Malin instinctively sensed something was amiss. His high intuition sometimes provided such steadiness that it even made him feel fear, but this name, Elsa, filled Malin with a sense of relief, akin to the comfort an aging father feels seeing his offspring grow.
What’s going on? Malin turned around, signaling an apprentice to come over. The latter, puzzled, trotted over nonetheless: "Mr. Malin, is there something you need?"
"Do you recognize the person in the painting?" Malin asked the boy.
He glanced at the photo frame in Malin’s hand, fell silent for a moment, and then looked at Malin uncertainly: "Mr. Malin, there’s no one in the photo frame."
"No one?" Malin was taken aback, first confirming there was nothing wrong with himself by instantly casting a Psychic Shield, and then he granted one to the boy.
After staring at each other for a moment, the boy’s color improved slightly: "Mr. Malin, there really is no one."
"This is incredible. That Punisher gentleman over there smoking," Malin said, and the middle-aged man who was smoking came over as Malin raised the photo frame: "He says he can’t see anyone. I see a young girl. What can you see?"
"...I see a boy. I don’t know why, but he looks very much like my... a child of mine." The middle-aged man frowned as he spoke: "There’s something wrong with this photo frame. I instinctively feel danger, but both you and I have gazed directly into this photo frame without any distortion or warping due to seeing different things... It probably isn’t a Chaotic creation."
"Could it be a chaotic artifact, Mr. Punisher?" The boy’s eyes widened with curiosity.
"It’s possible, but it could also be something else. Mr. Malin’s resistance is high, so he won’t have a problem, but if someone else were to handle it, then it might not be harmless," said the Punisher, who was clearly aware of Malin’s uniqueness. His words caused the apprentice to glance at the photo frame in Malin’s hand once more before smiling fearfully: "You’re right."
"Then do any of you know Elsa?" Malin asked.
The middle-aged man and the apprentice shook their heads in unison, but then a half-human Punisher approached: "I know an Elsa. Though, I’m not sure if she’s the Elsa you’re speaking of."
"Whose family?" Malin asked curiously.
"Elsa Moka, the old great-grandmother from the Moka family, once a prodigious young girl," the half-human Punisher said as he rolled up his sleeve: "This is a wound I got from a knife when I was a child. She sewed it up for me. She was a Follower of the merciful mother."
Malin looked at the photo frame in his hand—he was somewhat confused whether these two Elsas were the same person—but curiosity led him to decide to investigate further.
The Punishers soon extracted intelligence from the surviving Chaotic Believers—their sect wasn’t large, having already suffered heavy losses once. This time, they had chosen this location for their sect and had been engaging in loss-making businesses to earn some start-up funds. Initially, they had planned to hide during the combat, but Falm Feller, the lead preacher of the House of Bliss, who was killed by Malin on the second floor, had seen Malin and wanted revenge. He took a team upstairs; they were preparing to retreat when, instead of hearing news of Mr. Falm’s victory, they met their doom at your hands.
Listening to this, Malin found it outrageous. You guys are the masterminds behind the private distillery? Truly amazed, Malin had considered many potential masterminds behind the distillery, but he had never thought that even Chaotic Believers would be involved in this business.
Nevertheless, this lifted a weight from his heart; there was no need to worry about people going after his life over a dozen gallons of contraband liquor anymore.
Beyond that, Malin had other matters to address, such as gathering information about this Elsa. So, leaving the scene to the Punishers, he went to the surface with the apprentices and reported the situation to the Bishop, then retrieved Cain from his custody.
Before even leaving the encampment, Malin saw his own mentor’s group returning, dusty from the road. On seeing Malin, the mentor immediately dismounted, moving with an agility not expected of an old man who often sat in a wheelchair lamenting life.
"I’m away briefly, and you stir up such a commotion, but... good job, lad," Elder Hoffman ruffled Malin’s hair, then noticed the little tagalong: "And who might this child be?"
"Ah, right, this is Cain..." Malin briefed his mentor on the boy’s story, and the old man was very pleased. He put the boy on his horse: "I’m taking this child for testing. And you?"
"Is city hall still there?" Malin did indeed want to find out exactly who Elsa Moka was, but considering his mentor had just come from there, it was essential for Malin to confirm—city hall, was it still standing?
"Still there, but now it’s been sealed off by us. There are a lot of Chaotic residues inside, and we have to wait for the Church of the Merciful Mother to send someone to perform Purification before it can be used again." Hoffman grimaced at the mention of city hall.
With his mentor’s explanation, Malin learned that the elf was not a Follower of the Mimicking Bird but a Follower of some Fatty. When faced with a sudden Church assault led by Elder Hoffman, the entire city hall had turned into a battlefield. The staff, already infected, and the elf fought against Elder Hoffman’s troops and the Punishers, battling from the first floor up to the rooftop. The creature that the elf had morphed into kept fighting and birthing all the way to the rooftop, leaving the city hall filled with the corpses of Chaos.