Arknightcraft Modpack
Chapter 618: So Catching Traitors Was Really This Easy?
With Irene in tow, Steven headed straight for the nearby village.
Thanks to her status as an Inquisitor, gathering the entire population proved remarkably easy. Before long, all of the villagers had assembled in the small square at the center of the settlement.
Most of them looked at Irene with puzzled expressions.
As the person responsible for this sudden gathering, she naturally became the focus of everyone's attention.
The problem was that none of them knew what had happened outside the village.
As far as they were concerned, an Inquisitor had suddenly arrived and demanded that everyone gather. Naturally, they couldn't understand the purpose behind it.
What was unusual, however, was how orderly the crowd remained.
Under normal circumstances, there would always be a few people loudly protesting or whispering among themselves.
Not here.
That wasn't because these villagers were particularly law-abiding citizens.
Rather, their village happened to be located relatively close to the Inquisitors' encampment. As one of the first settlements to receive potato seeds, they had recently enjoyed a successful harvest thanks to the Inquisitors' efforts.
And when people who spent their entire lives struggling to survive suddenly had enough food to eat, they weren't exactly eager to oppose the ones responsible.
For ordinary folk—especially those living in harsh conditions like these—the person who filled their stomachs might as well be their second parent.
At this point, if the Inquisitors ordered them to gather, they gathered.
Hell, if someone suggested picking a few villagers for some eldritch god-sacrifice ritual, there probably wouldn't be much resistance either.
Soon, the entire village stood assembled in the square.
Irene positioned herself beside Steven, curious to see what miraculous method he would use this time to identify the infiltrators from the Church of the Deep.
Meanwhile, Steven himself looked completely relaxed.
Arms folded across his chest, he leisurely walked through the crowd.
One villager after another passed before his eyes.
The scene reminded him of when he'd been building villager trading halls.
Back then, he had needed to carefully select villagers with useful professions.
Compared to that, today's task was laughably simple.
All he had to do was glance at the name floating above someone's head.
If it contained the words "Church of the Deep," that was all the confirmation he needed.
After inspecting every single resident in the village—a settlement with fewer than a few hundred people total—Steven returned to Irene's side and stroked his chin thoughtfully.
Then he flashed her a confident smile.
"So."
He tilted his head slightly.
"Do I handle this myself, or do you want to go through the paperwork and follow official procedure first?"
Steven already knew the answer.
The only question was how Irene wanted to proceed.
"Aren't you in a hurry?"
Irene shrugged.
"I leave everything to you."
She had no way of identifying traitors simply by looking at them like Steven could.
But her trust in him wasn't fake.
At this point, Steven hardly needed to justify his actions in her eyes.
Coincidentally, that kind of trust worked wonders on him.
If someone was willing to believe in him, he didn't mind putting in a little extra effort.
It wasn't as though it would take much time anyway.
"Wait a bit then."
Steven snapped his fingers.
A faint green glow flowed from his body and sank into the ground.
Then he began pointing into the crowd one person at a time.
Wherever his finger landed, strange slime-like vines burst upward from beneath the earth.
Like living tendrils, they wrapped around selected villagers and pinned them firmly in place.
When it came to crowd control, Shoggy was far more useful than Yamato.
The restraints wouldn't do much against someone like Steven.
Against ordinary villagers?
They were more than sufficient.
In the blink of an eye, over twenty people from the crowd of more than three hundred had been bound by the writhing slime vines.
The remaining villagers immediately scattered backward.
Fear spread across their faces as they stared at their captured companions.
The bound villagers resembled insects trapped within enormous spider webs.
"I know you're all panicking."
Steven raised his voice before the crowd could descend into chaos.
"But relax. The explanation is coming."
The villagers froze.
Then Steven reached into his inventory and pulled out a rather peculiar bottle filled with a milky-white liquid.
Under countless confused gazes, he walked over and sprayed the restrained villagers.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The moment the mist touched their skin, agonized screams erupted from the captives.
