Elias sighed helplessly and walked toward Jack.
At the same time, with a thought, he activated 【Moon Vision】.
The sight before him made him raise an eyebrow.
Spirituality was wildly spilling out from Jack's limbs and bones, swirling around, and rushing straight back into his chest.
No matter how he looked at it, the scene was incredibly bizarre.
According to the explanation in 《Introduction to Mysticism》, spirituality was born in the sea of consciousness, serving as fuel poured into every part of the body.
And the sole purpose of a so-called curse was to weaken the individual.
But what on earth was this thing on Jack?
How was it passing from his left hand to his right?
An external circulation?
Elias was completely baffled.
But when he actually drew near, squatting down to observe closely, he realized things weren't quite as he had thought.
The overflowing spirituality wasn't just circulating uselessly.
A hidden spot on Jack's chest acted like a miniature spiritual black hole, greedily pulling in all the surrounding spirituality.
As for Jack, he lay on the cold, gravelly ground, his ears filled with the sound of approaching bootsteps.
Each step sounded like a death knell tolling against his sanity.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
Despair, helplessness, and a wave of shame that threatened to drown him.
With his curse flaring up before a fight, he had lost any ability to harm his opponent.
Aside from waiting for death, there seemed to be nothing else to do.
In this dark world behind closed eyelids, the young man from Landon began to regret his actions in silence.
He hated himself for suddenly letting his emotions get the better of him.
He had torn away his only remaining shred of dignity.
But humans were simply like that sometimes.
Even when they knew certain actions would lead to eternal damnation, and that they should play the coward when facing someone stronger.
When suppressed emotions reached a boiling point, the fuse of rationality was always the first to blow.
Especially for teenagers like him.
Jack was now in the typical post-outburst regret phase.
In his mind, he cursed everyone from the unreasonable investigators of the Seventh Agency to the lunatics of the Mist Veil Society.
Then, he quietly waited for the revolver to be pressed against his forehead.
One second.
Two seconds.
The expected outcome did not happen.
Jack was slightly confused.
Was this black-hearted Mr. Rockland too lazy to even shoot him, planning to just abandon him here?
Driven by sheer curiosity, the Landon youth couldn't help but peek with one eye.
The sight before him caused his already pale face to twist into an indescribable look of horror.
Elias was squatting right beside him.
There was no killing intent on his face, and he wasn't even frowning.
However, that slender hand of his was currently reaching toward his chest in a perfectly natural, matter-of-fact manner.
And.
Unbuttoned the top button of his coarse cloth coat.
“Hey, hey, hey!”
“By the Mother Goddess!”
Jack bolted upright from the ground.
He let out the highest-pitched shriek of his life.
Scrambling with both hands and feet like an octopus frantically slipping on smooth tiles, he desperately rolled and crawled backward.
“What are you doing?!”
“Rockland! Don't come any closer!”
Jack clutched his hands tightly over his chest, his collar twisting out of shape under his grip.
“You might not be killing me, but you can't humiliate me like this!”
“I am a member of the Sorenstein family, after all!”
“I don't do that kind of thing!”
Elias's outstretched left hand froze completely in midair.
The expression on his face at this moment was dramatic enough to headline an annual play at the Landon Royal Theater.
What the hell was going through this kid's head?
Were the minds of today's youth really this degenerate?
Elias slowly straightened his back, his fist unknowingly hardening into a block of pig iron.
His teeth ground together with a sharp click.
“What kind of garbage is running through your head all day?”
He suppressed the urge to punch the kid straight into a crack in the wall.
“What? Did reading too much of 《Forbidden Fruit》 shrink your brain capacity along with it?”
He snapped in annoyance.
“Spit it out. What else are you carrying that I don't know about?”
Elias withdrew his hand and stood up.
In his field of vision, the unusual spiritual vortex at Jack's chest was still pulsing and pulling in a steady rhythm.
Elias's tone turned extremely hostile, and his voice sank.
“Let's get one thing straight. I really didn't plan on killing you, considering the value of that vial of moon silver powder.”
“But my mercy has a quota.”
He took a step forward, his tall figure casting a massive shadow under the dim light.
“If there is even a single word of deception in your next answer, I won't guarantee you'll leave this cellar alive.”
“Regarding your curse.”
“Speak.”
The man's voice sounded exceptionally clear in the spacious underground area.
The low sound waves struck the cold stone walls, sending back dull, rhythmic echoes that hammered heavily against Jack's fragile eardrums.
These echoes magnified the terror of the unknown in the dark.
Jack, who had just let out all his emotions, found his state of mind snapping back to extreme tension in an instant.
