Chapter 144: Ghost Stories

Chapter 144: Ghost Stories

Night. Pritz Harbor, in a cemetery outside the city.

Those who had died during the earlier naval bombardment had already been carried here. Pastors and bishops of the three major Churches were busily soothing the souls, preventing mutations.

In that brief span of one day, many wives had lost husbands, many children had lost mothers, and many families had been left with only one lonely survivor. They wandered through the cemetery; some were silent, some wept, and some had fainted several times from crying.

Klein, wearing an ordinary face, stood among them without saying a word. He watched everything in silence, as though recalling funerals he had once attended.

Taking advantage of the darkness, he had just used the Staff of Life to heal the people injured in this attack across several hospitals in Backlund and Pritz Harbor. At the same time, he had left behind eerie, terrifying urban legends, further digesting the Bizarro Sorcerer potion.

And he knew that once such tales spread widely, Zaratul, who was in Backlund, would immediately understand what was going on and send marionettes to monitor the corresponding locations. Therefore, before the news had time to circulate, Klein used Teleportation to visit every hospital in Backlund and Pritz Harbor, leaving behind one horror story after another while treating the critically wounded.

Once these matters spread, he believed he would receive a great deal of feedback, taking a solid and enormous step toward completely digesting the potion.

However, Klein did not stop there. The possible conspiracy of the Red Angel evil spirit and the fact that Zaratul was in Backlund were like a blade suspended above his head, urging him to continue searching for opportunities.

And so he came here, personally witnessing the grief of ordinary people.

After standing silently for a while, Klein withdrew his gaze, turned around, and left the cemetery.

Once he reached a deserted place, the glove on his left palm swiftly turned deep blue, growing slick fish scales one after another.

A howling wind swept over, carrying Klein into the air and toward the harbor.

On the ocean beyond the port, the Feysac Empire’s Sonia Sea Fleet waited quietly, seemingly prepared to launch another round of bombardment at dawn to destroy the remaining shipyards.

Before long, Klein arrived above the port ruins and gazed at the faint firelight seeping through the deep night.

At the same time, his two marionettes used Flame Jump to rush over from the ground and took positions in different concealed places.

What he had just seen and heard left Klein without hesitation or pity regarding what he was about to do next. And yet he remained confused.

Retaliating against invaders was a just act. But if he were to heavily damage the Feysac fleet for that reason, the happiest person might well be Loen’s King George III—the real mastermind behind the scenes, one of the chief culprits pushing the war forward.

There are too many principles in this world, but only after truly experiencing things does one realize that sometimes no matter what one does, it does not feel quite right. One’s heart will still fill with contradiction… Klein exhaled and shifted his attention to the intelligence he had obtained from The Hanged Man.

The commander of the Feysac Empire’s Sonia Sea Fleet was Admiral Yegor Einhorn, a demigod from the imperial family. He was currently Sequence 4 of the Red Priest pathway: Iron-blooded Knight.

Using this intelligence, Klein combined it with the contents of the Red Priest card and brought more key details to mind.

“An Iron-blooded Knight can turn a woman into a man, and possesses courage comparable to steel. They can not only manipulate many kinds of flames and are masters in that domain, but can also transform themselves into flame or steel…”

…

Feysac Empire, Sonia Sea Fleet, aboard the flagship Nephos.

Yegor Einhorn, a burly man over two meters tall with a dense mustache above his lips, sat behind a desk covered with maps. While drinking Sonia blood wine, he considered his next arrangements.

“After daybreak, Loen’s airship formation will definitely come to attack. Their ironclad ship, the Pritz, and its corresponding fleet should also be close to returning. If we continue remaining here, we’ll fall into a very passive situation.

“Although I am an Iron-blooded Knight and can gather the power of the entire fleet onto myself, distributing damage outward, the commander of that ironclad fleet is very likely a demigod of the Arbiter pathway, or has a corresponding Grade 1 sealed artifact. It won’t be easy to deal with… One careless mistake, and they’ll take advantage of their speed and naval guns…

“Retreat is the best choice. After that, while Loen’s navy is still wounded and temporarily insufficient in numbers, we can continue raiding coastal ports…

“Heh. A war like this truly is a good opportunity to digest the potion.

“What a pity. I failed to become a War Bishop before this. Otherwise, perhaps after the war, I would have had the chance to advance to angel rank. Sigh. Only a War Bishop can truly bring out the advantages of an army, instead of merely gathering its strength onto oneself as I do now…”

While Yegor Einhorn’s thoughts churned, he was about to use the hidden connection between an Iron-blooded Knight and his soldiers to notify his adjutant, summoning him so he could issue the order to retreat under cover of night.

Suddenly, he raised his head and looked toward the door.

Knock!

A knocking sound followed, reverberating through the quiet room.

A forewarned attack… The thought flashed through Yegor’s mind. His entire mental state instantly became highly tense.

