The morrow didn’t bring any answers to the mystery of the thieves. Temple Hill was still off-limits, which meant the scheduled mass was canceled.

  Did this confirm that the priests had gripes with each other? Or they might be just concerned with security. The largest gathering on the hills would be a prime target for anyone wanting to spread violence.

  Borlen and several of his pilgrim group joined the other blue robes in hunting for the thieves. Half of their number searched the hills for anything suspicious while the other half spread outward, trying to find any hint of the thieves’ possible escape route. This didn’t sit well with some of the red robes—they accused the blue robes of ferreting out the stolen armor while pretending to look for the thieves.

  Still, Borlen firmly believed that most of Faridar’s followers were on their side. Or, at least, on the side of peace. No one could tell where these malicious shoves to make the groups fight were coming from.

  “I pray our Champion Penitent returns to us soon,” Borlen told Elian before leaving camp. “He has to succeed in his two hundred and eightieth Tribulation before we conclude our pilgrimage.”

  Elian nodded. “That way, everyone could see he doesn’t need the stolen armor. Good luck with your investigations. I’ll be staying here for today.”

  Munching a piece of hard bread, Elian sat on a wooden crate and flipped through the messy notebook that was given by Jadewell. Her grandfather supposedly wrote about meeting a Penitent with pointy scale tattoos. Elian scanned the diary looking for him.

  “Oh, her grandfather reached Sarhat?” Elian muttered to himself as he read.

  Looking at the date on top of the page, fifty-four years have passed since its writing. Had Idum-Ani already ascended the throne at this point? The answer was on the next page, mentioning that Jadewell’s grandfather attended the coronation of King Idum-Ani. The Sarhat Kingdoms didn’t yet have its Golden Army and was merely poised to become famous as the home of the strongest Aether Mage. But it did have its experts, enticing Jadewell’s grandfather to undertake the long journey to go there.

  A dozen more pages later, Elian found the probably-Cursed Penitent. Touring the backwater villages of the elven territories, Jadewell’s grandfather came upon a human settlement, a town minding its own business and somehow coexisting with the neighboring kingdoms of the elves. The Penitent in question was its lord.

  The story of the townspeople was they were under a self-imposed exile, vowing not to return to the Temples of Tribulation until their Champion Penitent had reached an Enlightened state. No details about why they had to do this.

  Jadewell’s grandfather showed them his Magistrate’s Boon tattoos to prove he was a Penitent, and the lord did the same. The lord had a higher Kymorathi number than him at a hundred and twenty-six. He wondered about the lord’s different-shaped scales but decided not to ask any questions that might be considered disrespectful.

  “If he thought asking would be disrespectful,” Elian said, “that means he suspects there’s something wrong with this guy and doesn’t want to come off as accusatory.”

  With a hundred twenty-six Tribulations, this mysterious lord was on the second tier of the Lesser Curse.

  The next few pages were very enlightening. Jadewell’s grandfather stayed at the manor of his new friend. He toured their bustling town that traded with the elves and braved the dangerous forests beyond the hills ringing it. The manor’s courtyard was where the lord conducted his Tribulation. Magic craftsmen were repairing wards, seals, and other defenses when Jadewell’s grandfather arrived; the lord had done his Tribulation a few days prior, they told him.

  Elian wrinkled his forehead, peering closer at the page. “Huh, what’s this line here? ‘The size of the hand imprint is smaller than I expected given the lord’s Tribulation count.’ Does this mean the area of Tribulations doesn’t grow for tier-two Cursed Penitents?”

  Reading on, Elian learned that Jadewell’s grandfather stayed for a week in this unnamed town. During that time, the lord called for a Tribulation only once. The grandfather didn’t get to witness it because he was helping a hunting party in return for the town’s hospitality. All he saw were three flashes of blue light in town while he was on a neighboring hill and heard echoes of slams. When he returned to the manor, the hand-shaped crater was much deeper, and everyone was busy fixing things. He noted that the size of the hole wasn’t noticeably larger than when he first saw it.

  “He wondered what caused the lights,” Elian said, going to the next page. “And about the sounds of slams too.”

