Chapter 18: A Contest in the Dark
At 11:30 p.m., Asker accompanied Nuo to Doroc Road in the slums.
“Will it be dangerous?” Nuo looked at the dark road on both sides and the homeless people sleeping in the alleys, covered with cardboard boxes. She whispered with some fear.
“Nuo, there is danger everywhere,” Asker said lightly. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have come with you.”
“Hmm.” Nuo nodded, still feeling a little uneasy.
Arriving at the door of house number 44, she reached out to knock, but Asker stopped her.
Asker raised the hilt of his sword and knocked on the door.
Is he worried that there are extraordinary traps on the door? Nuo immediately had the urge to take notes again.
The door opened, and inside was darkness, only a faint figure could be seen sitting on the bed. Asker sneered in his heart, it was indeed an enemy.
Nuo carefully glanced inside, and suddenly felt a chill, as if something had invaded her body and was fighting her for control. Her thinking became sluggish, her senses dulled, and Nuo felt it difficult to breathe. She wanted to scream, but found that the vocal cords in her throat were out of control and she couldn’t make any sound.
Asker encountered the same situation, but he was already level 1, and his spirituality was much stronger than Nuo’s, so he could barely move. As his body gradually became disobedient, he did not show any panic, but slowly turned his wrist, aiming the muzzle at the darkness on the left.
Bang!!! The roar of the Desert Eagle sounded, and Nuo only felt as if she had been hit in the face with a sledgehammer, blood almost oozing from her ears and nose… At the same time, her body quickly returned to normal. She stumbled and grabbed the door frame, just in time to see Asker light the flint, illuminating the scene in the room.
It was a simple shack of about twelve square meters. A young man in a yellow priest’s robe was sitting on the bed, his eyes rolled back and his face was blue and purple, obviously dead. Another body was in the shadows behind the left door, a middle-aged man in his thirties wearing a black robe, with a large hole blown open in his chest by the elephant hunting bullet. He was lying in a pool of blood, his face still showing an expression of disbelief.
“That’s a Spirit II extraordinary,” Asker stepped forward quickly and began to search the young man’s belongings on the bed. “Spirit II can freely manipulate nearby spirits and attach them to inanimate objects, such as a pistol, so they can shoot. Or invade living bodies and compete with the spirits inside for control.”
“Of course, it’s not foolproof.” He pointed to the body in the corner and added, “The higher the Sequence of the extraordinary, the lower the possibility of being successfully possessed by a spirit. From the moment I entered the door, I was holding the pistol in the arm armor of my cotton armor. Just turning my wrist and pulling the trigger, I could still do it in the state of resisting spiritual invasion.”
“So that’s how it is.” Nuo felt inexplicably ashamed. The moment the door opened, Asker had already assumed a posture ready to fight back with his gun, while her subconscious first reaction was to stick her head in to look. The gap in actual combat experience between the two was too big.
And even if she was on guard, her first reaction would definitely be to treat the corpse sitting on the bed as the enemy. How could she have imagined that the real enemy was hiding in the darkness behind the left door? By the way, how did Asker know?
“Two birds with one stone, you are lucky, Nuo.” Asker took out two formulas from the sleeve of the corpse on the bed. “Life I and Radiance I, this is a Life School extraordinary who tried to advance to level 2, but unfortunately he died here before he could put the formula into action.”
He finally pulled off the topaz signet ring from the corpse’s finger, glanced at it, turned around and went to search the body in the corner. Nuo looked at the corpse on the bed and bit her lip uneasily: “So… inviting me here was actually a trap?”
“Maybe.” Asker said, “Maybe the “Life School” learned at the party that someone was looking to buy the Life I formula, so they lured you here to join the organization, but were intercepted and killed by someone from the Spirit School. Or maybe the interception happened earlier, and it was the Spirit School people who attended the party. They suspected that you were a newcomer who wanted to join the Life School, so they deliberately lured you into this trap.”
“I think it’s the latter. If they were willing to let you join the organization just because they learned that you were looking to buy Life I, then the Life School would be too hasty.” Asker analyzed, and finally found his target: the Spirit I formula, the Life I extraordinary characteristic belonging to the corpse on the bed, and the Spirit II extraordinary characteristic of the murderer himself.
This time it was a real bargain! Asker thought with satisfaction. Three Sequence I formulas, two extraordinary characteristics (lv1 and lv2), and the ring of the Life School, the combined value was at least 600-700 pounds. The players on the game forum summarized that “murder and arson lead to a golden belt, while farming and development lead to elimination” was not a random joke. The price difference between the mysterious world and the secular world was really too big. The total price of his two shops in the imperial capital was only a little over 1200 pounds, and now he had recovered half of it by killing an extraordinary.
“Let’s go.” He took Nuo and left the scene.
“Are the Life School and the Spirit School mortal enemies?” Nuo asked curiously.
“The Life School is also called the Druid School, originating from the ancient Kate people. They master the ‘Shepherd of Trees’ bloodline path, whose main Sequences are ‘Life’ and ‘Radiance’.” Asker explained, “The Spirit School originated from the ancient Siris people. They master the ‘Spirit Witch’ bloodline path, whose main Sequences are ‘Spirit’ and ‘Undead’.”
