An inscriptionist?
A branch of the Knowledge Pathway I hadn't seen before.
Lu Yuan took another look.
The old man's fingers were covered in old burn scars.
Following behind him was a young man in his early twenties, panting as he carried a heavy toolbox.
Glock had already stepped forward to meet them. "An inscriptionist? Sent by the branch?"
The old man nodded, his voice raspy. "Coordinated by headquarters."
To be invited by the branch to handle an inscription project at the level of city wall runes, this hunched old man must have considerable skill.
"Assignment." The old man pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his robes and handed it to Glock. "Two tasks."
Glock took it, scanned the contents, and then read them aloud.
"First, repair the rune conduction structure on the corroded copper ground around the collapse hole. Restore the coverage effect of the city wall runes to that area."
"Second..." Glock's tone paused for a moment.
"Inscribe new blockade inscriptions at the edge of the collapse hole. Extend the suppression effect of the copper underground."
The first floor fell silent for a moment.
"Extend it underground?" Bo Er repeated. "How do we extend it?"
The old man didn't even look up.
He walked to the map and tapped the location of the collapse hole with his cane.
"The hole walls. Inscribe on the walls of the hole. The copper conduction structure will extend from the ground to the hole walls and then be laid downward."
"It's equivalent to changing the coverage of the city wall runes from a horizontal plane to a three dimensional one. We'll cover the top and the sides. That way, those things won't find peace even underground."
Bo Er understood.
"We have to go down into the hole?"
"We have to go down." The old man nodded. "Work during the day, stop at night. I need protection."
He turned to look at Glock.
"During construction, I need at least one full squad on alert around the entrance of the hole."
Glock looked at Lu Yuan.
Lu Yuan knew what he was thinking.
The Ninth Team.
The front line position.
The team most familiar with the situation at the hole.
"We can do it," Lu Yuan nodded.
The old man raised an eyebrow.
It seemed the reputation of the Nightwatchers was well deserved.
They accepted such a task without hesitation.
"However, I have two conditions," Lu Yuan added, shifting the conversation.
"First, I need more support. Men, weapons, anything. We don't have enough manpower to handle both ends."
"No problem," Glock agreed immediately.
"Headquarters has sent a batch of supplies and personnel this time. Any team that takes on the escort mission will receive extra supplies."
"Second." Lu Yuan looked at the old man. "I want to watch during the inscription process."
The old man looked at Lu Yuan with a hint of curiosity.
"Watch what?"
"The inscriptions." Lu Yuan met his gaze.
The old man's gaze lingered on him for a while.
That discerning look...
"Is your Knowledge Pathway also focused on Inscription Lore?"
Lu Yuan did not answer.
The old man did not press further either.
"Watch as much as you like." He turned and walked toward the door. "If you can understand it, that's your own skill."
The young assistant followed behind with the toolbox. His footsteps faltered as he passed Lu Yuan, his lips moving as if to say something, but in the end, he said nothing.
Lu Yuan didn't mind.
Proactively taking this task wasn't just because the Ninth Team was the most familiar with the hole.
During his time with Laurina, Lu Yuan had discovered that even without an explanation, as long as someone performed a certain 'skill' in front of him, he could gain the corresponding experience points.
He had been interested in Inscription Lore for a long time.
Moreover, there was a high probability it could also improve his Forbidden Lore.
Both Inscription Lore and Forbidden Lore belonged to the Knowledge Pathway.
Inscriptions involved carving knowledge onto matter to produce an effect.
Forbidden Lore involved carving knowledge into one's own cognition to produce a change.
If he could observe an inscriptionist's working method at close range...
【Forbidden Lore: Knowledge Seeker: +0.1... 12.8/100】
The experience bar jumped. Just thinking about the connection had increased it by 0.1.
Lu Yuan withdrew his gaze.
...
Around three in the afternoon, a carriage arrived from the direction of the inner city.
It was a standard Nightwatchers transport vehicle.
A young Nightwatcher stepped off the carriage, carrying two wooden boxes and a leather bag.
"Lu Yuan? Miss Laurina asked me to deliver these."
Lu Yuan took them.
The first box contained potions.
Four bottles of perfect quality Sanity recovery potions.
But at the bottom of the box, there were three smaller bottles wrapped separately in soft cloth: one bottle of Eerie-Bane Potion, one bottle of Stealth Potion, and one bottle of high-efficiency healing potion.
All were Laurina's handiwork.
The second box contained ammunition.
Three boxes of silver-plated bullets and one box of copper-cased incendiary rounds, which only contained twelve rounds.
Inside the leather bag was a letter.
Laurina's handwriting was as clean and sharp as ever.
But this time, she had written more than usual.
