The clock on the wall chimed, signaling the end of break and the start of another round of study for the nuns. Charles wrapped up his speech, walked to the doorway, and slipped out.
Sophia picked up the scripture and led the nuns in reading the next chapter aloud, then carefully marked out unfamiliar words for them to study further.
Everything seemed to be back on track. But of course, things wouldn't be resolved so easily. After leaving the scriptorium, Charles headed for the private third-level study room he used alone—not to study new spells, but to prep some materials.
Tonight, he planned to talk with the nuns one by one, tackling their anxieties, confusion, or arrogance, and nudging the group's spirit back on course.
His group was newly founded. He couldn't allow bad habits and attitudes to take root so soon.
As he hunched over the desk, scribbling notes, he couldn't help but marvel: forging a devoted, pure group was even harder than he'd thought.
There were only fourteen members now—small enough that he could spot any problems immediately and address them personally.
But what about when the group grew to a hundred, or a thousand, or even ten thousand?
He had no experience. The more he confronted these challenges, the deeper his respect grew for those who had accomplished such feats before.
...
Deep in the stygian darkness of the sewers, inside the secret Xanathar's Guild lair, the enormous beholder floated in midair, its huge central eye tightly shut, eyestalks curling neatly beneath it like the petals of an open lotus.
It was asleep—or more precisely, it was dreaming.
And as its Dream deepened, reality twisted and warped all around it.
Terrifying Chaos Energy seeped through the barriers of the world, flooding into the material plane. Shaped by the beholder's ever-shifting, bizarre Dream, the chaos coalesced into countless forms: jet-black serpents with eyes at both ends; stick-thin humanoids; double-headed dragons—on and on.
In the next room over—separated by just a wall—a lanky Mind Flayer arch-psionist, robed in blue-grey, sat cross-legged, eyes closed as he exerted his psychic magic, subtly steering Xanathar's Dream.
Not that he could control it perfectly. The beholder's psyche was wilder and trickier than he'd expected. All he could do was nudge it, suggest ideas, and try to push the Dream vaguely in the direction he wanted.
Arrayed around the Mind Flayer, three dwarves, a dark elf, and a human—all elite senior enforcers of Xanathar's Guild, decked out with enchanted longswords or staves—stood silent guard.
Their faces were grim; one wrong move, and they'd kill the Mind Flayer right there on the spot.
In the end, though, the whole process went off without a hitch. The shapeless chaos and energy swirling around the beholder morphed into a motley crew of night-black creatures—tall and slender, with strange, angular bodies, some humanoid, some hyena-shaped, some like huge cats or vultures. More than a dozen had taken form, each one deeply unsettling.
The Mind Flayer ceased his spellcasting and, at that cue, the beholder gradually opened all its eyes. Its giant central eye swept the room, blinking groggily in confusion—not quite sure if it was awake, or still caught in the dream.
Then, a gentle voice echoed through its mind: "Congratulations, Mighty Xanathar. Your first Dream was a huge success. Look at your creations—they're perfect assassins. Might even outclass the dark elves!"
Behind it, footsteps sounded. Still under the watchful gaze of the enforcers, that Mind Flayer slowly emerged, striding closer.
Throughout their psychic connection, he loudly praised the experiment's results—but Xanathar wasn't buying it. The beholder opened its monstrous jaws and spat out, in harsh, mocking Common: "Is this pitiful rabble really the best you can create?"
The Mind Flayer wasn't the least bit offended—he just kept responding telepathically: "They're excellent weapons, and you know it. You saw for yourself in your dream, didn't you? Oh, but…"
"Of course, how powerful they'll be in the real world… well, that's up to your own abilities."
The more he kept this up, the more Xanathar seethed. In its dream, these freaks had ganged up on it, nearly tearing it apart before it finally managed to bring them all to heel.
The more it thought about it, the more furious it became—energy started to crackle in several eye rays, and it seriously considered vaporizing everyone nearby just to vent its rage.
Right then, the handbell in the room rang softly, snapping the beholder out of its murderous reverie. It tapped the bell with its own magic; the door swung open, and a short, wiry gnome—barely a meter tall—scurried in: "Great Xanathar, we've finished the investigations you ordered."
"Turns out, the real mastermind wasn't that coward Chauvin—he didn't have the guts to take us on. Sure, he claimed the credit, but that was just a smokescreen."
"The one who actually ordered the killings was the guy who brought down Montport—Nigel Charles, priest of the Goddess of Life. No one knows what madness came over him, but supposedly, he killed six or seven hundred people in one go!"
Six. Seven. Hundred.
That number sent a cold shock through the room—even among hardened criminals, having hundreds of lives on your hands was insane. In all their years, none of them had ever slain that many; crime was for profit, after all. They mostly just roughed people up—killing was always a last resort.
But this Charles—supposedly a cleric of the Goddess of Life!
They stared at each other in bewilderment, Xanathar most of all. Its great gaze was full of confusion. Since when did the Goddess of Life produce someone like that?
"Nigel Charles…" the beholder muttered, then, suddenly, its eyes narrowed and gleamed coldly. "I see. Someone as unremarkable as him—how could he possibly have killed an Abyssal Lord before?"
"That Abyssal Lord must never have died at all. It clearly possessed Charles and slowly took over his mind—turned him into its pawn!"
"And this massacre… it must've been a ritual sacrifice! Seriously, what a sanctimonious hypocrite!"
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