“Oh, right.”
Elias had one foot halfway through the 【Moon Gate】 when he suddenly pulled it back.
“If something goes wrong, how do I get in touch with you?”
He peered through the silver light screen several times.
As the spell stabilized, the scene behind the gate gradually became clear.
A dimly lit warehouse, rows of shelves, and a wooden sign reading “Hastings Port” hanging on the wall.
The destination seemed correct. But both of them had forgotten to prepare a means of communication.
“We can use a messenger.”
Jack paused slightly, then pulled out a brass badge shaped like thorns from beneath his collar.
The badge was only the size of a thumb, but its thorns were extremely sharp.
He pricked his finger on a thorn and smeared his blood across the center of the badge.
Hum.
The brass badge vibrated gently.
The air in front of them cracked open, revealing a thorn-like rift.
The faint rustling of rubbing branches sounded.
A palm-sized bird squeezed out from the rift.
Its body was entirely woven from black branches, yet its feathers resembled layers of pale petals.
Its dark red eyes looked like freshly dripped sealing wax on an envelope.
The Thorn Finch landed on Jack's wrist, tilting its head to study Elias.
“The 【Life-Sewing Thorn Finch】,”
Jack introduced.
“Our family's exclusive messenger.”
“Your family even has an exclusive messenger?!”
Elias remarked sourly.
They had an ancestral containment object, an underground library, a box of life-saving scrolls, and now even their messenger was family-exclusive.
“Feudalism is truly unacceptable!”
He shook his head and pursed his lips, looking utterly distressed.
“Summoning it requires soul coins,”
Jack added.
“Well, that makes me feel much better.”
Jack took out a blank slip of paper and placed it in front of the Thorn Finch.
Several thin black twigs extended from beneath the bird's talons, piercing the paper.
When it lifted its foot again, a dark red thorn imprint had appeared in the center of the paper.
“It can only transmit items between Sorenstein descendants and holders of the Thorn Imprint,”
Jack handed the slip of paper to Elias.
“This Thorn Imprint will expire after the next dawn.”
“If anything goes wrong with the gate, I will have it find you.”
Elias took the paper.
“Can it be intercepted?”
“Yes,”
Jack answered very frankly.
“So do not write any secrets in your letters.”
“Well, a good thing suddenly isn't so good anymore.”
Elias tucked the slip into the inner pocket of his trench coat, but he couldn't help stealing a few more glances at the Thorn Finch.
He really did need a messenger.
He still had fifty-four soul coins in his possession.
Rather than letting them sit around and take up space, he might as well hire a hard-working spirit world creature for himself.
He couldn't just use Ms. Cecil's Imprinting Orb every time something happened.
That thing only allowed for a one-way connection to Ms. Cecil.
“Elias Rockland” could use it.
But if “John Constantine” pulled it out, his disguise would be practically nonexistent.
“The Society of Freemen in Hastings Port should be able to provide a contract channel for stations under the Spirit World Post Office,”
Jack said.
“Perfect,”
Elias tucked away the Thorn Imprint.
“I'll find myself an employee first thing when I get over there.”
In Velen, spirit world messengers were officially registered. The spirit world stations acted as intermediaries, handling the connection with real-world official organizations.
The major churches and nobility usually had their own established partners.
Thus, the Society of Freemen became the place that provided spirit world station services to various free transcendents.
He quickly did the math in his head.
Fifty-four soul coins might not buy a very high-level messenger, but it should be enough to sign a basic contract.
If it wasn't enough, he would just take on commissions first to earn money.
Hire an employee first, then rely on the job to pay them. This closed loop sounded very healthy.
The only problem was that the boss himself currently had no income.
Elias decided to temporarily ignore this detail.
He gripped the thick rope around his waist, took a deep breath, and stepped into the 【Moon Gate】.
The silver light screen instantly swallowed his vision.
A brief sensation of weightlessness came from beneath his feet.
His body felt as if it were being yanked forward by some force.
In the next instant, the soles of his shoes stepped onto solid ground again.
Tap.
The air in the warehouse was damp and stuffy.
The scents of timber, whale oil, and old hemp rope mingled together.
In the distance, the faint rumbling of waves and steam machinery echoed.
Elias immediately drew his elemental revolver, warily scanning his surroundings.
There was no one.
Only a few rats, startled by the sudden light, scurried along the base of the walls and ducked beneath the shelves.
The wooden sign on the wall read:
“Hastings Port West Bank Third Supply Depot.”
He had actually arrived.
A distance of twenty nautical miles, crossed in a single step.
Elias looked back at the silver ring.
The similar glow reminded him of the mysterious passage that had carried him away from danger when he advanced to Scale Two.
His heart stirred slightly, but he had no time to dwell on it.
The most important thing right now was to hide the gate.
“Isn't this thing a bit too conspicuous?”
“I can shrink it,”
“Catch.”
He threw the rope back toward the island.
Jack caught it and adjusted the spell.
The silver ring rapidly shrank until it was only large enough for a single person to pass through while hunching over.
“Be back within six hours,”
Elias said.
“Five hours and forty-five minutes,”
Jack corrected from the other side of the ring.
“The ritual preparation and channel stabilization have already used up a quarter of an hour.”
Elias's eye twitched.