It sounded as though something was being forcibly torn from their flesh.
Their cries were so miserable and desperate that several villagers instinctively stepped back in horror.
And alongside those screams, changes began appearing across their exposed bodies.
Scales emerged along their skin.
Bulging patches of fish-like tissue surfaced beneath the flesh.
Some developed strange aquatic features.
Others grew unmistakable gill slits along their necks.
In only a few moments, the truth that had been hidden among the villagers was laid bare for everyone to see.
The moment this scene unfolded before them, even the dullest villagers understood what had happened.
That appearance.
Those grotesque transformations.
Only people who had been corrupted by heretical cults for a long time could end up looking like that.
"So," Steven said as he dusted off his hands, "I'd say that's a pretty reasonable explanation, wouldn't you?"
He casually tossed the diluted milk bottle back into his inventory.
"There's always a reason when we gather everyone together. We wouldn't call you all here just for fun."
Ever since discovering that milk possessed surprisingly useful properties in this world, Steven had developed all sorts of applications for it.
Detecting Seaborn corruption.
Identifying Oripathy infections.
For jobs like these, milk was absurdly convenient.
The moment those words left his mouth, the villagers' expressions changed completely.
The confusion and suspicion that had filled their eyes vanished, replaced by admiration.
After all, actions spoke louder than words.
And there was no evidence more convincing than the truth displayed right before their eyes.
In the past, even if the Inquisition arrested a cultist from the village, most people wouldn't have cared.
When you couldn't even fill your stomach, who had the luxury of worrying about whether someone was a traitor?
But things were different now.
The Inquisitors had distributed food.
They had provided farmland.
The villagers' lives were improving with each passing season.
Under those circumstances, anyone who endangered the village's relationship with the authorities wasn't just causing trouble for themselves—they were making an enemy of the entire village.
Anyone trying to take food off their tables was everyone's enemy.
Compared to that, being dragged away by the Inquisition was getting off lightly.
If anything, it was simply the consequence of their own actions.
The operation concluded with astonishing speed.
Thanks to Shoggy's tentacles, the Church of the Deep infiltrators couldn't organize any meaningful resistance.
Most couldn't even open their mouths.
The writhing tentacles had sealed them shut before they could attempt to incite panic or manipulate the other villagers.
All Irene had to do was notify her colleagues and ask them to come collect the prisoners for interrogation.
After years of serving as an Inquisitor, this was the first time she had ever felt that her job could be this easy.
The entire process had left her standing there in a daze.
Her gaze remained fixed on Steven's back until he suddenly waved a hand in front of her face, snapping her out of her thoughts.
Only then did the little bird finally restart her mental gears.
Without hesitation, she grabbed his arm.
Her excitement was so overwhelming that she couldn't even find the words.
"Easy there."
Steven winced.
"Don't pinch me so hard."
"I already know what you want to ask."
He smiled knowingly.
"That bottle just contains one of my ordinary medicines. It's particularly effective on people showing signs of Seaborn transformation and on Oripathy patients."
He shrugged.
"I was planning to recommend it to Carmen anyway, so there's no need to worry about me hiding anything."
The moment he saw Irene's expression, he'd already guessed what was running through her mind.
So he answered all of her questions before she could even ask them.
Then, with practiced ease, he reached out and straightened the slightly disheveled collar of her Inquisitor uniform.
"And one more thing."
Steven leaned closer.
"There are still a few hiding deeper in the shadows."
His voice dropped to a whisper beside Irene's delicate ear.
"Some haven't undergone any transformation at all."
"I'll give you a list of their names later."
"Just have your colleagues take them away quietly without attracting attention."
Not every traitor in the Church of the Deep accepted physical transformation.
Those people were the most dangerous.
The best-hidden.
The hardest to discover.
Unfortunately for them, they had run into him.
At that point, all he could say was that their luck had truly run out.
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Note: Character Illustration is in this Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iuyfwNVFHzIi9H4rWNT_lAm7jTSiah_M
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