Chapter 78: Order Meeting (3)
When the regular meeting of the Order was over, Daniel opened his eyes on a pile of soft hay.
He got up from the hay with cold sweat and looked around.
How much sweat did he shed while he was sleeping?
He felt a chill down his spine as he looked around.
He breathed heavily with a troubled look on his face.
“Hoo, hoo…”
He was dragged into an unknown group called the Order until a moment ago.
But when he opened his eyes, he was in his ranch as usual.
It was a short but long moment of horror. Was it a dream or reality?
He saw a gemstone ring on his hand.
The ring on his left ring finger was the same as the one he saw at the meeting.
He was startled and stepped back.
“Hu… Huk…!”
He remembered the participants who wore rings on their left ring fingers.
It was the ring that the apostle named Eutenia wore on her finger.
The ring on Daniel’s ring finger was proof that what he had seen was not a dream.
He was shocked to see the ring and quickly took it off his finger.
It was an expensive-looking ring with a gemstone, but to him, it was nothing but a cursed object.
He buried the ring in the hay.
“This… this filthy ring.”
He buried it deep in the hay so that it would be hard to find it again if he ever wanted to sell it.
The ring that connected him to the Order was the most terrible thing for him.
The Order that was preparing for a war with the Holy Land.
If he was exposed by the Inquisitors of the Holy Land, Daniel and his family would not be safe.
After burying the ring, Daniel looked around and ran out of the stable.
When Daniel came out of the stable, his wife Anna Heslop was waiting for him.
“Honey! Why are you so late today?”
“…I had some trouble.”
Anna looked at him suspiciously up and down.
She must have come to look for him because he didn’t come out of the stable for a long time.
He was late because he attended the meeting of the Order.
But even if she asked him why, he couldn’t explain anything about the Order.
Daniel gave up on explaining to Anna.
And he pretended to be normal and walked towards the house.
As Daniel started to walk back to the house, Anna called his name from the front of the stable.
She seemed to have something else to say to him.
He thought she would ask him some annoying questions and asked her impatiently.
“What?”
“What’s that ring on your ring finger?”
Anna’s question about the ring made Daniel look at his hand.
His left hand was covered with dust from the hay.
There was a ring with a gemstone on his ring finger.
Daniel backed away as soon as he saw it.
The ring he had taken off and buried in the hay had somehow returned to his finger.
“Aaaah! Why is this here!”
“Are you trying to give it to me as a gift?”
Anna approached him with a hopeful look on her face, seeing the ring on Daniel’s finger.
But Daniel shook his head and denied it firmly.
It was a cursed object that made him attend the Order’s meeting whenever he wore it.
It was a perfect way to get caught by the Inquisitors of the Holy Land and cause a tragedy.
Daniel didn’t have the courage to give such a thing to Anna.
He took off the ring from his finger again and hid it behind his back.
“This is… not like that!”
“Then what is it?”
Daniel’s hand holding the ring trembled.
He had buried it in the hay to avoid any trouble, but somehow it came back to his hand.
He had to face the headache-inducing situation that he had tried so hard to avoid.
What could he say to fend off Anna’s inquiries?
He sighed and decided to confront her head-on.
“This is…”
“What is that ring?”
“It’s something to throw away.”
As soon as he finished his sentence, he steadied himself and threw the ring far away.
The ring left his hand and flew fast, rolling down the hill.
If he couldn’t explain the ring properly, he thought he should get rid of it somewhere it couldn’t come back to his hand.
He saw the ring flying away in front of his eyes and Anna’s eyes sparkled.
She hit his shoulder hard and expressed her anger with a furious voice.
“Honey! Why did you throw away that expensive-looking ring!”
“This ring is cursed…”
“Why did you throw it away!”
“No, this ring is evil…”
“Why did you throw away that expensive thing!”
No matter what he said, Anna didn’t listen to his story.
She only hit his back harder with her hand.
He looked blankly at the hill where the ring had disappeared.
He had acted for his family’s sake, but all he got was a harsh hand.
No matter how much time passed, Anna would never understand his actions.
The next morning.
Daniel was busy with his work at the slaughterhouse, holding a butcher knife.
Around him, there were neatly cut pieces of meat.
He was nicknamed the Silent Butcher, and he dismantled the livestock with skillful technique.
He had the best knife skills in Everlint, as everyone agreed.
“Hmm… I feel something hard stuck on the knife.”
As he was cutting the animals, Daniel felt a strange sensation on his knife and stopped.
His butchering skills were so refined that he could tell where the knife should go without looking.
But today, his knife was not moving smoothly.
He sensed something odd and twisted the knife’s path to cut around it.
Squish. Squish.
Something caught his eye as he handled the meat with his expert knife skills.
“…What is this?”
He reached out and pulled out the foreign object that was between the meat.
