Chapter 172: Prisoner and Jailor

Chapter 172: Prisoner and Jailor

No way. I didn’t go anywhere… Does trouble have legs and come over on its own? Klein grimaced in a way that did not fit Gehrman Sparrow’s persona and almost sucked in a cold breath.

The only reason he stopped himself was that doing so would make a noticeable sound and reveal his hiding place to that “trouble”!

No longer the inexperienced Nighthawk he had once been, he quickly made a decision. Holding his breath, he slowly stood. Almost without making a sound, he moved to the side of the iron-barred door and secretly, calmly looked toward the direction of the footsteps.

Since hiding and evasion might no longer work, he needed to confirm the details of the danger so that he could make the most appropriate choice.

With the two miniature suns hidden within his eyes, Klein waited for dozens of seconds. He heard the footsteps become heavier and clearer, accompanied by the clang of iron doors being pushed open and striking walls.

Then he saw a tall figure appear at the right side of the corridor.

The figure was nearly two and a half meters tall and wore black armor that covered its entire body. Its coldness was almost tangible, making it seem like a giant knight.

Its aura was restrained. It was silent as the deep sea. Two clusters of deep crimson light flickered where its eyes should have been, and in its hand was a long, broad black straight sword.

Clang!

It pushed open the iron door of one cell, stepped inside, and circled the room as though searching for something.

Hiss… Is it looking for a particular prisoner? If this continues, it will definitely find me… Klein hesitated, considering whether he should leave the cell and look for another way out before the other party approached, or suddenly attack, swiftly and cleanly deal with the target, and then continue hiding here until the dream ended.

After judging how much time he had to think, Klein quickly removed the yellow crystal pendant from inside the cuff on his left wrist and, in a voice so soft only he could hear it, began divining:

“That knight just now is powerful.”

After swiftly reciting the statement seven times, Klein opened his eyes and saw the yellow crystal pendant rotating clockwise, with both large amplitude and high speed.

This meant the target was extremely dangerous!

No longer hesitating—and with no time left to hesitate—Klein used his Clown abilities to control his muscles, opening the iron-barred door without creating any extra noise.

Then, taking advantage of the black-armored knight entering another cell, he slipped lightly into the corridor and, with his body lowered, moved quickly toward the left.

Within the thick darkness, he listened to the movements behind him while maintaining covert and swift motion. Soon, he turned a corner and arrived before a pair of iron doors that seemed to lead to an exit.

He tried pushing and pulling them, discovering that the iron doors were not heavy, but had been locked from the other side by someone unknown.

After thinking for two seconds, he took out the key he had picked up in the cell, inserted it into the keyhole, and turned it without much hope.

A soft click sounded. The lock on the double iron doors opened.

That works too? Even though this is a dream, a key picked up at random shouldn’t just happen to be an important item… I was originally planning to turn paper into soldiers, stick them into the crack between the doors, and cut through it over and over, one sheet after another… Klein slowly pushed open the iron doors, half puzzled and half lampooning.

To his disappointment, what lay behind the iron doors was not an exit, but a hall piled with many miscellaneous items.

Closing the doors behind him and locking them again, Klein moved around the disorderly piles of objects, searching for any possible door or path.

A few seconds later, he noticed an inconspicuous black wooden door in the corner. He cautiously approached it and reached out to grip the handle.

The scene inside naturally appeared in his mind. It was a storage room. On the right stood a full-length mirror, and beside it, a figure in a linen short robe huddled in the corner.

Someone? The escaped prisoner? Forced out of his comfort zone, Klein decided to seize a limited degree of initiative. He slowly turned the handle and pushed open the black wooden door.

He needed to gain a rough understanding of what was going on so that, at a critical moment, he could decide whether to flee or fight.

“Who is it?” The figure in the linen short robe asked in a rushed yet quiet voice, filled with despair and pain.

“An adventurer,” Klein answered simply.

Relying on his night vision, he had already seen the figure’s appearance clearly.

It was a man with weather-beaten features. The wrinkles on his forehead, around his eyes, and beside his mouth were deep, yet his hair was glossy black, without a single strand of silver.

His linen short robe was plain and ancient in style. His expression was twisted by pain. Within his rare pure-black eyes lay unconcealable astonishment and confusion.

“An adventurer?

“How did you come here?”

Keeping a certain distance from the man whose age was difficult to judge, Klein stood by the door and looked at him.

“It is necessary courtesy to introduce yourself before questioning someone else.”

As a Faceless, with only that brief observation, he had already grasped the other man’s defining traits—apart from the contradiction between his hair color and wrinkles, there was a hideous old scar on his cheek.

The man froze for a moment, then glanced worriedly at the hall.

“You had better close the door. We cannot be caught by that devil, otherwise…”

The muscles in his face twitched noticeably twice, as if he had recalled something terrible.

“Devil?” Klein repeated softly. Reaching behind him, he closed the black wooden door.

The man breathed a sigh of relief and smiled bitterly.

“My apologies. I truly was impolite just now.

“My name is Leomaster, an ascetic of a religious organization.”

“A religious organization? It seems you aren’t a believer of one of the Seven Gods,” Klein said, noticing the problem in his wording.

If he had been an ascetic who believed in one of the Seven Gods, he could have said so directly. Even a priest of the Church of the Eternal Blazing Sun or a bishop of the Church of Storms would not necessarily attack on sight in such a dangerous place.

Leomaster gave a self-mocking smile.

