After his bones were set, Wang Yue lay on the cold floor, feigning exhaustion. His mind, however, was racing as he analyzed his situation.
Animals move because the central nervous system sends signals to contract muscles and adjust tendons, which in turn move the limbs.
Now that I have ‘Puppet,’ I can bypass those steps. I can issue commands directly to my entire skeletal structure and every fiber of my being.
Wait, does that mean I could stay hard forever?
Never mind. I’m losing that part of me soon anyway. I’m getting gender-swapped… Goddammit.
Still, this Mystic Art was undeniably powerful.
It allowed him to ignore pain and fatigue, made him immune to joint locks, and ensured he wouldn’t suffer from vertigo or loss of balance even after a head injury. He could counter-attack instantly. Most chillingly, it remained active even after death, allowing him to function as a sort of “living corpse” for a short duration.
From the information he had gathered, this was a low-magic world—perhaps even “micro-magic.” There weren’t even traditional mages.
Firearms might be the ultimate path to dominance, but he had been a high school student before he crossed over. If he tried to follow a scientific path, he could probably manage a matchlock at best. Anything beyond that required chemical and mechanical knowledge he simply didn’t possess.
And how did I end up as one of ‘The Faithless’ anyway? Back when I was cramming for exams, I specifically went to pray to the Bodhisattva of Wisdom. I was a sincere devotee of the Buddha, wasn’t I?
Well… maybe the motive was too transactional. The Buddha sees through the impurities of the world and seeks detachment, while I was just wallowing in my own desires. I suppose that is the opposite of the Path.
Elliot stood over him, his smile radiating the gentle kindness of a grandfather.
He was pleased with the boy’s reaction. Although Wang Yue’s emotions fluctuated, they remained within a predictable range. The boy’s refined egoism and fierce survival instinct forced his brain into high gear, giving him an air of profound contemplation.
In a world where faith was the primary metric used to distinguish “us” from “them,” a Faithless was a natural-born spy.
However, undercover work was never easy, especially in the Evernight Realm, a place notorious for its eldritch horrors.
It was a land where sunlight never reached, spawning all manner of inconceivable abominations and aberrations. Even standing in the light of a campfire, one could lose their sanity for no reason. One could be standing in a crowd and suddenly find their personality completely overwritten.
Under the oppressive weight of eternal night, a pale moon hung askew in a sky filled with creeping mists. The darkness connected to twisted, alien dimensions; caves and tunnels linked together like a string of pearls. Demonic voices whispered like tongues reaching into one’s ear canal, licking at the brain. Carrion crows perched on branches, their blood-red eyes reflecting the embers of dying fires. Insects writhed, ghosts prowled, and Ancient Gods whispered from the void. Witches cackled as they stirred the brains of their victims, sharing a feast of flesh…
Despite the dangers, Elliot had reason to believe that this young farmer—John Wang—possessed the talent necessary for the mission.
While there were no obvious signs of greatness yet, the elderly always held out hope for the youth.
To the backdrop of the prostitutes’ giggles, the Bishop reached for the final object on the red velvet cloth.
It was a strange worm soaking in an unidentified liquid.
About an inch long, it was grayish-white, slimy, and looked disturbingly gelatinous. Its back was lined with a sensory strip made of rice-sized eyeballs, while the rest of its body was covered in tiny octopus-like tentacles.
This “water centipede” was alive. Its segments pulsed like a shrimp’s, and its tentacles wiggled like nematodes. It was enough to make anyone’s skin crawl.
The crystal bottle holding it wasn’t as clear as glass; it produced a double-refraction effect that made the creature look even more surreal.
“This is also an ancient relic, known as ‘Argus’s Gaze.’ My spirit is already coupled with it. I will implant it into your brain. Your eyes will be my eyes, and your senses will be my senses. If you ever dare to harbor thoughts of betrayal, it will burst into a mass of acid, melting your brain like hot wax…”
Elliot described the creature in terrifying terms. In Wang Yue’s modern understanding, it was essentially a biological surveillance device—this thing would patrol the sulci of his brain, monitoring his thoughts, and occasionally crawling from his frontal lobe to his eye sockets to read his optic nerves and sync the images to the Bishop.
Wang Yue’s teeth ground together. What the hell is this? Isn’t this cheating?
He had planned to make a run for it the moment he left the Holy Kingdom, but the Bishop had remote-controlled leverage over him now. He was trapped.
But there was nothing he could do.
When he first arrived in this world, he had nothing. He had spent two or three years as a lowly tenant farmer, scraping a living from the soil, eventually building a functional little farm through sheer grit.
Just as he was about to enjoy the fruits of his labor, disaster struck.
As a peasant at the bottom of the Holy Kingdom’s social ladder, he had no access to supernatural power. He hadn’t even seen it before. His knowledge of the world was limited to rural folklore. He was helpless—the lamb to their slaughter.
Having finished his introduction of the three items, the Bishop rubbed his hands together, his left eyebrow arching in a look of pure delight.
“However,” he continued, “I don’t feel entirely secure with only Argus’s Gaze as a safeguard. Even the most intricate lock can be picked. To ensure total compliance, you must leave a child behind as a hostage. A pledge of blood.”
Wang Yue’s skin crawled. No way. Am I going to have to get pregnant after the gender swap? Is it really going to be that extreme?
“Don’t panic. Since the ‘Anointed One’ must be a pure maiden, the task of pregnancy will be left to a woman of the Holy Kingdom. Before your gender transition, you will… provide the seed,” the Bishop said.
Richel let out a contemptuous laugh. “Look at that. We’ve even prepared the harlots for you. You can have as many as you want. Hehe, the little virgin’s expression is just adorable.”
Elliot’s expression hardened as he turned to her. “I was talking about you.”
“Huh—?”
Richel Ramirez—the seventeen-year-old Captain of the Holy Sacrament Harvest Knights and a Priestess of the Sacrament Cathedral—was struck dumb.