“The two schools were once close allies in the Third Epoch. At that time, the military power of the ancient Republic of Solomon almost conquered the entire continent. Both the Siris and Kate people were forced to submit to the Solomon people, so they also had the intention of joining hands to resist the common enemy. The ‘Singer of Life’ bloodline path was the product of the honeymoon period between the two schools.” Asker explained in detail, “Later, in the Fourth Epoch, with the division of the Solomon Empire into East and West, the Siris people were completely integrated into the Eastern Solomon Empire and began to regard themselves as Solomon people, while the Kate people were annexed by the Germanic people. As their ideologies and cultures gradually diverged, the two schools eventually broke up.”
“To make matters worse, because the two schools were too closely related during the Third Epoch, they both knew and possessed a lot of confidential information about each other. Therefore, after the breakup, both sides wanted to put each other to death.” Asker said leisurely, “As the saying goes, the most bitter hatred comes from those closest to you, and this is probably the reason.”
“Is that so?” Nuo immediately began to imagine, her mind filled with the tragic story of the two schools’ entanglement of love, hate, and hatred over thousands of years.
…
The next day, Asker woke up from his bed in the study and saw that the window on the third floor was open. A bulging package was placed on the desk, with a note attached to it, written in delicate handwriting:
Cash on delivery
M.C. (short for Mia Cinquemani)
P.S. There is a Church spy at your door
“Asker! Asker!” Nuo rushed in and shouted in a panic, “Our house has been burglarized! I just checked our belongings and found that 210 pounds are missing! The thief also left a note saying that it was payment for the goods…”
She stared at the package on the desk in a daze. Asker covered his forehead and said helplessly:
“Yes, your spiritual materials have arrived. She took the money too.”
“The goods have arrived?” The other three girls came upon hearing the news.
The package on the desk was opened, revealing a dazzling array of spiritual materials. The Galya Canyon river water was contained in a mineral water bottle with the label torn off, about 400 ml; the Fruit of Eden was a light green apple-like fruit, wrapped in three layers of plastic film; the Corfu olive oil was filled in a glass jam jar.
The Vila eagle feathers were tied with hemp rope, there were six or seven of them; the Bosnia Bay geoduck was packed in a plastic bottle; the Golden-Striped Leech paste was packed in an empty makeup powder box, with a label on it, handwritten with a big word: Stinky.
The service of the Thieves Guild was really too thoughtful, they actually delivered more than the amount on the order, obviously they had taken on a lot of business from extraordinary people before, so they also took into account the material loss of potion preparation failure… Asker thought to himself, then said:
“Since the materials are all here, let’s start preparing the Justice X potion.”
“What about my Life Steal I?” Peggy protested, the materials for her potion formula had also been collected.
“You?” Asker glanced at her, “Have you digested all your Flesh I extraordinary characteristics?”
Medea echoed, “It is very dangerous to take a level 2 potion without digesting the level 1 potion completely. Because the original potion in your body has not been ‘tamed’, taking potions of other Sequences is prone to ‘runaway’, which greatly increases the risk of losing control of spirituality.”
Seeing that Peggy was too depressed to speak, Asker waved his hand helplessly: “Let’s do what we can first.”
Eleanor immediately set up the crucible excitedly and started to help Asker. First, she measured out 100 ml of Galya Canyon river water with a beaker, poured it into the crucible, and lit the fire. Four minutes later, the river water boiled, and Asker took out a pair of Shadow Worm Beast’s Eyes and carefully placed them in the center of the boiling water.
With a pop, the eyeballs of the Shadow Worm Beast burst in the boiling water, and ink-like black liquid flowed out from the cracks in the eyeballs, quickly dyeing all the water black. The originally boiling liquid surface also calmed down strangely, and there was no response no matter how the flame below heated it.
Asker took out the reagent bag containing the diamond powder and poured it in. The powder dispersed in the liquid and seemed to dissolve quickly. Finally, he took out the Vila eagle feathers and put them in one by one.
Dots of light appeared in the pitch-black liquid, like a galaxy in the night sky, giving people a feeling of depth just by looking at it. Asker sniffed the smell, and after confirming that there was no problem, he poured it into a beaker and handed it to Eleanor.
Eleanor took the beaker containing the potion, her throat twitched, closed her eyes, and drank it all in one gulp. Then her skin began to glow. Her golden curly hair suddenly turned silvery white, and her pink lips turned pale. She opened her eyes blankly and unconsciously, her pupils turned into golden crosses, with faint rotating patterns.
She opened her mouth and let out a long, meaningless sigh, and her whole body slowly returned to normal.
“How do you feel?” Nuo asked with concern.
“I’m fine.” Eleanor looked at her body. “It feels like I’ve had a sunbath, my whole body is warm.”
“Has your mentality changed?” Asker frowned and asked, “There are many records in history showing that after taking Justice X, extraordinary people will obviously feel that the dark side of human nature has been violently stripped away, resulting in temporary psychological discomfort.”
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