“Then please hurry up and finish your evaluation,” Elias urged with utmost sincerity, looking at the commission document Horne had pressed against the counter. “I'm still waiting to take it.”
Horne glared at him testily. “Can't you at least let me stop the bleeding first?”
“Sure,” Elias nodded.
“...” Horne didn't bother talking to him anymore. He fished a coin purse from his inner pocket and slammed the breach-of-contract penalty heavily onto the counter.
The night-shift scribe verified the amount, then pressed a brass stamp over the spiritual imprint on the commission document.
As a faint glimmer of light dispersed, Horne's name slowly faded from the claim column.
Before the scribe could even put the document away, Elias had already reached out and pulled it in front of himself.
John Constantine.
He signed the name, and his spiritual imprint settled onto the paper.
The entire sequence of actions was as smooth as flowing water, as if he feared that a half-beat delay would result in someone else running off with these one thousand eight hundred gold crowns.
“Go ahead if you're not afraid of death!” Seeing this, Horne was so vexed that his wound seemed to throb with even more pain. “That vampire is very strong. At least Scale Three or higher!”
“Oh?” Elias finally showed a hint of seriousness.
Ever since Horne had walked through the door, his leaking spirituality had not been fully reined in.
Judging by the quality of his spirituality, this seemingly disheveled colleague of his was indeed a Scale Three transcendent.
To be able to injure him to this extent and force him to proactively pay the breach-of-contract fee within half an hour, the opponent was naturally no newly fanged novice.
“Don't think I'm trying to scare you, mate,” Horne said, clutching his shoulder, his voice still somewhat weak. “I didn't bring any pure silver items or wooden stakes tonight, so I did suffer from being under-equipped. But even if I had, I don't believe I would have been his match.”
This statement actually made Elias think a bit more highly of him.
To be able to admit defeat in the face of one thousand eight hundred gold crowns required a remarkably clear mind.
Especially since Horne hadn't simply run away the moment he heard the word “vampire,” but had actually clashed with it once.
He clearly knew exactly what equipment he lacked, how many life-saving measures he had used, and whether the opponent had chased him with serious intent.
His escape might have been miserable.
But at least he had returned alive to abandon the commission.
Elias also silently added two items to his mental list.
Pure silver items.
Wooden stakes.
Excellent.
Before the one thousand eight hundred gold crowns were even in his hands, his mission expenses were already lining up.
Elias glanced at his torn collar. “So, why would a vampire need that notebook?”
“How should I know?!” Horne snapped irritably. “I had barely reached the place before I was discovered. To escape back here, I used up more than half of the life-saving scrolls on me. It was also lucky that the fellow didn't want to draw the Church's attention by killing an investigator from the Society of Freemen.”
At this point, he turned his head to glance at the tightly shut door.
Only after confirming there was still no movement outside did he let out a strained sigh of relief.
“Anyway, wish you luck. I have to find a place to treat my wound now.”
Horne adjusted his collar with his uninjured hand and squeezed out a smile he believed to be composed. “Otherwise, next time, you might not see me again.”
With that, he waved his hand behind him, clutched his arm, and walked out the door.
Unfortunately, just as he crossed the threshold, his footing faltered, and he nearly collided with the door frame.
What little coolness he had previously mustered instantly vanished, leaving only his departing back to stubbornly maintain appearances.
Elias watched him disappear around the corner of the street before looking back at the counter.
The claim procedure was complete.
The client was also quickly notified by the Society of Freemen.
In less than fifteen minutes, the Mr. Moreau he had met yesterday hurried into the lobby.
“Professor Etienne Moreau,” the night-shift scribe introduced. “The client for Commission 793.”
Although Elias had already unilaterally recognized him yesterday, he still nodded politely to him.
Moreau glanced at the blood on the floor that had not yet been wiped clean, then looked at the unscathed Elias. “Where is the original investigator?”
“He completed his risk assessment and went to treat his wounds,” Elias answered.
Moreau's eyelid twitched.
He clearly understood the underlying meaning of those words, but he did not immediately bring up the vampire. Instead, he simply sat down at the consultation table arranged by the night-shift scribe. “Are you the investigator who newly took on the commission?”
He asked, still looking somewhat uneasy.
The 【Cloak of Mediocrity】 was still active.
At this moment, John Constantine looked neither like a master nor like someone whom that vampire would treat with caution.
At most, he looked like an ordinary mercenary who had walked into the wrong door in the middle of the night and was unwilling to admit it because the pay was too high.
