999 Bewitch 2 (1/2)

Dyon casually walked into Cathedral City, training his eyes on the massive renaissance era-like Church that loomed over everything.

The city itself was very reminiscent of what Dyon imagined a European town of the 1800s to look like, except for the fact that it was definitely much cleaner than a genuine city from that era would be, and it smelt much better too.

The aura of this town dripped with conservatism. The smiles of its people seemed faked and forced, their interactions were boxy and unnatural, even the children seemed to be walking on egg shells. Maybe the oddest part about it all was that these people seemed to think that this was just how people should act.

It seemed that people didn't visit this quadrant very often, so they simply had no idea how the outside world worked, and not many dared to enter the tower due to their poor ranking. It was only a fact of life that badly ranked quadrants would be bullied. Maybe the only reason no one bothered to conquer territories of the 98th Corner was because the resources given to that sort of ranking were much too poor to care about.

Of course, Dyon understood the other reason for this. The only people who would visit this quadrant would likely be those looking to profit from Soul Market. Individuals like this wouldn't be so keen to interact with the 'locals'.

Dyon did notice that the only true emotion these locals seemed capable of displaying was reverence. He noticed this every time he saw one of them glance at his robes.

'They probably won't reprimand me for breaking the city's rules… I wonder if it'll be the same if I go to The Cathedral.'

The Cathedral, itself, was a place of worship. So, much of it was open to public. As such, Dyon could stroll into it whenever he wanted. However, he didn't want to do this just yet.

Dyon's plan for hiding his identity wasn't what it seemed like on the surface. Because there were so few core disciples, it would be quite easy to narrow the list of individuals to only a handful. So, Dyon didn't wear this mask for the expressed purpose of hiding his identity forever. Rather, he just wanted to make use of the benefit of the doubt until it was too late for his enemies to do much else about it.

So, the first thing Dyon did before anything else wasn't to head to the places he wanted to investigate, but rather, he went to the teleportation stations and used them.

Just like before, he subtly manipulated the location symbols to send him to the outskirts of Cathedral City.

This time, he let his altered mask appear on his face before he appeared before the guards and also removed the symbol of Violet's faction that hung from his hip.

Despite there being a rule of no masks in the city, the guards didn't dare to be the ones to reprimand such a high-ranking person. They could only hold their breaths and let Dyon walk through the gates unhindered.