"Good reporter, this kind of thing is very common in the East District..." Liv, a laundry worker who looked close to fifty years old, rubbed her hands in the dark corridor, and her slightly hoarse voice penetrated the darkness, high and powerful.
After some communication, in exchange for the interview fee, the lady agreed to visit Klein's workplace.
Klein, who had a certain degree of night vision, pointed the cane wrapped in numbness in front of him, pretending that he couldn't see the road clearly and stumbling around. He was much more embarrassed than the old Kohler who was also cautious when he got up.
“Are there many thieves like this in the East District?”
"I saw that the one just now was still a child..." Klein avoided the wet and sticky muddy filth under his feet and asked a question that sounded very stupid.
The old Kohler, who was not so particular, hurriedly explained:
"They are all orphans controlled by gangs. Many children have been doing these things since they were young. Even if they have their own parents, their parents will let their children come out to steal things, because those people may have been controlled by gangs in the past.
One of the thieves."
"They're all bastards with no hands, they don't know how to make their own money."
Liv, who was walking in front, cursed, coughed hard several times, and then said:
"The one on the left is where we live, and of course it's also where we work. The sun hasn't set yet, so you can take a look."
She gently pushed open the wooden door that was not closed tightly, glanced at the two people behind her, and walked in first.
The wooden door painted with red paint creaked and swung back, and the peeling red paint formed irregular patterns. The wood inside was soaked by the long-term humid environment, with water droplets hanging on the surface, making it feel very moist to the touch.
Klein shook his head imperceptibly, and looked at Liv's crouched figure in the dark environment. His sight was blocked by one piece of clothes that were still wet, and the outlines of two thin girls were missing in this area.
Under the gray light, it was compressed into a thin silhouette.
Liv's nagging and complaining voice echoed in the small room. Klein suddenly felt that the steps he had taken were extremely heavy. He moved forward with difficulty, trying not to make a sound, not wanting to disturb the two people who were immersed in their work.
Working girl.
The older girl, seventeen or eighteen years old, was squatting in front of a large basin, her red hands inserted into a piece of mud-gray foam, scrubbing clothes of different colors, mostly workers' uniforms, while the other was younger.
The younger girl struggled to hold a hot iron with one hand and slowly handled the clothes that had been dried.
Klein noticed that although the younger girl was as skinny as her sister, her expression was more haggard. She only worked with one hand because her left hand was wrapped in thick cotton gauze, which was stained with iodine.
It was a wine-brown color, but the cotton gauze used to wrap the wound had obviously been soaked by the moisture in the air, making it look quite bloated.
"This is......"
Before Klein's doubts could be expressed, Old Kohler, who was standing behind him, gently tugged on his sleeve and whispered in his ear:
"This is Liv's little daughter. She was abducted by the gang some time ago. That day after the thief Black Emperor killed Capin, she ran back alone."
Old Kohler glanced at Liv who was helping her daughters neatly fold the clothes in the distance. Her wrinkled face pinched together, and she breathed a sigh of relief before continuing:
"But the child's hand was burned by the fire when she ran away. It seems that Liv took her to see a doctor..."
Klein didn't pay attention to what Old Kohler said later. He just looked at the gauze wrapped around the girl's left hand, a little lost in thought.
On the day of the assassination of Cappin, in order to exaggerate, he finally used the ability to control flames to expand the fire. Although he deliberately guided the flame wall to an area away from the ladies imprisoned underground, it now seems that there will be no follow-up.
The extraordinary ability that people continue to maintain seems to have caused some harm to the innocent victims.
After rolling his eyes numbly for a week, Klein once again carefully scanned the room that was mixed with various smells. For a moment, he felt that the stench in it was nothing.
"How much do you usually earn?"
Seeing that Liv had folded the clothes and took the soldering iron from her youngest daughter's hand to iron the clothes, Klein asked a little abruptly.
The female worker glanced cautiously and asked:
"Why are you asking this? Didn't you say that you can take a look at our work place?"
As she spoke, she nervously moved the soldering iron closer to herself and raised her elbow a little higher.
