Chapter 150: Azik’s Discovery

Chapter One Hundred Fifty
Azik’s Discovery

Number 2, Daffodil Street. Klein nodded once to Azik, then quickly walked to the front door, took out his key, and opened it.

Melissa, who had already returned home, heard the lock turn and hurried from the kitchen toward the sitting room.

When she saw Klein, her eyes brightened and she said, “I bought the ingredients already. There is chicken, potatoes, onions, meat fish, turnips, and peas. I also bought a small jar of honey.”

Little sister, have you gotten used to the occasional small luxury too?

Klein laughed softly and said, “You will have to prepare dinner today. No need to consider my portion. I have something to do and need to go out. I may not return until after midnight. Mm, I am helping Instructor Azik with something—the history instructor from Hoy University.”

As he spoke, he half turned and pointed toward the carriage waiting outside the door.

Melissa’s lips opened and closed twice. Then she pressed them together and said, “All right.”

Klein bade his sister farewell, went out the door, and boarded the rental carriage Azik had hired. After two hours and forty minutes, they arrived in Lamud Town.

By then it was nearly nine o’clock. The sky was entirely dark, illuminated only by the crimson moon when it occasionally pierced the clouds, and by scattered stars in places where no gas streetlamps stood.

After instructing the driver to wait in town, Klein led Azik onto the road toward the abandoned castle.

As they walked, he noticed Azik moving faster and faster, until Klein himself had to break into a jog to keep up. By the end, it was Azik who was actually leading the way.

Klein wanted to say something, but when he saw the man’s silent face and tightly pressed lips, he wisely swallowed the words back down.

At that speed, the two soon arrived before the abandoned castle.

In the dense darkness, the structure that had almost become a ruin stretched its body outward in all directions, breaking the sky with shattered spires. It looked desolate, wild, gloomy, and dim.

Azik gazed at the ancient abandoned castle and slowed his steps.

He stopped there. His eyes sometimes looked deep, sometimes distant and unfocused, as though he were constantly wandering between dream and reality.

Suddenly, he gave a low cry of pain and raised a hand to clutch his forehead, the muscles of his face twisting until they seemed almost ferocious.

“Mr. Azik, are you—what happened?” Klein asked carefully while activating spirit vision.

Earlier, while riding the rental carriage back to Daffodil Street, he had secretly performed a quick divination by playing with a coin, predicting that the return to Lamud would hold almost no danger.

But he believed divination was not omnipotent. He had to remain alert for the possibility that he had interpreted things wrongly, or that the wording of his divination had contained a flaw. In addition, Instructor Azik was a mysterious powerhouse whose past no one knew. No one could know how he might react once stimulated. Caution, vigilance, and concern were therefore all normal emotions for Klein.

Azik did not answer immediately. Wearing an expression full of pain, he stepped forward twice, released the hand pressing his forehead, pointed ahead, and spoke in a dreamlike voice.

“I have seen this castle in my dreams.

“At that time, it was still complete. It had a solid outer wall and high spires.

“I remember the stable was there. The well was there. The soldiers’ barracks were there. A field was opened there for planting potatoes and sweet potatoes…

“I remember there was a practice ground. My child—he was a boy, only seven or eight years old—liked dragging a broadsword taller than himself around, saying he would become a knight in the future…

“My wife always complained that the castle was too dark. She loved sunlight. She loved warm things…”

…

Klein, who had been examining Azik’s aura, felt his scalp turn numb as he listened. Yet he was also faintly moved, as though experiencing a supernatural tale personally.

This ancient castle really is connected to Mr. Azik… Could he truly be the first Baron Lamud? A Beyonder creature who has lived for thirteen or fourteen hundred years? Is he human, or an evil spirit? No. What evil spirit goes running under the sun and even comes into contact with the Nighthawks…

Klein could not control his thoughts. He allowed them to collide with one another, sparking more ideas.

At that moment, Azik stopped murmuring and stepped into the castle gate.

He passed through the interior without Klein’s guidance, skillfully found the mechanism, and opened the hidden door leading to the basement.

Gripping his cane tightly, Klein followed two steps behind, descending the stairs and returning once more to the place where the coffin had been placed.

Unlike the previous time, the coffin lid was now closed, and the warm, pure sensation had completely dissipated.

The coffin was shut… Frye must have done that. That is the professional ethic of a Corpse Collector…

Klein nodded thoughtfully, using spirit vision to watch Azik—his emotions chaotic—walk before the coffin.

Azik reached out and pushed the coffin lid aside, opening a crack.

For a long time, he stared at the headless white skeleton inside. Then, suddenly, he let out a mournful cry that seemed both grief and agony.

Thud, thud, thud. Azik’s steps retreated heavily. Before Klein could react, he staggered and fell, sliding down the wall.