He looked at Elias's cold eyes, which seemed to glimmer faintly in the darkness.
His palms were slick with cold sweat.
“I... I can't tell you.”
The young man gritted his teeth hard, forcing the words out.
He turned his head away, putting on an unyielding front as if ready to face death.
Elias laughed in sheer exasperation.
“Fine. Very well.”
He sneered, emphasizing every word:
“I had already promised to keep you alive, and even planned to take you back to the mainland with me.”
“But you brought this on yourself.”
“I hope your bones stay as tough as your attitude.”
With that, Elias wasted no more words. With a flick of his wrist, his revolver appeared in his hand, pointing directly between Jack's eyebrows.
If he pulled the trigger, the young head on the ground would split open like a shattered watermelon.
Jack squeezed his eyes shut, his body trembling uncontrollably with fear.
A deathly silence fell over the cellar.
Only the sound of their breathing mingled in the air.
One second.
Ten seconds.
Half a minute passed.
Elias's hand holding the gun remained as steady as a statue, his chestnut eyes flickering with a complex struggle in the dim light.
He looked at the boy on the ground, who, despite his pride, had never even cast a proper supernatural spell.
He looked at that clear, still somewhat childish face.
In the end, he realized he couldn't bring himself to do it.
“Get lost.”
Elias put his gun away, completely losing interest, not even bothering to spare him another glance.
“Scram back to your beloved Seventh Agency. Go back to screaming in front of the branch's gates.”
“Let Wayland's moles stationed there know you're alive at the very first opportunity.”
He turned and walked toward the stairs, his words precisely piercing the boy's naivety.
“Though I'm not sure if those double-dipping bastards will immediately leak your location to the Mist Veil Society.”
“But you're welcome to take that gamble.”
Lying on the ground waiting for death, Jack froze, completely stunned by those words.
“Wait... wait a minute!”
Jack scrambled to push his upper body up, shouting at Elias's retreating back.
“Mr. Rockland! What did you just say?!”
“Are you saying... there are moles in the Seventh Agency?!”
The wealthy youth from Landon shrieked in an unbelievably cracked voice, his tone filled with the utter collapse of his worldview.
To Elias and Cecil, information about the upper echelons being compromised like a sieve was completely ordinary.
But to an illegitimate noble son like Jack, who had grown up with a blind worship of the kingdom's laws and authority.
The weight of these words was as shocking as being told that the fine, aged wines bearing premium labels in his family's manor were actually cheap fakes diluted with industrial alcohol in the lower district.
In his understanding, what kind of place was the Seventh Agency?
It was a supreme institution jointly established by the top and oldest Magic families of the Kingdom of Velen!
It was a state apparatus of supernatural force, possessing absolute might and dedicated to regulating all abuses of spirituality in the world!
It was the absolute iron curtain responsible for containing uncontrollable supernatural objects and maintaining the final balance between mortals and the supernatural!
Even if the investigators inside were a bit arrogant, it shouldn't be like this!
Yet, this place that was supposed to be sacred and inviolable in their eyes...
Had actually been infiltrated?!
And from the other man's tone, the infiltration was incredibly severe?!
How did those capitalists and cultists manage that?!
“Mr. Rockland!”
All of Jack's previous arrogance and stubbornness shattered into dust at this very second.
He lowered his head in shame and bowed deeply to Elias's back to apologize for the misunderstanding.
“I... I offer you my most sincere apologies for my foolish and impulsive behavior just now!”
“I admit I'm just an ignorant fool who hasn't seen the world.”
The young man gritted his teeth, stripping away his final shred of pride.
“Regarding the bloodline curse on me...”
He reached into his collar and pulled out an object hanging from a thin black cord.
“Actually, it's all related to this.”
Elias stopped climbing the stairs and turned around.
Under the focus of 【Moon Vision】, he could clearly see that as the object saw the light of day, all of the spirituality was rushing into it.
It was an ancient-looking pendant.
It was shaped like an irregular crescent moon.
“What is this?”
Elias walked back, his brow furrowing slightly.
He could sense a spiritual aura representing the ancient authority of the Moon Lord on that small pendant.
It was cold, secretive, and carried a peculiar fluctuation on a spatial level.
“When my mother gave it to me on her deathbed, she called it the Waning Moon Key.”
Jack held the pendant, his face flickering in the dim glow of the gas lamp.
He looked up, staring intently at the lighthouse keeper with a gaze full of anticipation and testing.
“Mr. Rockland, since you are a Moon phase believer...”
Jack paused, asking one deliberate word at a time:
“Do you know if there is a high-level spell within the 'passage' authority of the Moon Lord...”
“Called 【Moon Gate】?”
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