What Solomon had just said contained far too much information.
Gaia stared in shock at the ring faintly gleaming beneath the night sky, while a whole string of suspicions rushed through her mind, and many things that had once made no sense to her suddenly became clear.
Although the corpses in Kaha Village had shown signs of being eaten, compared to the giant tusks of the greenskins, the wounds on those mostly intact bodies had been far too "gentle."
And in the house where Nia had been found, the way her parents had died also did not look like the work of Orks.
Those smooth, clean wounds could never have been made by the rough choppas of greenskins.
And that grotesque act of stuffing the man's head into the woman's body looked far more like some kind of evil ritual.
Gaia's gaze turned uncertain.
Meanwhile, Solomon continued speaking in his usual slow, deliberate way:
"You probably noticed too that the men led by that young master Paulus have serious problems."
"And that got me thinking about a rumor that's been spreading around this sector lately..."
"There's apparently a strange cult, called the Cult of Gluttony, that has been appearing on various planets, preaching its doctrine to the meat-eaters of the Upper Hive."
"They believe that nobles and commoners are two different species by birth, with the former being the higher form of life."
"And supposedly, to demonstrate their own superiority, some of their followers will eat commoners like livestock, as proof that they are beings above them."
"And they call this anti-human atrocity salvation, because in their view, those lowly creatures are honored to become part of a more perfect body."
Solomon spoke flatly, but the implication in his words could not have been more obvious.
"I thought it was just a rumor. I didn't expect it might actually be true."
He looked at Gaia, whose face was already beginning to show more visible emotion, narrowed his eyes, and spoke in a grave tone:
"In other words, this young master Paulus, and probably the entire House Joguya behind him, have already converted to that cult."
Gaia slowly closed her eyes.
A flood of imagined bloody scenes began flashing through her mind.
Those things wrapped in human skin were luring innocent people in under the name of rescue, only to brutally butcher and devour them afterward.
They had toyed with Nia's parents, slaughtering those brave and noble resisters, then arranging their corpses into a blasphemous display.
They boasted of their nobility while committing sins baser than the most savage beasts.
They wore fine clothes, yet could not conceal the grotesque faces beneath, stained crimson with blood.
Then suddenly, Gaia remembered the stench Paulus had given off while speaking.
At last, she realized what that smell had been.
The rotten reek of human organs.
Gaia remained silent, but the veins bulging across her forehead made it clear that she was far from calm.
Solomon, meanwhile, smugly began muttering to himself:
"Know why I came looking for you? Honestly, the moment I first laid eyes on them, I already had a guess about what they were."
"But I couldn't say anything right then, because Horne is a hopelessly upright fool. If he learned all this, he'd definitely try to arrest them all and then somehow drag in the Inquisition to handle it."
"But what do you think would actually happen? Their territory is not far from here, and the Planetary Defense Force stationed there is basically the private army of those Upper Hive lords."
"We'd probably end up conveniently dead in an 'accident' or in a staged battle with greenskins long before the Inquisition ever showed up."
"But you, brother, are different. The moment I saw you, I knew you were a steady sort of..."
As he kept talking, Solomon suddenly felt that something was wrong.
He turned around in confusion, only to find Gaia already gripping her warhammer and silently walking in a certain direction.
Straight toward the place where Paulus and his men were camped.
"No, brother, what are you doing? Calm down!"
Solomon could feel the overwhelming rage pouring off that body.
A killing intent sharp enough to make the heart tremble spread outward, and the night that had been so peaceful beneath the stars was suddenly stained with the danger of a coming storm.
At a moment like this, even an Ogryn could have guessed what she intended to do.
"Calm down, calm down! Those are nobles of the Upper Hive! Forget killing them, if word gets out that we even touched them, we're finished too!"
"And there are dozens of them! Let's endure it for now, get back to the hive city first, then think of some way to involve the Inquisition without conveniently committing suicide afterward..."
Solomon threw himself at Gaia's leg, clinging to it with all his strength and pleading bitterly.
He had thought that since Gaia rarely spoke, but always spoke directly to the point, she must have been a calm and steady person.
Who could have guessed her style would turn out to be even more straightforward and explosive than Horne's?
But Gaia completely ignored him.
She treated him like nothing more than a leg accessory and kept walking toward the camp.
She hated these people who stood high above others and toyed with the lives of the lower classes as they pleased.
At that moment, the oath she had once made to her adoptive father was pounding wildly inside her chest.
Do not implicate the innocent. Do not spare the guilty.
...
On the outer perimeter of House Joguya's encampment, the guard who had already taken two heavy blows to the face stood beneath the cold night sky, his expression dark.
"Damn it. What exactly did I do wrong?"
He thought in rising panic.
Every sign now suggested only one thing.
He had fallen out of favor.
Otherwise, how could a personal guard like him possibly have been assigned something as lowly as night watch duty?
"It's all those wretches' fault. Yes, it's their fault."
After some deep self-reflection, he decisively shifted all blame onto Gaia and the others.
It was only after meeting them that his situation had become this miserable.
"Those damned pigs. I'll skin your faces, carve out your skulls, and feast on your stupid brains while you scream your most desperate screams."
As he muttered his venomous curses, he wiped away the saliva he could not stop from gathering at the corners of his mouth.
Clack. Clack.
In the night wind of Klaurund, the crisp sound of footsteps came from the distance.
Only then did he notice a figure approaching from ahead.
That tall, powerful physique was clearly the largest of the three people he had just been cursing.
He raised his right hand and pointed at the figure, about to shout a rebuke and demand how this person dared trespass upon the great encampment of House Joguya.
But in the next instant, a roaring gust of wind struck him head-on.
And right behind it came a massive warhammer.
Everything happened too fast, almost in the space of a single spark.
How is that possible? When did they get this close?
His heart filled with terror, and that question became the last thought he ever had.
Splat.
His head burst apart on impact, and his headless body slowly collapsed to the ground.
Gaia looked coldly at the corpse, then casually plucked Solomon, who had just endured that sudden burst of high-speed movement and was now foaming slightly at the mouth, off her leg and set him down on the ground.
"You stay here."
"I'll go kill a few dozen bastards and come right back."
(End of Chapter)
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