He covered his face with both palms and sat there in utter dejection. The surrounding environment seemed to grow even darker in that moment.

Klein hurried forward two steps and had been about to extend a hand, but he withdrew it again, not daring to disturb him.

Just then, his intuition told him that Mr. Azik was currently terrifying—so terrifying that the basement had once again become cold and sinister.

Klein silently shifted his feet closer to the stairway.

He believed in Mr. Azik’s character, but he feared that the man might lose control.

Amid that unease, he waited for several minutes. At last, he saw Azik lower his hands and slowly stand.

Mr. Azik seems to have changed a little… That is the answer my intuition gives me… But in spirit vision, his aura colors have not changed significantly, and his emotions are still as heavy, lost, and painful as before…

Klein swiftly judged the situation, feeling that Instructor Azik had become deeper, and more dignified.

“I have remembered some things, but only a very small part,” Azik said in a tone stripped of emotion.

Immediately after, he looked around the basement and said, “I sense here the power that made your fate disharmonious.”

“Ah?”

Klein first froze, then asked with sudden delight, “Can you trace its source?”

That mastermind who lived in a red-chimney house had not only secretly created coincidences, but had also come to Lamud Castle and taken away the head of the black-armored knight?

What exactly did he want to do? What was his true goal?

“Too much time has passed. But I would like to try,” Azik said in a low voice, as though a volcano on the verge of eruption lay hidden inside him.

“How will you try?” Klein asked curiously.

Azik walked back before the coffin, gazing at the white bones inside.

“He took the skull of my child. I want to use the connection of bloodline to find him.”

Your child? Mr. Azik, you have confirmed that the black-armored knight was your child? You really are an antique… Do you truly lose your memories every once in a while? Is that the price for gaining an extended life?

Klein silently drew in a breath, feeling for a moment as though he were coming into contact with a mythical creature.

At that moment, Azik extended his right hand. With a thumbnail that had suddenly sharpened, he cut open his index finger.

A drop of red blood fell, landing accurately upon the white bones.

It swiftly seeped inward, instantly staining the entire skeleton crimson.

Wah! Wah! Wah!

Klein suddenly heard the cry of an infant and felt that someone behind him was staring at him.

He abruptly drew his revolver and aimed backward. Only then did he slowly turn, but wherever his gaze reached, everything was empty. Nothing existed.

Even the stairway leading back to the surface had vanished.

Wah! Wah!

The infant’s cries pierced Klein’s ears again and again. He looked back toward the coffin in astonishment and saw that one face after another—some invisible, some twisted—were rising along with black fog, transforming into a strange door.

Creak!

The illusory door opened. Pale arms stretched out one after another, fighting to be the first, but before Azik, every one of them evaporated into black mist.

Through the gap in the door, Klein saw a white skull. It had been casually thrown beneath a dark-brown tree, rotting in the wind until it crumbled to powder.

Clang!

The strange door suddenly shut, clipping off countless pale arms. They fell one after another to the ground.

At that moment, Klein heard a long sigh.

It was Mr. Azik’s sigh, a sigh that seemed to pass through the weight of history.

With that sigh, the black fog abruptly vanished. The infant’s crying came to a sudden stop. Everything returned to normal, except that the cold had grown much stronger.

Klein clenched his teeth, shivering as he looked into the coffin. He saw that the crimson bones had returned to white—clear, crystalline white.

“I am sorry. I could not find him…”

Azik, standing with his back to Klein, spoke in a low voice.

At the same time, he reached out and closed the coffin lid.

“It is normal not to find him. Finding him would have been the pleasant surprise,” Klein comforted him.

After all, I have already been disappointed plenty of times in this matter…

He silently added the thought in his heart.

Azik looked once more at the coffin before him, then slowly turned around.

“I will continue investigating. I hope to have your help.”

“No problem. That is exactly what I wish to do,” Klein answered, suppressing the urge to immediately tell Azik about the red-chimney matter.

There was no use in saying it yet. Only Klein himself could confirm the target.

Even so, this solved one major difficulty for him: after finding the red-chimney house, how could he bring in the Nighthawks?

He did not believe for a moment that he alone could defeat such a mysterious and terrifying mastermind.

And now, he could seek Mr. Azik’s help!

Azik opened his mouth. In the end, however, he said nothing. He merely sighed and silently walked toward the stairs.

After leaving the basement and closing the hidden door, the two walked out of the abandoned castle along the path overgrown with weeds and thorny shrubs. Neither spoke.

In the dense night, Azik suddenly said, “After this matter is resolved, I will resign and leave Tingen to search for my lost past.”

“Mr. Azik, have you understood what exactly happened to you?” Klein asked, unable to conceal his curiosity.