Chapter 146: The Poet of Boundless Love Teaches the Clergy

As night fell, the corridor in the second floor of Lichten’s Castle seemed to merge into the darkness. The only light came from a row of antique chandeliers suspended down the center. Outside the windows, which were flanking the hallway and shrouded in a dim, misty haze, the castle's trees and the distant cliffs began to lose their distinct shapes.

Down on the first floor, the young master of the Cambella Kingdom, the bodyguard siblings, and Frey were busy making preparations to host the vampire count. Yet, before the arrival of Count Palokas, a member of the vampiric nobility, the others had a crucial task to attend to. They needed to break the captured priestess of the Church of Resurrection and extract complete intelligence regarding this Shadow Realm dungeon from her.

Lance admitted that interrogation wasn't his forte. He was soft-hearted by nature, so he couldn't bear to see others suffer. As for the three clergy, although they had spent years battling cultists, they had never actually conducted an interrogation themselves. Simply defeating these unpredictable cultists was difficult enough, let alone capturing one alive.

Even if they did manage to capture one, clergy were generally forbidden from interrogating cultists on their own. There had been past instances where individuals, having engaged too deeply with cultists, unwittingly fell into corruption themselves.

However, thanks to the professional legal guidance provided by the Lawyer, they knew that the rules were different here. Within a Shadow Realm dungeon, provided their own safety was assured, they were free to interrogate captured cultists however they saw fit!

Thus, to compensate for the clergies' lack of expertise in this area, Lance had brought in a specialist to guide them.

***

Bedroom 202 was where the captured priestess of the Church of Resurrection was being held. In a corridor outside the room was a young woman with lovely gray hair that shimmered in the dim light, gleaming like the brightest star in the night sky.

Her voice rang out clear and bright. "The executioner will handle the torture, the priest will handle the healing, and the paladin will handle the confession. Don't ask a single question. Just gag her and spend the first hour practicing your techniques on her. No matter what she says, do not stop the torture. I will come back later to question her myself."

The Poet of Boundless Love stood in the center of the hallway, backed by an ancient mural that seemed to tell a story from a mysterious, bygone era. The three clergy, their voices filled with confusion and distress, asked, "B-but... why conduct an interrogation like this?"

If you're administering torture without asking any questions, isn't that just pure, senseless torment?

Although the Poet was a demon-type summoned creature, she had been appointed as an instructor by the Lawyer, so she was presumably an expert in her field. Even if she was a genuine demon rather than a summoned entity, the clergy of the Church of the Goddess of Fate would have treated her no differently. After all, history had seen demon clergy before.

The Poet sighed and sat casually on the nearby windowsill. She looked like a goddess from a painting, elegant and dignified, yet radiating a captivating allure that made it impossible to tell whether she was an angel or a devil.

"Don't underestimate the elite members of the Resurrection Cult. She has almost certainly undergone professional anti-interrogation training. Dealing with a prisoner of this caliber usually requires a drawn-out process before they finally break and confess. I call this protracted phase 'the prisoner's reserve.' Since the prisoner is bound to remain tight-lipped for a while, it doesn't matter if we simply gag her right from the start. Conducting interrogation and questioning simultaneously is inefficient. It only leads the prisoner to believe they still hold bargaining chips or have room to negotiate."

She then emphasized, "As the interrogators, we must make one thing crystal clear to the prisoner: the information itself is irrelevant. Whether she chooses to speak or not makes no difference. Severe punishment is inevitable, and she possesses absolutely no dignity or value in our eyes! And you must remember this: what a top-tier interrogator truly needs to inflict upon a prisoner is not pain, but fear..."

As they listened to the Poet's instructions, the three clergies' eyes were filled with conflict and apprehension. After hearing her explanation, one of them couldn’t help but ask, "But, Miss Lana, is this really the sort of thing we, as members of the clergy, ought to be doing?"

Although they understood her teachings and found them logical, they worried that, as clergy belonging to a church aligned with Lawful Good, mastering such taboo interrogation theories might violate their doctrine. The more they listened to her voice, the more their resolve wavered, and the more they feared straying onto a dangerous path.

"The gods are inherently cruel. Unable to intervene in the mortal realm directly, they use one person's hand to slay another." Seeing the bewildered expressions of the three clergy, the Poet smiled slightly and murmured in a voice of exquisite tenderness, "The gods surely delight in this. In fact, they do it constantly. After all, were we not fashioned in their very image?"

Her whisper was steeped in allure, swirling endlessly around their ears like an inescapable enchantment.

"Cruelty and torment are best viewed as a form of love, for one cannot control whom one falls for... So, this is not your fault. It is all simply a matter of upholding your faith, nothing more."

The three clerics murmured, their eyes growing hazy as if they were gradually coming to understand everything, "So that's how it is... This is love..."

They emerged from their confusion, replaced by a faith that burned with renewed fanaticism!

***

Lance and Hyperion were watching from a nearby corridor.

"Lance, are you sure this is okay?!" Hyperion felt like her heart was about to leap out of her chest. Lance might be committing a colossal blunder here!

After briefly observing the Poet's hands-on class, Lance signaled to Hyperion that they could leave. "Providing professional and reliable skills training to members of the clergy is, in itself, an act of accumulating merit. You can rest assured regarding the quality of instruction."

The Poet possessed certain inexplicable talents and abilities that even Talia wasn't good at. In fact, aside from sharing the same appearance and race as the demon princess, she was completely different in every other respect. He could only surmise that the magical material known as the Hymn of Compassion had endowed the Poet with a host of peculiar traits.

As they walked away, Hyperion couldn't help but glance back at the Poet instructing the three clergy. This particular Shadow Realm dungeon was titled Banquet of the Sanctuary Villains, though in reality, it was Purgatory Corridor Academy II, featuring an intensive five-day training course led by the "headmaster."

Hyperion's only prayer now was that, when she and Lance traveled in disguise to the Northern Continent during the winter break to seek out Cardinal Askesan of Annihilation, they wouldn't run into these three clergy.

She could already picture the scene: the three of them clutching The Collected Anthology of Lance, belting out The Internationale, and proclaiming that only by crushing cults could the Northern Continent be saved.