“Where are the Slayers?”
Guardian’s rough voice echoed through the empty altar.
His remaining eye was locked onto the phantom image behind the table.
He was unaffected by the man in black’s familiar, almost flippant attitude.
He completely ignored the Seventh Agency investigators in the rear echelons, who had already begun whispering among themselves due to the eerie situation.
“Slayers?”
Hearing Guardian’s question, the man in black behind the table let out a soft chuckle.
He seemed composed and playful.
“Where are there any Slayers here?”
The phantom leaned forward slightly in the wide, high-backed chair, appearing to scan the empty altar.
The gaze hidden beneath the brim of his hat carried obvious mockery.
“Have you seen any Slayers?”
Guardian narrowed his lone eye.
Beside him, Ms. Cecil took a quiet, deep breath.
Her sharp eyes sized up the phantom from head to toe.
In her mind, the gears of intelligence were grinding and spinning frantically.
This guy knew their trump cards and their purpose.
Even the fact that they had come up empty was within his calculations.
“So... you’re a member of the Mist Veil Society, and also a mole within it?”
Cecil arched an eyebrow.
She threw out this logically contradictory deduction.
She was trying to bait more real information out of him through this highly erratic line of questioning.
As long as the other party refuted it or played along.
The more he spoke, the more likely he was to slip up; she could always catch a flaw in his words.
“I never said that.”
The man in black didn’t take the bait at all.
His tone was light as he kicked the ball right back.
This eel-like slipperiness made Cecil curse silently in her heart.
The phantom’s slender fingers tapped on the wooden table.
“You needn’t worry either.”
The man in black’s tone slowed down, like an elder comforting a lost child.
“I mean nothing by it; I’m just giving you a hand at the right time.”
He spoke dismissively.
As if tricking more than half of the Seventh Agency’s elite into these foul-smelling sewers really was just a benevolent act of guidance.
“Lest the official investigators always be kept in the dark.”
“Heh.”
The corner of Cecil’s mouth twitched as she gave an undisguised sneer.
The cold laughter was exceptionally clear in the deathly silent altar.
Kept in the dark?
If it weren’t for you rats hiding in the gutters causing trouble every day, would the authorities be running around like headless flies?
However.
At this moment, in the hearts of the investigators standing ready in the back.
Looking at this mysterious man in black who was even kindly providing clues.
A single thought popped into everyone’s mind simultaneously:
He’s actually quite a nice guy.
Of course.
This was just a cynical thought born from the absurdity of the situation.
The phantom behind the wooden table showed no emotional reaction to the mockery.
He really seemed to be just a soulless phonograph, or rather, a messenger responsible only for relaying information.
He continued speaking.
“But since you have so many questions, I can throw in a hint as a bonus—”
The phantom raised his head slightly.
The shadow beneath the brim of his hat seemed to fade a bit.
The next sentence held no playfulness, only a cold statement of fact.
“At the center of Moon Bay, there lies a Fifth Element.”
The moment those words were spoken.
The air in the altar completely froze.
“See for yourselves.”
Leaving behind that light concluding remark.
With that, the figure that had been sitting steadily in the high-backed chair began to turn transparent.
The ghostly blue specks of light forming the phantom were like fireflies scattered by the wind, peeling away and dissipating bit by bit.
In contrast, everyone from the Seventh Agency felt as if they had been struck by lightning.
Guardian’s lone eye snapped wide as he instinctively gripped the sidearm at his waist.
And Ms. Cecil’s breathing grew rapid.
She, of course, knew what the Fifth Element meant.
This was a god-tier material that could only be condensed by an alchemical craftsman of Scale Seven—the Saint tier.
This object had a more familiar common name:
The Philosopher's Stone.
What kind of value did this hold?
It was comparable to the legends of the ancient past.
A spell that only ancient mystics of the demigod tier could possess and cast—
【Wish spell】.
And a Fifth Element, through a certain alchemical exchange, could achieve eighty percent of a Wish spell’s effectiveness.
Eighty percent of a Wish spell!
What did that equate to?
It was equivalent to a wishing stone capable of warping the rules of reality!