  Jadewell’s grandfather wouldn’t write this if they were caused by barriers exploding or some other obvious explanation; he’d know it, given his experience and knowledge. He just wasn’t aware of how a Cursed Tribulation worked.

  So… how did it work?

  The second tier of the Magistrate’s Curse upped the Tribulation from two strikes to three. It also gave a longer time to prepare, probably a week or so, unless this mysterious lord did other Tribulations elsewhere. But why would he do that? He could simply shoo away Jadewell’s grandfather with some random errand if he didn’t want to be seen. Elian thought it safe to conclude the Cursed Penitent lord performed only one Tribulation while Jadewell’s grandpa was his guest.

  Once-a-week mandatory Tribulation sounded pretty good. Was there any other downside? Adding one more strike wasn’t weighty enough.

  What was the significance of the Tribulation’s area of effect barely growing larger, if it did at all? It sounded like a good thing—less destruction of the surroundings. But this was too lenient for a Curse. Two benefits to the bestowed? The adjustment from daily to weekly Tribulations was already very generous. Elian wouldn’t believe that the Hundred-Armed Magistrate, a deity energized by its followers enduring pain and suffering, would be so magnanimous with its Curse.

  “Don’t tell me… the force is getting concentrated?” If his suspicion was right, it’d mean that from its second tier, Cursed Tribulations would strengthen at a faster rate than those from Boons.

  “Are you okay, brother Elian?” A boy approached him. “Is that a scary book? Looks messy.”

  “Oh, this?” Elian closed the copied diary and waved it. “You could say that. It shows the reader the greatest mistakes of their lives.”

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Um, I don’t get it,” said the boy, frowning. “Sounds boring. I thought it was a story about a monster. That’s why you looked troubled.”

  Elian ruffled the boy’s hair. “A monster is scarier, right?”

  “Yes! Very scary. I’ll defeat them all! I want to train to be strong. Can I… um, can I hit the funny cylinders you made yesterday?”

  “We can do that later, okay? I’m thinking about something now.”

  The boy nodded. “Don’t think about monsters,” he said before running back to his playmates.

  Monsters? The closest ‘monster’ around was living in the Forbidden Temple. Supposedly.

  Elian previously suspected the priests started the legend to hide gruesome experiments there.

  But it didn’t seem to be so.

  In the earlier pages of the diary, Jadewell’s grandfather wrote about staying on Immaterial Hill for a few months. He explored the surrounding areas and visited the Forbidden Temple; it wasn’t so forbidden back then. They openly tested various defensive spells on criminals and war slaves bought by the temple, checking how they’d fared against Tribulations called by Penitents beside them.

  One could say that the morality of the present shouldn’t be applied to the past. However, Jadewell’s grandfather himself was appalled by what he saw. It was a messed-up place even in the eyes of people back then. Normal people.

  “Right, Jadewell told me about her grandfather’s stories.” Elian thought of that one lunchtime he and Thorren ate with Jadewell. He didn’t realize its significance back then because he hadn’t pieced together the timelines.

  If human testing was the norm when this diary was written, then the priests didn’t need to hide anything ten years ago. People would think it was business as usual. The catfolk did questionable things. Humans followed.

  Unless… it wasn’t questionable experiments the priests were hiding.

  Not a simple coincidence that the ruins of the catfolk temple became forbidden right around the time Thalman attacked the Magistrate.

  “He might be really Cursed…” Elian muttered while watching the children chase each other.

  Elian dismissed the idea before because he assumed Thalman had a Greater Boon from the Magistrate. He couldn’t have been Cursed afterward because his Divine Bestowal slots were already filled.

  The diary of Jadewell’s grandfather shed some light on things, especially his meeting with this mysterious lord. This guy was Cursed. He and his followers exiled themselves to faraway elven lands. And they wouldn’t return to the Temples of Tribulation until their lord was an Enlightened Penitent.

  It then followed that Cursed Penitents were allowed to be labeled Enlightened Penitents.

  They should be. Penance was the big thing about their religion. The Cursed Penitents, out of everyone, should be given another chance. Add that the Penitent Path of the Cursed was more difficult compared to that trodden by those bestowed with Boons. If the Cursed individual reaches a Greater state, that is proof they should be forgiven and welcomed back into the fold.

