Chapter 61: An Unexpected Truth

Chapter 61: An Unexpected Truth

Looks like we have found the target… Klein withdrew his gaze and made a rough judgment.

Because there was no portrait, and because the dead adventurer’s face had been burned black, Elland clearly failed to recognize him as one of the targets. After observing the situation and listening for several seconds to that hair-raising laughter, he pointed toward the three or four military personnel lying not far outside the house and said in a deep voice, “Drag them back first. Once the other teams arrive, we will attack.

“Or…”

He hesitated, then lifted his head toward the deep-blue airship drawing closer.

Elland did not continue. Nor did he direct Klein and Danitz to do anything. He himself ran toward the unconscious military personnel whose faces had frozen blue-purple.

Thud, thud. Thud, thud… The closer he came, the weaker his steps became. Before long, his body had gone stiff, and every step was extraordinarily difficult.

As a former Royal Navy boatswain, Elland had rich experience. He made a prompt decision and advanced no farther. Slowly, he turned around and began walking back one step at a time.

The farther he moved away, the smoother his pace became, but his entire body still trembled uncontrollably. A thin layer of white frost had gathered on his brows and temples.

Freezing that violates common sense… Disaster-level cold… With Elland’s attempt as reference, Klein grasped the degree of danger in that area and sighed inwardly.

“What a pity. The Sun Brooch cannot produce true heat. It is a spiritual stimulation. Although it also makes the body react in obvious ways, at most it would allow someone to hold out for three or four extra seconds in that kind of cold disaster…”

Glancing at Elland, whose teeth were chattering too hard for him to speak, Klein swept his gaze toward Danitz.

He dropped his cane and said in a low voice, “Fire.”

Fire? Danitz froze at first, but quickly understood what Gehrman Sparrow meant.

He, too, had seen the full process of Elland’s failed rescue attempt.

A clump of crimson flame, not especially bright, gathered in Danitz’s right palm. He threw it toward an area near one of the military personnel.

The fireball crossed nearly twenty meters and landed on the ground. It did not explode, only quietly raising a tongue of flame.

The crimson pillar of fire let out sizzling sounds, constantly shrinking and swiftly dimming.

Suddenly, it expanded, as though struggling on the verge of death.

Wearing a black woolen coat, Klein leaped out from within and landed beside the military man.

He bent down, reached out with both hands, and grabbed the man by his clothing.

Then he braced one foot, exerted strength through his waist and back, and hurled the man outward.

The military man flew into the air and slid across the ground, landing ten meters away, out of the region where the cold was most severe.

After completing all this, Klein snapped his fingers with a crack, igniting a match he had specially separated and placed in his pocket before the cold seeped into his flesh.

Scarlet flames flowed outward like water and instantly submerged him.

When everything dimmed, Klein had vanished from the spot.

Flame after flame jumped, brightening and fading. Borrowing Danitz’s fireballs and his own matches, Klein flashed continuously through the region of extreme cold, simply tossing one military man after another out.

After two or three relays, he carried the last one and returned to their original position.

Elland had visibly recovered. He raised his thumb and said, “I am very glad, and honored, that I chose to ask for your help today.”

Captain, I like your tactful praise… Also, remember to increase the reward… Klein nodded politely, half turning to look at the house whose window had been flung open. The laughter inside was growing stranger and stranger.

At the side, Danitz curled his lip and cursed Elland inwardly.

Did you not see my contribution?

Although my fireballs turned into something like stage magic props, I still genuinely contributed!

That fellow’s nickname is Fair Elland, but he is not fair at all!

While he muttered, shadows covered the area. The airship had arrived in midair opposite them.

“Evacuate the people in the nearby houses!” an officer aboard the airship shouted from a distance.

After Elland and the two teams that had arrived successively cleared the residents from several nearby buildings, the airship lowered its altitude and adjusted its cannon barrels.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The cannons fired in succession, bombarding the house from which the eerie laughter emerged.

Hearing the explosions and seeing the fierce firelight flash, Klein, cane in hand, suddenly felt rather wistful.

This was the “overwhelming firepower” tactic he had always advocated. Back in Tingen, he had proposed it, but there had been no way to put it into practice. Today, the colonial military overseas was showing him the real thing.

Amid the deafening cannon blasts, Elland and the others split up to guard different positions, preventing the person—or monster—inside from breaking out.

The house soon collapsed. Smoke from the powder rose from the heap of bricks and timber, and all the accumulated snow and ice had vanished.

Suddenly, a thick bolt of lightning flared, branching wildly as it struck the airship.

Klein’s brow furrowed. He saw the airship freeze completely and heard the steam boiler produce a grating sound that made one’s teeth ache.

The dark-blue aerial monster lost some control. Emitting smoke that was neither too thin nor too thick, it drifted and sank toward one side.

Looks like there is ammunition isolation and an outer layer protecting the gasbag… I thought there would be a sympathetic explosion, blasting the airship into several sections… Klein turned all his attention back to the collapsed house.

When he had first sensed the profound cold and seen the male adventurer burned black, he had thought he might have encountered another Demoness. Having grasped the Witch potion formula and dealt with Demonesses several times, he knew Beyonders of that pathway could control frost and black flames starting from Sequence 7.

But the lightning just now made him reject this judgment. He now believed that Leticia truly was from the Moses Ascetic Order or Elemental Dawn—an original, genuine woman.