“My name is on the document now.” Elias tapped the newly signed commission contract.
“That notebook belonged to my late mentor.” Moreau quickly accepted reality.
He placed his leather bag on his lap, his hands resting near the clasp. “More than thirty years ago, I was an accompanying translator for the Arnovian East Territory expedition team.”
“My mentor was responsible for recording the discoveries along the way. The outskirts of the Moonshadow Woodland, the border of the Long Night, and several ruins that do not appear on current maps are all in that notebook.”
The Moonshadow Woodland.
Hearing this name, Elias's fingers resting on the tabletop paused for a brief second.
He recalled the forest that seemed to have no end during his Audience.
The owl staring down coldly at him from above.
The mirror-calm lake surface.
And the three white doors standing upright on the water without any support.
Perhaps the two only shared similar names.
However, in an East Territory notebook that might be related to the Twelve Earth Veins, there happened to appear a place he had seen during his Audience. This made it very difficult to simply brush it off as a coincidence.
This Republic of Arnova seemed to be gradually connecting with the secrets he carried.
Thinking of this, Elias suddenly realized that he had overlooked another matter in the past.
In the memories of his original body, there had only ever been Velen and Arnova.
Previously, he had only assumed that since Elias lived in Hope County and had limited exposure, even if he had gone to college, his major was Velen philology, so it was normal for him not to know about other countries.
But after arriving in this world, he had read newspapers, maps, and historical records, and had also come into contact with the Seventh Agency and the Church.
Every mention of a “foreign country” referred to Arnova.
All international disputes only occurred across the strait.
It was not that his original body just happened to be ignorant of a third country.
This world truly seemed to have only two recognized sovereign states.
Of course, beyond the strait, there were archipelagos, autonomous forest regions, polluted wildernesses, and territories of different races.
But they either belonged to one of the two countries, or simply lacked the conditions to establish a state.
There was no third currency system, no third national military, and no third government that could sit down and sign treaties with the orthodox god churches.
He had actually spent the past treating this matter as a simple deficit in his original body's geographical knowledge.
Thinking about it carefully now, that explanation felt rather superficial instead.
In such a vast world, why were there ultimately only two flags left?
This matter, which previously seemed irrelevant to his survival, suddenly became worth investigating now.
But not tonight.
Elias temporarily suppressed his questions and looked at Moreau opposite him. “Since this is data from an Arnovian expedition team, why not go through the Republic's official channels?”
“This is not a secret of the Republic,” Moreau said immediately.
“Usually, those who go out of their way to emphasize that sentence are hiding a bit of one,” Elias smiled at him.
Moreau fell silent for several breaths, his palms slowly tightening over the bag's clasp. “The expedition team crossed the safety boundaries designated by the officials back then,” he finally admitted. “That part of the journey was not approved.”
“If we reported it through the Republic's embassy or the Inspectorate of Rationality, the notebook would first be confiscated by Arnova. And now that it is within Velen's borders, the Velen authorities likewise would not allow us to take away original documents involving unregistered ruins.”
That made sense then.
This notebook was indeed not a secret of the Republic.
It was just that if it fell into the hands of either government's officials, it would never return to Moreau.
“Do you have a copy?” Elias asked.
“No,” Moreau answered very quickly.
Almost at the exact moment the words left his mouth, a faint spiritual reaction from 【Gauging Expressions】 flashed before Elias's eyes.
Tension.
Lying.
Even more conspicuously, Moreau's right hand, which had been hanging at his side, subconsciously rose to shield the inner pocket of his coat.
“Isn't that a bit too obvious?” Elias looked at the hand pressing against his pocket. “You'd better not play dumb.”
Moreau's body froze.
The two stared at each other across the table for a moment before he slowly moved his hand away, pulling a folded sheet of old paper from his inner pocket. “This isn't a copy. It's a rubbed page I tore out in advance before the notebook was stolen.”
“Very well.” Elias took the old paper.
The paper unfolded, revealing irregular torn edges.
There were no paragraphs of text on it, only a sketch of ruins drawn with pencil and charcoal powder.
A half-collapsed stone gate was embedded in the cliff face, its top flaring out to both sides, resembling the head of an owl looking down at visitors.
Below two deeply sunken eye sockets, overlapping layers of feather patterns extended downward along the door frame.
“My mentor called it the Owl-Head Ruins,” Moreau said softly.
Elias did not answer.
His gaze was locked firmly on those feather patterns.
Wait!
This pattern!
The elemental revolver?
Rate on N.U.
