Chapter 1574: Chapter 1574
Even though the man was strung up, the air bombs that had already been triggered continued to detonate. To effectively buy time for his escape, the Air Bomb Ring had set different detonation times for the air in the same area, ensuring a continuous, rolling series of explosions.
He hung upside down from the tree, only his eyes and nostrils exposed. He knew he had underestimated the Believers of Lies, but he desperately hoped his opponent would be blasted into a crippled, immobile state.
When the explosions finally ceased, the once-wooded area had been all but leveled, the ground itself having sunk several feet. In the center of the clearing stood a wooden cocoon, as tall as a man. Jenkins reached out, punctured it, and stepped out. The barrage had certainly been perilous, but this was a forest, and he had been standing on a tree. Not only was he unharmed, but even his clothes were undamaged by the blasts.
"It's almost noon," he remarked, pulling out his pocket watch and flipping open the cover with a flick of his wrist. "I'm in a hurry to get back for lunch." He couldn't afford to waste too much time.
"Now, answer my questions," Jenkins said coolly. "And I can make your death a little quicker."
As he spoke, he drew a holy sword from the air and, with a sharp swing, lopped off the arm entangled in the vines. Only then did he feel safe enough to remove the ring from the severed limb. Afterward, he manipulated the vines to lower the man and used the power of his [Life Source] to reattach the arm.
Jenkins was sure the doll watching nearby wouldn't mind its body being treated this way.
"I won't say a thing," the man sneered mockingly. "Go on, kill me."
He was met with Jenkins's promise that he would not be killed, but instead handed over, along with the doll, to the Orthodox Church. The man let out another cold laugh, declaring that while he might cooperate, it didn't mean his spirit would submit to the Believers of Lies.
Even as a captive, he managed to sound defiant. He was clearly a man with a story.
Through interrogation, Jenkins learned his background. Just as he suspected, the man was a foreign Enchanter who had fled to this kingdom after committing murder in the north. He had smuggled himself into Nolan City by ship, but realizing it was a dangerous place for an unfamiliar outsider, he had wisely run off to Bel Diran.
During his time in Bel Diran, he had a falling out with a local Enchanter over some trivial matter and was cursed, his soul trapped inside the doll sometime last winter.
An Enchanter does not lose all their power just because they've lost their physical body. After biding his time for a long while, he found an opportunity. He used his accumulated spirit to bewitch the cemetery groundskeeper, having him lure over a group of passersby. He selected a suitable body from among them, and then the whole affair ended up in the newspapers, which in turn attracted the attention of the meddlesome Believers of Lies.
What concerned Jenkins most was why one of the cursed individuals, who should have been confined within the arcane lock, was among that group. The captured man told Jenkins that one of the people stripped naked and abandoned in the cemetery wasn't someone he had brought to swap bodies with, but someone who had already been in the catacombs with him.
"That person broke into the crypt about two or three days ago," he explained. "It seemed like he wanted to use it as a hiding place."
"What did he look like at the time? Human, or more like an insect?" Jenkins asked immediately.
"Like an insect," the man replied. "I had a feeling it was something like the legendary Blood Mosquito Curse."
The man, bound by vines like a mummy, lay on the ground and continued his speculative account.
"Whether it was a disease or a curse, it was causing that person immense pain. After hiding in the catacombs, he would moan all night. But every two hours, he would comb his hair with a bronze-colored metal comb, muttering to himself as he did. I guessed it might be some kind of Numbered Item, because just by doing that, he somehow managed to slowly revert to his human form... But that comb also had a side effect. He was clearly losing his memory, and losing more and more of it. Every time he woke from sleep, he would seem dazed and terrified, probably with no idea why he was there."
This was all true, which meant the appearance of the Blood Mosquito Curse victim outside the manor had little to do with the man trying to steal a body. But Jenkins worried he was being told an "incomplete truth," so he used a few other methods to try and get him to say more. To his surprise, it worked.
"Alright, alright! After I recovered my body, to keep the Church from getting suspicious, I just tossed that comb-user in with the group I'd brought for the body swap. His memory was pretty much gone anyway... I took the comb, but it's not on me now. I buried it in the woods, thinking I'd come back to study it after shaking off the Orthodox Church. I was afraid that if I carried it on me, I might start losing my memory too..."
After that, Jenkins knocked the man unconscious. He then tossed both him and the doll back into the cemetery for the groundskeepers and the Church, who were still investigating, to handle. After all, he had no way of swapping their souls back himself.
