6 A little chat (2)

"So Mike, how was hunting?" Eron asked, between two bites.

"Good, I levelled up once."

"Ah yes, I still remember my first time here. I was beaten to a pulp after trying to fight one of those giant wood snakes. My teacher had to..."

'How can they all be so carefree? I kind of envy them, just being able to talk as they want... but that's not me.'

Mike recalled his days in school, where he had always been the outsider since he couldn't even approach others without fear of something bad happening.

Mike was suddenly pulled out of his thoughts when a shouting man entered the dining room. The man was dragging another hooded figure into the room.

"Pope, I found this person hiding in one of the empty bedrooms. He isn't one of our disciples, and all the summons are here!"

Suddenly the entire room became silent. One of the older priests jumped up from his chair. "Kill him immediately!"

Throughout the room, Mike could hear some encouraging shouts.

"Yes, kill him!"

"KILL HIM!"

His ear almost burst when Eron shouted, "Kill him now!" right beside him.

Mike could just sit there in silence. He had never seen such bloodthirsty people in his life.

"STOP!" the pope's voice echoed through the entire room, and it was silent once more.

He stood up and walked towards the unconscious man. "Let's first see what he has on him."

Together the pope and the man who had brought the outsider undressed him, searching every pocket. Even when he was stripped down to the skin, they didn't stop. They looked into the mouth and other orifices, but they didn't seem to find anything.

Mike's hunger had suddenly vanished, but he couldn't look away.

The pope placed two fingers on the unconscious man's forehead, who suddenly opened his eyes.

The man opened his mouth, but Mike couldn't hear anything. He could only see how the man opened his stat window.

Without warning, the pope suddenly grabbed the man's hand.

"Who sent you?" he shouted.

"Nobody sent me. I was chased through the woods by bandits and..."

His words suddenly turned to a loud cry of pain as the pope crushed his hand.

"Who send you?" the pope shouted again.

The nude man was trembling, but he could only shake his head.

CRACK*

This time the cry of the man didn't seem to be human anymore.

The pope's hand went between the legs of the nude man.

"NONONO, please, I don't know anything, just let me go!"

"Who sent you?"

"NO, please..." the entire man's body trembled uncontrollably.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

Tears rolled down Mike's eyes as he watched part after part of the man's body be crushed by the pope.

'And I was just about to believe that the people here aren't all that bad..."

With a last 'CRACK', the pope twisted the man's neck, and the inhuman cries finally died down.

Eron tried to lay his hand on Mike's shoulder, but the latter evaded.

"I know it must be hard for you, seeing something like this for the first time, but it makes sense when you think about it." Eron's face showed a genuine smile.

'What the f*ck is wrong with this guy? He actually enjoyed watching this?'

"You don't believe me?" Eron asked, "So, how do you think that man came into here? He said that he was hiding from bandits in here, right? But how do you think did he come in here?"

"He sneaked in?" Mike answered.

"Yes, most likely. Since nobody spoke up for him, there is no way that he was invited here by anybody. Sneaking into a temple is hard on its own right, but sneaking into a temple full of the luckiest people in this world, that would almost be impossible."

"So what? Why did you need to do something like this to him?" Mike pointed at the destroyed body that was carried out of the dining room.

"Well, why do you think someone like him was able to show us the stat sheet of a level one? The only way to get back to level one is by losing your job. So he must be hiding something from us when he was willing to delete his own job.

Somebody strong enough to infiltrate our base, something like that has never happened in the entire 4 years that I have been here for. There must be something going on."

'Oh no, there is no way that this guy could have come in here through my bad luck, right?'

The priests stood up, following the pope out of the room. Only Leonard ran towards Mike.

"We will have a meeting now. Please go to your room and don't come out. I will get you as soon as I am done here," Leonard said before turning around and running after the others.

Together with the other summons, Mike walked through the hallways. They had to go through the disciple's corridor before entering the hall, where the priests and their summons lived.

They each entered their rooms without talking.

About an hour later, Leonard entered the room. Mike had tried to get some sleep back, but he couldn't forget the broken body of the stranger that had entered the church. Now he sat on his bed and watched as Leonard walked through the room towards his own bed.

After Leonard sat down, he started talking. "Mike, I have bad news... I guess one of the other summons has already told you, but the stranger was most likely a spy. But what he most likely didn't know is what the pope told us.

Do you remember our prayers?"

"Yes, what about them?" Mike asked.

"Do you also remember the part with bringing back Sonas' word into the world?"

"That was supposed to be your new responsibility as a priest, right?" Mike answered.

"Yes, but it's a responsibility that we can't fulfil right now. The church of Sonas was once one of the big churches, but the other churches envied us since we got almost all the summons through our good luck. You see, luck can not create new things. It's only more likely that we find the things we want.

That's why the other churches started to plot against us. They joined hands to get rid of our church. Almost nobody survived. Only the pope and a few others got away to create this secret church.

But now, we might have been discovered again."