Chapter 148: The Silent One

Chapter 148: The Silent One

After listening to Sherlock Moriarty’s arrangements, Sharron said nothing. She merely gave a slight nod, indicating her approval.

Klein then took out an iron-gray metal mask and put it on his face, leaving only his eyes and nostrils exposed.

Likewise, Sharron and Maric each put on similar masks.

However, the reasons for their concealment were different. The Wraith and living corpse purely did not wish to reveal their true appearances, lest the Loen military lock onto them afterward, leaving them unable to remain active in Backlund. As for the Faceless, he was using the act of wearing a mask to conceal his pathway’s characteristic of changing appearance, misleading future investigations by the Loen military and the Rose School of Thought. After all, according to normal logic, if one’s face was already fake and did not belong to oneself, why bother wearing a mask at all?

After waiting a while longer, a deep whistle sounded. A ship entered the harbor from the darkness.

Klein returned to the ventilation opening, lifted the monocular telescope, and once again cast his gaze toward the sealed-off pier.

He then saw a hybrid ship with both chimney and sails slow from speed, docking steadily bit by bit. At the same time, two squads of soldiers in red uniforms and white trousers carried rifles and ran over in neat formation, lining both sides of the road.

Before long, a gangway was lowered, and people began disembarking from the ship.

First came sailors carrying wooden crates one after another. Next was a young man wearing a major’s uniform. With a solemn expression, he held a box made of crystal, surrounded by several crew members.

Those crew members all carried lanterns, letting light shine onto the box from every angle, illuminating its surface and the object within.

It was a human skull with not the slightest trace of flesh remaining, and beneath the lamplight, strange colors flowed across it!

This group moved very slowly, as if constantly paying attention to the lantern angles and leaving no blank space.

After they got off the ship and walked along the road toward the nearest freight railway—toward the steam train waiting there like a giant serpent—another man in black formalwear emerged from the cabin door behind them.

He held a huge iron bucket. From above at a slight angle, one could vaguely see that it was filled with layer upon layer of ice.

For one second, Klein nearly thought there would be a bottle of wine in those ice cubes, the way it was done in upper-class society and expensive restaurants. However, he soon saw clearly what was inserted into the ice.

It was a hand made purely of gold!

Unlike the previous group, the man holding the iron bucket moved extremely fast. Sweat kept rolling down his forehead, and the metal surface beneath his palms was covered in condensation.

He seemed very worried that before he reached his destination, all the ice would melt away.

The military has plundered quite a few sealed artifacts from the Star Plateau, the Paz Valley, the Hagati Grasslands, and elsewhere this time…

Klein sighed sincerely and patiently waited for the coffin of Tutanthis II.

After more than ten minutes passed, he, Sharron, and Maric, who were far away, all heard heavy footsteps.

It was as though giants were walking on the hollow deck below.

Immediately afterward, the door on the side of the cabin opened. Four “knights” dressed in full-body black armor carried a golden coffin and walked out step by step, their footfalls causing thudding echoes and creaking sounds to ring out.

On the surface of the coffin were carved strange birds, long serpents, feathers, masks, and other patterns. It appeared ancient and mysterious, with an intense style belonging to the ancient Highland Kingdom. It was none other than the “bed” of Tutanthis II’s mummy!

The sound of chains turning and metal grinding followed. The dark metal tower slowly rotated its body, lowering the steel cables and hooks until they were wrapped and fixed to the four corners of Tutanthis II’s coffin.

Then the complicated pulley system began operating. The heavy coffin was steadily hoisted up and moved toward an open carriage outside the pier.

The four “knights” in black full-body armor were instantly relieved of the pressure. They sat down on the deck at the same time, breathing heavily.

Amid the clatter, one “knight” suddenly let out a muffled groan.

From the gaps in his armor, dark-red blood flowed out in streams, growing more and more abundant, more and more obvious. In the end, tiny, hard black beetles even appeared among the blood.

Clang!

The “knight” toppled backward, knocking off his helmet and revealing a head whose eye sockets were hollow and whose flesh hung in strips. Countless black beetles were crawling in and out there.

A curse… The mummy of Tutanthis II is the embodiment of curses… Even wearing armor with blessings applied seems unable to completely avoid the outcome of being cursed…

Klein sighed silently and shifted his gaze toward the golden coffin as it slowly descended onto the carriage.

The carriage outside the pier had no horses. Around it stood four “knights” exactly like the previous ones.

As the coffin descended, they approached, preparing to pull the carriage.

At that very moment, the carriage wheels suddenly turned. Maintaining balance by themselves, they began running sideways!

In that instant, the carriage seemed to have come alive.

Klein’s mind tensed. He watched with even greater focus.

Pa, pa, pa. The wheels spun at high speed, constantly knocking against stones, wood blocks, and steps along the abnormal route. Without any horses, the carriage carried the golden coffin and ran by itself across the empty area of the pier.

This scene looked like something described in a ghost story.

Near the pier, one of the steel monsters with chimney, cannon barrel, and machine gun turned direction. A deep voice pierced outward from within, unhindered.

“Attachment to objects is forbidden here.”

