Chapter 85: Possibility

Chapter 85: Possibility

A smear of orange lit the horizon, and one manor after another on the north bank of the Tussock River gradually awakened amid the morning mist.

Tall and heavyset, Framy Cage came to the guest room where Qonas Kilgor had slept the previous night. He raised his hand and knocked on the door, preparing to have breakfast together with the deputy director of MI9.

However, no one inside responded.

“Has the major general already gone to the dining room?” Framy Cage turned around in slight confusion and left that floor.

Only after breakfast ended did everyone discover that Qonas Kilgor had disappeared. Under Dwayne Dantès’s lead, they came outside that guest room and watched the manor steward, Richardson, unlock the door with a key.

The inside was empty.

“Does Major General Kilgor have the habit of taking morning walks?” Member of Parliament Macht pinched both cheekbones and asked in puzzlement.

Framy Cage shook his head without hesitation.

“No.”

“Did any of you hear anything last night?” Portland Moment, the president of Backlund Technical University, looked around and asked.

Member of Parliament Macht thought back briefly.

“No. This place was very quiet, very suitable for vacation.”

Beside him, Hazel looked into the room with some curiosity, but she could not imagine what might have happened.

At that moment, Framy Cage proposed his own guess:

“Major General Kilgor is an important figure in the military. He often has sudden matters that require him to deal with them. Perhaps he left the manor very early and returned to Backlund.”

This steam-powered vehicle tycoon was clearly trying very hard to make the matter seem less serious.

He seems to know a little, or at the very least, he can guess that Qonas Kilgor came to Rose Song Manor with a purpose of his own… Listening to their conversation, Klein said to Butler Walter and Manor Steward Richardson with a grave expression,

“Ask every servant in the manor whether they saw Major General Kilgor last night or this morning.

“If no one did, send someone back to Backlund to visit Major General Kilgor’s family. Inform them of this matter, and let them decide whether the police need to be contacted immediately.”

After giving the instructions, Klein touched his graying temples and said to the guests, including Member of Parliament Macht,

“The matter cannot be clarified for the time being. Perhaps Major General Kilgor truly did leave because of urgent business. We should not let this delay everyone’s vacation. Let us continue with the hunting arrangement. If the police arrive, we will return then.”

Because Major General Qonas Kilgor’s companion, Framy Cage, had proposed the reason of urgent business—and because that reason was quite convincing—Member of Parliament Macht and the others all agreed with Dwayne Dantès’s opinion and left the place one after another.

Hazel walked at the very end. She glanced at the guest room where Major General Qonas Kilgor had stayed and then at the neighboring room, feeling that something was not quite harmonious. Subconsciously, she wanted to use a Cryptologist’s ability to reconstruct what had happened there.

However, a powerful fear immediately surged from deep within her heart, though she did not know what she was afraid of. In the end, she gave up on the idea.

She vaguely felt that she had some experience with similar matters, and that those experiences told her: one must not look at things one should not look at, nor listen to sounds one should not hear.

After all the guests and servants left that floor, inside the room beside Qonas’s guest room, the thick carpet supporting a tea table suddenly moved.

Little by little, it pulled its own body out from beneath the sofa and tea table without creating much noise.

Immediately afterward, that yellowish-brown carpet stood upright, revealing the situation on its other side.

It was flesh and blood that seemed to have congealed!

As the flesh squirmed and reassembled, the carpet quickly transformed back into a person—a young man with mixed-blood features.

This was Dwayne Dantès’s personal valet, Enuni.

And now, the one following Dwayne Dantès was Qonas Kilgor. They wore the same face and had identical builds!

For Klein, there had actually been no need to make Winner Enuni disguise himself in this way. He could have changed Enuni into some other appearance, mixed him among the servants, and used illusions to interfere with their senses so that they would not notice an extra person. That would have been easier and safer. However, “acting” remained important even to a demigod. It was one of the keys to accelerating potion digestion, while also resisting the tendencies toward losing control and madness. Therefore, in handling the details of many matters, Klein deliberately pursued strangeness.

Of course, he did not want to harm the innocent. Even when creating an eerie and frightening atmosphere, he tried as much as possible not to let others notice, lest they become excessively terrified and be left with psychological trauma.

That strange and frightening atmosphere was mainly meant for himself and for the potion inside him to acknowledge. Without question, this would also speed up the digestion progress. Yet without feedback from an audience, the “acting” was not complete enough. The Bizarro Sorcerer potion’s digestion speed would certainly not be as fast as expected. Even though he had done so many things and performed the role so many times, Klein still did not feel that he had any chance of attempting Sequence 3 within the year.

…

Backlund, East Borough, inside a rented two-bedroom apartment.

Xio sat on an unsteady chair, staring blankly out the window, her expression gloomy in a rare way.

Fors took a sip of water, walked over, and sat opposite Xio, blocking her line of sight.

“You seem to have suddenly lost your motivation.

“Is it because that answer left you not knowing what to do next? Because the king is someone you cannot reach?”

Xio’s eyes moved slightly, slowly coming back to life.

“Whether it is restoring my father’s honor or taking revenge, when the opponent is a king, hope is so slim. I simply cannot think of any way to accomplish such a thing…”

“That is because you are still too weak. Once you reach Sequence 4 and become a demigod, you will discover that there are plenty of ways, though they are rather dangerous!” Fors encouraged and comforted her in her own way. “Besides, you can also make use of others. Just like Shermane’s monitor—she also wanted to know whom Viscount Stratford served, so she must be very interested in the king’s secret.”

