed open the door at extremely high speed and rushed into the harbor-side building, only slightly slower than them.
With a single sweep of his gaze, he quickly took in the situation in the living room:
The "Artisan" Sharf was retreating in terror, his entire body pressed against the wall;
On the floor lay two men and one woman. One was making swimming motions, desperately kicking at "water" on the floor; another was continuously digging at the floor with his hands and stuffing broken wood chips into his mouth; the final woman's body was constantly convulsing, as if she were experiencing some form of "pleasure"…
And in each of their hands, they held a "phantom" matchstick.
"Mystery Reenactment—The Little Match Girl," whose effect was to plunge people into hallucinations.
Seeing this, Ebner opened his Pure White Eye and carefully observed the three "Primordial Moon" believers. He discovered that although they were not members of the Rose School of Thought, the doctrines they had accepted were indeed closer to the Mother Tree of Desire's ideology—placing "desire" before "reproduction."
Since he had clarified their origins, Ebner did not show any mercy. Within his own White Tower, he "created" the corresponding characteristics, transformed into a Bizarro Sorcerer, and turned all three "Primordial Moon" believers trapped in hallucinations into marionettes.
At the same time, Bernadette interrogated Sharf and learned that he had initially been controlled by the other party through drugs. However, after being forced to believe in the "Primordial Moon," his chronic ailment had actually been cured, allowing him to regain the feeling of being a man. Only then did he truly change his faith.
"That wasn't due to drugs. I truly recovered to the state I had when I was young. After that, I dreamed twice of a moon that looked bloody yet extremely alluring.
"I think I really did become a believer of the 'Primordial Moon,' so I didn't dare to escape," Sharf said.
But upon hearing this, Ebner interrupted him and asked seriously, "The moon you saw in your dreams was bloody and alluring? Are you certain?"
The "Artisan" Sharf was confused by the question, but since his life was in the hands of the people before him, he honestly nodded. "Yes, I'm sure!"
From this perspective, what Sharf believed in was the true 'Primordial Moon,' the Mother Goddess of Depravity!
But what was going on here? Why would followers of the Mother Tree of Desire guide an 'Artisan' to believe in the Mother Goddess of Depravity?
And in the memories of those three people, there was absolutely no related content…
Ebner frowned deeply, faintly sensing that there might be some conspiracy behind all this, yet he could not cognize any concrete information.
Generally speaking, when encountering a situation that deviated so clearly from the original story, it was either the butterfly effect caused by the Calamity Seal, or the fault of the God of Luck.
Considering that Sharf was a descendant of Old Huang, the former was far more likely!
(End of this chapter)