At the conclusion of the meeting he held with the clergy’s executives under his orders, Durant Sunnivah made his way to his quartier. Walking through the long corridor leading to his quartier, the man heaved out a loud sigh.

The earlier reunion was about the hierarchical changes his jurisdiction had to go through as a result of recent events across the continent, as well as the recent meeting he had with his fellow Archbishops and Holy Paladins of the Church.

As if the calamities and their aftermath weren't enough to deal with, they now had to deal with the aristocracy, which turned out to be less threatening than expected, and, most recently, the Faceless One, a ghost, whom Durant thought was dead for good, but apparently wasn't, because two proofs of his well-being and return arrived to them, the Fourteen, a few weeks ago.

A summons of urgence was issued a few weeks ago between the Fourteen to inform them of the return of the expedition sent to investigate the calamities, or to be exact, the dragons, or whatever could be behind them.

On a personal note, Durant was against the expedition. He thought the idea of sending three of their best elements to that, which was well-known to be the most dangerous place on earth, was foolish and sterile. To Durant, the church's priority should’ve been to deal with the mess left behind by the calamities and wipe out that plague that is the Aristocracy, which men were growing rampant across the continent.

On a more personal level, Durant made the former a top priority.From the moment little to nothing was known about the organization, he was already in their tracks. For among them was a group of men he had been hunting for over four decades but had never been able to apprehend.

The man and his organization have been, despite their generally overly barbaric methods, known for their discretion and their ability to slip out of authorities' hands, making their track quite a tedious task. They were generally known for almost chaotically preying upon whoever they were after, but lately, especially since the Erwein's Brotherhood alliance with the Aristocracy, their activity has become more moderate.

Durant, back then, understood that whoever was behind the one pulling behind the shadows, the person seemed to know how to keep the leader of the brotherhood on a leash. But that was what Durant thought before the said person revealed herself as Mathilda Douglas, a well-renowned personality across the continent.

As much as it soiled the Church’s name all this time, the truth was that the one financing the aristocracy was the same family who, after the calamities struck the continents, through their apparently benevolic and humanitarian activities, made a more popular, than it already was, name for themselves.

The whole revelation of that woman’s and her family’s involvement with the aristocracy came insultingly unexpected for everyone, but to the church, it came across as a straight slap on the face.

From the extent of the threat they made through that reveal, Durant was expecting a huge move from them, which turned out to be a wrong assumption, for after the woman, Mathilda, announced the Aristocracy's existence to the continent, they went anticlimactically silent.

Of course, there were still small incidents of their doing occurring here and there across the continent, but nothing befitting the extent of damage they could've dealt if they had taken advantage of the edge the grand speech that woman’s mere reveal gave them. In the end, Durant was left perplexed as to what exactly they were up to.

It simply didn’t make sense.

It was during one of these small incidents of their doing that, a few weeks ago, Durant managed to catch two of the Brotherhood’s men in the net that had led to them, thanks to two nobles who allied themselves to aristocracy to then later turn their vest on them.

From these nobles, Durant had learnt of the existence of the person the aristocracy referred to as "The Mother", the one who seemed to be the mastermind, working even as a superior to Mathilda, who took over the role for their organization as the aristocracy public figure known as Maa. Someone else stood atop the Aristocracy in other worlds, someone lurking in the shadows, using Mathilda as just one of the main pawns on the chessboard.

Just when he thought the mastermind had revealed itself, another one showed its tail.

From the two captured men, Durant was expecting to learn more about that woman, "The Mother", yet the two men, in the same fashion, upon being captured, took with them to the tomb a secret regarding their fellow aristocrats and brothers of the Eirweins of the Brotherhood.

An act which forced Durant's respect. It is such a shame they weren’t born nobles and members of the church, for loyalty is something running low on this continent as of late. Though their deaths were quite a shame, it didn’t inconvenience Durant in the slightest. In fact, he saw it as an opportunity. Having hunted the brotherhood and its leaders for so long, Durant knew that there wouldn’t be any way they wouldn’t come for the nobles that had betrayed them for retribution. He knew that vengeance, like him, was their fuel.

He put the two treasonous nobles under close watch, focusing particularly on the second one, using the first one as bait. As he had expected, they came for the first one. Durant deduced that they would undoubtedly do the same for the second family, the Baristas.

But, just as he had finished preparing for their arrival at the barista manor, he and his fellow fourteen were summoned in urgence by the church.

Despite his reticence, his duty as an archbishop prevailed over that hunt. Due to the personal nature of this quest, to the summon, Durant called off until his return the reception he prepared for the Aristocracy and the Brotherhood. By the time he got back, it was too late. His bait was gone, and so was his prey.

"Such a waste."

All that for what? It was about to be announced that, as Durant had predicted, the expedition had suffered great casualties, even losing the continent's last teleportation magic wielding man, and that a ghost of the past had been sighted to be alive somewhere deep within the Iharana Greatforest, while being assumed to be related to the calamity itself by the expedition's sole survivor, a fellow Archbishop of the Church of Durant.

