To Elias's ears, those words sounded incredibly ambiguous.
“He's not some unidentified person; he's a bastard son of the Sorenstein family.”
“And he has a family crest and ancestral items to prove it. Everything is legal, compliant, and fully documented.”
He quickly explained.
Actually, ever since he had confiscated Jack's flintlock pistol, he had already been testing him.
If the kid was willing to obey his every command just for an old pistol, and even work high-intensity unpaid labor without a single complaint, it proved two things.
First, he wasn't some unidentified operative who had snuck onto the island on a top-secret mission.
Second, he cared deeply about his family belongings.
Putting himself in the kid's shoes, if he really were a death-sworn soldier sent by the Mist Veil Society or the Wayland Company, with his brain stuffed full of reviving Divine Scions or capitalist false promises, who the hell would care about some “ancestral heirloom”?
Neither cultists nor capitalists cared about filial piety.
However, as a professional bureaucrat of the Seventh Agency, Ms. Cecil clearly didn't think that was safe enough.
“Bring that gentleman over.”
“I must confirm it myself.”
Ms. Cecil's tone returned to its usual icy coldness.
“The Sorenstein family of Landon suffered heavy casualties in that noble assassination case that shook the entire upper class recently.”
“After the Seventh Agency intervened with high profile, we arrested several priests and deacons of the Mist Veil Society in the Old District and the black market.”
“We currently have detailed files on all relevant missing persons and potential cultists.”
“If he is on that list, Mr. Rockland, you might have to write another written explanation.”
Elias shrugged and turned toward the cottage.
“Alright, Jack, stop playing gecko in there.”
“They say walls have ears, but yours is practically pressed against the crack in the door.”
“Come on out.”
At Elias's shout, Jack cautiously poked his head out of the wooden cottage.
His face was currently a picture of sheer embarrassment.
Just moments ago, this heavily oppressed Sorenstein bastard was preparing to complete his daily tasks under his unpaid labor agreement.
He had managed to catch a few edible fish from the freezing sea with great difficulty.
He was planning to bring his catch back to the cottage for some extremely basic cooking.
Who would have thought that as soon as he stepped ashore, he would see his foreman, Elias, sitting by the cottage door chatting with a talking raven?
The scene was incredibly bizarre.
Fortunately, because Elias was sitting on the other side of the wooden door, it created a blind spot.
Jack immediately wanted to overhear what they were talking about.
If Elias was secretly contacting the Mist Veil Society, his own life would be forfeit.
He used the most cautious footsteps of his life.
Pressing himself flat against the wall like a sheet of dough, he slid along the baseboards.
Ultimately, he clumsily climbed into the cottage through a window at the back.
Then, creeping through the shadows of the inner room, he stealthily made his way toward the doorway.
During this time, his ears accurately caught the words spilling from the mouths of the man and the bird.
“Seventh Agency.”
“Landon Council.”
In the darkness, Jack's eyes widened to the size of apples.
He roared in his mind:
No way, big bro!
If you had just said you had connections high up, things would have been so much easier between us!
If you had shown your hand earlier, would I have spent every single day cursedly greeting your ancestors in my head?
Why did you even take my flintlock pistol?!
If you had dropped even the slightest hint, I, Jack, would have slid to my knees right then and there to beg for your patronage!
However, because he was so utterly shocked, the young man accidentally stepped on a loose wooden floorboard.
Back to the present.
As Jack slunk out along the doorframe with his head lowered, the raven kicked off with its legs, flapping its wings and landing steadily on his shoulder.
“This raven is no ordinary bird. It is a physical entity formed directly from spirituality, containing high-purity resonance energy.”
Ms. Cecil's icy voice drifted from the bird's beak.
“With a single thought, I can cause this energy to undergo a spiritual overload within a tenth of a second.”
“If you understand what I mean, I can blow you into a pile of minced meat right now.”
“So, you had better answer every question honestly from here on out. Do not try to test my patience.”
Jack was scared out of his wits. All the color drained from his face instantly, leaving him as white as a freshly bleached sheet of paper from the Landon paper mill.
Never in his wildest dreams did he expect his first contact with the Seventh Agency to be in such a hardcore manner.
Highly submissive, the young man raised his hands high and nodded frantically.
“I'll tell you everything!”
Jack's voice carried a hint of a sob. He didn't even dare to turn his head to look at the black bird on his shoulder.
“Who are you?”
The raven tilted its head, its cold, bead-like black eyes staring intently at his profile.
“Jack Soren.”
“Faith pathway: Life Scholar. Rational Circuit: leans mild, non-aggressive... Reasonable.”
Ms. Cecil murmured to herself.
“Show me your family crest. Don't make any sudden movements; pull it out with two fingers.”
Trembling with fear, Jack used his index and middle fingers to pinch the silver emblem Elias had returned to him from his inner pocket.
The raven looked down, carefully examining the ancient crest in his hand.
“Where were you on the night of the 19th of last month, the night the tragedy broke out in the main building of the Sorenstein family?”
Ms. Cecil's question cut straight to the core of the archived records.
Jack swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty.
“Because I'm a bastard, I don't usually live in the central area of the main building.”
“My name probably wasn't on the list marked by the Mist Veil Society through some evil bloodline ritual, either.”
At this point, Jack curled his lips in a self-deprecating smile, but quickly composed his expression under the raven's gaze.
“I wasn't willing to be a parasite for the rest of my life, so I wanted to find out the truth behind my bloodline curse.”
“So, that night, I was hiding alone in the underground library, browsing through ancient texts.”
“When the Mist Veil Society launched their surprise attack, the defenses of the entire main building collapsed in an instant.”
A fear that couldn't be faked welled up in Jack's eyes—the kind of look only found in someone who had truly walked through hell.
“First, I heard heavy gunfire coming from above, the blood-curdling screams of the servants, and the sharp shattering of stained-glass windows on a massive scale.”
“The entire basement was shaking.”
“I was terrified and didn't dare go out at all.”
“Through the gaps in the ventilation shaft, I saw a familiar servant leading several members of the Mist Veil Society—wearing black robes with low-pulled hoods—down the hallway.”
Hearing this, Elias's eyes flickered slightly.
“That servant betrayed the family?”
Elias couldn't help but interject.
“No, and that's the most terrifying part.”
Jack shuddered.
“Later, on my escape route, I calmed down and recalled the details carefully. I realized that the servant's face was real, his voice was real, and even his tone when speaking to the cultists was exactly the same.”
“But his gait was wrong.”
“His left stride was five centimeters longer than his right, making him look like a puppet being forcibly yanked up by strings.”
“That wasn't a living person at all. It was a corpse, or rather, something else was disguising itself as him on a spiritual level.”
Jack's voice was trembling.
“Fortunately, the bloodline curse on me—which my family always treated as garbage—proved useful at the most critical moment.”
“That curse causes my spirituality to emit a dead-silent wavelength.”
“Because of that, I wasn't detected by the Mist Veil Society's special tracking rituals that rely on spiritual signatures.”
“So, once the noise outside quieted down a bit, I used my coat to bundle up some valuables from the library, along with useful occult books and self-defense tools, and successfully escaped through the sewers.”
Standing to the side and listening to Jack's account, Elias stroked his chin and nodded slightly.
As expected, this kid's curse is actually quite useful.
Rate on N.U.