Klein watched the opponent's small movements and shook his head.
"This environment is not conducive to the recovery of burns. Her injured gauze can almost be squeezed out of water."
He pointed at the dirty cotton yarn on the little girl's hand, then looked at the confusion in the girl's eyes and spoke in a calm and slow tone.
"Although I am not a doctor, I still have some basic medical knowledge. If this continues, your daughter's wound will only fester and rot, which is not conducive to her recovery."
"My suggestion is that you can take her to a regular hospital or a church rescue agency to change the gauze and wound medicine, and then try to stay in this humid environment as little as possible during the recovery period."
Liv, whose actual age is much younger than her appearance, was listening to all this in a daze, and the aggressiveness she had just taught the thief downstairs had long disappeared.
"But the church won't take her in. She's not an orphan. We can't afford the hospital bills."
The mother said stiffly.
I can't afford to stay in the hospital... Klein was a little confused for a moment, and the plan he had originally planned melted into his stomach.
He looked sideways at the old Kohler behind him, and saw that the middle-aged worker seemed to be moved by the scene, and the corners of his finely wrinkled eyes were slightly moist. He did not notice Klein's gaze for a moment.
"Ahem, let's start the interview." After a brief silence, Klein forced a smile to break the deadlock. On a nearby wooden board covered with clothes to be ironed, two girls of about the same age started talking again.
Work.
............
The place abandoned by God, the top of the round tower.
In the room belonging to the chief, Colin Yinliatt concentrated on watching the picture reflected in the crystal ball. In the shadow in the corner of the room, Lovia, whose face was shrouded in darkness, stood silently, with long silver hair as if it were alive.
He picked her up and slowly snuggled up to the side of this "shepherd".
"Can you tell which sequence the breath you felt last time belongs to?"
On the picture in the crystal ball, the boy was curled up on a narrow wooden bed, with his feet exposed. The weak candlelight was pulled very close, illuminating his young face.
After hearing the chief's question, Lovia, who was slightly lost in thought, took a breath calmly, with a hint of confusion in her deep gray eyes.
"I only feel the Lord's joy in the presence of that person, and there is no hostility."
"Did you feel the aura of that presence in front of that temple?" Colin frowned, his eyes never leaving the picture presented by the crystal ball.
Lovia nodded slowly as if she hadn't woken up yet.
"It was when Loholid was about to kill us."
Colin nodded slightly, seeming to agree with this answer.
During the battle at that time, he was almost ready to fight to the death, but Loholid suddenly stopped the rhythm of the attack, as if he was hindered by something, and was stunned for a second or two at the critical moment when the enemy's life was about to end. time.
And judging from the fact that the other party later did not dare to pursue him and was more surprised than frightened, the existence that stopped him might not be other powerful monsters, but an unknown secret existence at the end.
This was Colin's own judgment at the time, and now that he has been confirmed by Lovia again, he is even more certain of the correctness of his judgment.
If the "lord" who pulled Lovia out of Roholid's control is really as described in the murals in the temple, he was the Lord who was betrayed and burdened with sin and madness, then what Roholid said The object of awe and fear may be the person in the classics...
There was still no abnormality in the picture in the crystal ball. Colin cut off the truth that he had begun to vaguely expect in his mind, forced himself to calm down, and reason took over again.
As the chief of Silver City, when would he not want to return to the embrace of the Lord again, hoping that the gods could lead them, the abandoned people in the darkness, out of the sea of misery?
But precisely because he is the chief, he cannot place his hopes on a direction that has not been fully proven to be safe.
No matter what was described in the mural, the city-state they saw was already a ruin buried in time. If it were not for the "Lord"'s mysterious guidance to Lovia, this abandoned city-state might Buried in darkness, until the last city-state was destroyed, no lights of civilization could illuminate its past.
"I will continue to observe him for one day. If no abnormality occurs, Derrick will be released from isolation with the other explorers this time." Colin temporarily looked away from the crystal ball.
"He will be closely monitored by his direct reports on the six-member council."
As he spoke, his gaze penetrated the shadows and looked at Lovia's majestic and bright eyebrows. Her light blue eyes were full of determination.
