“Hello? Can I help you?”
“I’m in the room next door. Just now... was there some kind of noise in here?”
The tall man asked hesitantly, glancing sideways into the room, but of course, he saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“A noise? Oh, sorry. I must have dozed off at my desk...”
Jenkins mumbled vaguely, smoothing the wrinkles on his clothes as he spoke. The man nodded, whispered an apology, and turned to knock on the door of room number six.
Room number six was also occupied, by a plump woman with her hair wrapped in a headscarf. After confirming everything was fine, the man, just to be safe, knocked on the door of room number four, further down the hall.
A long time passed before the man with the white cat finally opened the door. He looked annoyed and was carrying a black suitcase, as if he were about to leave. New ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄhapters are published on novel•fire.net
“Dammit, what do you want? I don’t know you!”
“This wretched place, dammit!”
Jenkins, who had used [Real Illusion] to return from room five to room four, let out another crude curse for show. He turned, slammed the door shut, and then headed down the stairs with his suitcase and cat.
As he stepped out of the inn, he looked up thoughtfully. At that very moment, a head peeked out from the window of room seven on the third floor, looking down. It was the young duke.
Jenkins raised a hand and tipped his hat to him, a mocking smile playing on his lips. Then he turned and walked toward the other end of the alley.
The foreign nobleman was stunned for a moment before shouting the order. But by the time his men had come downstairs and fanned out through the alley to search, the man with the cat was long gone.
They couldn’t cause a commotion, otherwise more than just that one damned fellow would find out what was happening. But the situation was still dire, because none of them knew just how much he had overheard.
Provence Lucal, now going by the name “Mr. Wilkawang,” was the last to emerge from the inn. This Enchanter, a manipulator of the dead, stepped out.
He was dressed all in black, like a guest on his way to a funeral. He walked thoughtfully to the spot in the alley where Jenkins had just been standing and mimicked his action, looking up.
Suddenly, Wilkawang’s rough right hand shot out, snapping the neck of the duke’s guard standing nearby. With his left hand, he traced a complex symbol in the air, and a soul immediately drifted out of the corpse.
He began chanting in a low whisper that no one could understand as a bone-chilling wind blew from the mouth of the alley. Everyone, including the other Enchanters, couldn't help but shiver, instinctively backing away in alarm from the young man toying with a soul.
He opened his right hand, crushed the soul into a small ball, and then suddenly pressed it to his forehead. The wind immediately began to swirl around him, whipping up the dust from the ground into a tornado-like vortex that engulfed him.
Though the weather hadn't changed, the light all around suddenly seemed to dim. The young foreign duke motioned for his men to fall back, squinting as he internally weighed whether making a deal with someone so dangerous had been the right choice.
But even after that complex display, the only result for “Mr. Wilkawang” was a spray of his own blood from his lips.
His expression turned grim, not because of the injury, but because of the results of his wicked divination:
“I can see neither the past nor the future. That man’s fate is warped... Heh, a Believer of Lies! He knew, of course he knew...”
“You mean that pack of lunatics?”
The foreign duke’s face paled. Even as a foreigner, he had heard of the outlaws who had been active since the end of last summer. They were a group of unknown size, but they were ruthless, possessing both intelligence and strength. Last year's Fabry Fraud was just one of the conspiracies they had woven.
Some believed the true purpose of that scheme was actually related to the change in the status of the God of Lies...
“How could you get tangled up with those lunatics!”
he immediately accused.
“I got tangled up with them?”
Wilkawang spun around and glared at him fiercely.
“You haven’t been honest with me. What exactly is this [Performer (Red Martial)] ability you want from me?”
“It’s just a rare ability, that’s all!”
The duke stuck firmly to his story. He tilted his chin up, adjusted his collar, and had his guards close in around him.
“Remember our deal. I don’t want any more surprises ! And remember, you absolutely cannot provoke the Believers of Lies. According to my research, they seem to have an uncanny ability to show up at critical moments. There must be an extremely skilled diviner among them.”
“Of course I know that.”
Wilkawang snorted coldly, not about to back down, even if the man’s power and influence were indeed impressive. But this was the Fidektri Kingdom, not the Cheslan Kingdom. In this city, all that influence was little more than a pretty symbol.
“We’ll meet next time as planned.”
“No problem. But you’d better have the ‘deposit’ ready.”
And with that, the two groups parted ways hastily in front of the inn, unwilling to linger in a place that had been exposed. Neither knew how the Believer of Lies had found them, but that was hardly a question worth pondering. After all, it was perfectly understandable for those people to turn up anywhere in this city.
The duke and his retinue chose to head east. Wilkawang had wanted to go that way too, but he couldn’t stomach the idea of following someone else, especially not that arrogant nobleman. So he pulled the brim of his hat low, hugged the wall, and started walking west down the alley. Leaving this way would take him straight out of the Dock Area, which, on second thought, didn’t seem like a bad direction at all.
The alley wasn’t particularly narrow, lined on both sides with various shops and inns. In reality, though, every one of them was a front for some sort of gray-market business—a common sight in the Dock Area. It seemed the smugglers had come to an understanding with the Nolan Council; once you left the docks, it was difficult to find a reliable outlet for contraband anywhere else in Nolan City.
In the distance, he saw a boy in tattered cloth shoes, up ahead in the direction he was walking. The boy was playing with an iron hoop, guiding it with a stick he must have picked up somewhere. The sight made Wilkawang think of his own childhood, back when he was a carefree boy who never imagined that twenty years later, he would be walking this path...