"Cutting off the 【Mental Message】 was to hide from that infernal demon!"
"You can't just stop me from watching entirely!"
"We're friends!"
"Besides, my only pleasure is sensing the surroundings through the spiritual connection with this bracelet!"
"And the result?"
"You insult an old man?"
"You beast!"
"Shut up, you damn old coward!"
Elias immediately returned the favor to Old Ed with the same level of courtesy. He clearly hadn't expected this old thing trapped in the bracelet to have such a massive backlog of nonsense waiting for him.
Thus, one person and one ghost engaged in a fierce argument over manners amidst the ruins.
Of course, despite the cursing, Elias's hands were anything but idle.
While he used his combined vocabulary from two lifetimes to blast Old Ed in his mind, he leaned over to gather his spoils of war.
Roughly fifty-four of them.
Elias felt a secret thrill in his heart, causing his insults toward Old Ed to become much more half-hearted.
However, the bickering stopped abruptly when a small wooden box appeared in the corner of his vision.
It was an extremely inconspicuous wooden box.
It was half-buried under Elias's pile of coins, revealing itself only after the coins had been gathered.
"What do you think is inside?" Old Ed's voice suddenly quieted, carrying a hint of irrepressible curiosity.
"How should I know?" Elias replied irritably.
In this hellish world, touching things of unknown origin usually meant not even knowing how you died.
He stood his ground and didn't reach out immediately, instead activating his Spirit Vision first.
Elias studied it for a moment.
The negative spirituality radiating from the wooden box was identical to the spirituality of the fifty-four soul coins in his pocket.
It was the exact same frequency, with no higher-level pollution or hidden curse traps.
After confirming it was safe, he crouched down with peace of mind and lightly flicked open the box's brass lock with his fingertip.
"How could you just open it?!" Inside his mind, Old Ed screamed like a startled rabbit and began a frantic lecture.
"Aren't you afraid of some vicious curse?"
"Do you really think you're invincible?"
Elias ignored Old Ed's impotent rage and simply stared at the interior of the box.
Old Ed seemed to sense something as well, likely using some detection spell of his own.
After confirming there was truly no danger, the old man said sheepishly, "Tch, isn't it just another soul coin?"
A black coin lay quietly inside the box.
It had the same coldness, the same sliminess, and the same carving of a distorted, pained face.
There was nothing special about it.
"Oh!" Old Ed suddenly let out an enlightened cry in Elias's mind.
"Is this the 'sister' that crazy kid was talking about?"
"Must be," Elias replied flatly.
He pinched the coin and held it up to his eyes for a closer look.
There really was no difference.
This 'sister' that Mester had treated as a treasure—the one he had even abandoned his humanity to save—was not a single bit different from any other soul coin used for trade.
If you tossed it into the pile of coins from earlier and mixed them up, you would never be able to find it again.
The corners of Elias's mouth curled into an extremely mocking sneer.
Heh, is this humanity?
Is this the status of humans in the eyes of the demons of Calovius?
No matter what joys or sorrows you experienced in life, no matter what unforgettable family bonds or ties you held, in the eyes of those infernal beings...
It was just another identical soul coin from a production line.
Standardized currency.
This is the most cruel form of capitalism.
Elias shook his head silently and tossed the cold coin back into the wooden box.
Then he found a leather case and packed everything inside.
He used a ritual to cover the case containing the soul coins with an arcane circuit for a 【Moonlight Veil】.
This made the case feel completely unremarkable.
Unless someone investigated it closely, no one would notice that it contained a large number of soul coins and two potions.
Then he stood up and turned his gaze toward a corner not far from the ruins.
There, the man named Herm lay slumped in a pool of blood.
He had fallen into a deep state of incapacitation, with only the faint rise and fall of his chest proving he was still alive.
Elias walked over, closed the wooden box, and tossed it casually beside the man.
"I'm leaving your sister for you," Elias said without any emotion in his voice.
"The rest is for emotional damages."
With that, he turned and walked out of the building without looking back.
He quickly withdrew his overflowing spirituality and donned the 【Moonlight Veil】 once more.
...
Meanwhile, outside the building where the upheaval had occurred.
The strange metronome in Cecil's hand had lost its supernatural concealment effect at some point.
The clamor of the real world rushed back in like a tide.
Carriage wheels rolled over the wet cobblestones, making crisp clattering sounds.
Pedestrians reappeared on the street.
Soon, people were shocked by the terrifying changes that had occurred to the building.
"My God! What happened here?"
"Look! Someone's lying there!"
Panic-stricken cries were already starting to ring out.
The crowd began to gather like moths to a light, huddling around the two unconscious Seventh Agency investigators outside the building.
A few bold citizens tried to crouch down and pat their cheeks, attempting to wake the two senseless, unlucky bastards.
The scene became extremely chaotic.
Elias watched all of this while remaining completely unnoticed.
He even noticed a thief among the onlookers, wearing a low-pressed newsboy cap and weaving through the crowd like a loach.
His movements were highly skilled. Taking advantage of everyone's shock, he silently lifted a few Shillings from the pockets of the unconscious investigators and tried to slip away unnoticed.
This move was accidentally spotted by a noblewoman nearby, triggering a sharp scream.
"Thief! There's a thief!"
The crowd boiled instantly, pushing and cursing, creating quite a disturbance on the street.
Elias used the cover of this commotion to slip quietly toward the entrance of the hotel across the street.
But just as he reached the revolving glass doors, his footsteps stopped.
He frowned and stood on the steps, hesitating.
"Wait."
"Won't I smell like Calovius?"
He suddenly realized a fatal blind spot.
He had just faced a genuine infernal demon.
Though he didn't have much of a physical sense for 'Calovius,' he believed that after contacting a powerful spirit world creature like Guss, his spirituality would inevitably be stained with something.
It would be trouble if it was detected during spiritual testing.
"How do I handle this?" Elias asked while closing his eyes to carefully feel for any impurities in his spirituality.
Strangely, he didn't sense anything abnormal.
"Calovius?" Old Ed was stunned for a moment, not immediately reacting.
"Oh, you mean Hell?"
"Usually only devils and those lunatics who obsess over the occult call their territory that."
"And what do you mean, 'how do I handle it'?" Old Ed asked back.
"Are you underestimating that treasure you just took out?"
"When you lit the Sacred Candle, that infernal stench you picked up was burned away by the holy light long ago."
Elias was stunned.
"As one of the Dawn Church's top holy relics, the Sacred Candle is an extremely expensive and sought-after item on the black market!"
Old Ed began to lecture Elias incessantly in his mind, his tone filled with unconcealed feverishness and jealousy.
"Rumor has it the manufacturing process is incredibly tedious and complex. I only ever heard of it during my life; I never saw it with my own eyes."
"I've finally had my eyes opened today."
"But that's not the point," Old Ed said, his tone becoming heavy as he emphasized.
"The point is, the Sacred Candle doesn't just dispel delusion and burn infernal beings and evil spirits."
"It has many uses!"
"Besides that, lighting it generates a powerful 【Blessing】 effect within an area, instantly boosting your stamina, senses, and spell effectiveness."
"And its most important role is purification."
"It is the absolute symbol of light."
"It can wipe away every impurity and low-level pollution from the lighter's spirituality."
Hearing this, Elias immediately entered the hotel without further hesitation.
As he deposited the case at the hotel's luggage storage, he marveled in his mind.
"It's that useful?"
"I'll just enshrine it when I get back!"
Rate on N.U.
