The Cardinal Sin Bishop's one remaining eye stared intently at No. 1's pupils. Suddenly, his gold-stitched lips stretched into a hoarse laugh.
"Ha... hahaha..."
His mournful laughter echoed through the office, like that of an old man on his deathbed. Bloody foam oozed from the stitched corners of his mouth. Murky tears welled up in his one good left eye, washing away some of the bloodstains on his face.
"I truly am an idiot... There are clearly so many... outstanding talents here... yet I... was blind..."
He leaned his body back into the high-backed chair, the gold-embroidered robe emitting a tearing sound as if under immense strain. Marina nervously took a step forward, her fingers clutching the hem of her black robe.
No. 1, however, stood like a statue, only his eyelashes fluttering slightly, seemingly unmoved.
The room fell into a dead silence. Moonlight streamed through the glass, casting mottled colors on the Bishop's face, making him look like a haphazardly assembled doll.
After a long while, the Bishop slowly opened his eyes. The madness in his gaze gradually faded, leaving only exhaustion.
"You win," he said to No. 1, his voice carrying an unprecedented calm. "Congratulations... I shouldn't have... out of selfish desire... kept you here..." With every word, a trace of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth. "This... is... my own doing..."
A crack finally appeared in No. 1's composure. His pupils dilated slightly, the corners of his mouth uncontrollably turning upwards. His perpetually calm face was suffused with an almost childlike joy.
Fifteen years of waiting, fifteen years of pretense, had finally been rewarded at this moment.
"Thank you for your acknowledgment, Lord Bishop." No. 1 bowed slightly, a tremor already in the last syllable of his words.
The Bishop laboriously propped himself up, extending his stitch-covered hand. "Come..."
Marina's breathing quickened; she sensed a storm brewing. She watched as No. 1 slowly approached, watched that slender hand grasp the Bishop's bloody, mangled palm, watched the distance between them gradually shorten.
Just as they shook hands, the Bishop, as if sensing something, gently embraced No. 1, patting his back like a guilty father treating his misunderstood child. However, his eyes were on Marina, a hint of ferocity gradually appearing in his gaze as he gestured towards No. 1's back.
Marina's black robe billowed without a wind. Her right hand became an afterimage, Tidal Force gathered at her fingertips into a sharp blue light, directly piercing No. 1's back, through his heart!
"Pfft—!"
Blood splattered onto the Bishop's stitched face. No. 1's body stiffened abruptly, another mouthful of blood about to spray from his mouth. He instinctively activated his Tidal Force, intending to counterattack, but the Bishop pressed down hard on his arm, golden threads coiling around his wrist like vipers.
"You thought..." the Bishop whispered in his ear, his putrid breath washing over No. 1's neck, "you could control me?"
Marina's second strike followed immediately. Her palm pierced No. 1's side, shredding his kidney. No. 1 let out an inhuman scream, his knees slamming heavily onto the floor.
"You thought..." the Bishop's voice grew higher pitched, "you could use me?!"
A third strike. A fourth. Marina's hand pierced No. 1's body again and again, blood pooling into a viscous lake on the carpet.
No. 1's white robe was long since dyed crimson, but he still struggled to gather his Tidal Force, a faint blue light erupting from his fingertips.
The Bishop grinned savagely, tightening his arms. No. 1's body was like a squeezed water bottle; he coughed up a mouthful of blood, his body creaking, and finally, his body went limp, collapsing into the pool of blood. The ecstasy that had just filled him from his dream coming true seemed to flow out of his eyes with his blood, like a stream, turning into an empty, illusory bubble.
"Ah... ah...!" The Bishop suddenly released his grip, also spitting out a mouthful of blood. His body began to twitch uncontrollably, the glow on his gold-embroidered robe rapidly dimming.
Marina hastily supported his swaying body. "My Lord! Your injuries..."
The Cardinal Sin Bishop didn't push Marina away this time.
His eyes stared blankly at No. 1's corpse. The blood had soaked through the carpet, staining the crimson an even darker shade.
No. 1's white robe was no longer recognizable. His always calm face was frozen in shock and unwillingness, his pale gray pupils dilated into two murky glass beads.
"Throw the body... into the ice cellar," the Bishop's voice was thick with blood. "Freeze it... Later... there might be guests who want it."
The hem of Marina's black robe was stained with blood. She pressed one hand to her head, her eyes shot with blood vessels that crawled like worms in her weary eye sockets.
