The extraordinary comes with a price.
By the time he returned to the damp, moldy attic, the city's gas lamps had begun to flicker out one by one.
Ryan locked the door, not even bothering to take off his heavily worn old black overcoat.
He lay straight back down on the wooden board bed that groaned and creaked with his every movement, wrapping his freezing body in the coarse blanket.
Outside the window, the distant, long blares of factory sirens sounded muffled and remote in the fog.
Tomorrow was Monday.
The archives opened at eight in the morning.
Ryan closed his eyes. Today had been an information overload.
He was just an ordinary person.
He had no save files like in a game, and he didn't even have a cheat.
Despair, fear, and dread—countless negative emotions welled up, leaving him sleepless.
Outside the window, the London night was like a giant rag soaked in coal tar, heavily blanketing the rooftops of St. Blaise Street.
The distant sirens had fallen silent.
Leaving only a pipe dripping rhythmically from somewhere unknown—"drip... drip... drip..."
Ryan stared fixedly at the ceiling.
In the lightless dark, the tattered memories of the body's original owner began to spin frantically in his mind.
His memories of his past life as Lin Yuan were being ruthlessly devoured by the lingering, cold memories of this body.
He began to lose track of whether he was a miserable wretch from the twentieth century who had dreamed a grand modern dream, or an unlucky corporate slave who had truly transmigrated into a hell-mode dungeon.
What terrified him most was not next week's damn three-shilling rent, nor Irene's amber eyes.
It was that speck of pale gold starlight he had seen on the old newspaper earlier today.
That was no ordinary lung disease, nor was it even something that could be explained by the common sense of this world.
Although he was merely a player who had only recently started playing 《Cultist Simulator》, he knew exactly what it meant.
It was a sign of the Lantern.
It was the prying of the invisible arts, the most dazzling and ruthless principle from the Mansus, gnawing at this body like a parasite through the original owner's ruined lungs.
In this world, touching the extraordinary was never a cheat.
It was a one-way ticket to madness, mutation, and being sent to the gallows by the Suppression Bureau.
Not to mention, even players with a god's-eye view died countless times in the game.
“Fuck...” Ryan cursed softly in the dark.
No system, no cheats, just a coughing, blood-spitting body and two pence.
Despair and fear surged like a tide, nearly drowning his sanity.
He endured the night like this, teetering on the edge of sanity and madness.
Until morning, when the first gray ray of light, mixed with industrial exhaust, pierced through the mold-covered window frame and stung his eyes.
Monday had arrived.
Up at seven. At eight in the morning, the archives opened.
Walk north along Iron Lantern Street for half an hour.
Ryan arrived at the entrance of the St. Elias Branch Archive just as the clock chimed seven-fifty.
It was three miles away from the slums where he lived.
He didn't have the money for a carriage, so he had walked the entire way on foot.
From the outside, the archives were housed in a typical Victorian bureaucratic building.
The black granite exterior was so soot-stained from decades of coal smoke that its original color was unrecognizable, and the towering iron gates were mottled with rust.
Upon entering the main doors, the pungent smell of formalin, moldy paper, and low-grade preservative ink rushed to meet him.
“Oh, Ryan, you look like a corpse that just crawled out of the Greybell Church cemetery today.”
A sharp, mocking voice drifted from behind the counter.
The speaker was Pete, a temporary clerk who had entered the archives in the same batch as Ryan.
Arriving early every day, his sole intent was to cozy up to the staff on the first floor.
He wore a grey waistcoat he deemed respectable, his hair meticulously slicked back with cheap pomade. At the moment, he was dipping his quill into ink while eyeing Ryan askance.
In the memories of the original owner, Pete was a textbook opportunist.
He was extremely fond of snitching to the supervisor, hoping to climb over others' heads to secure a permanent position.
“If I were you, I'd ask Supervisor Morton for some time off.”
Pete curled his lips, a glint of schadenfreude flashing in his eyes. “Look at your face. If you happen to drop dead at your desk and ruin the civil registries from the last century, the supervisor will deduct the cleaning fee from your wages.”
Ryan ignored his provocation.
He didn't even have the energy to utter a single word right now. Expressionless, he simply bypassed Pete and walked straight toward the stairs at the end of the hallway.
“Hmph, quite a temper for a sickly weakling,” Pete spat softly behind him.
Ryan walked up to the second floor and stopped before an oak door bearing a brass plaque that read "Senior Operations Supervisor." Taking a deep breath to make his breathing sound as steady as possible, he raised his hand and knocked.
“Come in.”
Deep and hoarse, sounding like two pieces of dry leather rubbing against each other.
Pushing the door open, the room was incredibly dim.
Heavy, dark green curtains blocked out the fog and light from outside, and only a single kerosene lamp with a green shade burned on the desk.
The supervisor, Mr. Morton, was sunk deep into a massive high-backed leather chair.
He was a bloated man in his fifties, with an unhealthy, waxy-yellow complexion from a chronic lack of sunlight.
His eyes, buried under thick bags, were as lifeless as a dead fish's, yet whenever he stared at you, they always sent a chill down your spine.
“Ryan.”
Supervisor Morton looked up, his dead-fish eyes flashing with an uncomfortable scrutiny under the lamplight.
He stared at Ryan's pale face and sunken eyes for a full five seconds before slowly pushing a thick stack of parchment scrolls, their edges already blackened, from the corner of the desk.
“This is the church property registry cleared out from the cellar of St. Jude's Church in the West End last Friday. It's quite old, written in a mix of Latin and Old English, and the handwriting is somewhat faded.”
Supervisor Morton tapped the scrolls gently with two fat fingers, his voice dropping extremely low:
“Transcribe, classify, and archive them over the next two days. Remember, do not miss a single letter. If I find that you've copied even one word wrong... you can go share this week's wages with the beggars in the East End.”
“Understood, Supervisor.” Ryan stepped forward, reaching out with hands that were red and chapped from the cold to take the heavy stack of scrolls.
“Go to work, Ryan,” Supervisor Morton said softly.
“...Yes.”
He lingered before Supervisor Morton's desk, bracing himself to speak:
“Mr. Supervisor, my health isn't very good. Could I advance ten pence... to buy some medicine from the hospital?”
The office fell dead silent in an instant.
Supervisor Morton looked up, staring at him coldly with a voice devoid of warmth:
“Ryan, this is not a charity.”
Ryan gritted his teeth and interrupted, hastily promising:
“I can work overtime! I can finish organizing the registry of St. Jude's Church tonight and hand it to you tomorrow, without fail.”
The supervisor remained silent for a few seconds.
Then, he slid open a drawer, pulled out a silver coin, and slapped it onto the desk with a sharp clack.
It wasn't copper pence, but a florin—a double-shilling piece worth twenty-four pence.
“Take it. It's enough for medicine and bread.”
He paused, lowering his voice. “But by eight tomorrow morning, I want to see the complete transcript. Otherwise, you know the consequences.”
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