No sooner had Klein finished that thought than the piled bricks and wooden beams were suddenly lifted. A figure mixed with crimson and charred black used her elbows to support herself and crawled out.

She was female. It was still vaguely possible to recognize Leticia’s original features. Elland and the others were startled to discover that the target had already been found, but compared to before, Leticia’s current condition was both terrifying and miserable.

Her body was covered in black spots. Shells had torn one bloody wound after another across her, and inside those wounds, white fascia wriggled as if it had gained its own life.

The top of her head had split open, and brain matter spilled out, sticking across the surface like the overlapping palms of child after child.

Her bluish-gray eyes had lost focus. One pupil hid fire; the other flashed with electric light.

Beneath her chest, embedded in her abdomen, were two screaming heads twisted in agony. They were the other two male adventurers.

This does not only feel like losing control. It also feels polluted… After that round of shelling, she has already been badly wounded. Her aura has dropped to an extreme low… Klein did not move. He watched as the military Beyonders launched their attacks in layers.

Mental Pierce. Pain Whip. Purifying bullets. Small-caliber artillery fire… After this round, the out-of-control Leticia, who had only had time to make the ground crack and spread outward, completely collapsed and disintegrated, turning into broken flesh.

Pa!

Her torso fell to the ground, and the two male adventurers’ heads rolled out.

Klein narrowed his eyes slightly and discovered that, within the flesh of Leticia’s abdomen, there was a rolled-up yellow-brown parchment book.

On the surface of the book, a line of Elvish words was written:

“Book of Calamity.”

Why do these books and notebooks always end up inside people’s stomachs? The Antigonus family notebook was like this too… Klein first grumbled inwardly. Then he began to suspect that the Book of Calamity was the item that Leticia, this fake archaeologist, had taken from the Sea God ruins.

At that moment, one of the military personnel seized the opportunity while the two male adventurers’ heads still seemed capable of speech and asked urgently, “What did you do inside the Sea God ruins?”

“Sea God ruins…” one of the male adventurers answered in pain and confusion. “We never went there…”

He struggled to move his eyes, trying to see the condition below his neck.

“The Sea God ruins on Simim Island,” the military man reminded him.

“No… no…” The male adventurer wanted to shake his head, but could not. “We went to ancient elven ruins… Leticia found a book there… She liked it very much… She soon began studying it. She—she went mad! She went mad!”

The male adventurer screamed, and the last remains of his mind completely collapsed.

Not Sea God’s lost temple, but ancient elven ruins? That is different from what I thought… Just as Klein was about to listen more carefully, Elland had already come over and politely asked him and Danitz to stay away from the questioning site.

Turning into another street, Klein slowed his steps and began considering the whole matter.

“Why would Leticia taking the Book of Calamity from ancient elven ruins cause Sea God Kalvetua to be unable to maintain his own existence, gradually moving toward collapse? What connection lies between the two?

“Elves… Sea God… According to Little Sun, the ancient god Elven King Soniathrym controlled the authorities now belonging to the Lord of Storms. In other words, among the elves, there were unquestionably Sequence 3 Sea Kings, and perhaps even higher Sequence 2 beings…

“Could it be that Kalvetua, this sea serpent, accidentally discovered an elven ruin on the seabed, directly consumed the Beyonder characteristic left behind by a high-ranking elf, and luckily survived the two stages of sudden death and loss of control, thereby successfully obtaining demigod status and gradually gaining the faith of the Rorsted Archipelago’s natives?”

Klein slowly found a thread of thought, making him unable to avoid thanking Mr. Hanged Man.

At first, Little Sun had not revealed the corresponding authorities of the eight ancient gods. It was only later, guided again and again by The Hanged Man, that he had spoken of some of them, including the general situation of the Elven King Soniathrym.

As for directly consuming a Beyonder characteristic or corresponding material to advance, it was not something that had never happened. Before the potion system had been fully established, humanity’s ancestors had made similar attempts in order to obtain extraordinary power. But only an extremely fortunate tiny handful had survived and become Beyonders without becoming monsters, madmen, or dying on the spot as their flesh collapsed.

The success rate of that kind of attempt was one in a thousand, one in ten thousand, or even lower. After the potion system existed, no one was willing to take such a great risk again.

“If that is truly the case, Kalvetua was indeed very lucky back then… Of course, his body being thick and sturdy also played a part… But his intelligence does not seem to have improved much. At most, he is capable of deceiving faith. To think he never discovered that Simim Island also had an elven ruin, and that it was closely connected to the one where he hid…

“After Leticia’s group took away the Book of Calamity, that ruin collapsed, causing a mutation in Kalvetua’s hiding place and making it impossible for him, who had already been breathing his last, to maintain himself any longer. That would explain why Leticia and the others obtained their prize relatively easily. There were no rebels or Sea God believers guarding that place. Only after something went wrong did Kalvetua discover the problem and realize the two ruins were linked.”

Following that thread of thought, Klein attempted to explain the parts of the incident that had left him confused.

Among them was why the dying Sea God Kalvetua had not used one of his believers as a vessel—doing so would reduce many accidents and simplify everything. Given the brutality Kalvetua had displayed, that should have been the obvious choice.

The answer Klein came up with was that the body Kalvetua wanted to corrupt and occupy had to possess a certain degree of elven bloodline. Only then could it, to some extent, endure the transfer of the Beyonder characteristic.

And when Klein touched the bone sword, because of the gray fog, and because of his own special nature, Kalvetua had suddenly found an even better target.