Chapter 31: The Ancient City of Nois

Chapter 31: The Ancient City of Nois

Hearing the archbishop’s instruction, Leonard first froze. Then he sighed inwardly:

“Mr. Fool’s prophecy was so accurate…

“No, that wasn’t prophecy. He had already seen through all of this.”

Leonard quickly collected his thoughts. Following procedure, he had Archbishop Saint Anthony issue him an official document. Only then did he return underground with two team members and enter Chanis Gate.

After the internal guards checked the document, he passed under the illumination of silver candles carved with intricate patterns and arrived at the room where Emlyn White was being held. Using a brass-colored key, he opened the heavy stone door.

A幽-blue light immediately invaded the cell, “stinging” Emlyn White into instinctively closing his eyes.

His complexion was much paler than before, and his body had become visibly thinner, giving off the impression that a gust of wind might carry him away.

Recalling Mr. Fool’s answer, Emlyn suddenly gained confidence in his present circumstances. Without opening his eyes, he slowly stood and chuckled.

“I knew you would take the initiative to send me out.”

If I said this was only a routine inspection, would you be disappointed? Leonard lampooned inwardly. Outwardly, he replied without much expression, “You have thirty seconds. If you still haven’t walked out of Chanis Gate after that, I’ll assume you voluntarily chose to stay.”

As a fairly experienced Nighthawk and a Red Gloves captain who had already held the post for several months, Leonard had abundant experience dealing with prisoners.

Emlyn’s expression froze. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but in the end he maintained silence. Passing Leonard and the two team members, he walked all the way out of Chanis Gate.

Once outside, he suddenly shivered several times, as though trying to expel the chill from his body.

“After you return, spend a few days in the sun and you’ll be fine. Oh, Backlund’s winter sun isn’t very common, and you vampires don’t like basking in sunlight either… Aren’t you an Apothecary? You can prepare a Sun-domain medicine for yourself.” Seeing this, Leonard casually reminded him a couple of times.

Emlyn’s condition was off. On one hand, he had gone many days without drinking spirituality-rich human blood and could only substitute animal blood. On the other, because he had spent too long behind Chanis Gate, he had been eroded somewhat by the Evernight power supporting the seals. He needed Sun-domain medicine to expel the remaining influence.

As a Potion Professor, Emlyn had a certain grasp of his own body and mental state. He neither refuted nor nodded, merely emphasized the word “Sanguine.” Then he changed the subject and asked, “What about Father Utravsky?”

“He still has to stay for a while. Let’s hope this damned war ends soon. Don’t worry, from now on we’ll let him go outside twice a week to bask in the sun. As for which two days, that depends on Backlund’s weather.” Leonard gave a simple response, then escorted Emlyn White all the way to the surface and out onto the street.

Emlyn hesitated for a moment, then asked again, “Where is the nearest hospital?”

“What do you want to do?” Leonard asked back out of professional habit.

“Blood transfusion.” Emlyn lifted his chin slightly, doing his best to keep his expression unchanged.

Blood transfusion… You mean drinking blood, don’t you… Leonard did not expose him. He pointed in a direction and gave him the address.

After watching the Sanguine viscount leave, Leonard returned underground and began studying the cases they needed to investigate with his team members.

…

After several days of travel, Klein finally arrived near the northern ruins—the city-state of Nois.

This place was likewise a barren, deathly silent plain. A dried-up riverbed had left its traces upon the land.

Looking at the city in the distance—its outline deep black, indistinct in shadow, without the slightest sound coming from within, shrouded in faint mist—Klein did not hurry closer. Instead, he first found a hidden place and recited Mr. Fool’s honorific name in a low voice.

Then he took four steps counterclockwise in reverse, recited the incantation, and entered the space above the gray fog. To return to Sefirah Castle with a single thought required the prayers of the Tarot Club members to overlap, forming a strong and stable anchor that could produce enough summoning force toward The Fool.

Using the prayer lights, Klein employed True Vision from afar to inspect the Nois ruins. He discovered that the faint mist there was slowly, yet irresistibly, dissipating. Across the city’s surface, at a glance, there was not a single Spirit Body Thread. The people wearing linen-like robes or beast-skin garments lay collapsed in different parts of the streets, completely unlike the living, busy state the City of Silver exploration team had seen when they first arrived here.

“After the angel or sealed artifact occupying this city realized its whereabouts had been exposed, it chose to migrate?” As Klein inferred from what he saw, he withdrew his gaze and looked toward the grayish-white fog supporting Sefirah Castle.

He was guarding against the possibility that the Miracle Invoker, or Attendant of Mysteries, or corresponding sealed artifact, was hiding in the gaps of history, ambushing Beyonders who came to explore the ancient city of Nois. He did not want to “leap” into the fog of history to hide, only to run headfirst into an enormous vortex formed from transparent worms twisting and embracing one another. Nor did he want to be chased by slick, terrifying tentacles again.

