Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics

Beneath this piece of paper, there was a book whose cover appeared to be made of parchment, seemingly a product of the last century. The book's title was "Sailor Pick's Diary."

Shiller flipped through the book and found that many pages were missing. Disregarding the missing parts, the content could roughly be summarized as a tale of a man named Pick, who boarded a large ship and became a sailor. Along their journey, they encountered a storm, but luckily, they managed to dock under the guidance of a lighthouse.

The segment was abrupt and mysterious, without a clear beginning or end. If one were to guess, it might have something to do with the lighthouse in this village, but due to so many missing pages, it wasn't clear whether the lighthouse they encountered was the same one covered in heavy snow.

However, Shiller instinctively felt that this story was important because the descriptions of the storm were the most extensively torn out.

Shiller thought that Old Sirteck must have placed this note alongside the book for a reason. Could it be that he discovered some sort of conspiracy of the Church from this book?

Unable to discern anything clear, Shiller gathered the note and the book and started investigating more content on the bookshelf.

His skill in document reading finally came in handy, as the books here were not just in English, but many other minor languages. With this skill, he could understand them without even having to figure them out.

At last, Shiller found an important clue in a book on the bottom shelf, titled "A Record of Major Insurance Accidents over the Past Century."

The book mentioned that about 80 years ago, around the 1930s according to modern estimations, a hotel in Massachusetts experienced a major safety accident, resulting in the death of over 230 guests, ranking it the third most severe hotel safety accident in American history.

The group that owned the hotel had taken out a huge insurance policy for it, and the subsequent massive compensation payments became a focal point for a time. Within the insurance company's estimate, they were expected to pay out over 20 million US Dollars in compensation, an astronomical sum for that era.

The case spawned numerous high-profile lawsuits that lasted quite a while, even spilling into half a century, mainly because most of the victims had died in particularly gruesome ways, and no cause for the accident could be identified.

The hotel was not a cruise ship; in case of a disaster, there would be no other option than to sink with the ship. But since the hotel was on the mainland, even in the event of a safety accident like a fire, the guests in the lobby on the first floor should have at least been able to escape.

Yet, the death list from this accident nearly included everyone in the hotel, save for a few who were still missing, with almost none escaping.

Additionally, the local police stated that they had not received any calls for help, the fire department got no fire alarms, and even the night watchmen in the neighboring buildings heard no commotion.

Overnight, every guest in the hotel died under mysterious circumstances, and according to reports from journalists at the time, some of the wounds on the bodies did not look like anything a human could inflict.

Because the situation was so peculiar, the insurance company questioned the necessity of compensation, leading to decades-long litigation involving the hotel owners and the victims' families against the insurance company and its backing medical group. Many of these cases were not settled and are still in a state of litigation to this day.

Shiller could tell from the various photos accompanying the book that this hotel was indeed the same eerie one the Bishop had visited, with an identical style of doorplates.

Moreover, there happened to be a photo of the 19th floor corridor, showing that the doorplate of room 1913 was missing.

This meant, just as he had speculated, that this hotel truly existed in the history of this world and it appeared that there had indeed been a tragedy related to the descent of an Outer God.

What shocked Shiller even more was learning from another history book that almost exactly ten years after this tragedy, the world experienced a wave of bizarre events.

It was during this era that the Church began its gradual rise to power because they were adept at resolving and controlling bizarre incidents, leading governmental agencies to start channeling resources their way, to ensure the fundamental form of the nation was not undermined.

In the following 70 years, the Church grew increasingly powerful, evolving into an indispensable part of human society today.

Additionally, in a book discussing current affairs, Shiller discovered that over the years, the Church had extended its reach beyond merely resolving strange occurrences; their influence had permeated various sectors, becoming evident in all areas intertwined with human society.

Combining various pieces of information, Shiller estimated that the present-day Church was possibly the largest religious economic oligarchy in the world. While outwardly a religious institution, it was actually a vast global corporation with a highly complex structure of organizations and interwoven clerical factions.

Shiller didn't quite know his exact department, as Arrogant hadn't asked, nor was it specified—probably not even Arrogant had anticipated the Church to be so complicated.

However, from the fact that he could manage many tasks without needing checks, one could speculate that he was not the kind of Father who merely recited scriptures in a church.

After that, Shiller started looking for books about the Church and finally found favorable evidence of his identity and department in a modern encyclopedia.

