In the afternoon, on the balcony of Green Shade Town No. 17, Dorothy silently ponders while holding her Literary Sea Logbook. After reading Adèle’s recent response, she wonders if there is some hidden conflict or tension between the Radiance Church’s Holy Mother and the Afterbirth Cult’s Gluttonous Wolf, given that both are involved in the Chalice domain. Perhaps there is some undisclosed dispute between them.
“Of course, it’s also possible that I’m overthinking this. There might not be any high-level conflict between the deities. After all, the Radiance Church, as the largest official Beyonder organization, naturally opposes cults like the Wolf Blood Society.”
Dorothy thinks this to herself. After some more contemplation, she decides to set aside these questions that she can’t resolve immediately. She closes the Literary Sea Logbook and begins to enjoy the scenery around her, savoring her coffee and the sunlight during this leisurely moment.
Just as Dorothy is enjoying her coffee, she suddenly hears a familiar voice.
"Hey~ over there~"
Hearing this, Dorothy is momentarily stunned. She looks toward the source of the voice, down at the street below her house, and sees a familiar figure—a girl with short gray hair, wearing loose home clothes, an apron, and holding some kind of bag. It’s none other than Beverly.
"Beverly? What brings you here?"
Dorothy asks in surprise, seeing her neighbor downstairs. Beverly, expressionless, waves the rectangular bag in her hand and calls out.
"Your package. Come down and get it. Hurry up, I’ve got soup simmering at home."
“Soup? You, an automaton, have already learned to brew coffee, and now you’re learning to cook? Are you collecting data to develop some kind of household service robot?” Dorothy thinks to herself, amused, but she doesn’t delay. She quickly gets up, goes back inside, and heads downstairs. When she reaches the door, Beverly hands her the package, and Dorothy takes it.
"Alright, I’m going back to record data. If you have time, come over and taste the soup."
"Uh… sure, I’ll come by if I have time."
Dorothy responds, and Beverly, still wearing her apron, turns and leaves. Watching Beverly’s retreating figure, Dorothy wonders how this automaton has become so adept at human activities—first coffee, now cooking. Is she collecting data to develop household service robots?
Dorothy’s curiosity lasts only a moment before her attention shifts to the long, rectangular package in her hands. Although there’s no information written on it, since Beverly delivered it, the sender can only be one person.
Carrying the newly arrived package, Dorothy heads back inside, closes the door, and makes her way to the study. Sitting down at her desk, she places the package on the table, opens it, and finds an old, yellowed notebook inside. On top of the notebook is a note written in Adèle’s handwriting.
“As expected…” Dorothy thinks to herself.
The only person who knows how to send her items through the White Craftsmen’s Guild is Adèle, so this must be the research materials from Darlene, Adèle’s teacher, that she promised to send.
Without further thought, Dorothy picks up the note and reads its contents.
"This is the first set of materials I’ve found. It seems to be my teacher’s early research notes on the Revelation path. Since it contains cognitive poison, I haven’t read it in detail, so I’m not sure if it has the information you’re looking for. I’m dealing with some troublesome matters right now, but once I’m done, I’ll search for more materials to send you. Please take good care of these materials, and be mindful of the cognitive poison."
“Cognitive poison? That’s perfect. I used up 7 points of Chalice last time with the Heart-Devouring Cane Sword, which is no small amount. This will help replenish it.”
Dorothy thinks to herself, then sets Adèle’s note aside and picks up Darlene’s old notebook. She opens it and begins to read carefully.
Thanks to the powerful learning abilities granted by her Scholar path, Dorothy quickly finishes reading the relatively thin notebook. After finishing, she lets out a long sigh.
"Who would have thought that Adèle’s teacher had such a background… The Desire Path… So that’s how it came to be…"
Dorothy murmurs to herself, then begins to organize the contents of the notebook in her mind. As Adèle mentioned, this notebook is from Darlene’s early research period, when she was still an Apprentice and hadn’t yet fully entered the Desire Path. The reason she chose this path, however, surprises Dorothy.
Based on the notes, Darlene was born into an ordinary farming family in a remote mountain village in Farano, the main continent. The village was isolated, with little contact with the outside world, and maintained unique customs and traditions.