"The quantity of potions has decreased, and it's not because I'm being lazy. The supply of perfect quality guangyin grass essence has been cut off. My current stock is only enough to make two more batches. The transport lines are all being prioritized for the inner city right now."
"The situation in the inner city is much more severe than on your side. The collapses corresponding to those two beams of light last night occurred beneath the Old Council Square and near the Water Conservancy Hub."
"The hole at the Old Council Square is more than three times larger than the one in the North Ward, and the number of things surging out is also several times greater. The Water Conservancy Hub is even more troublesome. If the copper pipes there are completely corroded, half of the inner city's water supply system will be ruined."
"Headquarters is sending more people and supplies to the outer city, but very little of it is allocated to alchemical materials. You should be able to get more weapons and ammunition over there, but I can only do my best with the potions."
"I managed to get the copper-cased incendiary rounds from a dispatcher I know. That's all there is, and I might not be able to get more next time, so use them sparingly."
The last line was written separately at the bottom of the page, some distance from the main text.
"Remember not to let your Sanity get too low."
Lu Yuan folded the letter and placed it in his inner pocket.
Lu Yuan organized the potions and ammunition, giving one bottle of perfect quality Sanity potion and one box of silver-plated bullets to Bo Er.
Bo Er took the items and looked at the label on the potion bottle.
"Keeping the perfect quality ones?"
"Keep them."
Bo Er didn't ask more.
He tucked the potion into his coat and loaded the bullets into his ammunition pouch.
Lu Yuan walked to the window.
The sun had already begun to sink in the west. The light changed from gold to orange red, shining on the copper decorative strips of the building opposite and casting a warm but fleeting glow.
The situation in the inner city was even worse than he had imagined.
The Old Council Square and the Water Conservancy Hub were the core areas of Bronze City.
If the inner city couldn't hold, the defenses of the outer city would lose their meaning.
He looked at the faint outline of the city wall in the distance.
The energy of the city wall runes had been drained once, and it would take time to recover.
If another wave of the same scale attacked tonight, the runes might not be able to light up again.
But the inscriptionist had already begun his work.
Extending the inscriptions underground to push the power of copper into the depths.
This was the only proactive way to attack.
It wasn't a matter of how many ghouls they could kill.
It was a matter of whether they could plug the hole.
Lu Yuan withdrew his gaze.
Outside the window, the inscriptionist's assistant was carrying the toolbox toward the collapse hole.
The sunlight cast a warm hue on his young face.
He looked very nervous.
He should be nervous.
Because the sun would soon set.
And that closed eye would open once more.
Lu Yuan turned and returned to the first floor.
He began to press bullets into his ammunition belt, one by one.
The third night was coming.
...
By the time the sun went down, the nuns were already in position.
The four of them stood on a high point behind the position, their white habits swaying slightly in the night wind.
The leader was still the same nun from last night, her expression calm.
Her gaze swept across the position, finally landing on Lu Yuan before moving away.
Lu Yuan did not look away, nor did he intentionally act in any particular way.
Whatever was meant to come would come.
"Are you ready?" Bo Er crouched behind a barricade, clutching his short-shotgun.
"Ready."
The night fell completely.
The runes on the city wall lit up.
They were dimmer than last night, but they were still functioning.
Everyone stared at the collapse hole.
They waited for ten minutes.
There was no movement.
They waited another ten minutes.
Still no movement.
Bo Er looked back at Lu Yuan.
Lu Yuan shook his head slightly.
Nearly another half hour passed before the first roar came from the edge of the hole.
It was weak, as if coming from a great distance below.
Then a ghoul crawled out.
It was small.
Its skin was so thin it was almost transparent, its limbs were long and slender, and it was not covered in keratinous armor.
It was the lowest level vanguard.
As soon as it emerged from the hole, the holy light from the nuns fell.
It wasn't an offensive beam of light, but a thin golden light membrane that covered a twenty meter area around the collapse hole.
The ghoul's feet stepped onto the light membrane, and its skin made a slight sizzling sound.
It shrieked and instinctively tried to retreat, but two more ghouls surged out behind it, pushing it back onto the light membrane.
Bo Er raised his gun.
"Don't rush." Lu Yuan pushed down his gun barrel.
He was observing.
When the ghouls had surged out last night, it was as if they were being driven by something, one after another, regardless of the cost.
But tonight was different.
The movements of these few vanguards were hesitant and slow, as if they had been pushed out to test the waters.
And the numbers were too few.
The first wave had only seven ghouls.
The Nightwatchers didn't even need to use all their firepower.
Two gunners fired in an alternating pattern, and with Bo Er's short-shotgun, they were cleared in less than three minutes.
Then they waited another twenty minutes.
The second wave.
Five ghouls.
Even fewer than the first wave.
