Lord of The Mysterious Realms Chapter 854

Figuring out why the old gravedigger had fainted, Jenkins gently laid him down under a tree, then turned back to examine the coffin.

The interior of the coffin was lined with white silk. At the head, there was nothing; in the middle lay a music box and a letter; and at the foot rested a wooden toy dagger.

The arrangement was illogical. There should have been something at the head of the coffin—and judging by its position, something of great importance. After a moment of thought, he guessed it must have been the divinity he had already consumed, though he had no idea what form it had originally taken.

He hesitated for a moment before leaning over the edge of the coffin to retrieve the letter. The envelope bore no markings and wasn't even sealed; it was simply folded shut.

Inside was a single sheet of paper, on which three short sentences were written in an elegant, delicate script:

“What lies at the head is your reward.”

“What lies in the middle, please deliver to my follower.”

“With what lies at the foot, please save the world.”

Thanks to his recent experiences with the elven cipher and Miss Stuart's puzzle box, Jenkins had developed a habit of scrutinizing such secret letters multiple times, reading them top to bottom, left to right, over and over again.

“First of all, I can now be certain that the God of Music is behind this scheme,”

Jenkins murmured to himself, his eyes fixed on the letter as if he could will a hidden message to appear in the blank spaces.

“Second, the music box is a Bestowal, and I need to deliver it to a follower of the God of Music.”

Before opening the coffin, Jenkins hadn't seen the aura of a Bestowal, nor had he felt one calling out to him. This coffin clearly possessed some extraordinary power, but he had no intention of taking it.

Setting aside whether it was auspicious or not, the mere thought that an equally powerful deity had imbued it with their might was enough to quash any greedy impulse Jenkins might have had.

“They want me to save the world... Is this another situation like Mr. Pisco’s? This dagger...”

This, too, was a C-class Bestowal, and its aura was even more intense than the music box’s.

“And finally, the divinity was the reward... but I’ve already taken it. What happens if I can’t fulfill their request?”

Jenkins hadn’t entered into any pact with the God of Music, so theoretically, there would be no consequences if he simply ignored the letter’s instructions.

But things were never that simple. He was still a mortal, and he intended to live in the material world for a long time to come. Besides, he had already accepted that precious reward.

“Alright,” he declared. “I agree.”

He spoke to the empty air, then reached back into the coffin, intending to retrieve both the music box and the toy dagger. Thıs text ıs hosted at novèlfire.net

The moment his right palm touched the music box, it was absorbed into his spirit. And the instant his other hand touched the wooden dagger, a warm current flowed up his arm and into his heart.

The world seemed to stand still. His vision dissolved into nothingness, replaced by a terrifying, absolute darkness. In that void, a small sapling swayed before his eyes.

In the lightless emptiness, it struggled to emit a glow—faint, but incredibly resolute. Jenkins felt as if he could no longer think. His right hand moved of its own accord, reaching out to touch the first branch the sapling extended toward him.

The void shattered like glass, revealing the real world it had concealed. Jenkins was still standing in the cemetery, but the wooden toy dagger was now, somehow, in his hand.

“What just happened?”

There was no one to answer him.

He felt nothing wrong with his body. On the contrary, compared to just moments before, his physique and spirit felt unusually healthy and vigorous. He looked down at the toy dagger, frowning for a good while before finally storing it away within his spirit.

He summoned the motes of light representing his abilities. The green one at the very center had quietly transformed:

[Life Source (Green Life)]

The sapling of his Soul Emblem had grown a little larger as well, just as it had when Contact Healing evolved into Breath of Healing.

He remained silent for a long time. Lacking any real information, he couldn't begin to understand the nature of the change that had just occurred.

A short while later, the old gravedigger stirred and awoke. He hadn't lost any memories, yet his recollection of certain key moments had been subtly altered.

In his mind, it seemed Jenkins had simply opened the coffin after arriving, and the body was still lying inside, untouched.

“The decomposition is rather advanced,” the old man commented. “But you have quite the nerve, Mr. Williams. Have you done this sort of work before?”

The old man spoke while looking at the empty coffin, then offered another prayer before motioning for Jenkins to help him nail it shut and lower it back into the grave.

Staring at the open, empty coffin, Jenkins was suddenly struck by an inexplicable chill.

Once they had restored Miss Jones’s grave to its original state, the two turned to leave. Jenkins didn’t want to linger a moment longer, but to take the jewelry box, he first had to sign the gravedigger’s ledger of personal effects.

Taking the old man’s worn fountain pen, Jenkins opened the ledger. He’d flipped too far, however, and had to turn back a couple of pages.

But as his eyes fell upon the contents of the page he had turned to by mistake, his hand froze.

“Is something wrong?”

the gravedigger asked with concern, thinking there might be an issue with his records.

“Well... were you away for a time last year? I noticed the handwriting on these two pages is different from the others.”

“I was. I fell gravely ill last autumn. The church couldn’t spare anyone to cover for me, so I asked a trustworthy young man I know to help out.”

This matched what Jenkins already knew. Before his arrival last autumn, intelligence from the huntress had indicated that an ordinary person was watching over the cemetery during that period. That was why he had dared to sneak in at night to obtain the drop of divinity.

“A trustworthy young man... What’s his name?”

“Skryu Pompey. We were neighbors for ten years before I started working here. He went away to study but comes back to visit occasionally. He returned last autumn to see me, so I asked him to watch the grounds for a week.”

The handwriting was identical to the script on the notes Jenkins had found in the ruins of the collapsed apartment. He was no forensics expert, but handwriting that atrocious was easy to recognize.

“Does he have a permanent residence in Shire City?”

“No, Skryu usually stays with friends or rents a short-term apartment. There was some unpleasantness about it three years ago, I believe. Something about a landlord stealing his belongings and hiding them...”