Wong immediately opened a portal. On the other side was the chapel where prayers had been held earlier. Several nuns were inside, carrying out routine cleaning, and they nearly jumped out of their skins when the portal appeared.
Wong stepped through first, leaving the portal open behind him.
"Get help immediately! Someone's been badly injured!"
Hearing his shout, the nuns realized the gravity of the situation and rushed off to summon the monastery's physician.
Working together in a flurry of motion, they carried the still-breathing archbishop back to his room. The physician was also a nun. With the monastery's limited medical supplies, all she could do was perform emergency bandaging.
The novice nun, however, was already confirmed dead.
The nuns carried her body to the prayer hall, intending to hold funeral rites so her soul could enter Heaven and continue serving God.
According to custom, a novice nun's body should be washed clean and wrapped in a burial shroud—but Elsa stopped them. She needed to examine the body.
Despite the nuns' vehement objections, they were overruled. The novice nun was not wrapped in a shroud as intended.
"You are desecrating the soul of a pure servant of God!" Sister Agatha cried, standing in front of the body. "God will never permit this!"
"Your God doesn't get a say with me," Lucas replied coldly. "If He disagrees, He can come argue with me Himself."
Lucas showed no mercy. He had no issue with faith—but using faith as an excuse for everything was infuriating. They were here to investigate and exorcise demons, not to listen to sermons from a group of foreign nuns.
Sister Agatha tried to step forward again, but a blade of compressed wind instantly stopped inches from her face. The sharp pressure made her breathing hitch.
"One more step," Lucas said flatly, "and I'll send you straight to meet your God."
With that, he ignored the shocked nuns in the prayer hall. Faith was one thing; blind indoctrination was another.
With the crowd subdued, Elsa began the autopsy. Among the four of them, only she knew how—Lucas, Wong, and Daimon were only good at fighting and killing.
The novice nun's body showed no obvious external wounds, but all of her internal organs had been completely crushed and mashed together. The chest and abdominal cavity were a chaotic mess, impossible to distinguish individual organs.
Elsa skillfully sutured the incision afterward, her movements as precise and practiced as a veteran tailor's—so smooth it was unsettling. She clearly had far more experience than anyone would like to think about.
Lucas and the other two watched with thinly veiled horror. With suturing skills like that, calling Elsa a serial killer wouldn't have sounded far-fetched.
Elsa rolled her eyes at their expressions. She was used to it. Ever since childhood, Ulysses had forced her to learn all kinds of things. Autopsies and stitching bodies back together were child's play—she could practically disassemble a person and put them back together intact.
"It looks like she was killed by a demon," Elsa concluded.
No external injuries, completely destroyed internal organs, and within a monastery—only a demon could have done this so silently.
"A demon?" Lucas frowned. "You're saying there are demons here besides Amon? This is a monastery. How can demons just come and go like this?"
He was genuinely shocked. A monastery was sacred ground—demons shouldn't even be able to enter. Only a being powerful enough to rival God could ignore such holy protection. Even Amon himself had been confined to Jenny's body and couldn't leave that room.
"Where is the Staff of God?" Daimon suddenly asked, turning to Sister Agatha. "Take us to it."
This was no ordinary monastery. It housed a holy relic. With such an artifact suppressing evil, ordinary demons shouldn't have been able to enter at all. Yet during their exorcism, another demon had attacked the archbishop and the nun.
That meant the monastery was no longer truly sacred.
And it likely meant something had gone wrong with the so-called Staff of God.
Sister Agatha led the way, with the four following behind. The other nuns began preparing for the funeral.
Just as Lucas was about to step outside, he suddenly halted, a strange sensation tugging at his instincts.
He turned back.
All the nuns were kneeling on the floor, quietly reciting scripture.
It should have been an ordinary sight—but Lucas felt a thick, unsettling sense of wrongness hanging in the air. He couldn't pinpoint the problem, only that something was deeply off.
Suppressing his unease, Lucas turned and left. The nuns never looked up, continuing their low prayers as that eerie atmosphere lingered behind them.
"The Staff of God has always been sealed inside the monastery's tower," Sister Agatha explained as they walked. "It is the oldest and most sacred place here. No one is allowed to enter except during the monthly cleaning."
They soon arrived at the base of the tower.
It stood at the very center of the monastery, with all other buildings constructed around it.
Everyone looked up simultaneously.
The tower stood silently before them, but it gave off an intense sense of dissonance—as if it didn't belong there at all.
Daimon stared at it with a deep frown.
He had felt this sensation before, once at an ancient ruin where Satan-worshipping cultists had conducted rituals. The same wrong, discordant feeling—just like now.
But this was supposed to be sacred ground, housing the Staff of God. This feeling should not exist here.
Unless something was very wrong.
"Open the door. We're going up," Daimon said grimly.
Sister Agatha hesitated, gripping the key tightly in her palm, unwilling to step forward.
"Any concerns?" Lucas asked, noticing her nervousness.
"No… none," she said hesitantly. "It's just that no one is allowed to enter except on cleaning days, and today isn't—"
"Extraordinary circumstances," Lucas interrupted with a smile. "God won't hold it against you."
He took the key from her hand and unlocked the door himself.
The four entered one after another, with Sister Agatha bringing up the rear.
"According to Church doctrine, I cannot enter the tower outside of cleaning days," she said, grasping the door handles. "You'll have to go on alone. The relic is at the top."
Before they could respond, the door slowly closed behind them.
The four exchanged looks.
"There's definitely something wrong here," Daimon said quietly. "From the moment we arrived, this monastery has felt off. Stay alert."
They began surveying their surroundings.
The first floor of the tower was a large room filled with stacks of books and parchment scrolls, some covered in thick spiderwebs. Many looked ancient.
Lucas casually picked up a roll of parchment. It was sealed with red wax bearing the imprint of a cross—clearly very old.
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