Steampunk Era: Mad Abield

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The new school year at the Church of the Goddess of Harvest was not quite peaceful.

First, the intelligence report that Malin had given to old Hoffman had been sorted out, and frankly, the senior members of various churches were all tingling with alarm—whether they truly hadn’t noticed the matter, or their lack of awareness was due to interference from a higher-level entity was an extremely dangerous question.

At least Malin felt that the higher-ups preferred not to know about it; the situation had reached a perilously dangerous point. If the murderer accomplished this act of mimicking slaughter, who could say how dangerous and terrifying the ritual might be?

In Hoffman’s words, half the population of Carterburg dying would have been a mercy from the gods. Had it happened in the Central Administrative Province, any city would be likely to produce a victim count over a hundred thousand.

The Church was investigating. Malin discussed the possibility of taking him along with Emma Seidel, the mentor leading the team to the Central Administrative Province tournament—of course it would be impossible to join the team competition; not every apprentice from other regions understood Malin’s strength, but there were no secrets among the churches, and teams from all cities in the Central Administrative Province already had a portrait of Malin in hand.

"Why don’t you take your girls to the Central Administrative Province yourself?" Mentor Emma Seidelk was an older man past middle age, but unlike most older men, he maintained strict standards for his appearance, using skincare products daily from the alchemy workshop because their ingredients really were much better than those found on Earth. Malin’s skincare products worked well, so the old man’s complexion had been looking quite good of late.

He was tall and slender, always combing his hair with pomade into a side part, with a purposefully left patch of white hair on his forehead.

Most apprentices were somewhat afraid of him because he was, aside from a few legends like Hoffman, the most formidable combatant in the Church.

Actually, despite often being verbally fragrant and speaking in a sharp and scathing manner, from Malin’s perspective, he was still a standard member of the Church of the Goddess of Harvest—sharp-tongued but kind-hearted. The last time a group of apprentices had their spoils snatched by mercenaries from the Adventurers’ Guild, he didn’t hesitate to take his weapons and demand an explanation.