In Darlene’s hometown, there was a distinct faith. The villagers worshipped a goddess known as the Goddess of Abundance. According to the notebook, this goddess brought bountiful harvests to the land and was also the protector of love, marriage, and fertility. Darlene’s village had worshipped this goddess for generations, untouched by the expanding influence of the Radiance Church.
Darlene was born into a family of priests dedicated to the Goddess of Abundance. From a young age, she learned a sacred dance used in rituals to honor the goddess. The primary form of worship was through dance, which involved specific preparations, psychological cues, incantations, and other hidden techniques. As she practiced the dance, Darlene felt herself growing stronger day by day and becoming more beloved by the villagers, just like her ancestors.
In her notes, Darlene writes that she later discovered this ancestral dance was actually the Dance of Desire. Unknowingly, she had become an Apprentice of the Chalice path through the spiritual accumulation and family rituals associated with the dance. After her mother’s death, she officially became the village’s priestess, responsible for worshipping the Goddess of Abundance.
However, their peaceful life was soon disrupted. Due to industrialization, a railway was built near their village, exposing their secret worship. The Inquisitors of the Radiance Church quickly arrived with their Church Militia, forcing the villagers to convert. Under the pressure of the Radiance Church, the villagers had no choice but to comply.
Fortunately, the most fanatical era of the Radiance Church’s inquisitions had passed, and their methods had become more "civilized." Heretics who converted in time could avoid punishment, unlike in the past when they would have been burned at the stake. As long as they didn’t resist and converted obediently, the Church wouldn’t use force. However, all traces of the old faith had to be erased. The sacred texts in the village temple were confiscated, the murals destroyed, and the statue of the Goddess of Abundance was transformed into one of the Holy Mother.
No one dared to resist the overwhelming pressure from the Radiance Church. As the young priestess, Darlene was furious at the desecration of her faith but didn’t dare to resist. Instead, she secretly took the most valuable treasure from the temple—the ancestral sacred texts of the Goddess of Abundance—and fled the village.
After escaping, Darlene finally saw the outside world, its religions, and the hidden world of mysticism. Born into a priestly family, she naturally immersed herself in the study of the mystic and the sacred texts once her life stabilized. This notebook is primarily her research notes on those sacred texts.
This notebook was written by Darlene after she had been exposed to much of the outside world’s mystical knowledge and had spent many years in the mysticism world. By then, she had developed her own perspective on the Goddess of Abundance, no longer viewing her purely through the lens of a priestess. In her view, the Goddess of Abundance was likely an ancient Chalice-domain goddess active during the Dawn War and the Empire Era, and she might have already perished. The faith Darlene had followed was likely one of the remnants of the goddess’s former worship.
Darlene believed that the Goddess of Abundance had been incredibly powerful in her time. After years of studying the sacred texts and resisting their cognitive poison, she discovered that they recorded the goddess’s church as having been vast, divided into five major branches. Each branch’s priests mastered a unique Beyonder pathway that allowed them to grow closer to the goddess through advancement. Darlene’s family belonged to the Dancer branch, which focused on manipulating desires.
After confirming this, Darlene was thrilled. She began traveling based on clues from the sacred texts, searching for ways to advance further along her family’s path. The texts suggested collaborating with specific branches of the Star Numerology Scriptorium to learn methods for accumulating Revelation spirituality.
However, the texts didn’t specify the locations of the Star Numerology Scriptorium ruins, which Darlene lamented in her notes. Nevertheless, she was determined to find those ruins herself.
"Phew… In the end, I still don’t know the location of the ruins…"
Sitting in her study chair, Dorothy sighs after finishing Darlene’s early notes. Although the notebook contains some clues about the Star Numerology Scriptorium, they are sparse, and the most crucial piece of information—the exact location of the ruins—is missing.
“It seems I’ll have to wait for Adèle to find the remaining materials for more clues. This notebook is Darlene’s early research on her family’s sacred texts, written when she was just beginning her journey into the mysticism world. The other materials she left behind from later periods should contain information about the Star Numerology Scriptorium ruins.”