Ignoring the laws of physics, ignoring causal logic.
It was enough to drive any transcendent or organization into total madness.
Within the squad.
The silence lasted only a few short seconds.
Then, a suppressed commotion erupted.
Some of the newer investigators.
Hastily lowered their voices, anxiously asking the veterans who had served longer in the Seventh Agency.
What exactly was the Fifth Element?
The veteran investigators were now pale-faced, their lips trembling, unable to even speak a complete sentence.
Only the sound of chattering teeth remained.
The scene momentarily became chaotic.
The glow of spells flickered unsteadily under the influence of the uneasy emotions.
The expressions of Guardian and Cecil had become incredibly grim.
So dark they could drip ink.
The clues in their minds were linked together like a bolt of lightning at this moment.
Moon Bay.
Wayland Capital.
Those ambitious capitalists had already known this news twenty-five years ago.
For the sake of that Fifth Element submerged in the water, they had not hesitated to spend a fortune to buy the ownership of all the lighthouses around Moon Bay.
So.
What about the Mist Veil Society?
Had this secretive, chaos-loving cult also stepped in for that Fifth Element?
A wishing stone that could warp reality.
It was easy to imagine.
If it ultimately fell into the hands of ambitious capitalists.
Or, into the hands of those cultists who had no bottom line.
The real-world chaos it could cause would definitely not be less than the turmoil triggered by the Soul Pendulum tonight!
That was a disaster capable of destroying all of Velen.
The question came up again.
The Soul Pendulum that the Mist Veil Society had cleared out Lily of the Valley Convent to frantically fight for tonight.
Did it have some secret connection to this Fifth Element slumbering in Moon Bay?
More questions popped up like mushrooms in Cecil’s high-speed brain.
All the conspiracies were now woven into a suffocating, giant web.
“How can you prove it?”
Guardian’s voice was terrifyingly low.
This intelligence was too big—so big the Seventh Agency couldn’t even handle it.
He had to confirm its authenticity.
Facing this interrogation.
The phantom once again spread his hands made of light specks.
He made an indifferent, even somewhat helpless gesture.
“I don’t need to prove it.”
The man’s voice became more and more ethereal.
“Believe it or not, it’s up to you.”
He threw out this irresponsible disclaimer.
“Only—”
At the very last moment before the light and shadow collapsed, he paused.
His tone suddenly shifted, becoming extremely meaningful, even carrying a hint of schadenfreude.
“If you continue to waste time with me here.”
The final words were like a sharp blade, precisely stabbing into Cecil’s weak point.
“Things over at Lily of the Valley Convent are likely to spiral completely out of control.”
As soon as he finished speaking.
The phantom completely lost its energy support, turning into countless shards of light and dissipating into the murky air.
The altar returned to deathly silence.
Only the stack of worn parchment remained, lying quietly on the table.
Cecil, who had been frantically thinking about the connection between the Fifth Element and the various conspiracies.
The moment she heard those final words.
Her heart skipped a beat.
A chill rushed up her spine straight to the top of her head.
Judging by the man in black’s tone just now.
The so-called “great gift” he mentioned.
Would definitely not be any kind of pleasant news.
In that case, the Soul Pendulum was certainly not in this empty Temple of Slaughter.
The worst possibility was that the Soul Pendulum had been taken into his own grave by that damned thief.
It was never a good thing for a high-risk containment object to lose control.
Just then.
Before Cecil could issue any orders.
A wave of extremely unnatural, distorted ripples suddenly came from the air above the temple altar.
Space was forcibly torn open.
A nimble black cat jumped out from a spirit world rift.
The black cat landed steadily on the stone steps.
Its golden vertical pupils scanned the surroundings.
Immediately following.
A message flashed through her consciousness.
“Incident at the convent, critical!”
This was the Imprinting Orb she had given to Elias?!
He was there too?!
Cecil couldn’t care about anything else now and spun around abruptly.
She looked directly at Guardian and gave a brief instruction:
“Something’s happened at the convent.”
She didn’t wait for Guardian’s response.
“I need to go and provide support immediately.”
Rate on N.U.
