Chapter 366: Chapter 366

In his haste on the 31st, Jenkins had only had time to scan the titles of the documents, grabbing anything that seemed valuable.

Bathed in the flickering light of the fireplace, Jenkins read through the documents. He soon realized that the voluminous text boiled down to just two main subjects.

The first was detailed in a sheaf of white papers stapled together. The handwriting was scrawled and messy, clearly jotted down in a hurry.

It was an experimental log detailing the creation of the monster in the winery's cellar. The cultists had hoped these records would reveal the cause of the creature's mutation, but their final conclusion, disappointingly, was that it had been an unrepeatable accident.

To create their test subject, they had painstakingly sifted through over a thousand corpses to select five candidates. In the end, only one proved capable of containing such a tremendous amount of life force.

The origins of these thousand-plus bodies were complex, with most having been procured through illegal channels.

Corpse desecration was a grave felony in this era. Consequently, not even doctors could legally obtain cadavers for dissection, which had given rise to the profession of the body snatcher.

These ghoulish entrepreneurs supplied medical schools, mad scientists, and Enchanters with bodies in exchange for gold pounds. The records showed that the final specimen had come from them as well. As Jenkins read on, he saw the name of the deceased—

It seemed the tomb raiders had truly taken everything from the crypt that could be exchanged for gold pounds.

"What a coincidence," Jenkins mused. "That monster was actually an ancestor of the Augustus family?"

He recalled the rumors surrounding the Augustus family and their connection to death, and a feeling of unease settled over him. There was something more to this.

The cultists had investigated the Augustus family as well, suspecting that some inherent trait in the corpse itself had caused the unexpected mutation. However, that part of the investigation report was not among the papers Jenkins held. He couldn't know if it had been left behind in the cellar or if it had never existed in the first place.

Another detail took Jenkins by surprise: Abbott J. Augustus's tomb was located not far from the abandoned cemetery where they had played the Ouija board game earlier that day.

In fact, the small village of Yuka, hundreds of years ago when the Augustus family was still prominent, had been part of the family's fiefdom. The family cemetery was built adjacent to the village, and one theory even suggested that the villagers were descendants of the family's tomb keepers from a millennium ago.

Regardless, the Yuka village cemetery and the Augustus family cemetery were essentially one and the same. The reason they hadn't seen the rest of it was due to a landslide decades ago, which had destroyed the section containing the Augustus ancestral tombs, sparing only a few plots on the very edge.

Among them was the grave of Abbott J. Augustus.

"I'll have to pay that place another visit," Jenkins thought.

With that thought, Jenkins casually set the stack of documents on the sofa.

Chocolate, the cat, stealthily opened one eye and glanced at the papers. In the black-and-white photograph of the tombstone, it seemed to spot something quite interesting.

The cat closed its eye again, having more or less grasped the heart of the matter.

The second matter concerned the "Undying Man" project, something Jenkins had been investigating for a long time.

Just as he had suspected, the project's goal was to acquire the [White Basic] ability known as [Undying Man].

From the rubbings of ancient texts, personal letters, and confidential files he held, Jenkins learned that the core component for the ritual to acquire this ability was something exceptionally rare: the ashes of those who had attained longevity through forbidden means.

The ritual required nine portions of such ashes, and the other materials were just as rare. The cult, however, had already completed all its preparations and had managed to collect eight of the nine required portions.

Through divination, they had determined that Nolan City was the ideal location to perform the ritual, which was why they had come here.

The problem, as one letter pointed out, was that two of the portions were being held by an ally from the [Life Sharing Alliance]. And that particular ally, who had been in hiding, had the misfortune of dying in the incident caused by the New God cultist.

Jenkins grimaced, at a loss for words. It seemed that somehow, for some inexplicable reason, every piece of trouble eventually found its way back to him.

Those two portions of ashes were currently buried in his own basement, right beside the metal container sealing the eyeball. He'd had no idea he was sitting on something so dangerous.

Vague clues in the correspondence suggested that the allies of the [Life Sharing Alliance] were a formidable group. Mr. Clark's name was mentioned among them, though his role was never specified.

Jenkins scrutinized the letter for a long time before he noticed that some of the letters in one section had been deliberately altered after being written.

It took considerable effort to decipher the original text, but he finally made it out: [Tree House].

"What kind of strange organization is that?" he wondered. "Is that where Mr. Clark is from?"

He mused on this, running his fingers over the paper again and again, hoping to find more clues, but there were none. The [Undying Man] ability, he now felt certain, was very likely one of the nine Savior-candidate abilities that Mason Pisco had mentioned.

There was no concrete proof, but Jenkins felt it in his gut. He attributed this certainty to his own burgeoning 'inspiration', as well as the innate perception his [Twin Demons] ability had for powers of a similar origin.

The next day was Friday, and the sun shone brightly. Perhaps Wednesday's blizzard had exhausted the reserves of cold air, because the temperature had unexpectedly risen. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ NoveI[F]ire.net

The snow on the city streets had mostly melted away, but the damned fog still lingered. The Air Protection Act had finally been passed, and most recent newspapers featured the story on their front pages.

However, the act wouldn't take effect until the first day of the new year. This meant the city's factory owners had two more months to spew their exhaust into the air with impunity.

Not that Jenkins had much faith in the act's effectiveness to begin with.

He arrived at Pops Antique Shop with Chocolate in his arms. The first thing he did was recount the previous night's events in full, omitting, of course, the part where he'd gone into the sea to retrieve the documents.

"A Ouija board... not a numbered item, no files on it... an evil spirit in a nun's habit... Why does that sound familiar?"

Papa Oliver rubbed his nose and paced back and forth twice before grabbing his coat and hat from the wall hook and heading out the door.

Jenkins was now a qualified apprentice, fully capable of minding the shop on his own.