***

"It will come for us, just like we came for him years ago." Those were the words of Archbishop Ainsley.

The Faceless One was a disturbing case for Durant, one that he desperately tried to erase from his mind, and just as he thought he had, it reappeared, under these words of threat.

It came for them, indeed, it did.

Roughly a few weeks after the announcement of his return to the human continent, the message sent through the Holy Paladin Aubrecht to the Archbishop of Medvedik, he made his return felt across the continent.

He took down one of Durant’s fellow Fourteen, The Lady Archbishop Karen Caelus, the maiden of the Church, though not someone with whom Durant particularly got along with their sedentary and unaproachable personality, but still respected her greatly for the way she single-handedly ruled over the territory she vassaled over.

For years, Durant displayed a particular interest in her magic, for with magic such as hers, one’s concern for things such as betrayal and surveillance would be greatly lowered. But upon learning of the gruesome truth behind that said magic, Durant gave up the idea.

"To think that she is gone just like that."

A chill ran down Durant’s back. He leaned forward, pouring himself a glass of whisky, before swallowing the entire drink in one go.

The chill running down his spine was not because he was not afraid of death; he had no fear of it. He was, in fact, expecting that "peace" at last; that which he was afraid of was to die before accomplishing that oath he had made that day.

Leaning back deep into his chair, Durant remembered that day of fire, blood, and ashes. In one night, all his loved ones were lost.

It happened many years ago, when he was still an Aurora Academia scholar. He met a girl with whom he would later fall in love and marry, in spite of the fact that she came from a rather lowborn family among the seven great.

A girl with whom he would have a son a few years later,

A woman with his son, whom he would learn a few years later, while away fighting the crusade, was found murdered on his return for some stupid vendetta for something that happened decades before. He lost both, leaving not even a remnant of them to be farewelled to.

That day, he took an oath that he was the one who must find and punish the person who had taken his wife and son away from him. An oath, to which Durant would devote the decades that would follow.

The Eirwein brothers. Durant knew the three of them were responsible for his wife and son's deaths, and only one had died at his hands, so he couldn't allow himself to die until the three of these brothers died at his hands, even if it meant hiding himself away from the faceless one like a rat.

He simply could not allow himself to die yet.

Glancing at the ceiling and closing his eyes, "Just not yet. Just a bit, Zara, Isaac, just a little bit, "he murmured for them to hear, even though he knew that he had most likely just spoken to nothing but the wind.

It was then that Durant heard the last sound he wished to hear of the day.

The ringing sound of a device he knew linked him and his fellow Fourteen. He stood up from his chair and went to a corner of the room where a hidden passage was hidden behind the bookshelves, allowing him to enter an almost empty room. Within that room, one could only see one object: a tinkling orb hovering in the middair.

"Answer the call." Durant chanted.

Instantly reacting to his word, the floating orb shifted into a device relaying images and voices between two people.

On the screen, a man appeared, a face that among the fourteen was the second last Durant wished to see of the day.

"What is it? Who is dead?" Durant directly asked.

"Such a pessimism. Are you sure the paperwork your jurisdiction is currently going through isn't taking too much of a toll on you, old friend?"

"I did and always carried out my duty well and rather vicarously. And I cannot say it is the same for you. "

"Come on now. Are you still blaming me for having shielded the Douglas Lady?"

Years ago, after the event known as the Night Ecarlate, after the diplomatic mess between the Archbishop and Holy Paladin Medvedik, out of seven archbishops and seven holy Paladins, this person was, due to the fact that diplomacy was his forte, the one charged with collecting intelligence regarding the whole incident and calming down the mess left by the confrontation against the faceless one in Beaumont.

"What I feel about the fact that you willingly hid from us the fact that a woman of Douglas's family was connected to the Faceless does not matter. But I’ll make it clear to you that I, unlike our fellow Archbishops and Holy Paladins, consider it a betrayal to the church and deserve fitting punishment, but now is not the time for that. "

"Indeed, it is not time for that. But know that, for eight years, I hid her involvement with the faceless one because of her family’s name and nothing else, a family with whom the church and our beloved seven great noble families nurtured rather great relationships. "

"Which is why you chose to keep the truth from us?"

"Yes, for I believed a mistake was not enough to squander centuries of good relations. I believed doing well, which is why I, upon learning of her family alliance with the Aristocracy, immediately revealed to you that she had once acted as the Faceless One’s nanny.."

"That was a little bit too late for that."

"I concede that one, my friend. I only saw profit and failed to see the end of things. And I will gladly punish you for it when the time comes. "

Durant didn’t comment on it, simply sighed.

"So, what did you call me for? I can assume no one else has died yet, and I’d like to believe it couldn’t only be for this small talk, so what did you call me for?"

"Indeed, it is as you said, not for small talk. I have something for you, something you will be eternally grateful to me for. "

Intrigued by the tone in which the man spoke, Durant asked, "What is it?"

Harboring an ominous smile, the man announced, "It’s about them… or to be exact, him, the one whom you have for several decades hounded after. "