Chapter 1316: Chapter 1316
"The noble girl shoots the ghoul!"
Jenkins declared instantly, giving the Corpse Gentleman no time to add a "first strike" tag to the creature.
"The sailor picks up the merchant's daughter's pistol and opens fire too!"
Mr. White Cat chimed in.
The sailor's firearms skill was remarkably high. Even though Briny's shot went wide, he managed to hit the ghoul square in the eye. While such a wound wasn't fatal to the terrifying creature, it effectively delayed its next assault.
The bought time was just enough for Hathaway to command the writer on the second floor to smash a fist through the wall, killing an evil spirit before leaping straight down through the hole in the floor back to the ground level.
Ever since Jenkins rolled a failure value of over one hundred, Hathaway had grown a bit agitated. She commanded the writer's movements with little finesse, opting for the most direct approach to every action. Read full story at noᴠelfire.net
After temporarily repelling the ghoul and defusing the immediate crisis, she even issued a direct warning to Jenkins:
"Next time, please consider the potential consequences of your words and actions more carefully. You do realize your carelessness almost got an innocent girl killed, don't you? Worse, you could have brought our entire story to an abrupt end!"
he said, maintaining his "Mr. Candle" persona with a calm, measured tone. Beside him, Magic Miss seemed about to say something in his defense, but after a moment's thought, she remained silent. She had caught the subtle glance from Mr. Hood, a silent warning not to speak.
Of the three other players—besides Hathaway and Jenkins—only he had vaguely sensed the truth: Mr. Skylark very likely knew the noble girl, Miss Mikhail, and their connection was quite deep.
Of course, Mr. Hood would never point this out. It was a private matter for others. As he had just said, revealing someone's secrets at a time would only make the story more complicated.
Although they hadn't managed to kill the ghoul, it had at least been seriously wounded and driven back. It likely wouldn't be returning for a while. With the threat gone, the story continued. Hathaway directed the writer to continue exploring the second floor, where he effortlessly discovered a skeleton wearing a hat in the corner of a wardrobe in the largest room.
"This is the fourth one. Should we burn it like the others? I'm genuinely worried that if we release all the curses into Nolan, this situation can still be salvaged."
Hathaway asked her companions at the table, and the others shared her apprehension. But things had progressed too far to hesitate now, so the fourth skeleton was also set ablaze.
Just as a small flicker of flame danced across the tabletop diorama, a torrential downpour began to lash the night-shrouded city of Nolan outside. Compared to the lightning that occasionally split the sky, the rain itself was nothing extraordinary, but this wasn't Nolan's rainy season. A storm of this intensity was a rare occurrence for this time of year.
Aside from the skeleton, Hathaway's writer, aided by his [Cat Training] ability, successfully discovered a small drawer filled with gems and several letters hidden in a secret compartment among the ceiling beams.
The gems were appraised by the Viscountess and the noble girl, Mikhail, who confirmed they were all genuine, high-end luxury items. While the letters had various authors, they were all addressed to a "Director Foster."
The Corpse Gentleman relayed the contents of the letters to the group. They revealed that a small, high-quality ruby mine had been prospected directly beneath the abandoned hospital. The writers of the letters had conspired with Director Foster to conceal the mine and develop it privately, neither informing the true owner of the hospital's land nor paying taxes to the city hall.
Using the sailor's [Investigation] and the Viscountess's [Investigation], they soon discovered several lines of very small text on the inside of the envelopes. This writing only appeared in the more recent letters, and it mentioned that during the secret excavation, the miners seemed to have unearthed something truly incredible.
"Isn't this a bit cliché?" Magic Miss remarked. "Greedy miners release some ancient evil from the depths, leading to a great disaster. In this day and age, you'd probably only find such a tired plot device in a detective knight novel."
"But the letters were authenticated as having been written more than a decade ago, so it's not as if someone is deliberately trying to deceive us," Mr. Hood countered. "Besides, the broken staircase we found earlier seemed intentionally placed to either block our path upstairs or to separate our five adventurers. That makes these letters we found upstairs highly credible."
This was Mr. Hood's assessment, and everyone else agreed.
"We found a note earlier about something trying to escape the morgue, and then we noticed the discrepancies in the ledger. Does this mean the entrance to the mine is in the morgue? And that sum of money that vanished fourteen years ago in the autumn—was that the initial investment for the mining, which was returned six months later once they started making a profit?"
Mr. White Cat laid out his theory, then turned to Hathaway.
"Mr. Skylark, should our next move be to locate the morgue directly? I believe you mentioned seeing a map of the hospital hanging opposite the second-floor landing."
It was the most logical course of action, yet Jenkins still felt a deep sense of unease about that familiar underground morgue. Whether a mine entrance was there or not was uncertain, but he was positive that the Corpse Gentleman had laid a trap there.
Jenkins was tempted to voice what he knew about the Corpse Gentleman, but his only advantage at the moment was that he knew of his adversary, while his adversary didn't know he knew.
"That feels a bit too risky," he proposed. "I think it would be safer to explore the rest of the hospital before we head to the morgue."
"But that not only means Nolan has to endure another layered curse, but we might also run into the final evil spirit in the process," Mr. Hood pointed out. "What would we do then? Unleash all the curses upon the city, or have our adventurer friends bear the burden for now?"
Jenkins couldn't find a better argument to refute him, because he was absolutely right.
He wanted to explain the strangeness of the morgue, but with the Corpse Gentleman sitting right there, revealing it prematurely might put a target on his back. Jenkins wasn't worried for his own safety, but he was deeply concerned for Briny's.
Then, a new idea came to him.
"I don't know if any of you noticed," he began, "but at the start of the story, when the adventurers couldn't open the main hospital doors, the Corpse Gentleman's description never mentioned anything about them being rusted shut."