His very first time using a cross-spatial commute service, and he was already dealing with a shortened duration.
“I'll do my best.”
“Not 'your best.' You must.”
“Understood,”
Elias waved his hand impatiently.
“You're starting to sound more and more like a timekeeper.”
With that, he circled the warehouse and quickly dragged over a large, empty wooden crate with metal corners.
The crate was made of heavy hardwood.
It took some effort for him to cover the ring with it.
He gave it two more shoves to make sure an ordinary person wouldn't be able to budge it.
Afterward, Elias checked his disguise using a piece of dusty glass.
The effect of the Spy's Derby Hat had stabilized.
In the reflection was a strange man in his early thirties.
Short blonde hair was tucked under the brim of the hat, and his chin was covered in unkempt stubble.
His eyes were deeply sunken.
He looked like an unlucky detective who had pulled several consecutive all-nighters.
Elias straightened his beige trench coat and pulled down the brim of his hat.
“John Constantine,” he muttered softly.
Not bad.
He sounded like someone who was very good at sending his friends to their graves.
After confirming there was no one outside the warehouse, he pushed open the door and stepped into the night of Hastings Port.
The West Bank Pier had not yet fully gone to sleep.
In the distance, steam cranes hummed dully, and cargo carriages rolled slowly along the wet stone road.
No one noticed that a man who was supposed to be twenty nautical miles away had just stepped out of a supply depot.
Shortly after.
Elias pushed open the doors of the Society of Freemen.
The combined scent of old paper, tobacco, and engine oil greeted him.
The lobby was not fully lit, and a few cloaked transcendents still stood in front of the commission wall.
A few of them looked up at the unfamiliar visitor.
Seeing that he didn't draw a gun or carry a corpse, they quickly lost interest.
In the Society of Freemen, as long as a guest didn't drop dead the moment they walked in, it usually wasn't worth making a fuss about.
This place clearly didn't have the habit of closing at dark like normal shops.
After all, the people who made a living here generally didn't have normal schedules anyway.
The night-shift scribe sat behind the reception desk, not even looking up when he heard the door open.
“Name?”
“John Constantine.”
The scribe wrote the name in the register.
“What are you here for?”
“To find a messenger first.”
The pen tip paused.
“And then?”
Elias looked toward the commission wall in the distance.
“Then find a commission that will pay well enough for me to afford the black market.”
Meanwhile.
A few kilometers away.
Inside the supply room of the Seventh Agency branch, a gas lamp hummed softly.
Consumables that had yet to complete re-inspection were piled against the wall.
During the sea beast invasion, some warehouses had been flooded, causing issues with the registration and preservation status of many supplies.
Deputy Director Taylor had therefore ordered a re-inspection of all damp consumables.
Two night-shift investigators sat at a long table, carrying out the order.
One of them opened a sealed jar.
Inside the jar were fine, silver-blue grains of sand, though some of them had already clumped together due to dampness.
This material was typically used for the tracking capabilities of precise arcane instruments, possessing a certain divinatory quality.
However, its effects were much better when used within precise instruments.
“Trace-Seeking Starsand,”
He picked up a wooden spoon and stirred it a couple of times.
“Let's test this jar first.”
The other investigator spread out a map of Hastings Port and its surrounding areas.
“Find someone whose location will absolutely not change.”
Trace-Seeking Starsand was a low-level divinatory material.
By simply writing down the target's name and using a map as a medium, the starsand would gather toward the area where the target was located.
Its biggest drawback was its vulnerability to dampness.
Once it got damp, the results could easily deviate.
“How about that informant of the special envoy lady?” the other suggested.
“I heard he seems to be a lighthouse keeper.”
“A lighthouse keeper?”
The first investigator nodded.
“Then he definitely won't be running around.”
Especially a keeper who had just returned to duty and had no shift-change permit.
Theoretically, he would only stay on his designated reef.
“What was his name again?”
“Elias Rockland.”
The other investigator flipped open the registration records.
“Just returned to duty recently.”
“No shift-change permit.”
The first investigator wrote the name on the edge of the map.
Then, he poured a spoonful of Trace-Seeking Starsand onto the center of the map.
At first, the sand showed no reaction.
A few seconds later, they began to tremble slightly.
The clumped starsand collided with one another, producing a fine rustling sound.
One circle. Two circles. Three circles.
The silver-blue sand eventually moved across the map toward the interior of Hastings Port.
In the end, they all gathered near the West Bank Pier.
The room fell silent.
The first investigator frowned.
“Isn't he twenty nautical miles away?”
“Yeah.”
The other confirmed the lighthouse personnel files once more.
He also checked the map's orientation, the spelling of the name, and the amount of starsand used.
Everything was correct.
If the material were normal, the sand should have gathered in the middle of the sea in Moon Bay.
As for Elias himself suddenly appearing in Hastings Port?
That possibility didn't even cross their minds during the re-inspection process.
The two investigators stared at each other for a moment, then burst out laughing at the same time.
A lighthouse keeper couldn't possibly cross twenty nautical miles in the middle of the night and suddenly end up in a harbor warehouse.
What a joke.
“The divinatory material must be ruined.”
“It got damp, after all.”
The first investigator picked up the defective goods log.
“Ruined.”
The other poured the Trace-Seeking Starsand into the waste bucket.
“Tossed.”
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