Zaratul’s previous ambush still left Klein with lingering fear. Even now, from time to time, he would have nightmares because of it and consider asking Miss Justice for another session of psychological trauma treatment.

That shock had been greater than seeing his marionette Enyuni put on a monocle right in front of him while he could not move at all—because it had implicated the Fog Hounds.

After confirming that the gaps of history were safe, Klein returned to the real world. He extended his hand, grabbed forward, and dragged out the previous version of himself: likewise wearing a half top hat of silk, a black knee-length trench coat, and carrying a simple glass lantern.

The next second, he “leaped” into the grayish-white fog, following the illuminated gaps of history and sprinting all the way back to the era before the First Epoch, to the place where the “corpses” of civilized cities were stacked.

For him, this was an extremely clever “safe house,” because aside from him, no Ancient Scholar could trace history back to a prehistoric fragment that had been completely severed and lost.

Of course, even for Klein, coming all the way here consumed a great deal of spirituality. At most, he could remain for another fifteen minutes, and that was on the premise that his historical projection did not make any particularly burdensome attempts.

Once his true body had hidden, Klein’s projection in the real world advanced, swiftly arriving outside the Nois ruins.

He did not blindly approach and enter. Instead, he circled to the back of a small hill on the opposite side of the dried-up riverbed, raised his right hand, and summoned his original marionette: Qonas Kilgor, the Fallen Earl with cold, rigid features and deep blue eyes that were almost black.

Qonas’s body wriggled for a moment and instantly became Gehrman Sparrow. Then he too reached out and took a lantern from the gaps of history.

This historical projection, summoned by another historical projection, carried the lantern’s dim yellow glow. Distorting distance, he arrived outside the city of Nois in only a few steps, alone.

Then, holding the lantern, he passed through ruined, collapsed buildings and thin mist step by step, entering the ruins.

Compared to seeing things through True Vision above the gray fog, contact in reality allowed Klein to discover more details.

Most of the humans and monsters lying collapsed in different places had already shown signs of rot, as though they had been abandoned for a long time.

Some sat on chairs beneath eaves. Some sprawled beside fireplaces. Some held moldy bread. Some walked arm in arm. Some leaned against walls and sat on the ground, lips pressed to bone flutes…

This allowed Klein to imagine what this city-state must have looked like when they had still been “alive”:

Some people were slacking off and resting. Some were baking food. Some were shopping along the streets. Some were immersed in music. Some came and went amid laughter and conversation. Some were fighting monsters in the arena with their lives on the line…

What a vivid, lively, vibrant scene that would have been. But in truth, everyone had long since died, no longer possessing their own souls. They had merely repeated the same actions according to a preset pattern.

And one day, at one moment, that bizarre scene had also frozen, abruptly ended. Everyone had collapsed without warning.

“A city-state composed of marionettes—the most realistic theater… Back then, the foggy town had a similar situation… Although I’m also a Seer, I still have to say that, in terms of horror, terror, and strangeness, our pathway can absolutely rank in the top three… Do I have to act in the same way in the future? As an Attendant of Mysteries?” Carrying the lantern, Klein walked through the streets strewn with many corpses. Following his spiritual intuition, he headed toward the center of the ancient city of Nois.

The situation here convinced him that the one who had once ruled the Nois ruins definitely possessed sufficient intelligence. After the City of Silver exploration team broke this place’s “peace” and “harmony,” that existence had not chosen to kill them and erase the clues. It had abandoned everything without hesitation and migrated elsewhere.

“The reason it didn’t silence them may have been because an Amon was following the City of Silver team at the time. Mm, or perhaps out of respect for the True Creator…” Klein let his thoughts drift casually. Soon, he arrived at a fairly intact church.

Inside the church stood a statue of a demonic wolf with eight legs, covered in dark short fur.

On the statue’s head was a tuft of gray-white hair, and black pupils occupied at least three-quarters of its eyes.

“Not Flegrea… The Dark Demonic Wolf that appeared from time to time during the Third Epoch, the God of Wishes? After spending several thousand years in the Forsaken Land of the Gods, did it finally find that Sequence 1 Beyonder characteristic?” No sooner had this thought flashed through Klein’s mind than footsteps suddenly sounded by his ears.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Already standing half-sideways, he immediately cast his gaze outside the church. He saw a figure slowly walking through the thin mist, its outline rapidly sharpening.

He was nearly two meters thirty in height, with a slightly hunched back, completely white hair, wrinkles around the corners of his eyes, and scars by his mouth. He wore a deep-black clergyman’s robe and looked like a very old priest or bishop.

His deep brown eyes were quiet and tranquil, unlike the mad, bloodthirsty, spiritless eyes of the monsters in the depths of darkness.

Yet in this long night, when lightning flashed only at extremely low frequency, this clergyman carried no beast-hide lantern and lit no flame. He walked silently through the faint mist just like that.