Rough hemp ropes connect everyone together, leading them to the end of the journey and the end of their lives, the gallows.
"Please let me leave... I won't bring trouble to the refuge area. Really, please believe me, I won't betray humanity..."
Young Allen begged sadly, mixed with the cries around him.
He didn't know whether to hate those excessively cheap foods or the contaminated meat sold by unscrupulous merchants.
The soldiers who were as cold as their armor ignored people's prayers and led them to the gallows where Allen had applauded countless times, then became silent, and finally felt the same sadness.
Those past selves stood around the scaffold, doing the same things as their past selves.
As the cold rope touched the skin of his neck, Allen's goosebumps aroused as if from the cold, due to the fear of death.
"I am human...I am not contaminated..."
The sleep-like pleading has become Allen's subconscious behavior.
"I curse you! You executioners will be hanging on it too soon!"
But there are also people who become hysterical due to extreme fear.
The infected people quickly stood under the ten nooses on the gallows. Just when their lives were about to come to an end, a group of knights came from a distance and rescued them.
"Mr. Mayor and His Excellency the Exorcist requested that they be sent there."
The knight showed the order signed by Mateus, rescued ten people who were almost hanged, and headed to the inner ring with nearly a hundred low-sanity syndrome and polluters who didn't know what was happening.
"Where are we being taken?"
"They may use us as hard labor...I heard that some nobles are doing this..."
"We should find a way to escape..."
But someone who heard the knight's voice said: "I heard them talking about the Exorcist."
"I heard the exorcist too...we are being sent to the land of light!?"
"How could such a good thing happen..."
The knights did not stop their whispers and led these people who attracted strange gazes to the park located in the inner ring, a cave that was slightly smaller than the core cave.
The knight then revealed the reason for bringing them here: Lu Li and his allies came to the Weiner Refuge Area. He took pity on these poor people who would be expelled and killed, and gave them the opportunity to become believers of the Twisted Shadow and gain a new life.
"What if you don't want to become a believer?" someone asked.
"Go back and forth from where you are." said the knight captain who was responsible for the answer.
"We can go back to our home?!"
"Back to the gallows."
"Then the exorcist will take us back to the land of light?" someone else asked.
People who had been left to chance before looked forward to watching the knight.
"meeting."
Then this is no longer a multiple-choice question, especially after learning that becoming a believer does not erase consciousness.
"My wife is about to grow a deformed limb, can you bring her over?" Someone wanted to bring their family members.
The knight captain nodded, tilted his head and said to the team members: "Follow him to his residence and bring the people back."
Allen has no family, so he, like most people in the park, lined up in front of a newly built shed in the park.
"Is the Exorcist really here?"
The ragged young man standing in the queue chatted with Allen.
"I have no idea……"
Allen shook his head and looked for the legendary "black hair and black eyes" figure with him. Then he really saw it
As if glory and light were focused on him, clean silhouettes of middle-aged men, young women and cloaks surrounded him.
Aaron guessed it was the mayor, Anna and the twisted shadow.
But soon, the chatter around him pointed out his mistake: the young woman was a twisted shadow in the form of a saint, and the outline of the cloak was Lu Li's companion Ophelia.
The twisted figure enters the shack, followed by the first resident.
People looked and waited. A few minutes later, a terrifying figure that looked like it had stepped out of the deep sea appeared in front of the door.
Four soft tentacles like octopus tentacles are piled up and crowded in the trousers, the exposed skin becomes dark and smooth, the nose degenerates into flat pores to show the face, and small cilia like beards wriggle in the lower jaw.
As a "display", this first converted believer walked through the queue and talked with the people who were gripped by fear.
"This is what we're going to look like?"
"That's right..."
The wet and sticky believer replied, his voice was like a grunt with water in his mouth, and when he got close, he could hear a sound like a tidal wave in his body.
"I feel the power..."
The believer stretched out his webbed hands with a translucent film stuck between the knuckles, and clear water emerged invisible, flowing like sludge in the palm of his hand.
"And...I'm still me..."
Everything that happened was like a dream to him, and even the terrifying appearance softened.
Others remembered that they were allies of the exorcists and residents of the Land of Light...it didn't seem difficult to accept that they had become like this.
Maybe it’s not that bad to be a believer…
More and more residents walked into the mysterious shack, and when they came out, they turned into aliens with tentacles. Occasionally, some people who went in did not come out. Allen failed to guess the unlucky guy.
Praying that he would not fail, Allen stared at the transformed people and tried to get used to this appearance.
The queue behind him grew longer and longer. When there were only a dozen people left in front of Allen, more residents came to the park to become believers than at the beginning.
Residents from the outer ring and the inner ring, suffering from low sanity syndrome and aberrations, received the notice and chose to believe this because of the exorcist's reputation and came here.
He even saw the knights driving away some people from the back of the queue, those who were healthy and uncontaminated.
They want to use this to get to the land of light.
Getting closer and closer to the mysterious transformation shack, Allen lifted up the corners of his clothes and tucked the cilia growing on his abdomen into the tight trousers. However, a passing knight stopped him.
"Reveal it and no distortion will be driven out."
"Oh oh..."
Allen followed the instructions blankly. Not only did he not hide the cilia, but he made them more eye-catching.
However, other people around him also did the same thing, revealing the deformed parts, and those with low sanity values were worried about gains and losses, and worried that they would be kicked out as normal people.
It seems that in the park everything is turned upside down: normal people become outcasts...
There were only a few people left in front, and Allen was excitedly thinking about what he would say to the exorcist. He saw many people talking to Lu Li, and Lu Li also responded to them.
What made him regretful was that when it was almost his turn, the exorcist and the mayor left the park.
"Next."
The knight captain who maintained order stood outside the shack and said.
"name."
"Ah, Allen...has no last name."
"Go in."
Allen nervously buried himself in the shed, and the wooden door closed behind him, casting him into the shadows.
When he was frightened by the sudden darkness, a certain tenderness emerged from the front, as if he was being pulled into the warm embrace of a mother he had never seen before...