As Investigators, they were empowered to go anywhere. A priest could ask them to leave an area, but that would only last until Priest-Investigator Ekari reinforced their right to investigate an area. All Investigators were assumed to be at least Acolytes; many were actually priests, even though they didn’t hold the title Priest-Investigator. This meant that even areas that were off-limits to laypeople couldn’t simply be prohibited to Investigators.

Technically, there were areas where only a priest above a certain rank was allowed, but there weren’t supposed to be any of those in Steadfast Seventeen. If there had been, only Ekari would be able to investigate them.

Openly, at least.

That last piece was key. What the priests of Steadfast Seventeen didn’t know very well could hurt them and probably would. At the moment, the only plan they had was to slaughter all of the priests and make it look like a dungeon monster attack to keep the disappearance of the abducted victims quiet for long enough to pull the same trick at another church.

What Serenity couldn’t immediately decide was if he wanted to enter the Worship Hall openly or secretly. There were advantages to both options. He was fairly confident that his Sovereign form could go into the area without being noticed, since it was late enough there should be significant shadows. In that form, he should be able to look around and listen. He might or might not find anything, but he wouldn’t be noticed.

On the other hand, being able to “look around” well was one of the big advantages of going in openly. He couldn’t really see in Sovereign form; all he could do was tell where objects were and what shape they had. He couldn’t read and if there was anything that needed color vision he’d be unable to tell.

The fact that he’d be slower wasn’t significant when he had hours to look around, but the fact that he couldn’t be seen had its own issues. They wouldn’t know anyone had been to the Worship Hall, so they’d continue to be careful there. It wasn’t that he couldn’t go back; instead, it was simply that people tended to assume you wouldn’t doublecheck an area you’d already checked without a reason.

On the gripping hand, he could undo not being seen by making himself visible or perhaps leaving a trace he’d been there if he found it useful for some reason. He couldn’t be un-seen easily.

Perhaps the best answer was to openly look somewhere nearby so that he could secretly be more thorough about what he wanted to look at? It would be easy enough to “change his mind” and go somewhere if he needed to, then.

Or he could just shift into his human form, as long as his human form was already wearing the black overcoat.

No, the idea of doing both was silly. It also required him to adequately manage both his body and his Sovereign form at the same time. He was getting better at splitting his attention and having one be his Sovereign form helped, but he still couldn’t make it look natural.

If there was something he could salvage from it, it was that there was no reason he had to always stay in the same form. He was all too prone to forgetting that.

Serenity walked to the entrance, then followed the signs to the Worship Hall. There was certainly no need to be secretive on his way there; people were not only allowed but encouraged to come into a Worship Hall at any time. It was supposed to be more effective to pray there, and Ekari had told them that priests were generally supposed to find some time every day to spend in worship in a place dedicated to it.

So that was what anyone who saw Serenity would think he was going to do.

He was seen on his way over; there were people in the garden, “weeding” despite the poor light. Serenity didn’t say anything, and neither did the people that he was confident were simply there to watch the investigators.

When Serenity reached the Worship Hall, it was empty. There was plenty of stuff there, including all of the seating that was normal, but there were no people. Serenity took his time and looked around; something was odd beyond the simple lack of people; while he wouldn’t have expected that at a monastery on Earth, which this seemed to be closer to than anything else, it might be normal on Lyka.

When he finally figured it out, Serenity was glad he’d decided to walk because the clue that made him put the pieces together was something that would have been very difficult to see in his Sovereign form. Things were stacked in the corners and the seating had been pulled out of position, but it was more than that. The entire room was dusty, like the place where they’d entered the complex; if anything, it was even worse, especially in the corners. It was far more dirty than the relatively public entrance, however, which said that either something had happened in the room or it hadn’t been cleaned in a lot longer than three months.

A Worship Hall should always be kept clean. The fact that the entrance was dusty was also odd; the rest of the complex was relatively clean. It wasn’t obsessively clean the way Serenity had half-expected the Worship Hall to be, but it wasn’t dirty either. Serenity had assumed that that simply meant the entryway wasn’t being used; did that mean the Worship hall also wasn’t being used?

It was something to remember.

For now, though, it changed Serenity’s plans. He would be noted if went anywhere and someone was actually there; they might even take it as a threat if there was actually a secret here instead of the relatively ordinary reinforced religious settlement it looked like. He was unseen now, so he’d simply shift to his Sovereign form. If anyone came looking for him, they’d assume he’d left while he wasn’t being watched.

This was one of the reasons Serenity was grateful Ita could communicate with him without a token. He couldn’t carry a token in his Sovereign form, but he didn’t have to.

