The matter of the Mysterious Realm's entrance had been resolved. The Orthodox Church discovered it while pursuing a wanted criminal, by which time the owners of the house had all vanished. The initial conclusion was that ordinary people had accidentally stumbled into the Mysterious Realm, and as a result, had perished without a trace.
And just the day before Jenkins returned to Nolan, a team led by the Church of Ocean and Exploration had cleared it. According to black market rumors, someone saw the Church bring a decaying wooden chest out of the Mysterious Realm, but no one knew what it contained.
“I only came here from another city half a year ago. Are Mysterious Realms appearing a bit too frequently in Nolan?”
Jenkins hadn’t forgotten his persona as Mr. Candle.
“This has only started happening in the last six months. I’ve lived here my whole life and never heard of anything like it. I have no idea what’s going on. Could the End of the Era truly be upon us?”
The voice was tinged with sorrow, and Jenkins found himself asking the very same question.
Just as Jenkins had thought, the city continued to move on without him, with all sorts of things happening. Besides the rumors among Enchanters, a series of murders had also occurred in the city last week.
It wasn’t another incident like the Killing Mark, A-01-1-6377. This time, it was a genuine serial killer. The newspapers were deliberately silent on the matter, and the police department had its own way of handling it.
But all sorts of rumors had already spread among the citizenry, and even Mr. Hood couldn’t be sure if the version he knew was the correct one.
Mr. Hood concluded with a sigh, then he and Jenkins turned their heads to look at the third person to arrive.
This time, Mr. White Cat was late. The gathering was scheduled to begin at nine, but he didn’t show up until nine-twenty. At first, everyone thought he might have met with misfortune, just like MrBirchwood, who had died in the incident with the Young Flower Seller. Seeing their friend appear, they realized something else must have detained him.
“My sincerest apologies.”
Mr. White Cat said hurriedly to the other five people.
Despite claiming the gathering was “legal,” a group of people concealing their identities and meeting in the middle of the night was obviously inappropriate by any measure. For them, punctuality was crucial. If the host of the gathering weren’t the good-natured Mr. Hood, Mr. White Cat would have certainly been disqualified from attending.
To make up for his tardiness, he volunteered to provide two pieces of information instead of one. The first, however, was something Jenkins had known about for a long time.
“I discovered that the main members of that circus outside the city are Enchanters, most of them quite high-level. There are more than six of them!”
For those who were unaware, this was indeed astounding news. Generally, high-level Enchanters rarely gathered in one place, unless they were a squad from the Orthodox Church, a pseudo-god sect, a cult, or a “legal gathering.”
“Which deity do they follow?”
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“I don’t know. Perhaps a deity with a domain over circuses? This is too dangerous. With a group of Enchanters like that gathered together, who knows what could happen?”
Mr. White Cat muttered, before warning the others not to lose their lives out of curiosity.
“A circus...” Jenkins thought. “Come to think of it, I never did figure out how that young magician from the Spirit Incident Support Group managed to escape from that magic mirror... Mirrors, movement, hmm?”
Jenkins felt a flash of insight, a connection to something extraordinary. Those vampires seemed to possess a great number of mirror-related abilities because they had mastered the All-knowing Treasure Mirror—or rather, were mastered by it.
“Is it a coincidence?”
He didn’t know the answer.
The second piece of information Mr. White Cat provided was about the Sage's Church taming a dragon. Since someone had mentioned a dragon appearing near Nolan at the last gathering, the members all assumed that the Sage's Church had found and captured it.
“Although more and more strange folks are showing up in Nolan, the power of the Orthodox Churches is also growing. That should be a good thing... Damn it, why is the sour smell here so strong?”
Mr. White Cat concluded his summary, not forgetting to add a small complaint.
“Speaking of strange people appearing in the city, I’ve noticed that since the Believers of Lies, the Gear Artisans' Association, the Witch's House, and the Collector’s Association of the Evil Eye vanished, I haven’t heard of any new cults arriving in town.”
Mr. Hood took over the conversation. Seeing that no one else had anything to add, he continued:
“My friends abroad tell me that many pseudo-god sects have received divine oracles, all with a similar message: Nolan, on the west coast, is a place where destinies converge. If you value your life, stay far away. If you wish to take part in the great tide of fate, then write your will and come for an adventure.”
“Could you elaborate on that?”
Skylark Miss, Hathaway, asked. Jenkins wanted to ask the same thing, but he couldn’t break his cover as a foreigner. In that role, he would presumably have foreign friends of his own.
“Of course. It’s mostly things everyone already knows. The appearance of the new god raised a new star in the sky, and the purple star of destiny, in all sorts of prophecies, heralds the end of an epoch. Although much of the history before this epoch has been lost, we all know that at times like these, incidents become frequent in a certain region, attracting all kinds of disasters...”
At this, he shrugged, and Magic Miss took the opportunity to add:
“Like those legendary places—the Oasis of St. Gus in the central desert, Casaluntin, the city of arts that has fallen deep into the shadow world, the fabled Mana Gaethus Academy of Sorcery, the cursed ghost town of Gostra, and the Frozen Spire from the end of the last epoch. The birthplaces of legendary heroes, the starting points of those epic tales, the ones we never even knew about...”
Her voice trailed off as she shook her head, though it was unclear what she was lamenting. The “Frozen Spire” she mentioned at the end was one of the reasons Alexia Miller had traveled to the Hamparvo Kingdom; she was still trying to gain entry to that very place.
“You’re absolutely right.”
Mr. Hood nodded in agreement, then added, “If you’re interested in this sort of thing, I can tell you more and count it as my contribution of information.”