Chapter 145
Chapter 145
Translator: True Detective
Chapter 145: Teacher Da’ai’s Cleric Skill Training
Second floor of Lichtenstein Castle.
At the hour when night descended, the corridor seemed to dissolve into the darkness. The only light came from a row of ancient chandeliers hanging in the middle of the hall.
Beyond the windows on both sides, dim mist spread thickly, blurring the outlines of castle trees and distant cliffs until they seemed to vanish altogether.
Down on the first floor, the merchant’s son from the Canberra Kingdom, his guardian siblings, and the returning Frey were busy preparing to host the Count’s arrival.
But before the Blood Count Palocas arrived, the rest of the group had their own critical task—
That was to convert the captured priestess of the Church of Rebirth and extract from her complete intelligence about this Shadow World.
Lan Qi admitted he wasn’t good at interrogation work. He had always been soft-hearted, unable to bear watching others suffer.
As for the three clerics—they might have long battled cultists, but had never once conducted an interrogation.
After all, defeating those strange and elusive cultists was difficult enough. Capturing them alive was even rarer.
And even if one was caught, clerics were forbidden from privately interrogating cultists. There had been cases where prolonged interaction with cultists led to clerics themselves being subtly corrupted without realizing it.
However—thanks to professional legal guidance provided by Mr. Lawyer, in the Shadow World, so long as one ensured their own safety, they were allowed to interrogate cultists however they saw fit!
Thus, to fill in the clerics’ professional “skill gap,” Lan Qi had invited in a true expert to guide them.
…
Outside Room 202, where the captured Resurrection Church priestess was held—
“Executioner, you’ll handle the punishment. Cleric, you’ll handle the healing. Paladin, you’ll take care of her confessions. Don’t ask questions, just gag her. Spend an hour practicing your methods on her first—whatever she says, do not stop the punishment. Afterward, I’ll personally step in and ask the questions.”
The voice that rang in the corridor was clear and bright, belonging to a young girl. Her silvery-gray hair shimmered in the faint light, like the brightest star in the night sky.
The Poet of Great Love stood at the center of the hall, with timeworn murals rising behind her, as if whispering tales of some ancient mystery.
“B-but… why must we interrogate her like this?”
The three clerics, puzzled and uneasy, asked the question aloud.
To torture without even asking questions—wasn’t that just pointless cruelty?
Though the Poet of Great Love was technically a demon-type summon, since she had been appointed by the Lawyer as their training instructor, she was surely an expert.
Even if she were not a summon but a true demon in the flesh, the clerics of the Goddess of Fate’s Church would still treat her with respect. After all, history had seen demon clerics before.
“You’re underestimating the elite cultists of the Resurrection Church,” the Great Love Poet sighed. “They’ve undergone professional counter-interrogation training. For such prisoners, a confession usually takes a long process—sometimes short, sometimes unbearably long—before they finally break.”
She slid gracefully onto a nearby windowsill, lecturing the three clerics with a poise that made her seem almost divine. Against the backdrop of murals, she was a figure of elegance and gravity, a presence difficult to distinguish as angel or devil.
“This long resistance, I call it ‘the prisoner’s pride.’
So since the prisoner will stubbornly keep her mouth shut at first, it doesn’t matter if we gag her.”
“Trying to interrogate while punishing is inefficient. That only gives the prisoner the illusion she still holds bargaining chips, that she has room to negotiate.
As interrogators, we must make one thing absolutely clear: her information is irrelevant. She can talk or not—but the punishment will continue. She must understand that before us, she has neither dignity nor value.”
“And most importantly—remember this: the mark of a first-class interrogator is not the pain they deliver, but the fear they instill.”
…
Hearing this, the three clerics were visibly conflicted, their eyes filled with turmoil.
“But Miss Lanfu… is this really something clerics like us should be doing?”
The cleric finally voiced his doubt.
They understood the Poet’s reasoning, and even found it persuasive. But as holy servants of an orderly, good-aligned church, they feared that learning such forbidden methods of torture would run contrary to their very doctrines.
The more they listened to her voice, the more they felt their conviction waver—frightened that they might lose themselves.
“Gods themselves are cruel,” the Poet of Great Love whispered, lips curving in the faintest smile. Her voice softened, carrying a strange warmth that slipped straight into their hearts.
“They cannot intervene directly in the mortal world, so they use one person’s hand to kill another.
The gods must delight in this. They have always delighted in this. And we? We are but made in their image.”
Her murmur carried a bewitching charm, lingering in the ears of the three clerics like an inescapable spell.
“Cruelty and torment—see them as a form of love. After all, you cannot control who you fall in love with… So none of this is your fault. It is simply faith, nothing more.”
“I see… so this is love…”
The three clerics echoed faintly, their eyes clouding over as though enlightened at last.
From their confusion arose new conviction—faith burning hotter than before.
…
Not far down the corridor, Lan Qi and Huperion were observing.
“Lan Qi… are you sure about this?!”
Huperion clutched her chest, feeling her heart about to leap out. What Lan Qi was doing now might very well be creating a catastrophe!
“Providing clerics with professional, reliable skill training is also an act of kindness. As for teaching quality—you needn’t worry.”
Lan Qi, after casually listening in on part of the Great Love Poet’s public lecture, indicated to Huperion that they could leave.
The Great Love Poet had always carried peculiar talents—different even from Talia, despite sharing her looks and race.
It could only be guessed that the strange properties came from the mystical material known as the “Compassionate Verses.”
…
As they walked away, Huperion couldn’t help gLan Qingback at the sight of the Great Love Poet indoctrinating the three clerics.
This Shadow World instance, titled Cathedral Banquet of Villains, was in truth “Purgatory Academy II”—a grueling five-day course of principal-level intensive training.
All Huperion prayed for now was that when winter break came, and she and Lan Qi disguised themselves to travel to the Northern Continent in search of Bishop Askson of Annihilation, they would not run into those three clerics again.
For she could already imagine them, clutching Lan Qi’s Collected Works, singing the Internationale, proclaiming with zeal that only through crushing cultists could the Northern Continent be saved.