Finding the Death Tablet had been luck. Finding a Supreme Eternity Source would require something else entirely.Davide sat in the back of the sermon hall before the second address began, turning the problem over in his mind. His body could handle up to three Supreme Sources simultaneously, a fact the system had confirmed when he'd first examined his unique physical construction. But capacity meant nothing without the Source itself.And nobody was going to hand him one."Tell me about the hierarchy," Davide said to Ginevra, keeping his voice low. "The religious leadership. How is it structured.""Simply," Ginevra said. "The Prophet sits at the top. Below him, the Saintess. Below them, the three Paragons. That's it.""That's it," Davide repeated. "No administrative structure below the Paragons. No regional leaders. No lower-level clergy with actual authority.""None," Ginevra said."Who actually governs the religion day to day," Davide asked."The Paragons manage their own sects," Ginev

The red-haired girl touched the back of her neck three times during Everardo's next passage. Two rows away, the blue-haired boy adjusted his collar in response.Davide counted the interval between gestures. Four seconds. Consistent. Practiced."They're coordinating," he told Ginevra without moving his lips."I noticed," she said.He watched the body language more carefully now. The gestures were subtle enough to pass as fidgeting, but the timing was too precise. The red-haired girl, the one Davide had initially mistaken for a boy, would make a small movement. The blue-haired boy would respond. Then a third player near the side exit would shift his weight, completing the circuit.They were conducting a conversation without speaking. Telepathic, most likely, using the gestures as confirmation signals for whatever was being discussed in their heads.Davide couldn't hear the conversation. But he could read the frustration in the red-haired girl's jaw, the tightness in the blue-haired boy'

Riccardo touched his left ear.That was the signal.The hall exploded.Three players ripped off their pilgrim robes simultaneously, drew weapons that had been sealed against detection, and drove them into the nearest followers before anyone could scream."Infidels must die!" one of them shouted, his voice cracking with manufactured rage. "The divine commands purification!"Blood hit the floor before the first scream reached the ceiling. A woman in the front row fell sideways with her hands clutching her stomach. A man behind her stumbled backward into the pillar, red spreading across his white robes.The hall split apart. Pilgrims scrambled in every direction, trampling each other, screaming, shoving toward exits that the remaining players had already blocked."They're killing the Endurers first," Davide said, his eyes tracking the pattern. "Targeting Valerio's sect specifically.""I have to stop them," Ginevra said."Ginevra, wait-"She was already gone. She threw herself into the ne

The pilgrims turned on the players the instant they understood what had been done to them.Three thousand people, their manufactured reverence curdled into raw fury, descended on the exposed attackers with the kind of violence that only betrayed trust could produce. Fists. Feet. Broken furniture. Anything within reach became a weapon aimed at the people who had turned sacred ground into a slaughterhouse.Davide stood on the platform and watched. And while he watched, he worked.Death energy flowed from his fingertips in thin, invisible threads. Each thread found a hidden player in the crowd and branded them with a mark that sank beneath the skin like ink disappearing into water.The mark was elegant. Simple. Lethal. Designed to trigger a fatal explosion of death energy whenever the marked player was beaten close enough to death that their body couldn't recover. And when that explosion came, every point of accumulated experience the player had gathered would funnel directly into Davide

"Let me make sure I understand this correctly," Davide said, walking beside Ginevra through the back streets. "The entire Church of Eternity is run by five people.""The Prophet," Ginevra said. "The Saintess. Three Paragons. That's the complete structure.""No bishops," Davide said."No.""No regional administrators.""No.""No deacons, no elders, no distributed authority of any kind.""Nothing," Ginevra said. "The Church of Eternity has no lower-level hierarchy. No administrative apparatus. The Paragons manage their own sects directly. Everything else flows through the Prophet.""That's insane," Davide said."That's by design," Ginevra said."A religion with millions of followers and the entire governance structure fits in a room with five chairs," Davide said. "The Prophet is either the laziest man alive or he's deliberately set this up so nobody below him can develop any real authority.""Both can be true at the same time," Ginevra said."This explains why the hall fell apart the s