  If it truly worked this way, Elian wasn’t surprised it wasn’t readily available information.

  Library books not mentioning Cursed Tribulations seemed to be willful censorship, pointing to a stigma for being Cursed by the Magistrate. And it was incredibly unlikely that someone Cursed could reach the level of an Enlightened Penitent and earn acceptance from the Magistrate’s followers. Enlightened Penitents themselves were incredibly rare.

  According to the records, Thalman was tagged an Enlightened Penitent during his last public Tribulation. The date was around a decade ago. It must’ve been after this Tribulation that he tried to kill the Magistrate and was forced into priesthood after his defeat. He wasn’t Cursed not because he didn’t have a slot. Rather, he was already Cursed, elevated to be an Enlightened Penitent because of his successes.

  If Elian’s theory was correct, it’d make sense why Thalman attacked the Magistrate.

  It could also be out of desperation, hoping to get rid of the Curse. Wouldn’t work though. Killing the deity’s form on the mortal plane wouldn’t affect its true existence; Boon or Curse would remain, as was recorded in the Covenant with the Gods. Could also be for revenge, a cathartic release of anger and frustration. Elian’s original theory might also work—Thalman was angry that the priests didn’t help him continue surviving the Tribulations.

  “Thalman’s original body,” Elian said, gazing southward. “Is it in the Forbidden Temple?”

  Without aid from the golden hall, Thalman, if truly Cursed, would have had no choice but to hide from the sky. And his hiding spot was ‘chosen’ for him by the other priests.

  Elian would like to think that Thalman had nothing to do with the theft. Being Cursed by the Magistrate wasn’t motive enough; that was the sort of bias Elian didn’t want to be applied to him as well. But on the other hand, the priests did force Thalman to join them. And seemed to continue doing so by keeping him at the Forbidden Temple.

  “No way I can ask him about that,” Elian said, hoping he was wrong.

  There was still the question of why now. This stopped him from immediately branding Thalman as the culprit.

  Elian returned to reading the diary while willing Viney to make the thinnest layer of Barkskin it could, spreading its minute tendrils over the ground. He aimed to get them as thin as a strand of hair. Once he reached that level of control, he could make more complex structures and interactions with Aether. A ton of practice was needed so making it would be second nature to him, not requiring much concentration.

  What he could manage for now was a circular sheet of Barkskin, about half an inch thick and four feet across. He left the center of the circle and let the children break it. They didn’t have a hard time given its thinness.

  Those who used the Barkskin plant symbiote didn’t care much for its structure. They focused on the symbiote’s growth, making it healthy and infusing it with all sorts of natural and magical nutrients. But that was because they couldn’t exert fine control over the armor produced. The Guardian Exactor Vine was different. Elian could control its tendrils, which meant controlling the Barkskin it’d form.

  And he was going to take full advantage of it. The illustrations from Gideon were a good starting template, but it’d be better if Elian could study the actual thing. He should order a costrahastan.

  Later in the afternoon, Elian left the camp. Sunset beckoned, the sky turning a gentle orange when he reached Forge Hill. With the coming blanket of darkness, many hunters returned to town, unwilling to risk the dangers of the night. They headed to the pubs to unwind after a long day of hunting.

  “Are they here?” Elian tried to peer through the windows of the Rusty Anvil. Marlowe told him this was their favorite hangout place.

  The glass was too cloudy to see inside. He pushed the creaking door and dipped his head at the low doorframe. Inside was dusty and musty, yet somehow cozy. Everything was wooden, its brown color aged and fine. There were a few tables. Most were occupied by laughing men who glanced at him when he entered, not minding him as he walked among them.

  “Elian of Gilders, join us,” came the voice of Marlowe. He sat at the table closest to the counter with two other men—Frederick and a grizzled old man with a nasty scar across his eye.

  Elian sat on the stool that Frederick pulled up. “Marlowe, Frederick…” Elian nodded at the one-eyed man. “Bufford, I presume? I’ve been wanting to meet you.”

  “And me, you,” said Bufford. He elbowed Frederick. “This the Cursed one you were talkin’ ‘bout?”