Do ratmen dream of the sacred tree of spirits?

Chapter 32 The Messenger

Kingsley stood a few meters away, his expression complex.

He had known Victor for a long time, but now that Victor had been transferred to Lorraine to work with him, the gap between the two had become enormous.

"Ravens are a distinctive feature of the Church of the God of Death," Captain Campbell's voice held awe. "Messengers of the spirit world..."

Campbell didn't finish speaking, and the raven ignored him.

It spread its wings—without flapping them or gathering any strength—and disappeared directly from the bow of the ship.

It didn't fly away, it disappeared.

Fafnir's vision captured that instantaneous change: Mr. Victor's spiritual aura completely detached from the material world and entered another dimension.

The spirit realm, the source of spirituality, and the foundation of all magic.

There was a full three seconds of silence on the deck.

"This...this..." Campbell's voice became hoarse: "Bishop Zaitsev went into the spirit world alone to chase a ship forty nautical miles away? Is that something a third-tier messenger could do?"

"A messenger probably can't do that, but a peak messenger should be able to," Kingsley replied.

"Your Excellency," Hans and the night watchmen, who had witnessed everything silently, said, "you can one day be like Bishop Victor..."

"Don't ask anymore." Kingsley's voice was very soft, but Hans immediately shut his mouth.

There was nothing in the distant sky.

But Fafnir knew that Victor was already flying very fast in the spirit world.

He read in "Introduction to Spirituality" that there is no concept of physical distance in the spirit world; the stronger one's spirituality, the greater one's range of perception and the faster one's movement.

The speed at which a third-order messenger travels in the spirit world is equivalent to dozens of times that of the material world.

Forty nautical miles is just a matter of minutes for Victor.

Everyone stood on the deck; no one spoke or moved.

Time passed very slowly.

Fafnir counted his heartbeats, and when he had counted to about three hundred, Kingsley and Campbell suddenly looked up at the sky.

"Here they come," Kingsley said.

Everyone looked up at the same time.

A few seconds later, Fafnir realized—not saw, but felt—that...

A spiritual energy wave emanated from the east; it was not aggressive, but rather a declaration.

It was like someone striking a bell from a great distance.

Fafnir saw the raven.

It emerged from the void, like colors being added to a painting bit by bit: first a blurry outline, then black wings, and finally, those black eyes.

The raven landed on top of the tallest mast and looked down at everyone on the deck.

"There are five people on board who have reached level two or above," the raven announced, its voice echoing ethereally from the top of the mast.

"Four peak second-tier units and one early third-tier unit."

"There are sixty large boxes of spirit amber in the cargo hold, twenty pieces in each box, which is sixty times the amount of the batch you seized," Raven continued.

Kingsley's brows furrowed. "Sixty times? What is the Nunns Empire trying to do?"

"A test," Raven said. "Perhaps the purpose of this shipment is to test the Holy Kingdom's spiritual monitoring capabilities."

Their surfaces are covered with camouflage spells; if we discover them, they should shrink.

If we hadn't noticed, they might have known that the sacred tree had a blind spot in its perception due to the 'feather shedding period.'

Is the sacred tree experiencing a blind spot in its perception due to its "feather shedding period"?

Fafner noticed this crucial information. Could it be that in the past, we could have directly discovered the anomaly without such a thorough search?

The raven flew down from the mast, circled once above the deck, and then hovered in mid-air—its wings did not flap, it just hung there.

"That ship is near the border of international waters right now, and it's going very fast. It will be out of the Holy Kingdom's territorial waters in another hour," Raven said, looking at Campbell. "You can't catch up with it."

"What should we do then?" Captain Campbell asked anxiously.

The raven did not answer; it flapped its wings and took flight.

"Oh, right," Raven tilted her head to look at Kingsley's profile, "I've marked the spiritual materials on that ship. You can find them by following my spiritual trails, and also—"

It paused:

"I'll bring back that one who's at the early stage of Tier 3 first."

After saying that, the raven instantly merged into the void and disappeared.

"What does Bishop Zaitsev mean by 'bring back'?" Captain Campbell asked.

Kingsley did not answer.

About ten minutes later, the raven returned.

When it emerged from the void, it was holding a person in its claws.

A bald man dressed in dark travel clothes was bound from head to toe with silver-gray spiritual threads, like a dumpling, with a wad of cloth stuffed in his mouth.

His eyes were wide open, his pupils filled with fear.

The raven flew over the deck and loosened its claws.

The man crashed onto the deck with a thud. The silver-gray threads automatically dissipated, revealing his full appearance—bald, with a dark red scar on his neck, a caved-in chest, and blood foam still oozing from his mouth, but he was still alive.

Hans stumbled back two steps and bumped into the ship's side.

Campbell's hand rested on the hilt of his sword, but he didn't draw it—he saw the spiritual aura emanating from the bald man, though it was so faint it was almost extinguished, but it was indeed the aura of a third-tier cultivator.

A level 3 fighter was caught by a raven in less than ten minutes.

The raven landed on the gunwale and preened its wings.

"This is their leader," it said. "He just broke through to the third rank, his spirituality was unstable, and he hadn't even built up a spiritual defense. He fell with a single blow."

Kingsley crouched down, pinched the bald man's chin to turn his face towards him, looked him over, and then stood up: "What about the others?"

"There are four more peak-level Tier 2 ships on board. I'll go and bring them back." After saying that, the raven flew away again.

On deck, Captain Campbell looked at the unconscious bald man on the ground, his lips moved several times, but in the end he only managed to squeeze out one sentence: "One strike..."

Hans's voice came from the side, tinged with envy: "Bishop Victor just said—'One hit and he's down,' and the opponent is a third-tier fighter..."

Kingsley did not respond.

He stared in the direction the raven had disappeared, his eyes filled with complex emotions.

He had known Victor for seven or eight years, and knew that Victor was exceptionally talented and that his promotion speed was astonishing.

But that pure black spiritual glow he had just seen—he had never seen it before.

The spirit messenger from the Church of the God of Death had seen more than one of them; each person's spiritual aura was a different color, but it seemed that pure black had never appeared.

A few minutes later, the raven flew back for the second time.

This time, it was holding two people under its claws, one in each claw, and its wings were flapping more frequently.

The two people, dressed in identical dark travel clothes, a young man and a woman, were both bound with silver-gray silk threads.

The woman was still struggling, making muffled whimpering sounds; the young man had his eyes closed, and appeared to have fainted.

"There are two more," the raven said.

Then it flew away for the third time.