In battles between demigods, setting the environment in advance, launching surprise attacks, and striking unexpectedly were all effective ways to seize the initiative. They were indispensable components for defeating, or even killing, an enemy of the same level. Without them, success was very difficult. Therefore, behavior such as warning the target before an attack meant either there was only a warning and no follow-up, or the level, status, and strength of the attacker far exceeded that of the target.

As a seasoned Iron-blooded Knight, Yegor instinctively considered the worst possibility. He immediately awakened the connection established between himself and every sailor and soldier aboard the Nephos.

At that moment, the sound rang out once again.

“Bang!”

This time, the knocking produced a sound comparable to the roar of a giant cannon, making Yegor feel as though an enormously powerful bomb had exploded beside his ear.

With his spirit already highly strained and his attention fixed on listening for movement, this was not much inferior to the roar of a Disaster Priestess.

For a moment, Yegor’s ears buzzed, and dizziness appeared in his mind.

He hurriedly distributed the damage outward, causing every member of the Nephos to feel a slight ringing in their ears.

Immediately after, Yegor grabbed the fountain pen on the desk and threw it toward the door.

The dark-red pen left afterimages behind it as it flew, like a shell fired from a cannon.

For an Iron-blooded Knight, even the most ordinary object could, under the enhancement of his traits, become a terrifying murder weapon.

Bang!

The door struck by the fountain pen shattered directly, revealing the knocker in the corridor beyond.

It was a man in a black windbreaker. His body was thin as paper, and his face had no features.

At that moment, the fountain pen itself exploded as well. Tiny fragments swept out like a storm of machine-gun fire, tearing the knocker into piece after piece of blood-colored flesh.

Yegor did not relax. Instead, he stood directly, warily sweeping his gaze across his surroundings.

He knew very clearly that the true knocker had not yet “appeared.”

At that moment, the adjutant living diagonally across from him opened his door and ran out. Looking at the blood and flesh on the ground, he said in astonishment, “Your Excellency, Admiral, what happened?”

“There has been an infiltration…” Before Yegor could finish, his gaze suddenly froze on the adjutant.

The adjutant withdrew his eyes from the flesh on the floor and slowly raised his head.

His face had no brows, no eyes, no nose, and no mouth. Like the knocker from just now, its surface was empty and smooth.

Yegor’s heart quivered. His entire body instantly ignited, transforming into blossoms of flame that shot in every direction.

After dispersing, the almost-yellow crimson flames converged again with a whoosh ahead, surrounding the adjutant within.

The flames quickly scattered, revealing the adjutant, now charred from head to toe.

A wind born from the clash of heat and cold blew past, and the adjutant collapsed instantly into ashes.

The flames did not stop. One after another, they flew out of the room and reassembled in midair into the burly figure of Yegor.

At that moment, he saw seabird after seabird flying over from all around. Every seabird had a human head—a head without any facial features, blank and smooth.

Yegor snorted inwardly and sent a ring of scorching fire rippling around him, driving it at high speed toward those bizarre seabirds.

Just then, he heard the sound of metal scraping. At once, he borrowed the sight of his soldiers and looked over.

With that one look, his body abruptly turned cold. An uncontrollable sense of terror and horror surged within his heart.

On another sail-of-the-line ship in the Sonia Sea Fleet, cannon after cannon seemed to have come alive, possessing their own lives.

They turned on their own and aimed into the air.

And shell after shell eagerly, actively entered the cannons.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The shells had only just been fired when fireballs, each tracing a different arc, struck them and detonated them prematurely in midair.

Grasping this opportunity, Yegor swiftly recited the honorific name of the supreme commander of the Sonia Sea War Zone, a Weather Warlock from the imperial family:

“Master of battlefield mists, symbol of weather’s changes, totem of storms and lightning, great Ahomatuowa Einhorn…”

This was precisely why forewarned attacks found it difficult to kill demigods of the same level. They could always find an opportunity to seek help.

Of course, the attacker, Klein, had mainly intended to create an eerie scene that would frighten a demigod and help him digest the potion. He had never held any firm intention of successfully hunting the target.

Seeing the situation develop this way, Klein, hiding underwater and having mostly achieved his goal, immediately had the marionettes Qonas and Enyuni switch positions over to him. Then, bringing them with him, he Teleported away.

Yegor, however, did not lower his guard. His mind remained highly tense, prepared against any possible attack.

Only after that angel gave a response did he truly breathe a sigh of relief.

Afterward, Yegor no longer let the fleet remain there. Abandoning the sail-of-the-line ship that had become the center of a strange legend, he departed that sea area.

Some time later, on the now quiet sail-of-the-line ship, a seabird flew over and landed on the mast.

This seabird had a conspicuous dark ring around one eye. It looked left and right, then spoke in a human voice:

“I smell the aura of a Seer demigod…”