"Burn down the whole world? No, no, of course it's not that serious."
Miss Bevanna shook her head, then carefully sealed the file folder.
"But the current estimate is that the fire in the southern forests will burn for three months, at least three months. By the end of autumn, the cold air currents from the northern part of the continent will suppress the flas. That's using the power of nature. By then, with the help of a large-scale ritual involving a thousand people, we should be able to extinguish it."
"But in the anti, how many Children of the Mist will this fire prematurely spawn? And will sothing even more terrifying than the Children of the Mist be born from the flas?"
Jenkins asked again.
"That's hard to say, but I suppose this is what the end of an era is like. The apocalypse doesn't just happen all at once; it's a gradual process."
Miss Bevanna shook her head.
Jenkins's understanding of the apocalypse was mostly drawn from the stories of his forr world, where sudden catastrophes usually wiped out civilization. But a true apocalypse never arrived without warning. It was a process of gradual escalation, and only after people had repeatedly accepted disasters popping up everywhere would they realize that the days of peace and stability were gone for good.
Several small towns near the southern forests were already planning mass relocations, and cities further away had prepared to evacuate their citizens. But because of the chaotic political situation in the southern kingdom and the renewal of war, the Cheslan governnt wasn't taking the fire seriously, nor were they making a real effort to protect their own people.
The dostic turmoil ant the fire had only recently caught the governnt's attention. If not for the Church's active assistance in disaster relief, the number of innocent lives lost to the blaze would have been much higher.
Right now, Cheslan had thrown nearly all its resources into the western front. They seed completely unconcerned about the fire. At least, until the dust of war settled, that blaze was not a priority for the nation.
(Fini is praying...)
Jenkins had already invited the young ladies and Sigrid to visit Maidenhaven Road tonight. The matter was unaffected by Tackwen's death. But while Jenkins hadn't postponed the visit because of his own business, Mary had taken the initiative to delay the important occasion.
It wasn't that she was unprepared to receive guests, but rather that sothing had happened to the family of Jenkins's older brother, Newman Williams's, fiancée.
According to the news Jenkins received, the family had recently borrowed a large sum of money from an illicit source. A dispute over the interest paynts led to a violent confrontation, and on Wednesday afternoon, people broke into their ho and beat them severely.
Newman's fiancée's father and mother were both injured and hospitalized. With sothing like this happening, the Williams family had to go to the hospital to visit them, so the planned get-together had to be postponed for now.
Although both matters concerned her sons' marriages, Newman's situation involved life and death—he'd heard the injuries were quite serious. Thus, Mary and Robert had no choice but to push back Jenkins's plans.
As for why the family had borrowed the money, Jenkins found it a bit absurd. They had intended to purchase a large quantity of tulips. Mary didn't elaborate, concerned for her eldest son's pride and unwilling to ntion more of the scandal in front of Jenkins.
But Jenkins mostly understood, so he tactfully refrained from asking further questions. Family pride had to be respected.
Even though his original plans were canceled, Jenkins didn't find himself idle. The Twelve Churches Joint Conference was definitely happening this weekend. To that end, Bishop Parrold had prepared a considerable number of docunts for him, and the Holy See had sent soone with reference materials, as well as the preliminary plans and rough negotiation points that the cardinals had hamred out over several recent etings.
Jenkins needed to read all of it carefully. This was no simple task, nor was it sothing he could just morize. He had to master and understand the material, which would require a significant amount of his ti.
Due to the confidential nature of so docunts, not even Jenkins could take them ho to read. So, he spent this Wednesday evening at the church. During that ti, he saw Fini again and told her that he had already instructed people to handle the matter of the flower sellers.
At around eight in the evening, Jenkins was in Miss Bevanna's office, reading through the files. Miss Bevanna had business in the Evergreen Forest tonight, so Jenkins was free to use her office.
He sat on the sofa, vexed that he kept confusing the nas of the demigod from the Church of Destiny and Equilibrium and the patriarch from the Church of Ocean and Exploration. But their nas only differed by three letters; it was genuinely hard to distinguish them.
He gazed out the window at the thick fog, then looked down and began cutting an apple into small pieces for Chocolate. Suddenly, he heard a knock at the door, followed by the voice of Mr. Jas Hutt from the special items managent office.
"Mr. Williatte, Director Bellini needs to see you. An old woman just entered the church, and there's sothing not quite right about her. Mr. Gilbert and Miss Corshenna have already gone over. Director Bellini said you should probably take a look as well... We can't afford any trouble at the church right now."
Miss Bevanna wasn't at the church tonight, but the two demigods on duty were more than capable of ensuring its safety. As for Jenkins, he was only here because of the incident with the tulips, so he didn't think this was so conspiracy targeting him.
He stood, picked up his cat, and followed Mr. Hutt out.
"Where are they now?"
"In the main hall... Nothing dangerous has happened, really. It's just... the whole thing is very strange."
The Sage's Church was, in theory, open twenty-four hours a day. But much like Jenkins was, in theory, a villain who murdered, committed arson, and plotted conspiracies, sotis theory and reality didn't quite align.
Of course, the church was still open at eight in the evening, especially since the Sage's Church held night classes around this ti. So when the hobbling old woman shakily climbed the steps and entered the main hall, the guards at the entrance saw nothing amiss.
Jenkins erged from a corridor behind the main hall and imdiately spotted her, sitting in the second row from the pulpit. She wore a dark red headscarf, its frayed edges crookedly framing her head. Beside her rested a very ordinary basket, and she was dressed in drab, grayish-black linen clothes.
Jenkins suspected the color was because the clothes hadn't been washed in a very long ti. It was the typical appearance of an elderly person from the countryside. Even if he had been on guard duty, without using his Eye of Reality, he wouldn't have stopped soone like her from entering the church.
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