Dorothy thinks to herself. Despite her disappointment, she glances through the notebook again. While she didn’t find much about the Star Numerology Scriptorium, there’s a wealth of information about the Chalice domain, particularly the so-called Church of the Goddess of Abundance.
“During the Dawn War and the Empire Era, this Church of the Goddess of Abundance seems to have been incredibly powerful. It controlled five branches, each with its own Beyonder pathway, encompassing all the paths within the Chalice domain, including pure Chalice and auxiliary Revelation. It was even more dominant than the current Radiance Church, which only openly controls three branches within the Lantern domain. The Church of the Goddess of Abundance essentially unified the Chalice domain back then…”
“Another point of interest is that Darlene mentions in her notes that, according to the sacred texts, those who wanted to follow the Desire Path had to visit specific branches of the Star Numerology Scriptorium to learn methods for accumulating Revelation. This suggests that, at least for a significant period, the Star Numerology Scriptorium and the Church of the Goddess of Abundance coexisted and even collaborated.”
Dorothy ponders this, and there are many other points in the notebook that catch her interest. She flips through the pages again, stopping at one that features a drawn symbol.
The symbol is an inverted triangle with a circle inscribed within it. Surrounding the triangle is a ring of wheat stalks, with branches, flowers, and birds below, forming a crest. According to Darlene’s notes, this is the emblem of the Church of the Goddess of Abundance, and it is also the symbol of the goddess herself. Dorothy has seen a similar symbol before.
It’s the emblem of the Afterbirth Cult’s Wolf Blood Society. The Wolf Blood Society’s emblem is also an inverted triangle, but instead of a circle, it contains a wolf’s head. Having read many mystical texts about the Afterbirth Cult, Dorothy knows the symbolism behind these symbols. The inverted triangle represents not only the Chalice spirituality but also the womb of the Mother of Chalice. The wolf’s head inside the triangle symbolizes the Gluttonous Wolf as the blood descendant of the Mother of Chalice.
Seeing the Wolf Blood Society’s emblem, Dorothy is certain that the other two branches of the Afterbirth Cult have similar symbols, with the wolf replaced by a serpent or a vulture.
Is the similarity between the ancient Church of the Goddess of Abundance’s emblem and the modern Afterbirth Cult’s emblems a coincidence? Or is it an inevitable feature of powerful Chalice-domain churches? Were the ancient Goddess of Abundance and the current Mother of Chalice connected in some way? Yet, according to Darlene’s research, the Church of the Goddess of Abundance was nothing like a cult; it was more akin to a universal church like the modern Radiance Church.
"Sigh… The history of this world really is a tangled mess…"
Dorothy mutters to herself, scratching her head. Due to the cognitive poison, much of the world’s past has been obscured, and the information Dorothy has is highly fragmented. Thinking about these historical questions gives her a headache.
"Enough of this. After reading so much, I should extract the spirituality first."
Dorothy decides to set aside these thoughts for now and focus on extracting the spirituality. From Darlene’s notebook, she extracts 4 points of Chalice and 3 points of Revelation. Combined with her previous reserves, Dorothy’s current spirituality is: 9 Chalice, 11 Stone, 6 Shadow, 1 Lantern, 11 Silence, 18 Revelation.
“Hmm… The 7 points of Chalice I invested last time have now been replenished by 4 points. With more materials on the way, I won’t end up losing out on spirituality in the long run.”
“Still, I hope Adèle finds the rest of the materials quickly. I need to build up my Chalice spirituality to recharge the Heart-Devouring Cane Sword. That life-saving tool is too important.”
“Also, I now have 18 points of Revelation, which is more than halfway to the 30 points required for Chalk’s advancement. Considering that finding White Ash’s advancement ritual will allow me to extract a significant amount of spirituality at once, I’m actually not far from meeting the requirement. The key is finding the advancement ritual.”
Checking her accumulated spirituality, Dorothy thinks to herself. Afterward, she stretches and puts the notebook away, ready to enjoy the rest of her leisurely afternoon.
…
Meanwhile, on the other side of Pritt Island, in the southwestern part of Igwynt, a young man in a trench coat and hat buys a train ticket at the station.
Looking at the ticket that reads "Igwynt Station to Tivian West Station," Gregor smiles.