"Yes, My Lord..."
The Bishop suddenly reached out, gently caressing Marina's cheek. No. 1's blood still clung between his fingers, the warm liquid sliding down her cheekbone. "Headache again?"
"Go... cut some for yourself to eat."
A flicker of delight flashed in Marina's eyes, whether because of this rare offering of flesh or because of the Bishop's concern, it was unclear. She lowered her head, hiding her expression. "...Thank you for your benevolence."
The sound of footsteps gradually receded. The Bishop sat alone in his high-backed chair, his gold-embroidered robe rising and falling with his breath, like a sated beast.
He listened carefully to Marina's movements: the sound of her boot soles scraping against the stone slabs, the dull thud of a distant iron door closing, and finally, silence.
Only after confirming that no one was around did he slowly get up and go to the lavatory alone.
The golden door of the lavatory gleamed luxuriously in the candlelight. The Bishop pushed it open, and a rich aroma of sandalwood wafted out, masking the smell of excrement. The space was ridiculously large: the gilded toilet seat was inlaid with ivory, and a mirror hung on the wall, its frame entwined with grapevine patterns crafted from pure gold.
He unfastened his gold-embroidered robe and sat on the toilet. His pale, fat belly was covered with stitched marks. Every movement pulled at the wounds. He had been able to ignore it through willpower before, but now that he had relaxed, the pain almost made him faint.
There was a loose brick in the wall above the toilet. The Bishop's trembling fingertips fumbled in the crevice, his fingernail digging into the seam. With a gentle pry, golden light poured out.
Behind the brick was a hidden compartment, neatly stacked with dozens of gold bars. The Bishop grabbed one. The heavy touch made him let out a satisfied sigh; this was his best anesthetic.
He pressed the gold bar against his chest, the cold metal gradually warming to his body temperature. This gold was his lifeline, the only language those old foxes at the Most Holy Sanctuary understood.
"This year... not a single one survived..." the Bishop muttered to himself. A dull "thud" came from beneath the toilet. He felt as if his internal organs had finally given out, sliding out of his body with intense, colicky pain. Cold sweat soaked the fringe of hair on his forehead, but he didn't bother to wipe it, only hugging the gold bar tighter, his knuckles white from the force.
He remembered what he had told No. 7 and the others; some of it was true. Each batch of test subjects originally only needed one or two sacrifices; the rest could live. Over the years, he had fabricated countless lies: "No. 3 died suddenly during training," "No. 10 fell off a cliff." The Most Holy Sanctuary wouldn't investigate deeply, or rather, they knew.
Of course, they knew. Many guests were from the upper echelons of the Church. Casualties were just a sentence on a document, a single word, lightly brushed aside.
Those dignitaries, those jackals cloaked in silk and wearing jeweled masks, had long since tired of ordinary delicacies.
"Holy Communion of the Golden Bloodline"—this gimmick was his own creation.
The test subjects came from Terra, which gave the guests perfect psychological comfort: these weren't humans, but some rare "food" with a mysterious aura. Admission tickets were priced at one million two hundred thousand marks, yet they were still in short supply. Some claimed their gout was cured after eating their flesh and blood, some swore their wrinkles disappeared, and some, drunk, loudly proclaimed they had tasted "the flavor of divinity." All the rituals, all the masks, and the requirement to paint oneself gold to participate in the ceremony were just tricks to enhance the sense of sanctity.
The Bishop knew it was all bullshit, but he was happy to indulge these lies. Money, connections, power, rolled like a snowball, growing ever larger.
Everything was fake; only the gold in his hands was real.
He caressed the gold bar as if it were his own child. All the pain, all the unpleasantness, would vanish at this moment.
"Thump..."
The sound of a cabinet opening shattered the tranquility of the moment, piercing the Cardinal Sin Bishop's gradually relaxing mind, making him even stop breathing.
"What... who came out of the secret passage?"
He wanted to stand up, but a sharp pain immediately pinned him to the toilet. The immense pulling sensation from the stitches almost made him fall. The more anxious he became, the less he could get up, like a comical clown trying to run on smooth ice.
It was danger. He had to stand up. He had to know who was outside. He tried to prop himself up but found his limbs as heavy as lead. The countless golden threads in the life-saving gold-embroidered robe now felt like tiny chains binding his flesh.
No. 7 pushed open the ornate lavatory door, holding the humming, magnificent sword, still stained with Cyrus's blood.