Lord of The Mysterious Realms Chapter 689

After getting his things in order, Jenkins returned to the hallway, glanced into the girls' room, and then headed for the third-floor room where he had slept his first night.

He had changed rooms because a murderer was on the loose in the villa, sending everyone into a state of panic. Originally, a large section on the south side of the third floor had been designated for male guests. After Jenkins and Garcia moved out, it became a deserted, silent area.

Just as he rounded a corner in the hallway, he heard the sounds of a fight up ahead. But by the time Jenkins arrived, the corridor was completely empty, save for a few new small holes in the wall.

The last door around the corner was still his original room, and the mysterious door had not reappeared.

"Someone was fighting Mrs. Hydra," Jenkins mused. "Meanwhile, Hathaway is surely watching the people who fled. That means the real culprit is one of the 'victims' who stayed behind. My deduction is sound, but I still need to confirm it."

When no one else appeared, he decided to forge a path down to the first floor and see which body was missing. The ground floor was undoubtedly dangerous, but he reasoned that since most of the room doors had been closed during the avalanche, there should still be some standing room in each one, even if snow had burst in through the windows.

He continued down the corridor, listening intently for the slightest sound. Outside, the weather was grim as a blizzard began to take shape, pellets of snow rattling against the broken glass and walls.

The servants all lived in one area, but it was possible some unlucky soul on patrol or using the lavatory hadn't made it out. He first considered burning a hole through the floor to reach the first floor, but then realized he might not be able to climb back up.

"I'll start with the makeshift morgue," he decided. "The missing body has to be one of them."

Tying a bedsheet to a bedpost, he climbed down. As he descended, he simultaneously used flames to melt the snow near the door and his [Frost Punch] to freeze the snow by the window. It was no easy feat and required immense control, but fortunately, he managed to prevent more snow from pouring into the room.

Compressed and frozen by the snow, the bodies had taken on a bizarre, desiccated appearance. With just a single glance, Jenkins noticed one was missing. It was the body of Franklin Quake, the first of their companions to die.

He snorted, abandoning his plan to search for any other missing people. Laboriously, he hauled himself back up to the second floor with the bedsheet, then paused to straighten his clothes before walking back to the corridor where his first room was. He pushed open the door to the room opposite his.

This was Quake's room. After his "death," no one had gone through his luggage out of respect. Instead, they had locked the door and given the key to the keeper—

"Quake must have been the one who led us to the steam furnace, and by extension, that small compartment," Jenkins thought. "He manipulated us into killing the key keeper, not just to frame someone for the doctor's murder, but possibly because the keeper had been in this room."

As luck would have it, Quake hadn't found the time to return and sort through his belongings. Bagging the body and orchestrating the murders must have taken up a great deal of his time. The room's furnishings were exactly as they had been when Jenkins last closed the door.

Anything important wouldn't be left in plain sight, and certainly not in a suitcase. Jenkins finally felt something inside the lining of a coat on the clothes rack. Ripping the fabric open, he was surprised to find letters.

The first was signed with a familiar surname: Wellington.

During that major incident late last autumn, the demon-possessed young Wellington had caused Jenkins no small amount of trouble. After it was all over, the followers he had recruited should have all been taken into custody by the Church, an event that had caused quite a stir among the nobility.

"Did one slip through the net?"

He opened the letter, his mind racing, but it contained nothing more than ordinary pleasantries and greetings. That was to be expected; any letter with crucial information would have been disposed of.

"Could Quake's presence at this villa be connected to those demons?"

That was only the first letter; he had found five in total. Jenkins didn't recognize the names on the second, fourth, and fifth, but he knew instantly who had sent the third. The wax seal on the envelope was an abstract bat, and the letter closed with the phrase, "May the red moon watch over us."

"He certainly has a diverse circle of acquaintances," Jenkins muttered. "Are vampires involved in this, too?"

He paused for a moment, then tucked the letters into his pocket. This was crucial evidence.

In addition to the letters, Jenkins discovered a detailed travel itinerary dated to the previous summer. It seemed Quake had been preparing for this trip for a very long time.

Had these terrible events not transpired, the itinerary would have seemed perfectly innocent. But given what he now knew, it was highly likely Quake had come here for a specific reason. Perhaps he had learned some of the villa's secrets from his demonic or vampiric contacts.

He left the room and stood for a while by a window in the corridor, mulling over everything that had happened since his arrival at the snowbound villa and listening for another unusual sound.

Before long, the sound of running footsteps echoed from down the hall. Jenkins turned to see Mrs. Hydra and the supposedly long-dead Quake burst around the corner, one chasing the other.

A blessed holy bullet shot forward but failed to harm Quake. He caught the metal slug in his right hand, glanced at Jenkins, and casually tossed it aside. Jenkins had expected him to charge, but instead, Quake slammed himself into the wall beside Jenkins's former room and vanished completely.

"A Level 4," Jenkins noted. "Same as me."

Only at such close range could Jenkins perceive his status as an Enchanter.

"Oh, dear gods, this is terrible."

Trembling, Mrs. Hydra slid down the wall to the floor. Jenkins, however, rapped his knuckles on the spot where Quake had vanished but found no trace of a secret passage.

"I think it's time you told me what's really going on here," he said, turning to her. "I have a very bad feeling about this." Thɪs chapter is updatᴇd by novel⟡fire.net

He was prepared. If the woman still refused to tell the truth, he would simply summon his unicorn and fly away from this place with his cat and his friends.

"He's broken into the sealing chamber!"

Mrs. Hydra leaped to her feet, grabbing Jenkins by the shoulders:

"Go now! Get as far away as you can, and then notify the Orthodox Church! There's a terrifying creature sealed directly beneath this villa. That door you saw is the only passage to its prison. My family has guarded this place for generations, opening that door only once every ten years to ensure the seal is intact!