It was a metal ring soaked in blood.
He used a cloth to wipe off the ring, and then he recognized what it was.
A gold ring with a gemstone in the center.
It was the same ring that he had thrown away yesterday down the hill.
He dropped his knife in shock and backed away.
“Aaaaaah! Why! Why is it here!”
The ring that Daniel had thrown away came back to him.
Daniel’s eyes, filled with horror, looked at the ring of the cult.
No matter how he hid it or threw it away, it always returned.
Daniel Hesroff was destined to never escape from that gold ring.
He looked at his other hand, which had dropped the knife.
Then, a trembling voice came out of his mouth.
“Ah… don’t tell me…”
Even as he dropped the knife in surprise, the ring was still on his hand.
Vroom.
The ring on his hand vibrated.
The gemstone on the ring sparkled as it caught the sunlight from the window.
***
“Why is that skeleton wearing a ring on his pinky finger and making a fuss?”
I muttered as I looked at the smartphone screen with beer and snacks on the table, after the <Regular Meeting> of the cult had ended.
The first <Regular Meeting> of the cult was rather dull than I expected.
After all, considering that the characters in the meeting room were just chatting among themselves, there was nothing much to talk about besides the cult.
I couldn’t interfere with the characters during the meeting either.
From my perspective, all I could do was watch their actions while drinking beer.
The guy named Daniel who participated in the meeting also didn’t complain about his position until the end.
If I knew where he was, I would have gone to see him, but it was hard to watch him when I couldn’t even locate him.
-The <Regular Meeting> has ended.
-There is a cooldown time before the next meeting can be held.
As soon as the meeting ended, the screen switched to where Eutania was, and a message box popped up with the message that the <Regular Meeting> was over.
The <Regular Meeting> skill had a cooldown time before the next meeting could be held.
I couldn’t hold another meeting until the cooldown was over.
It wasn’t a skill that had a cost, but it wasn’t a skill that I could spam either.
And right now, I had no reason to hold another meeting, so I opened my inventory and checked the contents.
I wanted to check the status of the items that I had placed in the meeting room.
“They’re really gone without a trace.”
As I scrolled down and checked my inventory, the breads that I had acquired from the gacha were completely gone from my inventory.
The breads that I had brought to the meeting room had all disappeared.
Eutania and Estasia had eaten the bread happily during the meeting, and they ended up eating all of it.
Since there was no more bread left in my inventory, I had to spin the gacha again to fill it up.
I sighed and looked at my inventory, which had become empty.
“Sigh… I’ll have to spin the gacha a few more times when I get paid in a few days.”
Eutania ate a lot of cake, but Estasia ate more bread.
Estasia, who usually only ate fruits, ate a lot of bread this time for some reason.
I didn’t know how many times I had to spin the gacha to replenish what they ate.
Of course, there wasn’t only spending on bread in this <Regular Meeting>.
I also had a modest income from the <Regular Meeting>.
I couldn’t understand this income, though.
I lifted my head and looked at the message written at the top of the message box.
-[Daniel Hesroff] has acquired the <Fanatic> trait.
-Karma has increased by 1.
Daniel Hesroff.
He was the guy who introduced himself as the Silent Butcher.
He was the mysterious character who became my follower after participating in this meeting.
Lately, I only gained followers through the cult, so
it had been a long time since I saw a message like this.
I chuckled naturally when I saw Daniel’s message.
“Why are you a fanatic?”
He was the character who accidentally clicked on the wrong thing and gave me a ring while trying to aim at the flying Arcrosis.
But he became my fanatic after just one meeting.
It was a hard-to-understand sight for me.
He seemed to lack motivation to become my follower.
Was there a reason to become a fanatic just because he received a ring and attended the meeting?
As I pondered, I recalled the meeting content and found a plausible answer.
“Maybe… he was moved by my generosity of investing hundreds of thousands of won every month for them?”
Who else in the world would be as generous as me for their followers?
Not long ago, I gave a holy relic to an apostle while eating ramen.
I was intoxicated by my own generosity and muttered nonsense while drinking a can of beer alone.
Thunk.
As I put down the can of beer that I had lifted, a new message popped up at the bottom of the screen.
I stared blankly at the message box.
“…What is this?”
It wasn’t a message related to Daniel or the <Regular Meeting>.
Rather, it was a message that came up for a completely unexpected reason.
Swish.
I scrolled down and looked closely at the new message.
The new message was related to the <Divine Response Device>.
-The accumulated divine contribution points in the <Divine Response Device> have exceeded the threshold.
-From now on, you can share the <Eye of the Observer> skill with the targets who have the <Fanatic> trait.
The skill that I had since the start of the game, <Eye of the Observer>.
It was a message that said that I could now share it with the characters of the cult.
