Crisis at the Church — Saint Weirdo Gone Missing

Crisis at the Church — Saint Weirdo Gone Missing

The Adventurer’s Guild of the Holy City was abuzz with talk of Luciel, also known as “Saint Weirdo,” the only healer known to place compassion above profit.

It had been half a year since his last visit to the guildhall. Many adventurers had heard him say that he would be gone for some time, and had even seen him stockpile huge amounts of food and Substance X, but he had seemingly vanished without a trace.

At first, they’d thought he had simply gone on a trip, but no one could verify his destination. It wasn’t plausible that a healer of his status would end up somewhere without an Adventurer’s Guild when just about every town on the map had one. And there would have been evidence of him ordering Substance X wherever he was staying.

Substance X was positively vile and no one in their right mind would drink the stuff. So Adventurer’s Guild Headquarters gave out incentives every year, rewards that came straight from the inheritance of a long-deceased sage and their HQ’s old guildmaster, to the guild that consumed the most. These rankings were visible at all guild branches. The numbers were tracked by some absurdly advanced mechanism that discounted any substance that was tossed out, to prevent cheating. Not many even had the courage to try to subvert the system, though, with the rumor going around that if you wasted any, it would somehow find its way into your mouth again.

There hadn’t been a single person who regularly drank Substance X in years until a certain someone had started guzzling it over at the Merratoni branch. Likewise, when Luciel transferred to the capital, the local guild’s consumption had spiked. So wherever he was, he should have been easy to track. There was no question that he was still in the Holy City, and yet he was nowhere to be found.

Normally, this wouldn’t have been cause for alarm, but without the Saint around to help counter the price gouging, clinics had started to get ballsy and inflate their prices further. Petitions were sent to the Church, but not one was addressed.

One thing led to another until someone said, “What if the Church has him locked up?”

Then theories began to spread like wildfire.

“What if they’re torturing him?”

“He’s being brainwashed!”

“Maybe all they’re feedin’ him is Substance X.”

“What if they killed him?”

The unrest quickly spread from the adventurers to the city folk. Distrust of the Church swelled, and a movement to save Saint Weirdo soon began.

Meanwhile, at the Church, some were growing worried about Luciel’s prolonged stay in the labyrinth. His close friends knew that it was common for him to be absent for a month or so at a time and believed that he would return before long. But a month came and went, and then another, and another, and Luciel still had not emerged.

The pope herself—his direct superior—along with Cattleya, formerly known as Lady Catherine Frena, captain of the knights, attempted to rally a rescue unit. Unsurprisingly, the movement was rejected. The Church could not expend its limited resources on the recovery of a single healer lost in a fifty-year-old labyrinth.

Luciel’s peers denounced his reckless behavior, his arrogance in thinking that he could conquer the labyrinth himself. Only through the efforts of Her Holiness, Cattleya, and the Valkyries was official condemnation avoided and his name protected. In exchange, any formal plans for rescue were abandoned.

After half a year had passed since Luciel’s disappearance, adventurers were demanding answers regarding his well-being, which the Church declined to comment on. The truth of the labyrinth had to remain hidden, even at the cost of concealing the young man’s fate. Had the Church declared him dead, the people would demand a body. Riots would follow.

While all this was happening, the only knight unit concerned with the healer’s whereabouts—the Valkyries—was moving to begin its search. Along with his unconsenting predecessor, Jord, they set out for the labyrinth. Their combined strength was formidable, and the regiment made quick work of the hordes of skeletons and zombies in the tenth-floor boss room.

At the same time, Luciel was locked in the climax of his battle with the lich knight. What neither party knew was that the boss doors were interlocked. As long as someone was in a boss room on a higher floor, the doors to a lower-level floor would not budge.

The Valkyries had just finished gathering up their magic stones as Luciel begrudgingly trudged down to the forty-first floor. The rescue unit pressed on behind him, and the stench grew thicker. They barely made it past the thirtieth floor when the wraiths’ dark magic began to take its toll. Unable to withstand their frenzied and mind-warped attacks on each other, the Valkyries were forced to retreat.

Lumina and her unit emerged and were reporting to Cattleya when tensions finally exploded. Church Headquarters had been surrounded, and leading a group of Merratoni adventurers was their guildmaster, Brod.

Grantz and his band of adventurers had joined them, along with people from all walks of life who felt indebted to the young healer. Together, they rallied under the cry, “Free Saint Weirdo! End the greed!” And their numbers only grew.

The Church had never faced such a crisis before, such a fervent demonstration of epic proportions. The protest was one step away from becoming a full-blown riot. Their one hundred and eighty lethargic knights trembled in fear at the hundreds of battle-hardened adventurers and thousands of enraged citizens at their gates. At any moment, the fuse could be lit.

Luciel, none the wiser, was slowly bringing his arduous journey to an end. Little did he know that upon his return to the surface, he would find himself closer to death than he had ever been while down in the labyrinth.