"Huh?" The priest was stunned for a moment, and then reacted to what he meant, and struggled back to try to break free.

However, he did not have the desired hand, and the force of the clamping hand was as steady as cast iron, and he quickly reversed the joint, forcing him to turn around in pain, and then he was kicked in the bend of the leg and fell to his knees on the ground.

Kraft didn't give him more time to react, and controlled his other hand behind his back, making sure that the guy who was easily tricked into problems didn't have a chance to make any small moves. Before the first scream was over, the subject was incapacitated.

"Here's a rope!" Kraft suppressed the priest and made up an elbow by the way, leaving him to lie on the ground honestly.

It's true that the local church is always the most sensitive to paganism, because it is directly related to prestige and income. If, on the other hand, there must be no news of paganism, there must be something wrong with the functions of the church.

Now he can be regarded as having an intuitive understanding of "good at disguise". just preached on the stage so generously, and the laymen in the audience were stunned and didn't hear the problem.

Even when he was pressed to the ground, the priest was still trying to raise his head and make a final struggle, "You can't do this to God's servants!" I didn't do anything against the law, not even the lord! ”

"Okay, so tell me about your membership? From which seminary did you graduate, and what kind of person can prove you came from? Martin pulled out his dagger and put it against his throat, and the argument was immediately quieter, "Or tell me who got him to this position." ”

He hesitated for a moment in the face of the blade's threat, looked around in fear, and pleaded in a low voice like a slimy voice, "No, they will kill me, I don't want to be like that." ”

The commotion was so loud that some of the townspeople who had just left not far turned back and stood far away from the flower garden to watch the bustle.

The servants left two men to guard the door, closing the door of the church and keeping out the irrelevant people and the noise. Martin grabbed the priest by the collar and lifted him from the ground, meeting his strangled red face.

As he felt like he was about to choke, Martin let go and threw him to the bench, the dagger pressed to the fragile side of his neck again, and he could clearly feel the warm throbbing of the carotid artery that could be lost at any moment by a small shift in the cold metal.

"Father, I'm sure you're not stupid. Whoever is going to kill you will not be faster than we are. ”

The rapid heaving of the gasp cut through the top layer of the skin, and the warm liquid slid into the neckline, giving the interrogant the illusion that a part of his life was being lost, and he tilted his head slightly, the blade of the knife clinging to his neck like an intimate lover.

He was so frightened that he almost cried, and for a moment he had gone from sermon to prisoner, and he had lost his ability to think normally, but the fear of something, or some other reason, still controlled him, and his trembling lips refused to confide the slightest message.

This reaction seems to be carved into the soul and becomes a reflex logic, more than the fear of death in general, what is more terrible death?

"Oh, no, my friend. Since the priest is threatened, then if we give the same threat, isn't it no different from the other party? ”

The priest saw the younger, scholarly knight remove the dagger from his neck and say a few "fair words," but he was not so forgetful as to forget that it was the man who had made the first move.

"I have a compromise idea, you don't have to say anything." Kraft motioned for Martin to calm down, pressed the priest's shoulder, and slowed his voice, "We'll let out the news that you're willing to cooperate with us in exchange for a reduction in guilt." ”

The other party seemed to understand something, and his face quickly deteriorated.

"You don't do anything, and we don't do anything. Then we'll let you out and see what happens. ”

"No, I ......" had a sharper effect than a dagger, and the priest cried out.

"Of course, if you think that the Rings believe in your loyalty and that they are important enough to them, that's fine." Playfully rereading it in conviction and loyalty, Kraft saw the priest sweat on his forehead as he wished.

"But for now, I have to be honest with you, you're the only one who doesn't meet us as a corpse. So, think about it. ”

Opposite the priest, he sat down and waited for an answer.

The candid exchange seemed more touching than a mere threat to life, and the bald priest lowered his head and began to think, his trembling shoulders suggesting that he might be wrenched in fear, and it was hard not to wonder what it was.

But if persuasion succeeds, they should soon find out.

"News of what happened here will soon spread around, Father. If you're willing to say what you know sooner, we'll know how to protect you, instead of wasting time on preparation. ”

"But I don't know how they did it!" The priest looked up, despair and fear in his eyes, "You're right, they won't believe me, I'm dead." ”

"If they really have that much power, they shouldn't be confined to this town that lives on logging and local products." Kraft let out a sneer, and although he didn't know the bottom of his heart, there was one rule that would not change.

Any "mysterious organization" that hides its head and behaves perversely, no matter how powerful it is boasted, is essentially because it cannot be defeated in a head-on confrontation, so it will remain underground for a long time.

"If you don't know what to say, start simple. First of all, what about the original priest? ”

"I don't know, I watched him walk into the locked room and never saw him again." The false priest looked inside the church, as if beyond the dusty relief of the winged ring, and saw the source of fear, "They said that this was proof that they could communicate with the Lord, and that the Lord had sent an angel to take away the hypocrites." ”

Kraft and Martin looked at each other, and the familiar vanished into thin air.

"And who are you?"

Such a person who has the ability to read and write and has a talent for acting can still be qualified for the priesthood, and he must have received some professional training.

"My name is Hoel, and I was originally a priest here, an apprentice to the priest. No one doubted my takeover after he disappeared, and he really deserved to die. "There seems to be a bit of a personal grudge in this, but it is purely expected and reasonable, the upper class is dominant in the apprenticeship system of the church, and it is normal for the relationship to be discordant because of pure personal morality.

Now that the conversation had begun, Kraft felt that he had gone one step deeper, "How much do you know about 'them'?" ”

"Rarely, they just threatened me to maintain the church here and hand over the donation." With the attitude of breaking the jar and breaking it, the false priest Hoel completely accepted his fate, "I don't know what the meaning of talking more about the kingdom of the Lord and the chosen ones in the holy scriptures." ”

"Not a word?"

"Not a word." Hoel nodded, afraid that they would not believe him, and hurriedly added, "I did the copying work in the past, and these are all classic stories, the original used by the priest. ”

Kraft silently jotted. This so-called paganism becomes more and more unreasonable the more you listen to it, it is simply a clone of the church, born to confuse it with the original, and the symbols and scriptures are rather inconspicuous.

"What's their name?"

"Orthodoxy, I mean they call themselves Orthodox." When the word pops out of the mouth, the person who says it feels itchy on his tongue, and in any case there is no reason to combine the two.

"Do you know where they are?"

Hoel subconsciously shook his head, but suddenly thought of something, "They have always sent people to look for me, but once, just that time, I saw a few cangs on the trouser legs of the visitor, and that thing should only be in the forest." ”

"Okay, one last question, temporary." Kraft realized that he had caught not a big fish, but a coerced peripheral ATM, "Koop, give me that big bottle in the package." yes, the lead one, and the pliers, I don't want to touch it. ”

Twist open the lead bottle and pick up the red-black mineral inlay ornament with pliers. When the doors were closed, most of the church was shrouded in shadows, and the pupil-like light in the inner core could be seen.

"Do you know this?"

The false priest replied with action, and at the very first second of the red light in his eyes, he erupted in an unprecedented struggle without warning, and despite the deep thrust of the rope into his wrist, he writhed and bounced like a disemboweled, overturning the row of chairs, and neither of the guards could hold him down for the first time.

In a moment's eye contact, Kraft saw the fear that had been restrained burst uncontrollably, not at the pendant itself, but at the red light and the meaning it represented.

He wailed and stepped back, trying to get away from it with all his might, as if he would be overtaken by something if he didn't.

In that hoarse cry, only one sentence was particularly clear.

"Angel, their angel is coming!"

(End of chapter)