Then the third wave.
Three ghouls.
And after that, the hole fell silent.
Lu Yuan did not relax.
Bo Er clearly didn't either.
He moved the muzzle of his short-shotgun away from the hole and began to check the dark corners on both flanks.
"Too few." Bo Er's voice was very low. "During the same period last night, at least forty or fifty surged out."
Lu Yuan didn't respond.
He was counting the time.
Nearly forty minutes had passed since the last ghoul was killed.
The hole was deathly silent.
Just as everyone's nerves began to relax, the ground shook.
It wasn't a large tremor.
But everyone felt it.
A short vibration came from the copper ground beneath their feet, as if something extremely heavy was moving deep underground.
The shell casings on the sandbags jumped slightly.
"What..." Bo Er didn't finish his sentence.
A sound came from within the hole.
It was a low, continuous vibrating sound.
As if something was slowly rising from the depths, crushing the rock walls and soil along the way, creating a dull echo.
The flames of the march lamps tilted in one direction at the same time.
The wind direction had changed.
Before, it had been flowing weakly from the ground toward the hole.
But now, a gust of air surged out of the hole.
It was a breath.
A strong, rotting stench hit them almost physically.
Lu Yuan's vision flickered violently.
【Environmental Perception: High-risk source of pollution detected... move away immediately...】
His hand was already on his revolver.
The edge of the hole began to change.
It wasn't that something was crawling out.
The walls of the hole itself were moving.
To be precise, the scavenger fungus attached to the walls of the hole was moving.
Those grey green fungal layers that had been cleared during the day and had spread back during the night.
At this moment, they seemed to have been activated by some force, expanding outward from the edge of the hole at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The tips of the mycelia curled up like countless tiny tentacles, stretching toward the position.
The speed was more than ten times faster than during the day.
"Holy light!" Lu Yuan shouted.
The nuns responded almost simultaneously.
The light in the palm of the lead nun flared intensely, and a holy light ripple pushed out from above, covering a thirty meter area in front of the hole.
The scavenger fungus curled and withered in large patches the moment it touched the holy light, making dense sizzling sounds as the greyish-white spores were evaporated by the heat, forming a thin cloud of smoke.
The expansion was temporarily halted.
But the vibrating sound inside the hole did not stop.
Instead, it grew louder.
And then...
A claw flipped up from the edge of the hole.
It was too big.
Each of its five fingers was as thick as an adult's forearm, and thick veins could be seen pulsing under the greyish-red skin.
The nails were dark brown, with jagged keratinous growths along the edges.
It gripped the copper ground at the edge of the hole.
The copper plates let out a screeching sound of metallic deformation under its grip.
Bo Er's face turned pale.
"A massive..."
Before he could finish, a second claw flipped up.
The entire edge of the hole sank slightly under its weight.
Every gun muzzle was pointed at those two claws.
Lu Yuan's thumb had already cocked the hammer.
But he didn't fire.
He was waiting.
Waiting for it to show more of itself.
One second.
Two seconds.
Those two claws gripped the edge of the hole, their knuckles straining as if pushing upward.
A massive silhouette could be seen rising slowly beneath the hole.
Everyone at the position watched the hole with racing hearts.
And then, it stopped.
The movements of those two claws suddenly froze.
It was as if... it had been called to a halt by something.
Then the claws slowly released their grip.
The five massive fingers detached one by one from the edge of the copper plates, leaving deep gouges and deformed metal behind.
A dull sliding sound came from deep within the hole.
It grew further and further away.
The vibration also faded away.
The hole returned to silence.
Only the ring of copper plates deformed by its grip remained as silent proof that what just happened wasn't an illusion.
No one spoke at the position.
It took a long time before Bo Er let out a breath.
"What the hell was that?"
Lu Yuan didn't answer.
He looked toward the nuns.
The lead nun stood on high ground, the light from the scripture in her hand still steady, but her expression was not as alert as it had been the previous two nights.
She was listening intently.
Not to the sounds on the ground.
But to the sounds underground.
Lu Yuan followed the direction of her gaze.
Her sight passed through the collapse hole, extending downward, as if she could see something deeper through the soil and rock layers.
Then she frowned slightly.
Lu Yuan couldn't read what she had sensed.
But that frown made him certain of one thing.
The ghouls didn't want to stay in.
And that big fellow wasn't unable to climb out.
Something had called them back.
For the rest of the night, the hole didn't make another sound.
Even the roars had vanished.
It was as if something underground had suddenly retracted all its claws.
The sun rose.
The third night ended just like that.
There were no casualties.
They hadn't even consumed much ammunition.
This should have been good news.
But not a single Nightwatcher standing on the position had a relaxed expression on their face.
Rate on N.U.
