Chapter 18: The Offspring of the Dark God

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“This is Abbes Town. I am the monk apprentice, William Adams!
“Do you copy? Please respond! Do you copy?”
All Reinhold could hear was the crackling interference of static by his ear, and the apprentice muttering nonsense in the background.
He struggled to open his eyes and tried to sit up, only to discover that every inch of his body ached. He was swathed in bandages like a mummy, and even the slightest movement was excruciating.
“Don’t move! You're safe here, sir, there’s nothing to worry about.”
Reinhold stared dazedly at the ceiling that was so close above him, where several harpoons and pitchforks were still stuck, letting the wind in. It took him a while to realize where he was.
Ah… this was the roof of the steam carriage’s cabin.
Turning his head aside, he saw the apprentice fiddling with a large wireless transmitter.
Li Nanke’s face was smeared with blood, his features and hair scorched, blackened by fire. The strands of his hair were glued together in wet, bedraggled clumps.
He had taken off his black coat, and was wearing only a soaked, tattered vest and shirt. His shoulders, arms, chest, and back were all swathed in blood-soaked bandages.
Yet he seemed completely oblivious to his many serious wounds, his eyes burning with a feverish fire.
An aluminum-thermite rifle and a shock-blast rifle lay discarded in the corner, as if the ammunition had been spent... Liliana’s chainsword and his own chain-axe were also there.
“Liliana…”
The apprentice seemed to understand what he was worried about and pointed to the side. Reinhold followed his gaze and saw a corpse, charred black, wrapped in a coat riddled with gashes.
At the sight, Reinhold finally relaxed, his mind swimming and sluggish.
It struck him only then—wasn’t the steam carriage at the harbor? And weren’t there scores of heretics lurking there?
He stared at Li Nanke in a daze, his thoughts a tangled mess.
Did this apprentice go to the port, fight off a horde of native heretics, and finally recover the carriage?
William, just a monk apprentice, was able to accomplish all this by himself?
Even Reinhold himself had been unable to reclaim the carriage from the harbor. The heretic monsters there were too many to count, and even just trying to escape their encirclement had cost him half a leg.
Reinhold simply couldn’t believe that a monk apprentice could have managed all this—yet the reality before his eyes left him no choice but to accept it.
“I’m very sorry, sir. I lied to you.”

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“You lied to me?”
Li Nanke set down the ruler and map, ceased adjusting the wireless transmitter, and glanced at his pocket watch. “Yes, I lied to you.”
“The residents of Abbes Town don’t merely harbor a primitive reverence for the sea—they worship an evil god… though, to be precise, not so much an evil god as a scion of a god, one who has not inherited divine powers.”
Reinhold’s expression changed drastically. “A scion of an evil god… Why didn’t you tell me beforehand?”
Li Nanke smiled faintly. “Tell you? Even facing a ‘High Sea’s Chosen,’ we needed every scrap of courage and resourcefulness we possessed. If I had told you the truth, would you still have had the will to avenge Miss Liliana?”
“What’s more, even a scion of an evil god—one who has not inherited divine power—is utterly beyond the reach of mortals. If you had known this, would you still have had the will to fight for survival?”
Reinhold’s face darkened.
Were he not gravely injured now, he would surely have stood up and seized the apprentice by the collar and given this sharp-tongued brat a punch.
Yet he could not deny… the apprentice was right.
Even fighting a “High Sea’s Chosen,” he had only done so when desperate, backed into a corner with no other choice, risking his life out of sheer necessity.
If there had been any chance to escape the town alone, even if it meant leaving the apprentice behind, he would not have hesitated to save himself.
Yet now the apprentice had not abandoned him—broken and helpless as he was—but had treated his wounds, tended to Liliana’s remains, and risked his life alone at the harbor to reclaim the steam carriage.
Thinking of this, Reinhold’s tone unconsciously softened. “So you’re here calling for Church reinforcements… Well, did you get through?”
“The receiver on this wireless set is broken; I can’t get any reply, so I don’t know if the message was received.”
Li Nanke knew the Church had not received it; otherwise, he would have already completed the final node and ended this bizarre nightmare.
He was certain the transmitter was working properly. That meant, if the Church had not gotten the message, something had gone wrong in the chain.
If it was the stranded behemoth on that desolate shore, sealing off the town and blocking the radio signal, then this nightmare was a dead end.
“Orphanus” was a dread beast of myth and legend—Reinhold and he could never hope to contend with such a thing.
Even glimpsing it from afar had nearly broken him; to approach would be to lose his mind, to go mad and become a twisted monster before ever seeing the enemy clearly.
Besides, destroying the scion of the evil god did not necessarily require confronting it directly…
If not, then something had gone awry inside the Church.
“Sir, I need you to call the Church for me…”

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“That’s no problem. Pull the transmitter over here and I’ll do it.”
Li Nanke shook his head. “The default channel on this wireless set is the Monks’ Assembly—not the Church. The recipient is the Grand Prior, not a Church official.”
“I need to know if you have an extra encrypted channel—a way to bypass the Grand Prior and contact a bishop-level figure in the Church whom you absolutely trust and who has enough authority.”
“Why are you asking this?” Reinhold frowned, thought for a moment, then quickly realized: “You suspect the Grand Prior received the call but didn’t notify the Church or send help on purpose.”
“Impossible! I’m telling you, it’s the radio that’s broken, stop letting your imagination run wild.”
Li Nanke smiled faintly. “Nothing’s impossible, sir. I suspect not only the Grand Prior, but also some other high-ranking figures in the Church.”
“If I told you that the scion of the evil god, ‘Orphanus,’ is now stranded on the southwestern beach of the town, waiting for a new host—a foreign male body, preferably one with supernatural gifts, to help it complete its centenary rebirth…
“When a suitable candidate enters the town, the evil power fully seals it, preventing any entry or exit.
“And precisely at this moment, the Church issues an investigation order, and the Grand Prior dispatches an inadequately small, armed monk squad to Abbes Town… With all these clues, what does that suggest to you?”
Reinhold was clearly stunned, then his face changed. “There’s a traitor in the Church, deliberately… Did you learn all this from the Book of the Black Sea?”
Li Nanke neither confirmed nor denied. “The simplest solution would have been to throw you—still alive—to the evil god’s scion. Once it had a new host, the scion would lift the seal, and I could leave the town—maybe even win the Grand Prior’s favor.
“But you are, after all, Miss Liliana’s beloved, and we have fought side by side. I may be afraid of death, but I won’t betray my conscience just to survive.”
With that, Li Nanke pulled the transmitter over and placed it before the armed monk.
“When you’ve decided, you can change the channel yourself. As for what to say, just read this paper.”
Reinhold looked at the paper. On it was written:
This is Abbes Town. I am the armed monk Reinhold!
The investigation mission has failed. There is a powerful heresy in Abbes Town beyond mortal ability to subdue. Massive bombing is required for cleansing!
This is not a drill or a joke. Send at least ten steam airships at full speed, loaded with incendiary bombs, high-explosive bombs, and depth charges to prevent heretic escape!
Bombing coordinates are 4°7'2.882'' West, 50°18'57.577'' North. Repeat: bombing coordinates are 4°7'2.882'' West, 50°18'57.577'' North!