“Shermane…” Xio repeated the name, and her mental state abruptly recovered.

On the table to the side lay a copper-green cross and a deep-blue gemstone shaped like a vertical eye.

Around the gemstone, thread-like patterns protruded one after another. It was the Beyonder characteristic that had separated out after Shermane’s death. It made the surrounding objects turn gentle and gain an added sense of beauty. However, because of the copper-green cross’s existence, its light could only shrink into a very small range.

“That monitor is one of the murderers who killed Shermane,” Xio said with great seriousness.

They had already found a place to bury Shermane. Fors had also flipped through Leymano’s Travels and performed a requiem.

Fors immediately nodded.

“Yes. That is why we should drive her to investigate the king’s secret and touch the potential risks.

“Didn’t you say she might be monitoring our previous residence? Then we can find an opportunity to disguise ourselves and return there, then throw a piece of paper into the mailbox. On it, we write that Viscount Stratford served King George III, and that George III hides an enormous secret. This way, I believe that person should be able to see it.”

Xio carefully thought it over, then nodded solemnly.

“All right.”

After discussing what to do next, Fors stood and pointed at the copper-green cross.

“We have received Mr. Fool’s help many times. It is time to show our sincerity. I intend to sacrifice it to Mr. Fool now. Do you have any objections?”

“No,” Xio answered without hesitation.

…

At Rose Song Manor, another evening arrived. Because the news brought back from Qonas Kilgor’s family was that they should wait a while longer, and that the deputy director of MI9 often engaged in similar behavior involving secrets of national security, Member of Parliament Macht and the others were neither frightened nor panicked. On the lawn behind the manor, they used the animals they had hunted to hold a barbecue dinner different from ordinary ones.

Watching the gentlemen roll up their sleeves and busy themselves beside the grills, watching the ladies occasionally go over to help, and watching the children run back and forth, eager to try, Klein held a glass of Rose Song Manor’s own sweet white wine and sat down on a white wooden chair, the corners of his mouth carrying an obvious smile.

Beside him, his mixed-blood personal valet Enuni stood straight, waiting for instructions.

Meanwhile, in a certain room of the manor’s main building, a pair of eyes was quietly watching below. They belonged to someone who looked exactly the same as Enuni.

The evening breeze blew past. Klein was just about to stand up and go to the grill to demonstrate what Desi-style barbecue was when he suddenly saw a figure rapidly outline itself before him.

It was Arianna, dressed in a simple robe and tied with a bark belt.

This servant of concealment looked at Dwayne Dantès and said,

“There was nothing special inside that underground ruin…”

She then briefly described the important parts of what she and the three archbishops had seen there, as well as the explanation given by Prince of Sonia, Grove Augustus.

That does not make sense… Suspicion was the first thing that appeared in Klein’s mind.

After all, Viscount Stratford’s side had received assistance from White Saintess Katerina. This very clearly indicated that the king’s faction and the Demoness Sect had not severed contact.

Under the premise that the Great Smog of Backlund had already happened, the fact that they still had contact with the Demoness Sect absolutely could not be explained by selfishly wanting to monopolize the Blood Emperor’s ruin.

With such deep cooperation, would the Demoness Sect and the Psychology Alchemists not demand a share of the gains?

If so, why not directly seek out the three Churches instead?

Klein instinctively believed that the problem with that ruin had not truly been discovered. He suspected that information might have leaked midway, allowing the king’s side to make preparations.

With Madam Arianna present, the possibility that the other side discovered something wrong through divination or prophecy can be ruled out…

From the time I dealt with Qonas Kilgor to the three Churches’ joint operation, fewer than ten people could have known of this matter, and all of them were high-level figures from their respective Churches. How could it have leaked…

Did Viscount Stratford’s problem cause the people inside the underground ruin to activate an emergency plan? No, his status should not reach that level. Even Qonas Kilgor did not know the exact situation, much less him. At most, he was responsible for communicating with the Demoness Sect and handling some peripheral matters. He might not even know about the underground ruin… Klein’s thoughts turned rapidly as he searched for a cause.

He first ruled out the possibility that Viscount Stratford’s matter had caused the other side to prepare. After all, the death of that court guard captain was not that important or critical.

In that case, there were only very few possibilities that could explain the entire situation. One was that someone who learned the secret midway had, for some reason, intentionally or unintentionally leaked the matter. Another was that someone had discovered something wrong with Qonas Kilgor’s seemingly normal state—but Klein himself had not noticed anything at all.

The Psychology Alchemists are also cooperating with them… Could one of my thoughts have been read, leaking the secret? But I have the gray fog’s support. No matter what, there should have been some abnormality, like when I faced that Spectator demigod together with Anderson before… The Psychology Alchemists originated from Hermes’s legacy, and Hermes is… As he thought this, Klein’s pupils suddenly dilated slightly.

He instinctively stopped himself from thinking further. But after glancing at Arianna, he relaxed and asked,

“Is this place concealed?”

“It is very concealed,” Arianna calmly replied.

People came and went behind her, but no one noticed her.

Klein breathed out, and the thought inside his mind finally took shape:

Emperor Roselle had said in his diary that the members of that ancient secret organization were all major figures…

Then, could there be such a possibility: that some high-level figures among the three Churches were members of the Twilight Hermit Order?

And could the ruin that Arianna and the other archbishops saw have been not the real ruin, but a ruin imagined into existence by Adam?