"Also, I hope you can also participate in the surveillance. If there is any abnormality in him, you can feel the fluctuation of that existence's aura as quickly as possible and have enough strength to suppress it."
With her hands subconsciously touching her lower abdomen, Lovia breathed a long sigh of relief and said in a calm tone:
"I don't think we need to be so wary of Derrick."
She turned her head slightly, her deep gray eyes were blurred, and she said like she was dreaming:
"I am more inclined to believe that the existence behind him is the one we expect. It is recorded in the holy scriptures of 'Lord' that even after the 'Lord' suffered, he never abandoned him and was the 'Lord' from beginning to end. A solid ally."
"I hope so too." Colin's calm reply showed no trace of concession.
The chief, who had been fighting for more than eighty years in his life, straightened his back and walked into Lovia, who was half-hidden in the shadows. The bright morning light shrouded the surroundings, sealing off the prying eyes of the outside world.
"My brother is dead."
Colin's expression was extremely dull, but a trace of movement inevitably appeared on Lovia's face.
"He died on the first night Derrick entered the underground." Colin continued to tell the facts of what had happened in the calmest tone, his light blue eyes unwavering.
He continued to say almost forcefully:
"Although we all hope that there is that person behind Derrick, she has not shown any trace in more than two thousand years. What we really need to be careful of are the outsiders who disappeared for no reason back then."
Speaking of the outsider who had been forgotten by most people in Silver City, Lovia shook her heels imperceptibly.
The chief, who was nearly 2.5 meters tall, looked down at her condescendingly. Lovia's hands wrapped around her lower abdomen tightened unconsciously and she closed her eyes tightly.
After a few breaths, she nodded slightly.
"I will be responsible for monitoring Derrick."
The pale gray eyes that were reopened were stained with coldness. Lovia stared at the scene of the lake in the crystal ball, and the hand on her lower abdomen fell.
"But I need to know everything about that outsider."
She is only in her thirties, and that was already forty-two years ago. Although she has become an elder, she rarely knows about the past, and more of it is just another general impression of these unaccounted for stories.
Just stop paying attention.
"Let's start with his name..." Colin said in a heavy tone as he recalled the past events.
"His name is Amon."
...
In the dark and lightless dungeon, Derrick curled up on a low plank bed with a frown on his face. He was not at all like the calm look that Colin and Lovia saw in the crystal ball.
Apart from the false picture of being "cheated", Amon, who used the stolen "apprentice" and "divineer" abilities to hide himself, smiled and said nothing, quietly observing the rare ants on the steel wall, pushing the motionless one with his fingers
, a little bug with weird behavior, as boring as an ordinary human child.
"It seems that the Hanged Man has indeed maintained contact with the Secret. It is very possible that she has always known that the Secret has not fallen into madness at all."
Amon's smile remained the same, but the black eyes behind his monocle were filled with depth.
After a long absence, she felt the discomfort of being left out again.
The last time, in order to get rid of the influence of "God"'s awakening, his father secretly summoned the "Redemption Rose" and kept it secret from him until she died quietly, then he knew about the bloody conspiracy that was silently expanding behind the scenes.
"Oh, it's a pity that the real body is too far away from me now. Although there is still a clone at the second level of the sequence in the God's Abandoned Land, I have almost no power to resist in front of the 'Hanged Man'."
Amon was talking to himself to the ants on the wall. The little insect pushed by her fingers also swayed with the ups and downs of the emotions in her words. Derrick on the wooden bed frowned more and more.
Adjusting the monocle in the socket of his right eye, Amon, who was slightly bored, was a little surprised by his emotional changes.
With the help of the figure of "deceit", he was sucked back into Derrick's body. Amon, who was floating in the spirit body with the crimson mark, stopped outside the star spirit body. A group of golden twelve-linked insects shivered and exuded a faint light.
Light.
The next time this little guy prays to the "God of Mysteries" or the "Fool" he knows, his existence will be exposed... Amon felt the excitement before the adventure of life for the first time in a long time.
－－－－－－Digression－－－－－
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