The book described the dress standards for church personnel; there were no specific requirements for ordinary believers, just to dress appropriately for church. Parish priests in regional churches wore black robes, the very common Catholic priest attire, and other higher-ranked clergy also followed the Catholic conventions.

There were a few departments with distinct attire, such as the Court, which replaced the function of judicial enforcement agencies and donned black robes with blue patterns, carrying the symbol of a scale on their sleeves.

The Court, replacing the function of law enforcement agencies, also wore black robes, but these featured golden patterns, with the design of a longsword on their sleeves.

Shiller glanced at the longsword pattern on his own sleeve and fell silent, so after all that, he was still an agent.

No wonder Hoff had felt, upon first seeing him, that he was there to silence someone; the Court's business was exactly that, and Shiller's main job as a Soul Calmer might indeed be the physical soothing of souls.

The book stated that the Court was a global Special Agent Organization, which could be compared to S.H.I.E.L.D., dealing with the impacts of various strange events around the world.

Of course, Shiller knew this was a euphemism; the Court was essentially a violent law enforcement agency that maintained Church rule, wielding a hammer in a game of whack-a-mole, striking down anyone who disobeyed.

Indeed, the book also mentioned that the Court had been involved in assassination scandals more than once, but owing to the significance of their functions, they were often given a slap on the wrist instead of facing real accountability.

Reading on, Shiller saw several photos of the Pope on a outing. The Pope himself didn't look unusual, just an old man with white hair and a white beard, who appeared to be in good spirits.

However, the caption beneath the photos read, "The Pope and his personal guard on an outing." Looking closer, Shiller realized that his outfit strongly resembled that of the personal guard. Great, he was part of the Jinyi Guard.

So the question arose, why would a member of the personal guard not stay in the Holy City but venture out to such a remote village?

Shiller speculated there were two possibilities: either he was here to carry out some important assassination mission or he was the target of the assassination, having fled to this location.

Shiller felt the latter was more likely since this place didn't seem to harbor anyone who required the personal guard's intervention to be effectively silenced—not even Old Sirteck would qualify.

Because the last assassination case the Court couldn't cover up involved the State Lord of America.

Combining this with the note, Shiller formulated a bold conjecture.

The hotel disaster did indeed result from the descent of an Outer God, more precisely, the Waynes had provoked Nya, which after a series of actions, triggered the outbreak at the hotel, causing many deaths.

But the subsequent strange events might not necessarily have been natural disasters, as judged by both their manifestations and effects, which paled in comparison to the hotel disaster.

To be precise, those cases didn't resemble the disturbances an Outer God could cause. To use a word like 'arrogant,' they were too typical and lacked aesthetic.

The tragedies within the Cthulhu Mythos all possessed a detached eeriness, as if the human race didn't lose in a fight but were more like ants accidentally trampled while passing by.

Whether it was Outer Gods or the Ancient Ones, it wasn't that they intentionally targeted humans, but rather humans insisted on exploring the secrets behind them, which led to the bizarre reverberations that impacted Earth, quietly crushed to death.

However, these later strange cases looked like meticulously orchestrated murder scenes, with victims as wretched as could be and scenes as gory as possible—as if the phrase "I was killed by a monster" was etched on their faces.

Many victims in the Cthulhu Mythos were not actually killed by Outer Gods; in fact, their deaths were often unrelated to gods or ghosts but more due to irrational actions born out of fear, such as jumping out of a window in terror or dying from a frenzied infection.

But these subsequent oddities... In instances where hundreds died, not one death was ordinary; all had to be bizarre, such as bodies exploding from the inside out, people beheading themselves, or suddenly ejecting all their viscera.

And another critical clue was that there were no survivors from the hotel incident, not even a single witness left behind, taking place in the dead of night with police and reporters arriving by morning to find everything had vanished.

But these later strange events invariably occurred in broad daylight, in public, wherever there were crowds; the outbreaks happened, with half of the onlookers dying and the other half fleeing, and those who escaped were eager to tell the media about the horrors they witnessed.

The scenes ranged from college graduations to bustling art exhibition openings, and the victims included noted novelists, slightly famous painters, or at least were linked to something like a documentary filming site, highly popular tourist spots for check-ins, and the like.

Moreover, the way these strange events unfolded was always highly dramatic, starting with a powerful shock, followed by a slower pace, culminating in a fast-paced chase sequence, as if it were all produced for a film.

It was all too deliberate.

That was the impression these cases left on Shiller.