“Yes. I worship the original Creator. He is omniscient and omnipotent, the root of all greatness. He is the beginning, and He is also the end. He is the God of Gods!”

This… Hearing that the man worshiped the original Creator, Klein’s first reaction was the Twilight Hermit Order.

However, across the Northern and Southern Continents, there were indeed many small sects with primitive worship, and no small number of people believed in the original Creator… After considering, Klein asked, “What is the name of your religious organization?

“And how did you come here?”

Leomaster hesitated before saying, “The easternmost end of the Sonia Sea is the place where my Lord slumbers. His holy mountain is hidden somewhere here. I led a pilgrimage party here, hoping to witness a miracle and redeem ourselves.

“Perhaps it was an inevitable trial. We were captured by that devil. One after another, we died…

“Later, I seized an opportunity, escaped from the cell, and hid here, waiting for the devil to leave.”

After thinking for a moment, Klein asked, “Do you know what that devil is called? What are his characteristics?”

“He?” Leomaster shook his head, somewhat confused. “I do not know his exact name, but many pilgrims seem to recognize him. They call him the Black Saint.”

Black Saint? A demigod? Is this Leomaster’s dream, or that demigod’s dream? Judging from my divination result, it should be the latter. Otherwise, the danger wouldn’t be that great… Klein was just about to ask which organization Leomaster belonged to and to figure out roughly what Beyonder abilities the Black Saint possessed, when the corner of his eye suddenly swept across the full-length mirror opposite the ascetic.

In mysticism, mirrors were passages that connected to hidden, unknown worlds. They could easily bring terrifying accidents. Therefore, Klein, currently inside a dangerous dream, cautiously walked over, intending to use the Priest of Light’s ability to destroy the object directly.

“No, don’t!” Leomaster seemed to sense Klein’s intention and cried out in terror, though still in a low voice. “Without it, I will—I will die immediately!”

Ah? Klein looked at the mirror again in confusion.

Although the environment was abnormally dark, the mirror clearly reflected two figures: one was Leomaster, with many wrinkles and black hair; the other was Gehrman Sparrow, thin-faced, black-haired, brown-eyed, and wearing a flat cap.

At that very moment, without Klein doing anything, the Gehrman Sparrow in the mirror slowly turned his head and gave him a gloomy smile!

Ripples suddenly spread across the mirror’s surface. A hand reached out from within.

Klein had only blinked once when that identical Gehrman Sparrow climbed out of the mirror. Because of the darkness, his face carried an obvious sinister quality.

Very frightening… Unfortunately, I don’t actually look like Gehrman Sparrow, so you didn’t scare me… If the one shown in the mirror and crawling out had been Zhou Mingrui, I might have woken up from fright on the spot… Klein looked calmly at the other party and raised his left hand. A layer of sunlight had already begun flowing over it.

The gloomy Gehrman Sparrow opposite smiled and likewise raised his left hand, letting the glove take on a deep black, noble yet evil.

That corresponded to the Corrupt Baron’s ability!

My duplicate? Klein thought for a second, then expressionlessly raised his right hand as well.

In his palm, he held a short milky-white scepter that had appeared from nowhere. Around its head was set a ring of azure-blue “gems.”

The Sea God Scepter!

Although actions in the dream had to be logically consistent to achieve the desired effect, Klein suspected this illusory world could not affect the gray fog or the mysterious space above it. Therefore, he had tried simplifying the ritual process, telling himself that the Sea God Scepter was stored in a place similar to a unique region of the spirit world, and that he could retrieve it whenever he wished.

The result delighted him. The dream world truly could not distinguish between a unique spirit world region and the world above the gray fog. Since the Sea God Scepter did indeed belong to him, that demigod-level Sealed Artifact had been “retrieved”!

It really works… Otherwise, I’d have had to fight the one opposite in a brutal battle… Klein secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

He also believed that the mirror could not copy the parts related to the gray fog.

The gloomy Gehrman Sparrow stared at him in slight dullness, instinctively raising his hand in imitation. But his right palm was empty.

Then he saw countless silver-white bolts of lightning shoot out, wrapping him layer after layer. He consumed one Paper Figurine Substitute after another, yet still could not escape that area.

With a sizzling crackle, an enormous ball of lightning illuminated the cramped room where there was nowhere to dodge. Then it vanished together with the Gehrman Sparrow from the mirror.

For some reason, Klein felt strangely calm at that moment, as though he had entered the time of a sage.

He turned his head, looked once more at Leomaster, and asked, “What exactly is the name of the religious organization you joined?”

Trembling, Leomaster answered, “The Aurora Order…”

The Aurora Order? Klein was stunned, unable to stop himself from raising an eyebrow.

At that moment, a loud clang sounded outside. The locked double iron doors seemed to have been kicked open.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

Heavy footsteps, like beating drums, came straight toward the corner, as though the source had already discovered where Klein and Leomaster were hiding.

Klein suspected the commotion from the lightning storm just now had attracted the Black Saint’s attention.

There’s no hiding now… Gripping the Sea God Scepter, Klein kicked the black wooden door of the storage room outward, sending it flying toward the Black Saint!

As the wooden door tumbled, he saw the target clearly.

The knight in full black armor had, at some point, lifted his visor, revealing a face with deep wrinkles, a few strands of glossy black hair, and an old scar on his cheek.

He looked exactly like Leomaster, every fine feature matching perfectly!

The only difference was that his eyes burned with deep crimson light.