As for the comb buried in the forest, he found it quickly enough by using his Eye of Reality to track its spiritual glow.
Metal combs were uncommon due to factors like craftsmanship and cost, making them less prevalent than wooden or plastic ones. Jenkins had only ever seen one before, which belonged to Dolores, but she never used it, claiming such combs felt prickly on her scalp. She much preferred ivory.
The metal comb Jenkins now dug out of the dirt radiated a dense yellow aura. Its design was very plain, except for the fact that both its front and back surfaces were exquisitely carved with slightly concave eye shapes.
This gave the comb an eerie quality, as if the eyes on both sides were staring right at Jenkins. While the eye symbol itself was not inherently problematic in human culture, the existence of the evil god known as the Void Evil Eye meant that such imagery always brought unsettling things to mind.
The intensity of its aura was on par with a typical Numbered Item, but Jenkins didn't recognize it. Seeing that it was almost time for lunch, he decided to hurry back to his base outside the manor, lest someone discover that his illusion wouldn't wake up no matter how much they called it.
However, the moment he picked up the comb, Chocolate showed extreme hostility. When Jenkins summoned his mount, the unicorn also acted with animosity, trying to poke the comb in his hand with its horn.
Seeing this, Jenkins didn't assume that both his cat and his unicorn had suddenly gone hysterical. Considering their typically powerful sense for danger, he hesitated for a moment before tossing the comb onto the ground.
Chocolate's four small paws clung tightly to Jenkins's shoulder as the cat leaned its head down and meowed incessantly. The unicorn, too, grew agitated, stamping its hooves on the ground and nudging Jenkins with its head, as if urging him away from the dangerous object on the ground.
"I know, I won't touch it anymore," Jenkins said, reaching out to soothe the cat and the unicorn. He then took a few steps back and pulled the newly acquired Air Bomb Ring from his pocket.
He slipped the ring onto his finger, squinted at the comb lying in the mud, and with a gentle wave of his hand, an invisible pellet of air shot from his palm, blasting the comb high into the sky.
Generally, Numbered Items possessed an "indestructible" characteristic, which was the Church's final method for identifying such objects. But the comb, now soaring through the air, shattered right before the eyes of Jenkins, Chocolate, and the unicorn.
When the explosion subsided and the metal fragments rained down, the ground was littered not only with smoking clods of dirt, but also with a puddle of something black that looked like sludge. The substance writhed continuously. At first, it reminded Jenkins of the "slime" species, an aberration that had long been extinct in the material world. But he was quickly horrified by the sheer malice concealed within that sludge.
The unicorn and the cat displayed even greater hostility. Jenkins retreated another two steps, tapping the ground with his cane. The spirit of life stimulated the seeds and broken wood in the forest soil, and a wooden wall shot up around the black sludge, growing rapidly to prevent the thing from escaping or splitting apart.
Its aura wasn't black, nor did it possess that terrifying ability to spontaneously influence one's mind and surroundings. But it was just as bizarre. To Jenkins, it looked like a mass of pure malice that had taken physical form. The spiritual fluctuations it emitted could undoubtedly turn any ordinary person into a complete villain and criminal the instant they came into contact with it.
"This kind of thing shouldn't exist in the world."
He raised a hand, intending to activate his Blasphemous Creation ability, but found it wouldn't work. The sludge, it seemed, was not judged to be a sentient life form with a soul, and therefore possessed no blasphemy to be extracted.
So, he drew his holy sword again. Wiping a hand along the blade, he wreathed it in the inextinguishable Fire of Grace. He then swiftly drew two slashes in the air beside him, just about to unleash a spinning sword dance, when he saw the mud, contained by the wooden wall, begin to writhe even faster.
In the center of the churning sludge, a hunched human shape gradually took form. In less than two seconds, the upper body of a black human figure rose from the ooze, its waist still connected to the murky mass. Its facial features were merely concave depressions in the sludge, making it look utterly disgusting.
"Please stop," it said. "I have something to say."
As it spoke, the shape of its indented mouth shifted, further enhancing the grotesque, chilling appearance of the human form emerging from the puddle of filth.
"I haven't harmed you, have I? I haven't harmed anyone. Why do you want to destroy me?"
The black sludge gestured with both hands. Latest content publıshed on Nov3lFɪre.ɴet
"You see, I am no threat to you. And I didn't harm my previous owner; in fact, I used what little power I had left to help him escape a very powerful arcane lock. I may not be good, but at least I am not evil."