As soon as those words ended, the carriage that had been wildly running on its own suddenly lost momentum. After dragging out two long trails, it stopped steadily.

At the same time, a figure appeared in midair. He wore a white robe inlaid with golden threads. His hair was pale yellow and slightly curly; his eye sockets were obviously sunken, and his face was thin to the point that one could almost see the bones.

He was a middle-aged man with the appearance of mixed Northern and Southern Continent ancestry. Within his brown eyes lay irrepressible malice and madness. On his rather thick lips, rows of golden nails covered in dense patterns pierced through them, sealing his entire mouth shut, giving him an eerie and terrifying air.

Based on the features Miss Sharron and Maric had described, along with the portrait they had provided, Klein recognized him at a glance as Mahmos, an important member of the Rose School of Thought and one of the leaders of the Highland resistance army. His nickname was the Silent One.

As soon as Mahmos appeared, he cast his gaze toward the steel monster that had issued the decree, paying no attention at all to the coffin of Tutanthis II resting on the carriage below and to the side.

His attempt just now seemed to have been only to confirm the position of the Loen military’s demigod!

In the blink of an eye, Mahmos lifted his right hand and tugged at his mouth.

The golden nails piercing his upper and lower lips simultaneously flew away, no longer sealing his mouth.

Mahmos then opened his mouth.

Klein heard no sound and saw no light. Yet he discovered that the enormous steam chariot twisted as though melting. In the blink of an eye, it had become a sheep.

A sheep with vacant eyes and messy fur!

With a puff, blood sprayed from the sheep’s belly, and a lump of flesh rolled out. Embedded within it were a white glove and a golden mask.

A beam of light suddenly burst from inside the lump of flesh, cutting through all chaos and evil. The writhing flesh began reassembling into human form and returned to its original state:

A black-haired, golden-eyed man wearing a mask.

At that moment, the Silent One Mahmos lifted his palm upward. All the guns and cannons aimed at him and about to fire were raised into the air, shooting into empty space.

Then he took out a cloth doll.

The doll seemed to be made of old fabric, stained with obvious filth and spots of blood. Its eyes had been gouged out by someone, leaving behind two hollow sockets.

As soon as it saw light, its face began changing. The reference target was precisely the Loen military demigod—the golden-masked man staring back from the doll’s eye sockets!

Seeing this, the Loen military demigod immediately made the ring on his right hand emit crystal-like light. His entire person suddenly vanished from where he stood, blinking to Mahmos’s rear.

However, the cloth doll’s transformation did not stop.

At the same time, beside Tutanthis II’s golden coffin, the void dimly stirred and outlined a translucent mouth more than ten meters long.

The mouth abruptly opened and inhaled, creating a terrifying gale that lifted both coffin and carriage together.

It is suspected to be a spirit world creature!

It wants to swallow the coffin containing Tutanthis II’s mummy!

All of a sudden, the bullets and shells that had shot into empty space earlier were dyed with majestic light. They gathered together and turned into a magnificent ocean of light, drowning everything around them.

Klein’s eyes stung. Even though he had closed them in time, a few tears still flowed out.

Two seconds later, he opened his eyes again. The spirit world creature that had only manifested as a giant mouth was already gone. Tutanthis II’s golden coffin still rested quietly on the stopped carriage. Meanwhile, Mahmos had used a metal surface to flash to another direction of the pier. The filthy cloth doll in his hand had also returned to its original appearance, while the masked, golden-eyed man pursued closely with the aid of short-range Teleportation.

At the location where the two had been, a female figure wearing a black evening gown appeared. She also wore a golden mask, and atop her head was a crown woven from thorns.

On the crown, pure radiance flowed rapidly, constantly gathering inward into an “ocean.” However, at this moment, it seemed to be in a dim phase.

Just then, Klein saw a hand.

A hand wearing a black glove.

It hid within a shadowed corner and made a grasping motion through the air toward the coffin containing Tutanthis II’s mummy.

The coffin vanished instantly, flashing to the front of that hand!

The Rose School of Thought did not send one demigod, but two, and they seem to have brought along a sealed artifact of the Marauder pathway!

Seeing this, Klein immediately turned his head and said to Maric, “Run!”

Maric had been waiting for the command all along. Hearing this, he abruptly sprang up, rushed out of the warehouse, and madly ran toward the outside of the harbor.

Klein then turned around and said to Sharron on the other side, “Begin!”

Sharron likewise did not hesitate. Holding the iron cigarette case, she flew toward the lighthouse. As a Wraith, the walls and obstacles along her path seemed not to exist.

The movements made by her and Maric may have already been detected, but because they were leaving the pier and the battlefield, no one paid attention and no one cared.

Klein swiftly withdrew his gaze and extended his left palm, aiming it at the ventilation opening—at the location of Tutanthis II’s golden coffin.

Less than a second later, an illusory, indistinct book condensed in front of him, and a distant, ethereal chant sounded beside his ears:

“I came, I saw, I recorded.”

The book flipped with a rustle and stopped on one page.

Tornado!

This was a demigod-level Beyonder power with an extremely large range!