Serenity shifted, then picked a hallway to begin with. It was difficult to decide which one was the most important, because the Worship Hall didn’t completely match the previous churches he’d been in, which was also strange. The others were remarkably standardized, and he’d been in a lot of them over the past few months.

In the end, Serenity just picked the corridor in the middle. He had no basis for his choice, but he had all night to explore.

“...seventeen.” A woman’s voice coming from the other side of a closed door was the first indication Serenity found of people in the entire building.

He’d traveled into an entirely different wing of the church building before he found anyone; even the spaces that Serenity thought were set aside as meditation or sleeping chambers for the priests who tended the Worship Hall were empty. He couldn’t check to see if the new area was cleaner, since he couldn’t really see dirt as anything other than texture, but the presence of people made him think it might well be.

“It’s not enough.” A man’s voice, this time. The man sounded stressed more than anything.

Something about his voice seemed remarkably familiar to Serenity.

“It’s plenty. Ara says we’ll have more in a few days; the giant pig will be ready tomorrow, and they can use the ashes to make more soap.” The woman huffed softly. “I had no idea ashes were used to make soap. I thought it was glycerin or something like that.”

“Soap’s not the real problem, it’s everything. We can’t just eat meat, and who knows what eating monsters will do to us?” The man took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I know, I know, there’s nothing we can do about it so make the best of it. I’m tired of making the best of it.”

The word “glycerin” made Serenity realize what seemed so familiar about the voices: they were speaking English.

They sounded completely unlike the other Earthlings Serenity had rescued on Lyka; these people sounded like they were dealing with a bad situation, certainly, but they sounded like they felt like they had the power to affect it. More than that, it sounded like they were working with the locals. That fact together with the neglect of the Worship Hall added up to a very different situation than they’d expected.

They’d expected to use Ekari’s supposed status as a Priest-Investigator to either relocate the Earthlings or simply steal them; that plan was probably out the window now. They had to figure out what was actually going on and adjust, but it seemed likely that they, or rather the Earthlings that ended up here, had gotten very lucky.

Serenity had hopes that this might make things a lot easier, but he needed confirmation. :Ita? Has anyone else reported anything odd that makes this look like we guessed wrong about what was happening here? I found some Earthlings, but they don’t seem to be nearly as cowed as the others we’ve found.:

Ita’s reply was surprisingly fast; she must not have been communing with Lyka when he contacted her. :Kerr says that all of the weapons in the armory have been used recently, far more than there are supposed to be trained priests. Even including the other listed residents isn’t enough people for the number of weapons that are in the armory. Blaze reported that he found the infirmary but hasn’t sent anything since.:

Serenity figuratively chuckled to himself. That was a very Blaze sort of a report; he’d reported what he thought was important then headed off to do his duty. Serenity was certain Blaze was busy healing, and would be until everyone was at least out of danger. He’d heal until he ran out of mana, and Blaze could manage an impressive amount of healing.

:Ekari is giving regular updates, but so far all I’ve really learned is that the records aren’t in any of the first three places she checked. Sillon says he’s not done, and he hasn’t found anything truly hidden, but the place is set up more like an isolated village than an enclave in the middle of a city. They seem prepared to do everything without help instead of taking advantage of the people around them.:

That wasn’t exactly what Serenity had expected to hear, but it was another set of not-quite-matching puzzle pieces. They were interesting, even if Serenity didn’t have the whole picture yet. :What about you, Ita?:

:Me?: Ita sounded surprised. :No one’s approached me.:

Serenity would have sighed if he’d had lungs. :You were talking to Lyka, weren’t you?:

:Oh, that. Yes, it didn’t take that long. Lyka is upset and wants us to deal with the people hurting its core. All I was able to get otherwise is that it can, through the dungeons, only leave temporary instructions in monsters that are released during a Dungeon Break. They last a short period of time before the monsters start acting like whatever they would normally. I couldn’t tell if the short period of time was days or weeks but it was something like that.:

Ita’s report was clear and concise; she had clearly finally learned how Serenity liked getting information. It didn’t change anything but it was something to keep in mind. Serenity wasn’t certain how he was going to stop the mining of Lyka’s World Core, but he thought it might well happen when he went after the people held by Priest Alanaeon. The question of whether that would be before or after the eclipse was something he’d have to determine later.

For now, he needed to deal with the situation in front of him. Serenity shifted to his chimera form instead of his human form, covered himself in his armor-self, then grinned. He knew just how to do this.

He knocked on the door in a pattern.

Shave and a hair-cut.